For a long time, I was trying to be everything to everyone. Even with my art - I was dipping my toe into lots of different things. A necessary part of a creative business in my opinion - trying things out, seeing what feels right and what lands with collectors and your creative soul.

On one side of my creative world, I have my fine art. The big original paintings. The large-scale collections I pour months of dreaming and weeks of painting into. The serious stuff - not serious as in boring, but serious as in - this is my life's work, my creative development and what I want to say and express.

And on the other side? There's the playful stuff. The little paper studies I do when I'm just messing around with no particular destination in mind. The experimental pieces where I try a completely different colour palette or a material I've never touched before.

The arts and crafts that have honestly been part of my DNA since I was a kid making costumes and handmade gifts. Creating glittery chaos wherever I went.

For a while, all of that lived together in the same space. Same website. Same Instagram feed. Same everything.

And it was fine. But something kept nagging at me.

Two completely different conversations

Here's what was actually happening.

I had collectors landing on my page genuinely interested in original artwork - people ready to invest in something meaningful for their home - and right next to that they'd find a small playful study I'd done on a rainy Tuesday afternoon just for the joy of it.

And then I had a completely different group of followers who loved watching me play in the studio. Who were drawn to the smaller, quirkier, more accessible pieces. Who had absolutely no interest in large scale botanical collections but enormous interest in a beautiful little print or a fun handmade something.

Neither group was wrong. Both groups were wonderful. But I was serving both of them badly by trying to serve them in the same place.

It felt like trying to have two very different conversations at the same time. Loudly. In the same room.

The permission I needed to give myself

Here's the honest truth underneath all of that.

I needed to give myself permission to play - without it affecting my “serious” work.

Because when everything lived together, my playful experiments felt like they were somehow undermining the fine art. And my fine art felt like it was putting pressure on the play. Neither could breathe properly.

The gift shop - Briar by Design - gave the playful side of me its own rightful home. Its own aesthetic. Its own Instagram page. Its own audience who loves it for exactly what it is.

Now I have a place to play freely, share my creations willingly and grow that online space organically over time.

This freed my fine art to be exactly what it needs to be too.

There's another layer to this that I find genuinely exciting. The gift shop is actually where future Briar lives. When I'm paint-deep in a major collection - we're talking months of work on large scale pieces - I'm also quietly experimenting in the background with completely different materials and colour palettes that have nothing to do with what I'm currently painting. I'm thinking a year ahead. Playing with possibilities. Following curiosity without any pressure for it to be anything in particular.

That creative laboratory is so important to me. And now it has its own space to exist without getting tangled up in everything else.

Two shops. Two audiences. One very happy artist.

I'm not going to pretend it was a dramatic lightbulb moment; it was more of a slow exhale and realisation.

A final moment. A sense of everything clicking into its rightful place.

If you've ever felt like you're doing too much and somehow still not doing enough - like you're pulled in too many directions and none of them are quite right - maybe you need to give yourself permission to separate some things out too. Like scheduling time with individual friends or solo playdates with your kids - same, same.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for your work - and for yourself - is to give each part of it enough room to breathe.

Not everything has to live together just because it all came from you.

Find my fine art originals and prints right here on this website.

For the playful side of things, come visit me at @briarbydesign

Two Shops, zero regrets

Why are you holding back?