We recently connected with Amy Pratt and have shared our conversation below.
Amy , appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on has been my monthly handwritten letter subscriptions. We’re all familiar with the concept of a pen pal, but I wanted to marry the idea of encouraging letters with a sticker subscription. Each month the subscriber receives a handwritten letter, original sticker, and mini art print in the mail, an uplifting treat to look forward to.
The goal with these letters is to connect at the level of our humanity and shared experience. We may live in different places and lead very different lives, but we all share common threads: the changing of the seasons, the grief of missed expectations, the stress and joy of family and holidays, the yearning for meaning and creative expression.
There’s such an epidemic of loneliness right now with so much of our social lives happening on screens, and I really wanted to capture the slow-build connection that only handwritten snail mail can. These subscriptions are often given as gifts to encourage friends and family, from college-age daughters to retired moms and grandmothers. Some people are creative journalers looking for fun goodies to inspire their pages, and others are just like me and love sending and receiving something handmade.
Hundreds of letters have gone out since its inception in December 2022, and I look forward to even more growth ahead.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
AddPeace Studio began as a quick idea in the car. My best friend was opening her own bookstore in another state, and I wanted to be able to contribute in some way. I called her to see if I could make book-themed stickers for her store, having no idea how to make a sticker or how many bookish stickers already existed in the world. She encouraged me to go for it, and AddPeace Studio was born.
A few months later, the idea came for a handwritten letter subscription, a way to blend my love of letter writing with getting more stickers out into the world, and a few months after that, I began wholesaling my stickers to other bookstores.
AddPeace Studio is more than just stickers (or letters, or calendars, or whatever else I create), it’s a way to celebrate what we have in common. It’s a way to share the love of books, or nature, or grief, or daily humor, to take what makes us human and capture it for a moment in a sticker, in a letter, in art. My hope for anyone interacting with something I’ve made is that you leave feeling more seen, more loved, more connected, more peace.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I grew up drawing as a kid. I loved art in school, and given a focused project and some direction, I was generally pleased with what I made, but underlying each project or drawing was this feeling of not being good enough, striving for perfection, an unwillingness to push through the messy middle of whatever I was creating. Those things don’t necessarily fade with time and maturity. I think the only thing that frees up your ability to create and call yourself an artist is to take yourself a little less seriously and play a little.
If you wait until what you’ve made is perfect, whatever that means, you’ve lost the momentum of the purpose of your art, to share yourself and your ideas. I think perfectionism is born out of our own fear and self-judgement. When you allow yourself to be a beginner, when you allow yourself to play and experiment, that’s where the magic happens. You slowly begin to realize perfection isn’t a thing, or if it is, it’s not what we really crave. We want what’s real. We want what’s human.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I think the thing that has helped me make leaps in my creative business is surrounding myself with people who are doing the same and investing in education to help me move forward. We are what we absorb, so curating your environment with other dreamers and creators is essential to keeping your momentum. I took Leverage Your Art, an education course by Stacie Bloomfield, in the first year of my business, and it really opened my mind up to possibilities I hadn’t considered before. I also highly recommend The Studio by Liz Kohler Brown. It’s an online community of artists looking to hone their style and grow their creative businesses.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.addpeacestudio.com
- Instagram: @addpeacestudio
Image Credits
Twelve16 Photography