We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liz Pritchard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Liz, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
At my very first craft show, I met a lot of people that promised to contact me about creating custom pieces for them. Very few of them followed through but one in particular still stands out as my all-time favorite, most meaningful piece. Over a month after the show, I received a call from the grandparents of a young girl I had met there that wanted to buy a piece from me but they had talked her out of it, saying she needed to really think about spending that much money and to look at some other vendors first. The grandparents told me how she insisted she still really wanted me to make a piece for her parents for Christmas so of course, they helped facilitate it. After several conversations, I got an idea of what the girl wanted and suggested she hand-write a note to her parents that I would burn on the back of the piece. They sent not only a hand-written note, but a simple sketch of what she wanted recreated. I instantly knew I needed to capture that sweet drawing and included an exact replica of it on a Christmas ornament along with the piece she really wanted. To me, to have a young girl admire my art so much that she wanted to spend her hard-earned money on it for a gift, that is the most beautiful, meaningful compliment I can imagine receiving.
Liz, 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?
I discovered my love of pyrography (the art of woodburning) during the beginning of quarantine 2020. I found a small wood-burner my son got for Christmas one year and I thought it would be a fun thing to try out since we were all stuck at home. A day or two after I first used it, I managed to break it, but I was already hooked. I convinced my husband that I needed a newer, fancier one so I could “make gifts for family and save us money at Christmas”. Once my new burner arrived, pyrography turned into a full-fledged hobby which quickly turned into a growing side-hustle. I create art on all types of wood – cutting boards, jewelry, coasters, ornaments, light switch covers, rustic wooden slabs, and really anything else wood I can find. Most of my pieces are custom orders I get to create for gifts and are usually full of sentiment. One of my most popular products are heirloom recipe cutting boards where I capture the handwriting and recipe from a loved one. These pieces are intimate and time-consuming; I feel so privileged being able to spend my time getting to know these loved ones through their hand-writing and through their recipe that they’ll always be remembered for lovingly preparing. One of my favorite parts of it is seeing how people dot their i’s and cross their t’s – it’s really interesting at how randomly people place those little dots!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
It’s not all about the profit. It’s actually not about the profit at all. When I first started this business, my goal was huge profits – dream big! While I think most other creatives that sell their work can agree that profit is definitely part of it, I’m learning that if you focus solely on selling pieces and how much you’ve made, you will fail as a creative. You may succeed as a business, but the creative side of you will be wrecked. This is a lesson I’m still unlearning but through focusing on creating the pieces I enjoy versus the pieces that people want, I’m finding more happiness in my art. While I’m still a “starving artist”, I do have a separate full-time job that pays the bills so I’m working to focus on saying “no” to commissions that make me cringe.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
It’s a tough, lonely world for artists. Social media is an amazing way for us to share our art with the world but ever-changing algorithms make this next to impossible to master. We’re artists, not social media gurus or marketing specialists, and I’d much rather spend my time sketching and burning and painting than reading blog after blog on how algorithms have changed yet again in the last 48 hours. The best way to support us is to share and comment and react to our social media endeavors. Outside of the social media world, word-of-mouth is the next best thing. Nothing makes me smile bigger than when I get a call or an email from someone saying a client of mine referred them to me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.southernsomethings.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/southernsomethings.liz
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/southernsomethingslp
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZPhveTkHQMA4juyz1FbfIw