Our first Friday Feature of 2025 is the incredibly talented (and equally lovely) Lucy from Illucetrate. Lucy is a self-taught artist, hand-painting bespoke pet-portraits and other commissions. Lucy started painting again as a way to keep her occupied during a difficult time in her life. She then grew that creative hobby into the most wonderful and inspiring small business. So let’s find out more about her… What first got you interested in painting? In all honesty, and my family will say this on my behalf, I truly think I was born with a creative streak! After showing an interest in drawing and colouring from the moment I could hold a

This week’s Friday Feature, and the last one of 2024, is the lovely Fi from Creative Stationery London. Fi creates luxury handcrafted stationery (yes, you read that right… handcrafted!) with a focus on purpose-filled pieces – designed to be used well, not just admired on your shelf. Each item of stationery is made by Fi herself, and many of them can even be personalised. We asked Fi some questions to get to know more about the incredible woman behind the inspiring small business… What does being creative mean to you? To me, it’s my outlet. It lets my mind process things, when I’m doing things more repetitively, but it’s also

This week’s Friday Feature is the ever so creative, Louise from Two For Joy Illustration. Louise is an award winning (very rightly so!) illustrator and designer – with a focus on cheerful cards and stationery… although, as you’ll read in her interview below, it sounds like she might expand into other products in the coming years, which is a bit exciting! Let’s get started… What inspires your creativity? So many different things. I would say I’m design-led, so i create a range of illustrations around maybe something topical – like my love for postboxes – or an idea I’ve had for a clever card (Like my children’s cards which all