Seller Spotlight: Digital Gems

We're very lucky at DesignBundles to have such a talented array of designers selling in our marketplace. The work and designs they produce are absolutely amazing so we thought it would be fun to do an interview with a different seller each month to learn more about them, their creative process and any top tips they might want to share!

Our first interviewee for the Seller Spotlight is Gemma from Digital Gems who has been a seller on Design Bundles since 2017

Tell us a bit about yourself!

Hi Everyone! I’m Gemma from Digital Gems. I live in South Yorkshire, UK, and I design and sell cut files for Cricut, Silhouette, and other electronic cutting machines on Design Bundles. I’m really lucky as designing is my full-time job, a job I absolutely love doing!!!

How did you get into designing cut files?

I’ve always been into art, ever since I was a young child I have been drawing and painting in my spare time to relax.

When I had my first child, sixteen years ago now, I couldn’t afford to go back ‘out to work’ as the childcare would cost more than I was earning, so I needed to find some work I could do at home, in an evening, to help my husband pay the bills.

As I enjoy creating art, I decided to try and turn that into a business. I started out by selling my physical art and crafts on Facebook, and in local art and coffee shops. Over the years I sold a few of my artworks, but not enough to make a big difference to my family financially. So about seven years ago I decided I needed to try something else.

I had a look at what other shops were selling and selling well. I looked at shops on Etsy, and the shops selling cutting files caught my eye. Designing cut files wasn’t such a great leap from my artistry business I currently had, as it is still creating art, just in a digital form! So I purchased a Cricut cutting machine, watched what feels like hundreds of hours of Youtube tutorials on making SVG files, downloaded a graphic design programme, and had a go at drawing, designing and making my own cut files in the hope they were good enough to sell.

When I got my first cut file sale, I was over the moon! That sale spurred me on to designing more files. After a couple of years or so of designing and selling my files on Etsy, I got an invite to sell on Design Bundles. That was a huge boost to my confidence! I love selling on Design Bundles, they are an amazing company, that care about both the designers and their customers, which isn’t something you can say about every selling platform!

How would you describe your style?

I would describe my style as ‘cutesy’. A lot of my designs are of cute cartoon animals! I design a mixture of papercraft and vinyl designs.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I have 6 young children, so my day is quite busy, as you can imagine! A typical day starts for me at 6.30am when I get my children up, 5 of my children are school age, so I get them ready, and off to school. When I get home from the school runs, I still have my one year old to look after, so I do a bit of multitasking, looking after him, whilst answering any customer messages that I have received over the last 24 hours. When I have answered all the messages, I then get on with the housework and looking after my baby. After lunch, my baby has a nap for a couple of hours or so, so I take that opportunity and get on with some designing! At 3pm I wake my baby up and I go to collect my other children from school, when the children come home, I do their homework with them, and make them their tea. At 7pm my youngest children go to bed, and that’s when I ‘start’ work. I design until around midnight, then I go to bed, ready to start over the next day!

What inspires you to make new designs?

I get my inspiration from a lot of places, sometimes ideas just pop into my head, sometimes I get ideas from my children’s schoolwork, or reading books with my children, or sometimes I get ideas online from Pinterest etc.

What is your designing weapon of choice?

I design mostly with my Microsoft surface pro computer, I prefer my mouse, but I sometimes use my stylus pen. And I mainly use a mixture of Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator software.

What’s your best selling item?

My best selling, single item is my sunflower design. Sunflower designs are always popular all year round, I can see why, they are such a beautiful flower and they make me happy - I even grow them every year in my garden. I’m sure they make everyone else happy too, and that’s why they are a popular cut file design!

What's something you wish you knew when you started designing?

How time-consuming and addictive designing is! I can spend days drawing and designing just one svg file! Time will just ‘vanish’ whilst I’m designing!

What tips would you have for any new designers wanting to start selling?

Don’t get disheartened, or give up when sales don’t come rolling in straight away. ‘Regular’ daily sales only start coming in when you have a lot of designs in your shop. I think I only started getting regular daily sales of at least one item a day, when I had around 200 designs in my shop.

Where can we find you online?

My DesignBundles shop:www.designbundles.net/digital-gems

My Facebook page:www.facebook.com/Digitalgemsdesigns