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E3: From High School Crush to Creative Career: An Unexpected Journey · The Creative Jugglejoy Podcast

• 0:04
  Delores Naskrent: Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting episode of Creative Juggle Joy, where we explore the art of building a thriving creative business while balancing all your other responsibilities.
• 0:16
  Delores Naskrent: I'm your host for today, Delores Naskrent, and I'm excited to share my story with you.
• 0:22
  Delores Naskrent: It's not really just about me.
• 0:25
  Delores Naskrent: It's about the incredible journey that we can all take as artists, illustrators and creators.
• 0:32
  Delores Naskrent: No matter where you are on your path, it's never too late to pursue your creative dreams.
• 0:38
  Delores Naskrent: So grab a cozy spot I've got a cup of coffee here because it's a little chilly and a rainy day and, yeah, I hope you join me.
• 0:49
  Delores Naskrent: For those of you who don't know me really well, I've been on this creative journey for quite some time now.
• 0:58
  Delores Naskrent: I started right out of high school Can you believe that?
• 1:01
  Delores Naskrent: I was fresh-faced and eager to make my mark, and I had had an incredible mentor, mr Sandyman, who guided me through three formative years.
• 1:12
  Delores Naskrent: I had never dreamed in a million years that I could make money with my art, but he nurtured my passion and helped me realize what I wanted to become, because I really had no idea.
• 1:27
  Delores Naskrent: I literally ended up in his program because there was a really cute boy that I wanted to be in class with, and that's how I ended up in the commercial art room at Crocus Blaine School, casplain School.
• 1:50
  Delores Naskrent: While I was in his program I had done some work experience and part of that work experience was in a wallpaper shop.
• 1:54
  Delores Naskrent: I then also worked in a fabric store and those experiences really sparked my interest in commercial art.
• 2:00
  Delores Naskrent: Mr Sandeman spoke of so many wonderful jobs that existed for commercial artists.
• 2:07
  Delores Naskrent: I envisioned moving to the big city to really dive into that world, and so began my 10-year adventure.
• 2:16
  Delores Naskrent: I first started in a sign shop, getting the chance to explore screen printing.
• 2:21
  Delores Naskrent: That was truly an eye-opening process.
• 2:25
  Delores Naskrent: The next challenge I had was working in the garment industry.
• 2:30
  Delores Naskrent: I worked in a big factory where we designed embroidery for winter shirts and hats.
• 2:45
  Delores Naskrent: That was a really great place to gain a lot of experience.
• 2:52
  Delores Naskrent: From that experience I eventually moved into display work and I worked in a display company where we would create gigantic decals and things for fleet markings, like all the milk trucks, for example, and we also did a lot of point of sale posters and the like for department stores.
• 3:14
  Delores Naskrent: So we'd create all sorts of hanging banners and anything that you would call point of sale, so the kind of images you see when you're walking through a department store.
• 3:29
  Delores Naskrent: We created any kind of display that was necessary, and not just for department stores.
• 3:33
  Delores Naskrent: We worked for all sorts of different businesses, creating displays for them, for example, for when they were traveling to trade shows.
• 3:42
  Delores Naskrent: And of course, I did whatever I could on the side as well.
• 3:47
  Delores Naskrent: I took on every freelance project I could, so I did a lot of the work that I had done from the original jobs, the sign shop kind of jobs I took a lot of those as side projects.
• 4:00
  Delores Naskrent: I did whatever I could to make some extra money.
• 4:06
  Delores Naskrent: I was newly married, and it wasn't at all what I expected.
• 4:10
  Delores Naskrent: I'll eventually share more about that.
• 4:12
  Delores Naskrent: Life had so many surprises for me, though, and just when I thought I was really settling into my career, an unexpected opportunity arose.
• 4:23
  Delores Naskrent: I was offered a teaching position back at my old high school.
• 4:28
  Delores Naskrent: I can't tell you how stunned I was.
• 4:31
  Delores Naskrent: Mr Sandyman was retired, and I didn't feel nearly as qualified as I think there were another 30 candidates, some of them qualified teachers teachers already, but I decided I would take a chance, and, yes, I was invited to interview for the job.
• 4:48
  Delores Naskrent: Now can you imagine this?
• 4:50
  Delores Naskrent: Me in a canary yellow pantsuit, head to toe, not just like the shirt, the pants too, and I was meeting with a conference room full of guys in suits.
• 5:01
  Delores Naskrent: No other woman was present.
• 5:04
  Delores Naskrent: Can you imagine?
• 5:05
  Delores Naskrent: I thought I had lost my chances right then and there.
• 5:08
  Delores Naskrent: But I was eventually offered the job and I really committed to the role.
• 5:15
  Delores Naskrent: Believe me, there's tons of stories I can tell you all about that period in my life.
• 5:20
  Delores Naskrent: I had to get my qualification, so my teacher certification, all the while juggling a toddler and a husband who was unemployed.
• 5:31
  Delores Naskrent: We had moved back to my original city, so everything was different, really, really different, and you know what that job was the best thing that ever happened to me.
• 5:44
  Delores Naskrent: I found out that teaching not only fulfilled a deep-seated passion within me, but it also brought back the joy that I had felt in that classroom as a student.
• 5:57
  Delores Naskrent: So that was around 1987, and something miraculous happened at the time.
• 6:06
  Delores Naskrent: You'll probably all remember this, but At that point, specifically that year, the technology revolution in graphic design was beginning.
• 6:20
  Delores Naskrent: My principal surprised me with my first computer, and it was a Mac Plus.
• 6:25
  Delores Naskrent: It came equipped with Adobe Illustrator and a printer.
• 6:30
  Delores Naskrent: There was a lot of learning to do, but I could I could hardly believe it.
• 6:36
  Delores Naskrent: I was so excited because this was something I could never have personally afforded to purchase, let alone have access to.
• 6:46
  Delores Naskrent: But gone were the days that I had spent marking up designs and ordering typography because you had to do that and go somewhere and pick it up and then you had to come home and paste it all up.
• 6:58
  Delores Naskrent: I was taking my first steps into the digital art realms that would shape my career and I was hooked.
• 7:08
  Delores Naskrent: I absolutely loved the technology.
• 7:13
  Delores Naskrent: Now, on a little side note, my educational journey wasn't the smoothest sailings because it took me five long years to complete my college and university studies studies.
• 7:24
  Delores Naskrent: I had my second baby girl just after the first month of summer school and was back in the classroom by October.
• 7:33
  Delores Naskrent: Yep, I had only had nine weeks to recover, if that's even possible.
• 7:39
  Delores Naskrent: Those of you who've had babies you know what I'm talking about.
• 7:41
  Delores Naskrent: Again, plenty of stories there.
• 7:43
  Delores Naskrent: But the bottom line is, I persisted.
• 7:47
  Delores Naskrent: I spent sleepless nights studying, sometimes up until the morning hours, and, in all honesty, those years felt like a blur.
• 7:56
  Delores Naskrent: Yes, it took me the whole five years to become fully certified.
• 8:03
  Delores Naskrent: With time, my numbers grew and I was thrilled to create a really successful commercial art program, with technology being a huge draw for teenage students, as you can imagine.
• 8:18
  Delores Naskrent: Eventually I was able to get an assistant who was a former classmate of mine and she also went through the process of becoming certified as a teacher.
• 8:30
  Delores Naskrent: We quickly became the go-to educators in our community, teaching students about Adobe Illustrator and then Photoshop as well, and nurturing the passion for the digital arts.
• 8:41
  Delores Naskrent: We were even teaching other teachers how to teach the software and that was the industry standard back then Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop and believe me, they have changed a lot since that time.
• 8:58
  Delores Naskrent: Since that time we're talking, you know basic typesetting, bare bones, illustrating those programs have evolved tremendously in 40 years.
• 9:13
  Delores Naskrent: So our program was very popular and it became the model of such programs in our province.
• 9:19
  Delores Naskrent: Best of all, our students recall fun times in the classroom and best of all, our students and my teaching partner and I really recall some fun times in the classroom, really recall some fun times in the classroom.
• 9:41
  Delores Naskrent: After all, we were all together for half days for a full three years.
• 9:43
  Delores Naskrent: So we would have grade 9 and grade 10 students in the morning and then in the afternoon we'd have the grade 11 and 12 students.
• 9:50
  Delores Naskrent: Everything that we taught was outcome based and the whole goal was that by the end of their four year or three year program they could be hired.
• 10:02
  Delores Naskrent: They were 100% competent and getting them into the workforce with their certification was the chief goal.
• 10:14
  Delores Naskrent: But anyhow, in the background, my home life was very turbulent.
• 10:17
  Delores Naskrent: My husband struggled with addiction and I was caught in a cycle of abuse.
• 10:22
  Delores Naskrent: It was a tough and isolating time, so teaching really became my anchor.
• 10:29
  Delores Naskrent: It was my daily dose of normalcy amid all the chaos of my home life.
• 10:36
  Delores Naskrent: In the end I mean, believe me, it took years.
• 10:41
  Delores Naskrent: He had to go and, thanks to the support of his family especially, they got him away from us and I was left to raise my daughters alone, which seemed like it should be really really tough.
• 10:56
  Delores Naskrent: But honestly, we rejoiced.
• 10:58
  Delores Naskrent: It was a wonderful time Peace at last and it was a challenging transition.
• 11:06
  Delores Naskrent: But you know what?
• 11:07
  Delores Naskrent: This was the turning point in my career.
• 11:10
  Delores Naskrent: I embraced everything.
• 11:13
  Delores Naskrent: I was teaching.
• 11:13
  Delores Naskrent: I dove into freelance work and I gradually found a way to supplement my income.
• 11:20
  Delores Naskrent: I explored everything.
• 11:22
  Delores Naskrent: I took work from everywhere.
• 11:24
  Delores Naskrent: I did everything, from seed packets to magazine illustrations.
• 11:28
  Delores Naskrent: I created sell sheets for local businesses, anything really.
• 11:33
  Delores Naskrent: I even began teaching myself how to create patterns and design for products that I could sell at craft sales.
• 11:39
  Delores Naskrent: And just then I got the biggest contract of my life.
• 11:45
  Delores Naskrent: It was to illustrate an entire online anatomy and physiology course for the local college as they readied themselves to teach nursing online to the northern communities here.
• 12:01
  Delores Naskrent: That was another huge advancement that technology was beginning to allow, and that was online education.
• 12:10
  Delores Naskrent: All of this stuff just really perfectly has shaped the way my business has evolved From that point forward.
• 12:26
  Delores Naskrent: I was working two jobs full-time teaching and my side hustle, which was my own creative business.
• 12:33
  Delores Naskrent: As a matter of fact, I can't even think of a time in my adulthood where I didn't have some sort of side hustle going on.
• 12:41
  Delores Naskrent: You know, it wasn't until many years later that I stumbled into the world of art licensing, and let me tell you that was a game changer.
• 12:52
  Delores Naskrent: There's a whole huge story there too, too, and I'll share that sometime.
• 12:56
  Delores Naskrent: My first contract allowed me to create for the sheer love of it, free from client demands and creative restraints.
• 13:04
  Delores Naskrent: It was truly a moment of liberation.
• 13:08
  Delores Naskrent: Art licensing validated my work and ignited a fire within me that I thought had gone out.
• 13:17
  Delores Naskrent: I was so excited to be able to share my art, my creative pursuits, with the world, and, you know, from that point forward, that's when I really started to dream.
• 13:30
  Delores Naskrent: I've created and sold my own products, my work wholesale.
• 13:35
  Delores Naskrent: I began teaching online, I licensed my art creations and I explored lots of different ways to build the diverse income streams that I enjoy today.
• 13:45
  Delores Naskrent: I know I'm always talking about that, but really this was a pivotal moment.
• 13:52
  Delores Naskrent: The success that I've experienced has been beyond what I ever imagined, and now I'm sharing what I've learned with all of you and that fills me with so much joy.
• 14:02
  Delores Naskrent: Having a partner like Kaylie to work with has changed my life.
• 14:09
  Delores Naskrent: It really has.
• 14:12
  Delores Naskrent: My mission today is to support you in finding your own creative path.
• 14:16
  Delores Naskrent: I want artists like you to thrive in this beautiful journey of creating and selling your art.
• 14:22
  Delores Naskrent: Whether you're into digital illustration, textile design or any of the other forms of creative expression that there are out there, there's a place for you.
• 14:33
  Delores Naskrent: I concentrate mainly on digital illustration, and I love teaching artists how to maximize tools like Procreate and Affinity Designer, which are my two favorites at the moment.
• 14:46
  Delores Naskrent: These programs are game changers for digital artists and illustrators, and I'm so excited to share and guide with these two programs.
• 14:57
  Delores Naskrent: We're going to be talking a lot more about those things in upcoming episodes.
• 15:04
  Delores Naskrent: So I think it's about time I wrap up today's episode and want wanted you to leave just thinking about one thing every one of those little steps I took mattered.
• 15:17
  Delores Naskrent: Your journey may seem overwhelming right now, but trust me when I say that these steps lead to incredible possibilities.
• 15:24
  Delores Naskrent: I know you can do it.
• 15:27
  Delores Naskrent: I really believe you can because I did it.
• 15:30
  Delores Naskrent: So if you're just starting, don't be afraid to embrace both the challenges and the victories along the way.
• 15:37
  Delores Naskrent: Let yourself have the space and grace to grow and learn.
• 15:41
  Delores Naskrent: All of this didn't happen overnight.
• 15:44
  Delores Naskrent: I mean, I am no spring chicken.
• 15:47
  Delores Naskrent: My hope is that, with this podcast and the resources I share the resources that Kaylie shares that we can help lay a foundation for your creative business and for your dreams to grow.
• 16:03
  Delores Naskrent: Thanks so much for joining me today.
• 16:04
  Delores Naskrent: If you enjoyed this episode and want to keep exploring your creative path with me, why don't you hit that subscribe button and join me every week so we can uncover more insights into the art world?
• 16:17
  Delores Naskrent: And if you can think of anybody else that could benefit from this, let them know about it too.
• 16:24
  Delores Naskrent: I mean I'm just starting out with this and I know in the past.
• 16:28
  Delores Naskrent: I mean, I'm just starting out with this and I know in the past that word of mouth has really helped.
• 16:31
  Delores Naskrent: I would appreciate that very, very much.
• 16:35
  Delores Naskrent: Remember it's never too late to chase your dreams.
• 16:41
  Delores Naskrent: Now, if you're interested in any of the links I mentioned, or anything else I believe might resonate with you, be sure to check out the show notes.
• 16:50
  Delores Naskrent: Your support means the world to me.
• 16:52
  Delores Naskrent: So if you enjoyed this episode, I would be really, really grateful if you could like and subscribe to the show.
• 17:01
  Delores Naskrent: Thank you all for being such an incredible community.
• 17:03
  Delores Naskrent: I appreciate every single one of you.
• 17:04
  Delores Naskrent: Bye for now.