Melsa Davey
How would you introduce yourself? Why do you do this to me, man? I don’t know. I don’t generally introduce myself.
Why not? Normally people come to me and they’re like “Oh, hey Melsa. I saw your work online, can you do some shit for me? So I don’t have to introduce myself half the time because I don’t deal with people face to face. And everyone in Palmy already recognises me from the thousands of shops I’ve worked at.
Ok. Could you talk a bit about growing up? Can we not talk about that?
Were you a big drawer when you were little? Ok. Well I grew up in Marton. Old mudtown. There wasn’t a hell of a lot to do other than get up to shenanigans and I used to draw heaps. Always thought I was a good drawer – never was.
Bullshit. Got a pass on NCEA art, that was it, no merit or anything. Apparently people didn’t like my turtle drawings. Yeah, used to draw heaps. Grew up with artistic grandparents. So, yeah my grandmother was an artist and an author, so always had that influence, and my granddad used to do watercolours and stuff back when he was young. So there was always that artistic kind of vibe in the family but never from my parents as such. They weren’t very artistic at all. Kind of skipped a generation. Then me and my brother and sister are all relatively artistic in different ways.
That’s’ cool. Did you know in High School that you were going to study design? Nah, high school I dropped out at the end of 5th form. Because it was shit and it was Marton, and being the weird goth kid, it was kind of a bit crap. Moved to Palmy, moved in with Chris, and he was studying at UCOL. I thought I wanted to get into photography, and then when I actually started at UCOL I realised there were numbers involved in photography and numbers and me don’t get along, so then I thought I’d get into advertising, but that’s shit. So. Yeah. Got my degree, did nothing with it for years, and then had a kid. Well, had two kids. After the second one I didn’t want to go back to retail, so decided to see if I could make some money doing other stuff.
It was originally just going to be wedding stationery and stuff, but bailed on that because I would have to deal with people face to face, and people tend to be real anal about weddings and stuff.
I like that people are coming to you for your work. Not something they have already imagined. Yeah, “oh I’ve seen this on Pinterest, can you make it exactly like this?”. I don’t want that. Just let me do what I want to do. I still do some wedding stationery for people, mainly people that come to me and they want hand lettered stuff, rather than just the old boring crap that you can order from Vista print or whatever.
Having two children seems really overwhelming. But it seems to have made you more focused on your creative work? Well, I know that I can make money from what I’m doing now, so it’s kind of like, if I don’t do it my kids don’t eat. Soy milk is expensive, and we go through a shit load of soy milk! So if I don’t work, then we don’t have the extra money and we basically are on the bones of our asses. And we can’t do anything fun for the kids, and that sucks. So, it’s good.
You do lots of creative stuff with the kids? Sometimes, when they’re not just watching TV. The kids always like to draw and stuff. Miles is probably more artistic minded than Andy, Andy is very details focused. Miles is more of a free spirit. It’ll be interesting to see what they’re like when they are older. Whether they carry on being artistic.
Must be fun for them? I think they get sick of it, I’m always sitting and working and then they take my pens so I get shitty at them because they leave the lids off. I buy myself felt pens for thing I’m doing, and when I go to use them all the ends are chewed off because Miles likes to eat them.
I buy myself felt pens for thing I’m doing, and when I go to use them all the ends are chewed off
You run your business mostly online, as well as at the monthly Night Market in town? Yeah, I do the night markets. I only do markets once a month, that’s my limit of how much I can physically and mentally do. I’m just so busy with online stuff.
It seems like you’re clocking Instagram? It’s grown quite a bit. I just started a business Instagram so that people on my personal account didn’t have to deal with lots of pictures of me drawing stuff. It just grew from there. I was only doing it as something for people here and there, then somebody contacted me to put my designs onto t-shirts so that’s where it all started, from one person asking for that and it grew from there. Instagram has got a really big ‘small shop’ community, it’s honestly the easiest way for me to get work. I don’t have to try and market myself, I just put up three or four posts of what I’m doing every day, what I’m working on and stuff, and I seem to get work from it. It’s so much better. So many small shops focus on Facebook and stuff like that, but I don’t want to pay extra for people to see my stuff. I don’t want to pay $30 for people to see one post, I’d rather just put it up on Instagram and know that most of those people who follow me are going to see it.
That’s legit. There’s a series of magic hashtags, you get so much exposure from them, that you couldn’t pay for anywhere else. It’s pretty awesome, I really like Instagram, and I’ve made some really good friends from other small shops through it.
You’re planning a trip to America, and you’ll meet some of those people? Yeah, as we travel around we’re staying with different women that I met online in a mums group when I was pregnant with Andy. So we’ve been talking for about four and a half years now which is pretty crazy. There’s a group of about 50 of us. Then along our travels we’ll meet up with different people from small shops that I’ve gotten to know, so that’s pretty cool.
That must make living in small town NZ seem a bit bigger? The good thing about the online community is that we all struggle together. When it’s quiet, we all struggle. When they struggle to sell their stuff I struggle to get them to buy any more designs, and then I’m like ‘well add more designs and you’ll sell more’. But it does make it easier as well. Working from home and having two kids, most of my friends have real people jobs, they go to offices and stuff. There’s a couple of us that don’t… but everyone else is either a PA or working a proper job. Whereas I’m just sitting at home drawing pictures, getting paid for it. Quite often I don’t talk to my ‘in real life’ friends for ages at a time because I’ve got my weird little online group of friends.
Most of your business is with Americans? I’d say 90% of my t-shirt designs are for USA small shops.
Do you think that’s because of Instagram? Fashion is so much different in the US compared to New Zealand. New Zealand is really boring with how they dress their kids, whereas the US tend to dress their kids a bit cooler and different. Whereas here it’s like “oh, we’ll put an All Blacks t-shirt on the kid!”, “poler fleece pants!”, like, get out of here with that shit. So it’s quite cool. It’s cool to order stuff through other small shops. I’m going to try and bring that to New Zealand, release a small range of hand lettered kids t-shirts. New Zealand themed without anything rugby or jandals. I’m not into sports, and most of my friends and their kids are like that, so.
What are your goals for the future? I’ll just keep doing it until it’s not the cool thing to have anymore. And then, move on to something else. May get a real people job! Or give up the whole creative side of things, go back and study biology and become an embalmer and work in a mortuary. I like dead people. Don’t have to talk to them. They can’t swear at me. Retail has made me so bitter about everything.
It makes you appreciate doing things on your own terms. It’s been so nice the last couple of years to not work Boxing Day. Because 11 years of working Boxing Day was pretty shit. You miss out on so much time with your family and things like that. It’s always insane around Christmas, I’d prefer to just be chilled out. Not have to deal with people who are in a hurry and expect everything quickly. It’s nice being able to pick and choose who you deal with.
Such a privilege. Definitely.
What would you say to yourself before you got to this stage that could have been helpful? I just make it up as I go along, I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time. I’d say just do what you want, aye. Even if people don’t like your stuff, just do it for you.
I struggle to understand exactly how to go about that. You do a lot more commercial stuff than I do. I mainly deal with small businesses and people who are just starting out. You’ve got to be realistic and know that there’s going to be a quiet period. But there’s always quiet periods with any transition. I started out just doing my thing, and developed it further and further. Now I’ve got six different styles that I’ve developed, so it’s not just one thing. But I think if you were to only do what you want to do, it would be quieter at the start but you’d end up busier.
When you’re a creative you’ve got your own style, it’s just a matter of finding it, and convincing people to spend money on it.
Anything else? Not really. Just, don’t have kids aye. Nah, I love them.
Grouse. Sweet.
