hard launch my secret project with me!
I have been working on this secret project for over 2 years and I… don’t have a lot to show for it?
Just so I can actually talking about it in this video, here it is, my secret project. Love and Peas. This is an illustration project dedicated to drawing all things fruit and veg, garden-core and joyfulness around food. This project was inspired by the amazing tiktok creators who have amazing gardens and grow a variety of food. In particular I want to mention Red Leaf Ranch, Meg Grows Plants, Carmen in the Garden and Gardening with Tara. Special mention to an Aussie creator, 10th Floor Balcony Garden! Before finding these creators, I thought there were only like 3 varieties of tomatoes, so seeing them harvest like a dozen varieties with their amazing colours and shapes, I was blown awayyy. So my first piece was a little tribute to this discovery and the first vegetable to open up my world. Tomatoes! I love this piece so much.
So why have I been keeping it a secret? It’s not like the content is anything culturally significant or vulnerable.
There are few pieces i have ever drawn where I can really remember the time and place that I came up with the concept and started drawing. I remember the significance of this piece because I was on a drawing date with my illustrator friend, Lily, and I was telling her how uninspired I was feeling and really down in the dumps about my creative practice. We were just doodling away and I drew this cute little tomato friend and I fell in love with it. When I got home I started building it from there and a couple days later I sent her this WIP shot. I hadn’t drawn anything I really loved in a long time so I was giddy with joy when sending these WIPs to her. I started adding in some texture with a dry brush and I was just loving it even more. When I finally put the layout together, I just felt so proud. I hadn’t felt this way about a piece in a long time and I wanted to savour it. I wanted to keep this joy to myself and not put any pressure on it by starting to sell it. So i kept it a secret, only for a few people to see.
Ok yea… but why? Well, I’ll let you in on a secret, I am an oversharer. I’m not sure where this comes from. Me being chronically online, or having one parent who’s an oversharer and the other being kinda mysterious. Or maybe it’s because I feel like sharing my plans already feels like accomplishing my plans, and then my brain already checks it as done, so I never really get around to it.
Yea… I think it’s got that something to do with that.
I wanted to keep Love and Peas secret because I have a really bad habit of telling lots of people about my ideas and plans and then never getting around to it. I mastered talking the talk and never learned how to crawl.
I started having bigger plans for Love and Peas, a book, a cooking book?, a print series, a pattern collection, character designs. All that and more. I started dreaming big about these little veggies and what they could become. And just as I was about to let my big mouth run. I kept it shut.
It was because I had seen a TikTok of someone explaining this very self sabotaging trap. How my habits are age old traits of the procrastinators. It felt like I had been spotted! And I didn’t want that to be me anymore. And you know what, I even kept it up with a new secret project. This YouTube channel! Ok while the channel isn’t secret, I didn’t tell any friends or even my family about restarting my channel and the ideas i have for it. It was so freeing!
So I kept this project to myself, quietly adding to the collection and ideating the future of Love and Peas. I created a few more pieces, drafted up a manuscript for a toddler book (and submitted it to a publisher), and even put some recipes together. I was in PLANNING MODE. And then it teetered off. I got busy with mum life, moving country, experiencing said new country. After 2 years, this project’s collection isn’t nearly as big as what I thought it would be. But that’s ok, I’m a recovering procrastinator so I know these changes to my work habits won’t happen overnight. Or over a couple short years.
Somewhere in those 2 years, I started uploading digital downloads of my art to Etsy and while I didn’t share anything about this Etsy page, I somehow made $100 with no advertising. And yea I get that it’s not much, but to me that’s wild. $100 with zero advertising, because when I previously had my online store, I was hustling hard to get $100.
When I realised this, it made me want to work on this project even more, but I’m not really sure if I can keep it a secret any longer!
So this is it! My Etsy shop for Love and Peas.
While it doesn’t look like much at the moment, it is an amalgamation of my art transformation and my chronic procrastination days being put behind me.
I’ll be adding to this in the coming months and years as I work on the style, the vision and future for Love and Peas.
I don’t plan on it being a business or thing on its own, its always going to be an extension of Merinda Designs, but giving this project a name makes it feel more long term I guess.
I hope you resonate with this video and the thoughts I shared on being an oversharer. Creating these YouTube video is actually kinda giving me an avenue to release this desire to overshare, so I thank you for being with me.
I’d love it if you checked out my Etsy and I am totally open to feedback on this project, so any thots kweschens and konsurnz. Please either leave a comment or send me a DM!
See you next time, bye!
