Our Friday Feature this week (and the last one before our summer break) is the lovely Carly from Olivin Designs. Carly handmakes stylish and fun wire art – from joyful flowers and bookmarks to personalised words and ‘ear jackets’.
Let’s get to know more about the wonderful creative woman behind the small business…
I’ve been creative from a very young age, as a child you would find me building my own doll houses out of cereal boxes, using different papers to decorate each room and building small pieces of furniture to put inside. I was also a big fan of programmes like art attack and always bought the creative magazines that would teach me how to draw and make things.
Yes, I find it really hard to switch off but I know when I’m being creative it really helps quieten the outside noise and lessen any anxiety I’m feeling. For me it can be any kind of creativity whether I’m wiring, colouring with the kids or decorating the house.
I’d bought my first house and really wanted a piece of custom wall art for our living room. The quotes I’d had back were too expensive for us and I really liked the black metal/wire trend against neutrals that was becoming popular at the time (think hairpin legs & black accents). After lots of research and YouTube videos I bought a set of jewellery making pliers and reel of wire and it went from there. When I look back at the first pieces they were terribly made compared to my work today, but I was so proud of one that it made it to the wall and stayed there until we moved out 5 years later. My mum still has one of these first pieces up in her kitchen.
It was a complete accident, I was on a great career path in Children’s mental health working for the NHS, had been to university etc, but in my spare time I began being creative again and started making things for family and friends. It started with a box frame for my sister’s baby shower, personalised toyboxes for friends and even wedding stationery. Eventually I was taking orders and listed on Etsy and it wasn’t until in 2019 I introduced wire art and it has been my sole focus for the business since.
I recently hit 10K sales on Etsy which felt pretty big. But also one of my favourite highlights was being part of a pop up last Christmas in the Manchester Arndale. Manchester is my hometown and the Arndale is where I’ve shopped from being a young girl so to see my items in a full shop set up with a busy footfall felt huge.
It’s definitely a rollercoaster of ups and downs, good weeks and bad weeks. I’ve 100% got better at dealing with difficult situations and not letting things consume me, but there’s always something new to overcome or push through. And on the flip side, days where new opportunities or great feedback comes through and I’m back on a high. You really never know what the day will bring.
After having my first son in 2018 the business really started to pick up and again even more so when I went back to my NHS job at the end of 2019. This led me to leaving this job early 2020 right before the pandemic hit and panic set in as nobody could foresee how that would affect small businesses. Luckily I continued to stay busy, however I now had an 18month old at home full time due to nursery closures, whilst fulfilling all orders from a small dining table I had to also share with my partner because he was also sent to work from home. Of course, we were extremely grateful to still be employed during that time but it was a huge juggle and test on both us as a family and whether I could sustain running the business in that way. From memory I think my turnaround time for custom signs went up to 9 weeks which wasn’t how I’d wanted or planned to run the business, and it took me a long time to get things running as they are now.
I’d really love to be doing more in person events like markets and have my items in more stores across the UK. Most of my business runs through online marketplaces and my website, but as I’m dipping my toe into pop ups and wholesale opportunities, I can really see how great it is to be out in the “real world” for reaching new customers. I think it will also help me grow as a business owner as I’m definitely an introvert and have really pushed myself to say yes to more opportunities out of my comfort zone this past 6-12months.
Most of the time I’m inspired by something I want myself that doesn’t currently exist in the way I envision it in my head and I only ever try to introduce products to the business that I personally love. For example, with the ear jackets, I love jewellery but really struggle with fashion earrings, either they make my ears sore because I can only wear certain materials or they are really heavy and I have to take them out. So, when creating them I had to make sure I solved these problems for myself and they would be a piece of jewellery I love wearing. This has also really helped me when sharing on social media as I find it so much easier to talk about an item I genuinely love and believe in.
I would love to teach others how to wire art and build a community of wire artists, both through in person events and DIY kits. Over the years it has become more popular, however I still think it has a long way to go to be recognised as an accessible art form. It’s a great creative outlet with so many elements to it and possibilities that can be created, and I believe it could bring joy to other creatives that haven’t got the information or resources to access it.
It’s lovely how Carly’s business and creative path grew organically – leading her to create products she so passionately believes in. And as she says, it makes it a lot easier to share and promote your creations if you genuinely love them.
To see more of Carly’s wire art head to her website: olivindesigns.com – and for behind-the-scenes content take a look at her Instagram: @olivin_designs
Friday Features will return in September after our break for summer, but in the meantime why not catch up on any previous features you’ve missed and listen to our podcast if you haven’t already.
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