One thing that’s really important to me is taking the time to regularly step outside my comfort zone. This includes making up weekly, monthly, and quarterly challenges that force me to be a little bit uncomfortable. In the height of my state of indecision, I decided I wanted to challenge myself to keep illustrating, even though so much of my life was in flux.

Curious Mail was born out of a need to cultivate light in a time of uncertainty–both personally and for the greater world. The idea was simple: over the course of 3 months, I would create original illustrations and send them out to people via snail mail.

I’ll be honest, this was an interesting challenge. I love the idea of sending things directly to people’s mailboxes, but the reality of doing that monthly was drastically more difficult than I ever imagined.

I wanted to walk through 3 things I learned from the Curious Mail Project:

Honestly, I always knew that I loved drawing cartoons, but there’s something beautiful about having to create something on a recurring schedule. I enjoyed pushing the limits of my own creativity and loved being able to develop and send out a variety of new pieces within such a limited timeframe.

One of the major highlights of the project overall was getting regular direct feedback on the pieces. Very frequently I would run into someone that connected with a specific art piece. They would mention how they hung a certain piece in their home or gave it as a gift to a friend that they thought would love it.

This may seem obvious, but in practicality I quickly learned how much time it takes to do all the different parts of creating a successful subscription mail business. After finishing a piece, you have to order it from a printing company. That adds at least a week to any process. Then you have to pack the items. Even with only 25 participants, packing the orders took around 8 hours to prepare the batch of orders.

The final step, which was actually the most daunting, is printing the postage and getting the pieces to a mailbox. I used an online system through the USPS to print the postage, but the process was not incredibly intuitive and a lot of times, I found myself spending hours trying to figure out how to print the postage on the sticky paper. (I’ll fully accept that this probably has more to do with my personality type than a severe knock on the process)

Over the course of this 3 month project, I designed a variety of different art pieces, including a packet of postcards, 4 new 8×10 art prints, and a slew of cards. This was an exciting way to make each package feel special, but it also created a series of logistical challenges. The biggest one was that there was additional research necessary (and sometimes costs) in printing the variety of different pieces.

In hindsight, if I were to relaunch the Curious Mail project, it would probably be a singular art print every month. By simplifying the objective, I think I could spend more time on the individual piece that I created for that month.

Hello beautiful humans!Sending out the final Curious Mail filled me with so many different emotions. This week I’m sharing the final illustration I created for that campaign. What I love about this piece is that I drew things that I very rarely illustrate, but I was able to maintain my personal style. (I have a few more tiger illustrations coming soon.

Here are 8 interesting things that piqued my interest this week.

I’m totally inspired by illustrator, Linda Gobeta.

Anti To Do Lists are the best way to quantify all the hard work you do in a day

This Airline Took Its Uniforms To The Next-Level: Couture

5 Ways to Be a Strategic Slacker

I LOVE this interview with E. Jean Carrol from Vogue. Such beautiful execution and such a beautiful mind.

No, you can’t pick my brain–and here’s why

As a small business, you have to be very in-tune with where you’re spending your resources. This includes your money, your assets, and your time.

You can be woke without waking up to the news 

PS. There’s a huge difference between being nice and being kind. Choose kindness.

Hello beautiful humans! I usually send my illustrations to a group chat before I put them in this email. One of my friends captioned this photo: “Me every time I leave Canes.”

Here are 7 interesting things that piqued my interest this week.

A company just launched that doesn’t have branding AND I basically want to buy everything they have. Have we reached the end of capitalism?

Cyndie Spiegel just relaunched her website for The Collective of Us, a carefully curated small business accelerator designed with the mission of supporting women in powerfully leading profitable and strategic bold businesses. It’s awesome and she is a powerhouse.

Here’s a secret. One of my favorite conferences for creatives is called Circles. The first time I went, it literally changed my perspective on design. The next conference is scheduled for September 6-8 in Grapevine, TX.

instead of thinking through what they wanted their perfect day to look like, business partners at TIny thought about the worst day imaginable and how to avoid it. This led to something they like to call Anti-Goals.

This is one of the most creative Instagram accounts I’ve seen in a long time.

This weekend I rewatched Boomerang, a classic 90s movie set at a black owned ad agency. Not only is it hilarious, it also inspired my new haircut. The movie is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

This straight-forward article teaches you how to apologize properly.

PS. You are strong. You are important. You were designed to do something meaningful for the world.