Today we’d like to introduce you to Bernadette Fischer.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I was a little girl my grandmother had a copy of J. Albert Cavanagh’s book, Lettering and Alphabets: 85 Complete Alphabets. I would take it down from where it was nestled between old Hollywood biographies and 1960’s comic books and lay on the carpet with it, flipping through its pages like it was Teen Magazine. I studied those letters for long hours, completely fascinated. This was just the beginning of a lifelong love of typography.
I opened my Etsy shop, HeyBernadette.etsy.com after leaving my job with the local library to stay at home with my newborn. My first handmade items for sale were custom painted cake toppers and clay jewelry. But lettering was always at the back of my mind calling to me, reminding me that there was a creative endeavor that I wanted more. But calligraphy is a skill as much as a talent and I needed to learn and be trained before I could step confidently into that world.
After shipping hundreds of pieces of handmade jewelry to fourteen different countries, I took a step back and realized that even on my busiest days I was never fully satisfied with that pursuit. So in my down time I returned to my truest artistic obsession, hand lettering and illustration. I practiced calligraphy day in and day out, studying letters, drilling curves, hunting down and curating the perfect materials until I had everything just right. One terrifying, exhilarating day I packed up my clays for good, brought my inks and watercolors front and center on my work desk and switched to calligraphy and illustration exclusively. I haven’t looked back.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The biggest struggle for me has been balancing work life with home life. Working at home and being a parent is a rewarding, but difficult juggle. Work involves so much when you’re freelancing, because you’re flying solo. You’re marketing, keeping up on (and learning) taxes and legalities, handling business correspondence and contracts, ordering and keeping tabs on supply levels and stock, and then of course doing the actual creative work. And to illustrate my point about being a stay at home parent, in the course of writing that sentence I had to stop and put toothpaste on a Paw Patrol toothbrush. Every day is take your child to work day in my house, and it’s wonderful, but it’s certainly a challenge.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Hey Bernadette – what should we know?
When I worked in the library I co-founded my library system’s first Sensory Storytime for children with special needs. The impact this had on the kids and parents who yearned for this kind of inclusion will remain with me for the rest of my life. When I left the library to work from home I missed having that connection with the community, but I was unable to really volunteer with my newborn. At the time I was creating polymer clay jewelry, so I came up with a pair of earrings shaped like the Autism puzzle piece, and sold the pair for $10 with the entire $10 going to the Doug Flutie Foundation for Autism. The sale of that item raised hundreds of dollars for the DFfA and I am very proud of that. Now that I’m no longer creating jewelry I have a print of The New Colossus (the poem on the Statue of Liberty) with all profits going to the ACLU and plans to add more prints with the profits to charity in the future.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Hey Bernadette wouldn’t exist without the endless support of my husband. It’s an uphill battle, going from being one self-taught person in your own home and trying to “break in” to the freelancing world. More than once I was ready to give up. Maybe I even did, reluctantly, tell myself that I was only torturing myself with this dream. But each time I saw other artists with more success or more of a following and let that contrast bring me down into desperation, my husband was there ready to tell me that I could do this. His logical reminders that because something doesn’t come easily doesn’t mean you’re not growing, and that as badly as you want a thing, that’s how hard you have to work for it – that has kept me going.
Pricing:
- Invitation Design $350+
- Logo Design $450+
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.heybernadette.com
- Email: hello@heybernadette.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heybernadette/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeyBernadette/
Image Credit:
Heather Richardson Photography (calligraphy class photo), Eurri Kim Photography (porch photograph taken at Hodge Podge Lodge in Montgomery), Rebecca Reategui Weddings and Special Events (blue place cards in the plant pots), Mustard Seed Photography (Brides with invitation for Love Wins Texas Magazine), Briana Purser Photography (Blue celestial suite on tray for Love Wins Texas Magazine)
