We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carrie Esser. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carrie below.

Carrie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I am very happy as an artist and creative. And I am extremely grateful that I get to work each day pursuing my passion. When I take a moment to zoom out on my life and realize that I’ve been able to make art for so long it can feel surreal.

While I do enjoy my work greatly, there are challenges that come along with it. One challenge is continuously finding ways to secure stable and consistent income. I have a variety of revenue streams that support my artistry – content creating with brands, selling my original art, prints and products on my website, custom commissioned paintings, body painting on clients, income from social media platforms.

I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a regular job. When talking to people who are in more traditional positions, I learn about the positives and negatives of that world. While the stability of having a set, consistent income would be nice, that would not overcome the fulfillment I receive from doing what I am passionate about.

Whenever those thoughts or questions arise of having a regular job, it does not take long for me to return my thinking to how much I love what I do and the tremendous gratitude that I have for being able to create and share my art with the world.

Carrie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Carrie Esser and I am a self-taught artist. I’ve been creating for as long as I can remember and have enjoyed learning and working with many different mediums.

My family moved a couple times while I was growing up and in each home I had a dedicated space for all of my art supplies and creating. For a couple years leading into middle school, I dove into making polymer clay figures and jewelry. I had a YouTube channel with a couple thousand followers and also attended craft fairs to sell my creations. This was like the first miniature version of an art business that has grown to what I am doing now.

I continued exploring many crafts and mediums. In my high school years I would come home from school with floral sharpie designs halfway up my arm (while my mom loved the designs she was not so thrilled with me having that much sharpie ink on my skin!)

High school is also when I began exploring makeup. I wore colorful eyeshadows to school each day which always got me excited to go into school. In 2014 I started experimenting more frequently with creative makeup after growing a liking for it since the previous Halloween.

I continued playing with makeup and started entering small makeup competitions on social media. A year later for Christmas 2014 my parents got me my first set of body paints! I really did fall in love with this art form and ran with it ever since.

I majored in Entrepreneurship and earned my Bachelor of Business Administration from Kent State University in 2019. While studying I was able to work on my business, Makeup Madhouse, throughout my experience there.

Currently creative makeup and body painting are the roots of my business and presence on social media. I have been building and growing my online store to share and sell my paintings, prints and other products.

A few highlights in my career have been achieving NYX FACE Awards Top 5 in 2019, my first table at Wizard World Comic Con Cleveland March 2020, runner up for Snapchat’s makeup illusion competition show Fake Up 2021 and being named Creative Makeup Artist of the Year for the American Influencer Awards in 2021. I take pride in these recognitions as they have helped me grow my audience to share my art with and have brought many more exciting opportunities.

Nature is one of my main sources of inspiration. Being environmentally conscious by learning and practicing better choices is important to me.

Practicing love, kindness and gratitude are also important values to me and in my work.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

A huge element of being an artist and small business owner is the balance of doing both.

In an ideal world I would spend the majority of my time making art. The actual process of finding inspiration, drawing up ideas and then lots of painting and creating.

That would mean spending very minimal time on all of the other areas that in reality take up a lot of time – email and communications, finances, capturing content, editing, sharing and being present on social media, running a website. Don’t get me wrong, I have learned to enjoy doing most of these things.

Throughout growing my business I’ve always had my own systems and processes for keeping everything organized. There is a lot to keep track of as a business owner. It’s important to be organized so it is easy to find what you need quickly. Having systems and processes to follow also increases efficiency.

There is one resource I found a couple months ago that is becoming a big game changer for me. It is a platform called Notion – putting it into the universe that they will sponsor me some day. : ) I can only imagine how great it would have been to find Notion much earlier in my creative journey.

Notion can be used in many different ways – school, work, personal life. For me, it is becoming my main all-in-one workspace to hold and organize all of my information. I could really dive deep into this, but we can save that for another day! There are some great tutorials and Notion tour videos on YouTube if anyone is curious to learn more.

My greatest excitement about this platform is that it is improving my organization and efficiency allowing for more time for the actual art and making.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Every purchase someone makes from an artist or small business has big impact.

Much of our current commerce is fast-pace and on-demand which leads to major over consumption that is not doing any good for us or our planet.

Each time someone decides to shop small, it is a step in the right direction. Paying a little more for something that is made with quality and care is also something that you may find more value and connection to.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.makeupmadhouse.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makeupmadhouse/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/makeupmadhouse
• Other: https://story.snapchat.com/u/makeupmadhouse https://vm.tiktok.com/makeupmadhouse

Image Credits
Only in 1 image, the Disney body paint: Model and best friend Julia Stoll is pictured