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Being an Artist - a brief overview

I run my own business selling art for children; hand-drawn name art for christenings, births or birthdays, cards, posters and I'm working on a book. It's called drawnbyhand.com - the business, obviously, not the book.

I thought I'd tell you about it because it isn't anything I thought I'd do for a living - even if I wanted to be an artist when I was a kid. I don't have a degree in "Drawing Pretty Pictures" although I do have a degree in the History of Art. After a 12 year career doing something else I just fell into it by mistake!

I had a reasonably high powered job with a multi-national transport company but I got made redundant. I didn't take it well. It felt like the world had ended. I suppose the fact I was cited by the MD as the ideal role model for his junior managers on the Friday and made redundant on the Monday didn't help (although it made for a funnier story to tell my grandchildren).

It's quite a niche industry and I lived in absolutely the wrong part of the country to continue in my chosen field I was already commuting 100 miles to the nearest one and since they had let me go, the next batch were up north. My husband was a bona fide high flier and had always earned a higher salary than me and of course, we were positioned in exactly the right part of the country for his job. That made it difficult to ask him to move somewhere that would make his working life more difficult when he was the one earning the bulk of the cash anyway.

So I was going to have to go back to the bottom in a new industry and work up. I started doing contract work and applying for jobs as and when

About that time, my mid thirties, my friends began getting pregnant left right and centre and I began looking for presents I could give them to mark their new arrivals. However, one, in particular, proved difficult.

It was for a lovely couple, my old boss and his wife. She is great and he was very kind to me when I worked for him. I owe most of my confidence to him and therefore a huge debt of gratitude so I wanted to make sure I found something really special for their daughter - something that would show I had spent as much time, consideration and effort on her as they had on me but at the same time, something that wouldn't be so obviously expensive as to embarrass them.

After looking or ages I realised I was getting nowhere. For the most part, the gifts available either fell into the embarrassingly expensive bracket or they were so tacky and cheesy I'd

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