Working part-time towards my BA in Graphic Design meant I was able to do shifts in my old career in nursing. Wherever possible I would try to focus my efforts on my career in art & design. When I wasn't working on client projects or pitching to new ones, I would develop products for sale online and at local stalls.

The thing which impressed on me the most during our many visiting speaker talks at university, was that creating a niche product will make your items more desirable, and catering to a more generalist consumer won't do very well financially. After working on some more freeing projects in my final year, I felt the need to explore more interesting ideas. First of them all, I worked on small batch printed poetry zines which I authored and illustrated.

The theme for these was Wonky Animals. Each zine was a poem on another animal. Each animal had another aspect of everyday life to deal with. Each was illustrated in a style befitting the subject, with details not immediately obvious to readers.

Once I had printed a batch of zines and made my printing costs back in sales, I was able to focus on a new arm to my product library: Poster Print art. I wanted to make parody spoof art of the most timeless musicians for each generation. This way no matter which consumer viewed the designs, there would be something likely to grab their attention.

My first was The Fae Fighters which was a pull from my first ever campaign in Dungeons & Dragons as Dungeon Master. I had made an NPC band of Bards with the same name, led by Dave Troll. It had tickled and stuck with me. I had two sales while still warm from the laser printer, and a senior lecturer at university liked the design enough to pay for two A0 prints for the design studio to show to future students. This was more than enough market research to demonstrate the need for more products in this arm.

The secondary theme for these poster parody prints was high fantasy, owing to the first being from my D&D campaign. This then led me to the thought of printing vinyl stickers on the high fantasy theme as well. I was producing these around June which was Pride Month. The concept of Pride is a contentious one even among the LGBTQ+ community (of which I am a part), as it's changed from its beginnings as a march in protest of the prejudice and legal restrictions on those of the community.

The broad feeling now is that Pride is overly commercialised by big corporations solely to make profit which then isn't paid into any relief or charitable organisations for the victims of violence or abuse in homophobic and transphobic countries around the world. It's because of this that I wanted the flag to be used in my designs but not the wording of Pride, as it could be misconstrued by consumers. Rather, my goal was for those who bought these stickers would do so as a statement of intent, and in support of their personality and individuality.

Hence, the Goblin Era stickers were designed.

Overall, I'm proud of the work I put into these products. They won't expire or age so long as I keep them in good storage conditions, so there will unlikely be depreciation considerations to make. I've sold enough already to break even on the costs, so I'm now able to sell at a lower price to generate more revenue and create more products for the future. I've worked with multiple seller platforms previously, and it works best for me at the moment to sell on eBay. Each of the items on this page (and more) are listed in the Products section of my Linktree page (see below) if you'd like to take a look for yourself.