Meet Olivia, the designer behind handmade boho- & travel-inspired home brand, Wild Minds

Hi everyone! My name is Olivia and I am the mind behind Wild Minds :)

I design wooden (and hopefully soon, metal!) wall hangings, dreamcatchers and other bits and pieces for the home. I am hugely inspired by festival culture and style, and absolutely everything bohemian. I also love to travel, and that has introduced me to many different cultures and their spiritual symbols, which I have incorporated into several of my artworks.

Wild Minds began from my home in Cape Town around 3 years ago. I had designed place names for wedding tables which I had then had laser cut from wood. I realised how many possibilities there were with laser cutting and started designing decorative wall hangings (initially for myself) as I could never find exactly what I wanted elsewhere. When I got my first samples back, it hit me that I should make this into a business, and Wild Minds was born!

It has been a massive learning curve as I do everything myself - from the initial designs and hand-painting, to website management, sales, packaging & shipping and accounting to name a few. I would say that has been the biggest challenge, although it has definitely taught me a lot along the way!

Having your own business can sometimes be a real test - there are often days where I stop and wonder if my work is good enough, if I'm wasting my time on a pipe dream, and if I am ever going to be able to make a real success of it. Your confidence can take a real knock when sales aren't pouring in. However, when I send a piece off to the other side of the world or I get to collaborate on a custom design with a customer or another maker, it's really exciting and I love every second of it.

Receiving a lovely piece of feedback after a lot of hard work also makes everything feel worthwhile - I don't know if my customers ever realise just how much it means to me to hear how happy they are with something I have made just for them. When I think about all the people across the globe that now have a little piece of my artwork displayed in their home, I feel really proud of myself that I have managed to get to this point and I hope it continues!

The best part is that I get to be creative and do something I love every day. Even the more mundane tasks are just a reminder of the fact that I have built a little business by myself, and that's a great feeling.

My advice to other sellers out there would be to just keep pushing forward, keep creating and being inspired, and stay positive! Set backs happen, but when you put yourself out there to showcase your work, you are doing it because you are passionate about it, and thats the most important reason of all.

A platform like Hello Pretty is so valuable for us small business owners as it gives us the means to get online, get selling and extend our reach to people who may not necessarily have ever discovered our work. So make the most of it and enjoy!

You can find me on Hello Pretty under Wild Minds, on Instagram at @x.wild.minds.x and on Facebook at facebook.com/wildminds.sa.

This blog post is one in Hello Pretty's guest blog series. Each post is written by a person who is running their online store through South Africa's favourite art, design & craft marketplace.

If you'd like to more view guest posts in this series, and other posts where we interview local businesses, click here.

Wanna write a guest post on Hello Pretty? Email us at info@hellopretty.co.za to find out more.