Stories & Insights: My Canvas Rebel Interview and Experience
One afternoon, I received an email notification from someone representing Canvas Rebel. They were letting me know that one of my Instagram friends and fellow crafter/designer, Lumy of @LumyArtStudio has nominated me to be featured in an interview as a fellow artist. I was a bit skeptical at first because it was the first time I have heard of Canvas Rebel. Tbh, they don’t really have a big digital footprint at all. They’re like an MLM site, I guess they’re not at all bad.
In the end, after double checking with my friend if she indeed has heard and has had contact with Canvas Rebel (she confirmed they are in fact NOT a scam), I proceeded with my conversation with the Canvas Rebel representative myself and I eventually agreed to the “interview”. I say that with air quotes since no one really interviewed me personally, face-to-face or via video call. In one of the emails I received, I was given a link and a passcode to be able to access their portal where they have their standardised set of questions that I can freely pick to answer myself. Regardless of how it went down, I will admit that I did like the set of questions I was able to choose for myself. I took it as an opportunity to sit down and really think of my answers properly.
So in case you’re interested, I have kept tabs of the questions I chose for my “interview” as well as my corresponding answers. Feel free to get to know me and Studio Moon Tokki more as you read them below!
Meet Sephie
We recently connected with Sephie and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Sephie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
(Interviewer’s notes: For folks who may not have read about you before, can you please tell our readers about yourself, how you got into your industry / business / discipline / craft etc, what type of products/services/creative works you provide, what problems you solve for your clients and/or what you think sets you apart from others. What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc. Please provide as much detail as you feel relevant as this is one of the core questions where the reader will get to know about you and your brand/organization/etc.)
Tokki & Friends Farm Friends Collection - Coming Soon
Hi, my name is Sephie. I was born in the Philippines and moved to New Zealand after graduating from university. I grew up watching Japanese Anime, Korean Pop music, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, and they pretty much shaped me into the person I am today. Because I wasn’t allowed to have pets growing up, I channeled my love for animals through a possible obsession for collecting toys; plush toys to be exact. Whenever I travel to a new place or revisit some locations I’ve already been to, my family and I would always make it a point to pick up a plush toy as my personal souvenir for that trip. Birthdays, Christmases, any special occasion I go through, I will always have a plush toy to commemorate it with. I could easily fill up 3 closets full of plush toys, to be honest.
I have always been a visual person since I was a kid. I love the arts a lot that the least I could do is appreciate every form of it (music, film, food, crafting, animation, etc). Back in school, Art class has always been my favourite to have. Projects that involved being able to express myself through art is always the one I remember best. Art has just been a part of me since I could remember. I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Multimedia Arts and I have a Post-Graduate Diploma in Design as well. I really thought that having a career as a multimedia designer was my pathway in life until the pandemic forced me, like many others, to rethink my priorities in life.
Kuma & Sena couples keychains from Valentine’s Collection
Working as a digital designer for 7 years, I felt severely burned out and wanted nothing to do with designing for a while. So I left my job and took a break for 6 months filling my days with drawing, crocheting, and playing Animal Crossing. It was a total detox to say the least. When 2022 came around, a lot of my friends were turning 30 that year, so I decided to make handmade birthday gifts for each of them to celebrate their special day. While that was happening, my husband suggested I should start selling some of the items I was designing as some form of side hustle. And that was when Studio Moon Tokki was born. Soon after, I was making gifts and commissioned pieces for a lot of friends and family.
Moving to New Zealand was a bit of a culture change for myself. New Zealand is definitely more laid back in general compared to the highly competitive and fast-paced lifestyle Manila has. People are just so chill in New Zealand that I actually appreciate having a legit work-life balance here. However, because New Zealand is farther away from most countries, it does take a lot longer to receive items from abroad. As New Zealand is also still a young country in itself, its culture is still growing, but I see this as a great opportunity to bring a little more of the cuteness from my Asian roots to my fellow kawaii lovers here in Aotearoa.
When I decided to set up Studio Moon Tokki, I initially wanted to create and sell physical products of my artworks, like stationery, art prints and stickers for journaling. But with the recent pandemic, shipping items to and from New Zealand became too expensive for a small business like mine who is competing with other more established brands. Adding in the fact that crocheting is a very physical activity, I had to be careful as to not over-exert myself and possibly injure myself in the process of producing so many physical goods in such a short amount of time. So I recently pivoted from selling physical products to be shipped out, and opted to sell digital versions of my crochet patterns instead to minimise cost. I try my best to design and share a variety of items like coasters, accessories, bags, pet costumes, keychains, flowers, golf club head covers, and of course, toys. I am happy to say that since I now have two dogs, my obsession for purchasing plush toys for myself is almost gone; I just make them for myself now. Hopefully soon, I can go back to shipping out more physical goods and even participate in selling in local markets for more people to enjoy.
Studio Moon Tokki is an extension of myself. It is my way of showing others that you can bring a smile to people’s faces with cute handmade items. Each item ensures to bring a smile to one’s face. Everything I make is made with love and ensures top quality, so you surely get what you pay for. The very least I want to do is inspire people to not give up on their dreams and to never forget their inner-child.
Gameboy bag from Gamers’ Collection and Bag Collection - Coming Soon
Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Growing up, I’ve always been a huge fan of Japanese anime. I used to watch the likes of Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Studio Ghibli religiously before and after school. So much so, that I taught myself to draw in a style inspired by the anime I was in love with at the time, until I discovered and settled on a style I could call my own. When I was around 10 years old, I was finally allowed to register my own email address (back then, it was purely for school and social purposes). As a girl heavily inspired by the cute culture of Japan and Korea, I coined my forever personal icon: the Strawberry Bunny, simply because I love strawberries and bunnies. Little did I know, that was the moment that the name “Strawberry Bunny” would be associated with me by everyone I knew and would know from then on.
Fast forward many years later to the height of the recent Covid pandemic, I was experiencing severe burnout for my chosen field in digital design. I have been constantly working as a multimedia designer for 7 years and never really stopped to think if it was still something I loved and wanted to continue pursuing, until everyone in the world had to be forced to rethink their priorities. I honestly needed to recover from said burnout, so I took time off of work to reset. During that time, I wanted to go back to my first love of anime and drawing and started “Sephie Sketches”. My sole purpose back then was to really just recover from what I have been doing all this time and try to do something I actually enjoy for myself, be it drawing, playing Animal Crossing, or crocheting. As long as it makes me happy, I counted it as a tiny win.
After a few months of being in my detox era, I told myself that this might be a great opportunity to do something I actually love as a profession. So I decided to take my craft seriously and I converted “Sephie Sketches” into “Studio Moon Tokki”. Similar to Studio Ghibli, Sailor Moon, and bunnies (Tokki actually means “Rabbit” in Korean), I wanted to pay homage to the ones who first inspired me from way back in my childhood to be the same kid I used to be like back then: full of innocent promise and sweet dreams. And the rest, they say, is history.
Christmas Crochet Coasters from Christmas Collection 2022
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
At first, I converted my old online portfolio from when I was working as a digital designer into an ecommerce website. However, it’s always a challenge to get people to visit your own shop’s website nowadays unless you have successfully established a loyal following or a big enough audience, or you’re a master in digital marketing that you are affectively able to drive traffic to your own website correctly and smartly.
Taking that learning curve into consideration, I opted to open a shop on Etsy regardless of them being known to have increased their fees recently. It took a while for me to decide to open a shop there, to be honest. Many nights, I debated with myself if it was worth the effort and the initial cost. In the end, I took the shot. No matter how polarising Etsy is nowadays compared to its earlier years, it is still one of the first places people would look at for items in the field of arts and craft. People who shop on Etsy know what they’re looking for and accept what is being offered to them by shop owners who sell on the platform. Yes, there are a lot of additional fees the platform deducts from your sales nowadays, but I would not count it out for those who would want to simply get their name through the door for the sake of brand awareness. Later on, when you have enough of a loyal following that people would regularly buy from you, you can always stop selling on Etsy and open up your own official shop website.
With that being said, I am currently doing both. Etsy is mainly used for brand recognition. It’s where I introduce myself to people who are looking for crochet items and patterns and may potentially see mine, but I also offer my official website as an alternative place to make a purchase where I offer significantly cheaper prices in comparison. My official website is also a place where I can have more freedom to customise, curate, and offer a lot more that what Etsy currently has to offer.
At the end of the day, it really all boils down to personal need. You can do one or the other, or you can do both, or even neither.
Neyhom the Thanksgiving Turkey from Thanksgiving Collection
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
I have the most supportive husband ever. Before I left my job, we sat down a few times to seriously chat about how I was feeling and how he feels about how I was feeling. There were a lot of feelings to consider. We talked about financial stuff, potential issues, and drafted some plans on how we would be tackling our concerns moving forward. After all, this decision to start Studio Moon Tokki does not just affect me, but also him.
He was generous enough to offer to partially fund starting Studio Moon Tokki. Nowadays, we split the costs of everything from materials, subscriptions, etc. It was a smart decision of me to actually have saved up some funds to be able to get a head start on my future plans before I left my work. Fortunately for us, it’s working well so far.
Most of the items I crocheted from January until May 2022. Some items were given away as gifts.