The story of us: Personal Digital 2020
The summer of 2020 was a pretty bleak time for all of us but, I hold it close to my heart because it was the summer that Personal Digital was born.
I had just bought myself a new iPad to help me with my uni degree (in Architecture) and I started turning photos of friends and family into digital art. I casually decided to start posting them on a new Instagram account so that I had a little record of my progress, I had absolutely no intention of creating a business! I was trying to come up with a creative new name for this Instagram account but failed miserably, I called it Personal Digital because I was making personalised digital art...I hated the name and my lack of creativity but, it is definitely something that I have grown to love!
Within my first week of posting on Instagram, I received a message from a complete stranger asking if she could purchase a piece of digital art. I was absolutely terrified at the prospect of someone paying for my 'art'. What if she didn't like it? If it wasn't good enough? Would I have to give her a refund? But, I did not let any of this show, I charged her £5 which she paid me through Paypal and that is how my business was born! I spent the next few months operating a business through Instagram dm and Paypal.
When Christmas came, I decided that I wanted to make my own Christmas cards and for this, I wanted to have a more professional shop so: PersonalDigital2020 was born on Etsy. After the Christmas season, I realised how easy it was to make money through the online shop and...I loved it. As a financially stunted university student, every penny counted.
In 2021, I decided that I wanted to be designing phone cases so, I reached out to fellow small business owners and proposed a collaboration: I design and advertise the cases, you print and ship them and we split the costs. This went so well. I designed 60 patterned phone cases and popped them on my shop. At this point, I also designed 2 Harry Styles themed phone cases for another collaboration I had going...and that is where it all began but, I had no idea it would go this far!
It's around this time that I started up my TikTok account @hattie.bunn where I posted the most random rubbish. One day I decided to post a really bad joke about having 'designed' the best Harry Styles tattoo ever; the video revealed a simple fine line across the screen...as I said, REALLY bad joke...but people loved it and I got half a million views and suddenly thousands of requests for my tattoo designs inspired by Harry Styles. What teenage girl doesn't dream of having a little bit of social media stardom? I started posting 6 videos a day to help grow my following.
One of my followers loved all my tattoo designs and suggested that I turn them into colouring sheets. I wish I knew her name because my goodness, I owe so much of my success to that idea! I ran with it, I decided to design an entire Harry themed colouring book titled: Harry's Colouring Book and I released it at the same time as Harry's House.
Since then, my TikTok following has grown as I have continued to design a gorgeous range of colouring books. In this time, my business has grown and I now also design apparel too.
I lost my Etsy shop on the 22nd of August 2023 but, hopefully, this website is the start of another amazing chapter in Personal Digital's story. Thank you for following along and for helping me grow.
As always, TPWK
All the love,
H