Encouragement for 2025
Sharing a series of artwork to remind you throughout the year to continue forward
If you are new here, welcome!
Writing a shorter post this month to share my intentions for the year and encourage you forward in your 2025 journey.
Also a quick note to my friends in the U.S. and anyone feeling the impact of the events that have unfolded here since January 1st. I had this post drafted to go out this month and it feels even more necessary with the raging fires in California, a returning president taking massive strides to turn back progress and strip away rights, and the general sense of unease that many of us are feeling right now.
Your mission matters, your voice matters, your dreams matter. Lean on your community, have intentional conversations, find places to exist that make you feel safe and keep fighting for a better future for all. We don’t know what is to come, but I know that we must continue forward. Keep planting positive change and urge others to do the same.
Similar to my mantra last year, I want to continue connecting intentionally with people and stirring up opportunities for co-creation (two collaborative blogs are already in the works!).
New this year is the idea of taking more action. No more letting “BIG” ideas collect dust in the corners of my brain and more pulling them out and putting them in motion. In addition, heading out into my local community for more coffee chats, more events, and more volunteering. I’ve already found that these intentions are already filling my heart and making me feel more positively about the possibilities for 2025.
Lately, I’ve been working on a series of illustrations. Not created for a client or commission, but created by me as a way to explore and experiment. I was inspired to create more personal work after being selected as one of the artists featured in a local calendar, you might remember reading about that in my last post.
Being an artist has always been a challenge for me, not because I didn’t want to create, but because I didn’t always feel like I fit in. I struggled because I never felt “artsy” enough or something even though I’ve been sketching since I was young. Other artists seem to have such a strong sense of personal style and purpose, where I was just me, an ordinary, small town girl who likes to create art.
Since moving to Portland, an internal battle has been raging between my desire to create personal work and my fear of not fitting in with the local art scene (despite many great conversations with local creators). After being selected as one of the artists featured in Outlet’s 2025 Calendar, I felt a surge of confidence to go for it despite my fears. Not only did this series of artwork bring me a lot of joy but it also gave me encouragement to do more like this throughout the year.
Right now, I’ve created a trio of three encouragement pieces (I’d love to keep adding to this collection). Each features nature-inspired illustrations alongside handwritten type with positive phrases. The goal of this series was to embrace my place as an artist and to acknowledge areas of my life (and business) that I’ve personally struggled with, in hopes that they will encourage others along their own journey.
In the spirit of sharing more openly and being comfortable with vulnerability, I’ll share a bit about each one.
Adapt and grow as you go
Throughout my business career, I’ve learned that you have to be okay with changing things up. This can show up in your systems, marketing strategy, offerings, process and more. Old systems and advice might not work for everyone, you have to learn to rely on your own intuition. You can’t think too hard about something and you often learn more from taking action than you do from following a detailed plan
To me, this applies to life too—sometimes it can be freeing to give yourself permission to fail. Take the leap of faith, try the new thing, follow your heart and pursue a new career path. We evolve as people so much as we get older and we can’t let our fears hold us back from learning and growing as we go along.
The sooner you start, the sooner you grow
When I first started my business, I felt really young. In all honesty life threw me curveballs and I probably wouldn’t have started when I did if not for a few firm nudges from the universe. Going to networking events where everyone was at least a decade older made me feel a little self conscious. Took me a while to start owning my knowledge and expertise to show up more confidently at events.
Sometimes you just have to take the leap of faith, trust yourself and make it work. At the end of the day, you won’t know if you will succeed or fail until you try. I’m always encouraging people to follow their heart and trust their gut, life is too short to put off major life choices.
It’s okay to ask for help
The piece that started it all—inspired by the prompt “connection.” Very fitting for me considering my own personal and professional goals.
Growing up I was never the type of person or student to ask for help. I’d re-read an entire chapter or lesson notes before asking my teacher a question. Looking back, I might have been better off admitting when something didn’t make sense. Maybe I would have become a faster test taker or would have understood that one AP chemistry lesson that still doesn’t make sense to me.
I’ve come a looong way when it comes to asking for help. Now I take more chances and ask more questions along the way. We can’t be an expert on every subject, it’s only natural to need help when jumping into something new or complex. I hope this one inspires others to lean on their community for support.
Want an art print for your home, office, or friend?
While I’m in the experimenting phase of selling products, I’m trying to simplify things before investing a lot of time and energy into building a permanent space online. If you’ve ever sold online, you know it’s quite the mountain to climb (building the store, tracking inventory, navigating payments and more).
Right now, I’ll be taking payments through embedded Stripe links on my website. Please let me know if you run into any issues, I want to make this a smooth process for everyone involved. If you are interested in shopping, thank you for your support.
Since this is my first set of prints and I want to celebrate with you, I’ll be offering these at $8 off for a limited time. I printed 25 of each design but will order more if and when needed—they are 8”x10” prints on white, 100% recycled 80lb cover paper.
For now, they are $32 each (send an email to reneelynncreative@gmail.com if you want a bundle deal for the full trio).
If you are in Portland, OR I can deliver straight to you—no shipping needed! And a local refill shop has offered to sell them at their storefront, so I might eventually go that route instead of handling shipping and selling online. Even exploring the idea of creating a set of greeting cards they can provide for their customers.
Studio Updates
A belated happy new year to you all! Hard to believe we are three weeks in already.
The last few weeks I’ve been writing lots of holiday cards, for family, friends and clients. I designed and printed a custom card this year, which is something that’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. Finding a local print partner and seeing them come to life has been exciting! Next year I just need to account for more time for writing them since I severely underestimated the time that would take.
Also relaunched the Eco Brief community here on Substack and could not be more excited to get that growing again! Feel free to take a look and share with anyone who might be interested in joining us.
On the business end of things, projects are picking up again and my calendar is looking more and more crowded. If you’ve been working on a design for your business, but feel tired of spending hours in Canva on your own—I offer ongoing and time-based design support for anyone wanting design work off their list of to-dos.
Or if you want the heart on your sleeve to match the soul of your brand, so it attracts your core supporters, fill out my inquiry form to get a conversation started.
Thanks for spending some time with me, until next time—keep growing, 2025 is only just beginning!
Renee
Your artwork is delightful and uplifting! I'm so happy you are selling these prints!
Beautiful prints!