Imperfect Circle

In 2018 I quit my job and decided to give Shipwreck Press a try in a full-time small business BOSS capacity. I took classes on quickbooks and learned how to pitch retailers and ran through my savings in about 6 months, because I didn’t know I had ADHD and running a small business is just about the hardest thing you can do in that case (at least without knowing). But before I went back to work, I came up with an idea.

My cicada wing card set

After taking my first batch of designs to craft shows and looking around at the vendors with the biggest crowds, I thought I could maybe intuit what a hot new design might look like. I made a series of confetti cards (that were of course still labor intensive as hell) and when I brought them to my next show, expecting to be swarmed, I think I sold a grand total of one. I had a real reckoning with that. Two of my newest designs, a cicada wing set that was so fiddly it was almost comical, to which customers would say funny things like "I'm not a bug person,"  and this confetti card set which was for an imagined audience and gathering dust from the jump.

Confetti cards I was certain would sell 

As a serial over-thinker, it was one of those important small business lessons. People will always have advice for you, and there’s a certain type of over-simplified, “you should just do x, because people are really into y right now” kind of mentality that can be alluring at times. And I sort of fell for it. I felt humbled that that I couldn’t just figure out what my customers wanted in a card by looking around.

My first ever craft show!

And because of my desire to make intricate designs that tended to take months rather than weeks to design and manufacture, I had to admit that maybe it would be better to leave it to the people. If I pushed myself to make a new design every month I would get a lot of feedback about what people loved and didn’t love about Shipwreck cards. Then after thinking about it I decided two was better data because then people could vote in the moment (and I am loathe to do anything the easy way).

Fat stacks of cards

And so I created a Patreon, a way for people to support me where they got something in return. I had a friend film a video, but generally I was just guessing about all of this stuff. Was it a good value? What if it got super popular? What if it didn’t? Nevertheless I went forward and went live.

My portrait from my Patreon launch

And wouldn’t you know it, maintaining a subscription club was quite a challenge! A different challenge than being paralyzed by the million little decisions of being full-time (since I was back to having a day job), but quite a task nonetheless. The hardest thing? Coming up with two designs that met with my high (and arbitrary) artistic standards. It had to be cute, or beautiful, it couldn’t have text or words, and yet I wanted them to make sense as cards, for certain types of sentiments, evocative, not cheap in any way. And so I often agonized over the designs, days and days of tryouts and reworks and pre-vote social media polls.

One of many examples of how I agonized over designs in the early days

And then after a couple years the Covid Pandemic hit. And while it was bad in almost every possible way (and somehow we still didn’t get Medicare for all) it did put a lot of people on social media with a little more disposable income than usual and a higher desire to support one another. 

Some of my art from 2020

This coincided with a natural hitting of my design stride. I started to notice some patterns in my choices for cards (music, flowers, birds, patterns, silly lil animals). And I started to get a little bit of a flow on social media as well (an admitted weakness of mine, self-promotion). I did a month-long 32 card bracket--and once 64 cards--of my designs which was a particular highlight. 

The SC Vote-a-rama Sub-a-thon was a highlight of quarantine times

Things were going well for Shipwreck, but I had actually planned to move to Philly in the summer of 2020, and though I was doing fairly well professionally, I felt so socially isolated and in that truly special New York way, though I was making the most I ever made in the city, I still felt as broke as ever.

Baby's first studio

And so I moved to Philly in 2022/23, and found my first ever art studio (which had holes in the floor and when it rained there would be water on my desk, but it was MINE and so it was perfect. I didn’t have much of a job per se at first. And I didn’t always mind that fact, except when I had crippling anxiety about it. Any other time, I loved it so much. Spent long, 9-10 hour stretches at the studio, came up with some INCREDIBLE designs in Philly. (Canyon, Crystal Ball, Vintage Wallpaper, Witch Cat upgrade, Tomato). Honestly maybe the height of SC designs.

My final two original designs of the first run

But despite finding seasonal work at a plant nursery and despite all my skills and resume I was really struggling to find work. And I decided to do the thing that I had held in my back pocket for years, and learn to code.

Portrait of the artist as a gardener

Doing a coding boot camp on top of having a day job felt like too much to keep designing two cards a month. Especially at the high level I had hit in the recent months, and so I made the hard decision to end Shipwreck Circle. At least the new designs part which to me was where all the value was. I closed Shipwreck Circle, but kept some subscribers under a new name, Shipwreck Rewind, where you would still be able to vote on old designs. That's all I felt I had time for. 

I tried to make it fun, but I was sad to say goodbye

In hindsight, I should have reached out to my subscribers and asked what they wanted and thought, but the work of 5 years of designing/making/sending cards had worn on me a bit, and I looked forward to a break.

One of my two designs stocked in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

That lasted about two months, before I missed it, and by the time my bootcamp was over I was pretty thoroughly miserable not having Shipwreck be as significant a part of my life. People would occasionally reach out and say “I thought Shipwreck Circle was done?” and I would have to explain my re-ordering.

My first re-desing of Shipwreck Circle 2.0

So when the coding market fully imploded and I decided to for the who-knows-how-many-th time to just be an artist and not a career ladder guy, I changed back the name. I found time to tweak designs, and have even made a couple brand new ones. And feel about as good and comfortable with the situation as ever.

New design, the Muchs Card

I am incredibly excited for the future of Shipwreck Circle, which I think is a timeless service, regardless of the novelty of new designs. I have over 120 designs after all.

Mousse in her nest with her favorite card, the Cat Witch