We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cassandra Zepeda-Kelley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cassandra , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

My name is Cassandra Zepeda-Kelley and I am the Co-Founder, Creative Director, and Lead artist for MageCraft Miniatures.

My husband and I started this business in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and we never actually expected it to become what it has! We started doing this for fun and as a way to spend time together while we were all in lockdown, and very quickly became our main source of income.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At MageCraft Miniatures, we 3D print and custom hand-paint Miniatures for tabletop games like Dungeons&Dragons and Pathfinder, as well as collectable figures.

I’ve been painting dragons since I was 17 – at the time, I was in a wheelchair recovering from severe Multiple Sclerosis. I’ve been a performer – a singer, actor, dancer, and model – all my life, and when I was sick, they told me I might never walk again. Painting and sculpting was one of the things that gave me peace. I felt like if all else failed and I could never walk again, I would want to paint and nothing else.

When the pandemic started, to pass the time, my husband and I would sit in our Orlando patio and paint DnD miniatures for hours; It reminded me how much I enjoyed painting. We began posting our painted work on social media, just for fun, but very quickly started getting inquiries to purchase our minis! One thing led to another and we got into 3D printing, started to print better and better quality models, custom painting pieces, and hiring more artists to work with us!

One of the things we pride ourselves of and want to do more of as we expand is to give more and more artists the ability to sell their work and, hopefully, get we can get big enough that they can make a living doing so. We also try to connect with our clients on a much deeper level and aid them in their storytelling through our miniatures – that has been the core idea and mission while creating our miniatures.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Something I had to unlearn and do a lot of mental work on once we launched the business is my relationship with money. I’m still working on this, but as many of us are, I grew up witnessing a scarcity mindset when it comes to money and managing it. A huge hurdle that I had to overcome as a business owner is better my relationship with money.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

As I was working to scale my business, I started doing lots of online courses and coaching, and two of the best resources I had were two amazing women who are also business owners – Alex Harvey and Stephanie Rose Freeman. Alex helped me a lot with re-structuring the way I manage money and really doing lots of shadow work on myself. Steph was huge in helping me with setting up amazing systems in my business that have helped me since.

Contact Info:

• Website: Magecraftminiatures.com
• Instagram: @MageCraftMiniatures
• Facebook: MageCraft Miniatures