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

Christine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Being able to earn a full-time living from our creative work has been nothing short of a challenging and exhilarating journey. I think becoming full time muralists was never a path we thought we would land in. Allison was miserable in her 9-5 job and decided to quit to pursue being self employed. Her background was in art so she decided to go that direction but wasn’t sure that it would be murals. Initially the uncertainty was kind of stressful but the freedom was really rewarding. Christine was in the midst of juggling different jobs all while trying to navigate how to make art a full-time career, signing up for art festivals on the weekends and on her free time. With her background in Marketing, she was trying to learn the business side of things, which is a huge part of being able to be successful in a creative career. She found that she loved painting on a larger scale and pursued murals shortly after. We both separately started our mural careers by doing free murals to build up our portfolios and gradually increased our pricing over time. A large part of being able to take your side-hustle passion to a full-time career is staying really persistent and always thinking of ways to expand or get more work – what is the next best thing, what is going to set you apart. A lot of being self employed is just having the desire to succeed, constantly be working to be better, and troubleshooting. No one is ever truly ‘ready’ to do anything, so it was a matter of just throwing yourself into it fully. Over the past year, we have merged our two separate mural businesses into Girls Who Paint Murals. Having the same determination and drive to be successful as one another has been a huge part of how we can make a full-time living from our creative work. Merging and combining our businesses has been a key milestone in our career. From time efficiency, to creative work, to getting into different markets, we are so happy that it has made the process of being self-employed more encouraging for us and for others. I think being able to operate a creative business you’re constantly learning something with each project and each client and every time it makes us stronger and better.

Christine, 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?

Girls Who Paint Murals is owned and operated by the creative team made up of Christine Crawford and Allison Dunavant. We are a commercial & residential mural company that provides interior and exterior wall paintings, murals, and hand-painted signage to our clients. We are based in South Carolina but travel and work all along the East Coast. Some of our top clients we have worked with this year include Amazon Fresh, TRULY Hard Seltzer, Riverbanks Zoo & Garden, and Verizon. Our work helps individuals and businesses make their space unique and provide a marketing opportunity. I think we are different than other muralists because we do not have a particular niche – we cater fully towards our clients’ wants, needs, and personal vision. Over the past year we have painted over 50 murals for cities, businesses, and residences. We think murals should be accessible for all and our goal is to spread our creativity to places while keeping true to our creative bones as well as our clients’ needs. This year we are very proud because we have had our three largest projects to date, Riverbanks Zoo & Garden, City of Conway, and MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital. Being able to paint and design something that will be there for over a lifetime, bring joy to families, neighborhoods, and surroundings areas, is a feeling unlike no other. We want our murals to have an impact on you when you see them and want to make a statement to the community or business that hires us for them and we hope to continue to spread our creativity for everyone to enjoy.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Allison and I met on Instagram – crazy, I know! We still to this day talk about how wild it is. One day we met in person and talked about our goals, how we run our separate businesses, and shared laughs over stories about previous projects. The next thing we know we are painting an entire building wrap on Hilton Head Island for the Boys & Girls Club a couple months later. It’s so rare you can find someone that you can get along with, have the same values and determination in business with, and be close friends outside of the business. Moral of the story: don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and make things happen if you truly believe in yourself and your business goals.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

What is life without risk? Whether you start your business as a side-hustle and it flourishes into your full-time career or you decide to jump into it head first, you’re doing it. We shouldn’t be afraid of failure; even if you fail, you’re winning because you’re gaining a new experience that you can use somewhere else and make you stronger in the end. For Christine, she started with art as a hobby and side-hustle and built her way up to murals. Allison has a background in art and jumped head first into a full-time art career without looking back. We think taking that risk is a crucial part of being able to make it full-time. Don’t look back and just do it! We both have very supporting friends and families and we are very grateful for the constant encouragement.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.christineccreates.com AND www.allisondunavant.com (two separate accounts)
• Instagram: @christine.c.creates AND @allireneeart AND @girlswhopaintmurals (three separate accounts)
• Facebook: Christine.C.Creates AND Alli Renee Art (two separate accounts)
• Linkedin: Christine Crawford AND Allison Dunavant (two separate accounts)