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

Emmy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Throughout the past few years, I have had the incredible privilege of working on a myriad of meaningful projects. As an event signage artist, I am constantly engaging with clients to make sure that whatever they have in their mind, I am able to make come to life. I’ve worked on signs for weddings, baby showers, bridal showers, and funerals. I’ve done work for large corporations like Target HQ and Sweetgreen. But, my most meaningful project to date was a recent one. During the holiday season, like many other calligraphy artists, I make personalized ornaments to spruce up (hehe, get it?) peoples’ Christmas trees. This year, I had someone reach out to me and ask if I could make an ornament to honor the loss of their child. Several months before the holiday season, this woman had lost her baby due to a miscarriage and she wanted a way to remember their little one. Her baby was due in May and the birth flower for May is a lily of the valley, so I drew that flower on an acrylic circle. I then got dozens of requests to make similar ornaments for others who lost a child or a loved one. It was an incredibly heavy project to work on, but I felt so much gratitude that these people were trusting me with creating a precious keepsake to honor the lives of loved ones gone far too soon.

Emmy, 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?

I’m Emmy! A Minneapolis, Minnesota calligrapher and hand-lettering artist, mom, wife, amateur cookie baker, enneagram 2w1 and an extroverted introvert who loves CrossFit and pasta. Specializing in event signage, I create one-of-a-kind, thoughtful designs for weddings, vow renewals, baby showers, engagement parties, celebrations of life, anniversary parties, bachelorette parties and more, plus a collection of nursery artwork and line drawings that add a personal touch to your space.

My journey began in 2015 when I turned to hand lettering during an excruciating time in my life. At that time, I was working as a special education teacher, and during the school year, one of my third graders tragically and unexpectedly passed away. Nothing can prepare you for a moment like that. To busy my mind and have an escape, I turned to doodling. I found so much peace in doing calligraphy while listening to music, so letter by letter, I put my mind at ease and got lost in it.

Other teachers began to ask me to make hand-lettered art for their classrooms and write their students’ names in calligraphy. That’s when I realized I had a skill that people were actually interested in! After a few months of informal practice, I enrolled in a local hand lettering workshop to learn the basic calligraphy strokes and the rest followed. If there’s anything my story taught me, it’s that if you really want to go after something, do it, because life is far too short to not bet on yourself. Now, through everything I create, I hope to provide others with the same sense of joy hand-lettering gave me during that time. The world is a crappy place sometimes and spreading kindness is so simple.

A few of the services I offer are event signage, in-person calligraphy workshops, and live lettering for businesses. Things like signs at an event like a wedding add meaningful little details that set the tone for your event and wow your guests. Your special day is all about telling your story and inviting your loved ones to be a part of it with thoughtful touches that reflect just how special your guests are to you. This includes things like signature cocktail signs to your wedding stationery and envelopes, seating charts, place cards, welcome signs, bar signs, table numbers and so much more.

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

As someone who has a modest and respectable follower count in the 3,000s, I am probably not the one to ask for all the tips and tricks for building an audience, but what I can say is this: While I may not have 10k+ followers, the followers I do have are incredibly supportive people and that’s what matters to me. I have grown slowly since starting my social media journey, but I think that slow growth has allowed for meaningful connections to the people who follow me. I have conversations in my DMs with people every day. When I ask for my followers to share something I’m excited about, THEY DO! And I think that’s because I’ve tried to foster my relationship with them and show them who Emmy Shanley is.

My number one piece of advice is to show up as your authentic self. That may sound cliche, but it’s the truth. People are craving connection and in order to truly connect with someone, you have to show up as yourself AND you have to show an interest in learning about the people who are following you. Find out more about them so you can better learn how to serve them. Tell stories about what crazy thing happened to you that week. Post what you’re making for dinner. Ask people something they learned late in life that they can’t believe they didn’t know before. Post silly polls about would you rather ____ or ____. Do two truths and a lie. Share things about your life! We are all so much more than a square grid of pictures.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The world feels hard to navigate sometimes. I don’t know if it’s because we all have access to the 24-hour news cycle at our fingertips every minute of the day, but things can feel really heavy these days. If I can bring joy to somebody through something I’ve created, that is quite literally all I want. No matter what I’m creating, from custom signage for weddings to line art prints of your pup, the intention behind everything I do is to bring a smile to you and your loved ones’ faces.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.emmyshanleycreativeco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmyshanleycreativeco/

Image Credits
Sassypants Photography Trish Burtzel Ali Kemp