We were lucky to catch up with Emily Voss recently and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I started my serious creative journey learning dip pen calligraphy, and while I adored doing that, having an open bottle of ink around two toddlers turned out to be a bad idea. So I invested in an iPad, the Procreate app, and some courses to help me get started with digital lettering and calligraphy. That slowly morphed into illustration classes, too, and while I’m not as proficient with illustration, I find it just as fun as lettering!

I learned that finding inspiration was one of the most important skills for me to nurture and so I tried to curate a creative space in my home filled with some of my work, the work of artists I love (some of whom I’ve had the honor of meeting at markets!), and my kids’ drawings and cards they’ve made for me.

One of the biggest obstacles for me in creating art is having a long enough continuous chunk of time in which to do so. Both my kiddos are homeschooled so we’re all home all day long together and that means lots of interruptions. I also have ADHD, so sometimes it can be tricky for me to keep being interrupted and not just give up on a specific piece because I haven’t been able to put an uninterrupted amount of time into developing it.

Emily, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As a stay at home mom with two young kids, I found myself missing the feeling of being something more than just a mom. I missed being me. So I invested time and money in myself since we had the privilege to do so, and it turned out creating fun, feminist, and unapologetic art really spoke to me. My favorite thing to do is create punchy phrases, illustrate them beautifully, and make them into stickers or other fun products for my shop, Hey Lemon. I find that a lot of women and femme presenting folks appreciate my humor and my design choices, but I’m so happy when literally anyone likes what I do!

I’ve done commission work for friends and clients that runs the gamut from a lettering art piece they want to hang in their home to an anniversary gift for their in-laws 50th wedding celebration to an illustrated portrait to commemorate their new business venture.

I’m definitely most proud of work where I surprise myself and the client is overjoyed at the finished piece. One of my favorite things I’ve done is create a trio of spicy themed bookmarks for a romance literary subscription box. I’m super into reading romance novels and it was so fun to take my love of reading that genre and put it into my art! The bookmarks were extremely well received and it was a blast to have my work included in the Steamy Lit Box.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Something that was so beautiful that came out of the dumpster fire that was 2020 was the amount of art being released to the public for free for the literal betterment of our society. Artists, musicians, authors, etc, were teaching, creating, and performing for free online when we were all virtual. It really emphasized the importance of the arts on our mental health and well being. I think that our society really needs to remember exactly how much the arts have been present during times of sorrow and devastation and how much the arts have lifted everyone up.

The best thing we can do is to make sure to fight for the continuation of arts in education. We can push for more financial and cultural support for artists. Ireland just started a program where 2,000 artists have been given a universal basic income to pursue their art and I think that is a really incredible idea.

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

I think my absolute favorite resource I’ve discovered during my creative journey is a group of peers to bounce ideas off of and from whom to get support. I’ve found a small group of women who are artists and business owners and we try to get together for coffee somewhat regularly to chat about all things art and all things business. We also have a group chat for quick questions about pricing and commission work and our own mental health. I think finding your community when you start your creative journey is one of the most important and best gifts you can give yourself and your art.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.heylemoncreative.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/heylemoncreative
• Facebook: facebook.com/heylemoncreative
• Other: www.etsy.heylemoncreative.com tiktok.com/@heylemoncreative