We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Deepa Gheewala a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Deepa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

The creative field has always been my happy place. After becoming a Cake Artist, my passion and creativity got a better direction to grow. Each day is a new challenge with new possibilities that motivates me to keep going. The best part is when those beautiful happy smiles and feedback I get from the clients that made their special occasion even more special. What an amazing accomplishment!

However the way cost of living has been increasing, and in order to support my family, I had a serious thought about joining back in the IT industry along with continuing my passion. I absolutely love making cakes so I will not stop at all. I recently completed BootCamp from UT Austin and I would soon start searching for a job.

Life is throwing challenges at us, and we are ready to embrace them with happiness. Avish Creations have higher dreams to grow, it’s just slowing down a little bit for the time and it will continue to serve the community.

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

I started baking for my kids and then slowly got into a full-time home baker/ cake artist. I learned and enhanced my skills with each cake I made. Avish Creations’ USP is a wide range of Indian fusion flavors and the details I work with to get the perfect product of one’s dream. Avish creations stand out with the details of design and varieties of flavors offered that bring back our customers to try out something new every time they come back.

I am so proud to improve my skills with sculpted cakes, wedding cakes, and structural cakes and also improved drastically over figurines. Hence going forward, I would like to work more on sculpted cakes or engineering cakes, and unique wedding cakes if I get more of such requests.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

“ARTISTs are underpaid and undervalued” – this is one fact that I would like to talk about today.

I would like to highlight on the amount of effort, time, and resources that go in for creating one custom product are way more than what you actually pay for. The time for discussions, time is taken to make any change request, buying all those tiny stuff that is needed for only your cake, sleepless nights to work on some unique ideas, and many more. These are never accounted for. I would like Society to understand that you are not just paying for cake ingredients, please understand there is a lot more effort and resources used for which you are not paying at all.

“You are too pricy” – This is something most artists have to hear when you do not value their ART. This is something I would request society to understand and a little bit be humble and say instead “Oh! That is a little out of my budget, I would love to come back when I have a higher budget. Thank you for your time”

A humble request to society to make a little shift in thoughts and let’s appreciate the artist and value their art right.
This can really motivate more artists to pursue their passion and make the world more beautiful.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I started my journey as a cake artist, the only social media medium was facebook. My business grew slowly with word of mouth and recommendations on Facebook groups.

During the pandemic, the use of Social media increased exponentially. I had an Instagram account prior to the pandemic, but I got super active during the Pandemic with more posting and actively connecting to the baking community.

Here are a few simple steps that will help anyone who is starting to make social media presence.
1) Connect on Instagram and Facebook
2) Post regularly with your products
3) Share your page with other small businesses and support each other
4) Connect with other bakers and support each other and grow together
5) Advertise your best work on the days allowed on the Facebook page
6) Collaborate with other bakers/artists and expand the reach of your work.
7) Enjoy creating content and take breaks as and when needed.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avishcreations
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AvishCreationsUS

Image Credits
Some pics are shared by the Client. Some are taken by myself.