Framed Florals Musings // Find Your Voice

Find your voice.

Your business, life experience, creatively driven, entrepreneurial voice. 

I get asked often about my best advice for someone starting their own creative career and my first piece of advice is always related to finding your own unique voice. In any business, niche, corner of the world, there's always going to be someone who did what you're doing long before you got there, and someone who starts after you.. but what makes what you different than the others, is how you use your voice to make it yours.

I’ve said it many times but it bears repeating, I didn’t invent flower preservation, I wasn’t the first person to press a flower. But what I did do is give life to the medium with my artistic interpretation because I didn’t see it in the industry. When I started my business I wasn't modeling it after anyone else specifically. Specifically when I got married and was looking for an artist to create something with my own flowers. So I assumed that role! I have a signature style, voice, aesthetic, and I work really hard at being authentically ME in that. When starting and as I grow, I grab inspiration from all corners of the creative world, but execute it with my own spin on it.

This last year taught me how to use my voice in more ways than one. Using my creative voice and vision has always been at the forefront of my work, but using my voice louder and more unapologetically became even more important. My voice not only stands for flowers, entrepreneurial spirit, bootstrapping a brand, leaning as I go, but also is here to loudly voice my feminist views, advocacy for change, for Black Lives Matter, for the environment, for lgbtqia+ rights, for a hopeful and more progressive future. These things can all exist within my voice as a business owner, artist, human. And this is what makes my brand voice and art distinctly mine!

The idea of originality and copy cat work comes to mind when thinking about the topic of a brand voice, brand aesthetic, branding in general. And at the core of that, I believe, is a new business owner or artist having insecurities about finding their own voice and paving their own way. They will replicate others work because it feels safe, it’s been done before and worked for someone else, why shouldn’t it work for them? And maybe that does work at first, but once you grow your own brand and it’s built on the voice and work of someone else, it’s not going to carry anyone very far. And, being on the other side of things, having been used as the “inspiration” it feels violating and hurtful to have what is so deeply personal to me, replicated and reproduced as someone else’s work. As my brand grows this happens more often each year, but the overarching idea of staying true to myself and protecting my brand is most important. Behind every artist no matter the medium is a story, unique voice, and journey to get to where they are!

So! If you're looking to star your own business, are just starting out, or are figuring out where your voice comes from.. don't focus on what anyone else is doing.. find those things that matter most to you and amplify them in your work.  Hone in on your “why” and the passion behind your brand and your voice!