Meet Nicola Rowlands- Illustrator extraordinaire

Today, I'd love you to meet the first in what I hope will be a series of  many creative entrepeneurs featured on Apples and Green. One of my personal goals is to support and promote independent creative businesses, and to encourage people to look past the high street for their gift, fashion and design solutions! I'm incredibly pleased to have Nicola Rowlands here with me today- Nicola is a rad illustrator I met at the Hello Etsy conference in Berlin back in October, and I can vouch for her being an all-round awesome lady!

But wait! There's more! Because Nicola loves you so much, she's offering a discount in her shop- just use the code APPLESANDGREEN for 10% off in her Etsy shop before the end of March 2012.

It's not too long ago that you left the 9-5 in order to pursue your creative business, and it's really taken off. How's that treating you?
Ah, thanks – I guess it is going well.  I feel excited about the future, happy to have control of my life and lucky to be in a position to work entirely for myself, in my own studio.  Also, I have eradicated bus rage from my life, which is fantastic. (Ed: I would LOVE to eradicate Tube rage from my life. This is my ultimate goal in life.)

Let's assume I'm new to your shop- where should I start?

The cards! My cards are where it all started and what I’m most proud of because I feel they are the closest reflection of my inner crazybrain.  I’ve got a new range hopefully in-store today. New designs include ‘congratulations on being one of my favourite people’ and ‘I love you so much I could fart’

A product we've been seeing featured all over the web is your Pocket manfriend series- how did that come about? 

Argh... Don’t ask! They were an accident... And have become one of my bestsellers. It’s crazy!  


What is the best part of running your own creative business?

I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do: make small talk, wear a uniform, take a lunchbreak at a particular time, pretend to like people that I don’t.  These are all things I am bad at so working for myself kind of is ideal for me.

What's the biggest challenge you've had to overcome?
how to draw an egg. Have you tried? It’s harder than you’d think.

Any big surprises that you weren’t expecting before taking this business on full-time?

My accountant surprised me in December with a figure that apparently I had to pay to the nice people at HMRC. Something called... taxes?  

Let's talk about Taco Cat for a moment. I basically wish he was real so that I could pick him up and smoosh my face into his fur, telling him what an adorable beast he is. How do you think he'd react to that?

He’s a rather serious chap but if you’re armed with jalepenos and flour tortillas I’d like to think he could reciprocate the love. 

You've been featured in a pile of magazines and awesome blogs- were there any that made you squeal a little bit when you found out? What was it like the first time you saw your work in the media?

I first picked up a copy of frankie magazine 7 years ago when I was backpacking in Thailand.  I had never realized up until then that you could make a living doing something creative that didn’t involve painting canvases and being some crazy hippy artist.  I quickly found out that this creative thing was called ‘graphic design’ and that I could actually study it at university.  Which is what I decided to do!  So yeah, when frankie magazine featured my taco kitty tote AND my pocket manfriends in the December issue 2011 I pretty much pooped myself.  It was like the universe was saying ‘yeah, you be doing something right.’

Do you have any words of advice for anyone planning on jumping ship on the day job in favour of becoming self-employed creative ninjas? 

Buy a Mac? Be a nice person. Say yes to opportunities.  Be very careful with collaborations.  Don’t copy other peoples work.

Pie or cake?
Steak & ale pie/chocolate cake.
Tea or coffee?
Black coffee
Tacos or burritos?
I think you know the answer to this one! But if it’s a choice of types of tacos, a Californian fish taco wins. So good.

There's a bunch of places you can go to learn more about Nicola:

Tumblr
Twitter 

Website
Blog
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All photos are the property of Nicola.