We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Abigail Kramer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Abigail below.
Hi Abigail, thanks for joining us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?
In the beginning I was mostly making and selling my crochet work and couldn’t give the potholders away fast enough, because making them brought me so much joy, so my friends and family all got their first of my works for free and then found out first hand how sturdy and beautiful they were and were hooked! I now have friends, family and customers that return for my artwork and crochet goods year after year after year. It is so satisfying to provide beautiful things to people I love… and still delight in gifting my creation to loved ones and loyal customers!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Creating has been integral to my being for as long as I can remember, and growing up always said I wanted to be an artist and a mom when I grew up. Aside from a few years in high school when I considered being a dental hygienist or archeologist, being an artist has always been my dream.
After marrying my high school sweetheart and moving across the country (twice) we settled in Arizona where I became more interested in rocks as I walked in the desert around our home and found beautiful agates, jaspers and obsidian everywhere I went. After getting more interested in rocks, I began learning about them and got connected with jewelry makers, rock cutters, mineral sellers, etc, on social media and found out about the Tucson Gem Show and attended for the first time in 2015 and was hugely inspired by all I saw and experienced there, and a couple months later drew my first crystal (a fuchsite included quartz) and the rest was history! As soon as I did one, I saw inspiration everywhere and the series expanded quickly. Before long I was combining the drawings digitally (with the help of a graphic designer I worked with), and worked to draw minerals in all the colors of the rainbow. I was also inspired by vintage mineral posters I saw, but felt that a modern retelling of those drawings/posters was in order since pigments used for painting and printing at the time were less vibrant than the minerals I was seeing in real life and after some research found that it wasn’t something that anyone else was doing at the time and made that my goal to bring crystal and mineral artwork to life for modern viewers with the tools available to me.
As the mineral art series grew, so did my social media following. People were excited about what I was doing and started to ask for prints with my artwork and as a new mom, staying home with my kiddos, it helped to have an outlet for my creativity and that’s when I started designing prints and shipping out of a small desk that sat in my living room and working nights, weekends, and during kids nap times on our kitchen counter, drawing dozens of minerals that year. Our family left Arizona in 2016 and moved to Minnesota (to be close to family) and found a house where I have a designated studio space and could expand my business and hold and ship more and different inventory such as mugs, stickers, notecards and in the past couple years working with two large game companies and getting my artwork on 500 and 1000 piece puzzles!
Slow progress is still progress and that’s how my business has grown the past 9 years, since I’ve never been able to work full time on my art as I spend winters homeschooling my 3 children and the summers foraging and spending time in beautiful (if buggy) Minnesota and still find myself creating at night and on the weekends… but thankfully not on my kitchen counter anymore!
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
In my case, it didn’t even start as a side hustle. Drawing and crocheting were simply hobbies, but when my crystal/mineral series started getting attention on Instagram and I gained 50,000+ followers in the first few years (growth was slow and steady back then), there were a lot of people asking for my work and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a little extra money to help support my young family and it worked out perfectly because I was a stay at home mom with no job and I could pour my extra time and energy into my art.
Some of my favorite milestones have been the opportunities I’ve had to work with others in the mineral industry and have created custom artwork for jewelry brands, crystal ID cards for mineral sellers, and even something as simple as display prints of my work for crystal shops across the country and around the world.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the freedom to explore new interests. Through the years while I’ve been working on the mineral series there have been multiple other side projects and artistic explorations, such as rendering found heart rocks in watercolor, arranging found rocks in shape and color order, nature flat lays and most recently I’ve started to learn about Lino cut and have started carving my own stamps that will now become part of my art life and may eventually become part of my business as well. Nothing you learn or explore is a waste. Any new interest or learning experience will offer benefits you could have never foreseen. Don’t be afraid to explore something “off brand” as whatever you touch can become part of your brand or simply enhance your life and reignite your creativity
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.etsy.com/shop/twigglings
- Instagram: Twiggyabi
- Facebook: Twiggyabi