About

Hi, I’m Sarah, a designer, illustrator and author based in Melbourne, Australia. I’ve worked in creative industries for over 30 years, covering everything from graphic design and handmade crafts, to wholesale stationery and party printables. Where I have ended up is what I’ve wanted to do ever since I was a little girl: owning my own art business where I get to design fun and colourful stationery and gifts, as well as writing and illustrating my own books.

If you’d like to know more about my career as a creative, grab a cuppa and read on!

To find out more about my author career, visit me over at SarahEpsteinBooks.com.

How I got started in the art world

I studied design and photography at university in the early 90s, graduating with a Bachelor of Design before starting my career as a graphic designer. From there I worked in various design studios and marketing agencies, both full time and freelance, before I became restless. I started my first small business side hustle of painting colourful décor items for children’s bedrooms, and sold these through local craft markets. I soon started a second side hustle of handcrafted wedding invitations which I promoted through a friend’s wedding chapel business.

My first wholesale collection

Around 2002, I stopped working as a graphic designer for other agencies and started working for myself full-time. I wound down the handpainted crafts and wedding stationery, and I created a collection of greeting cards and notebooks which were stocked by a number of gift stores. Nobody had websites back then because online shopping wasn’t a thing yet (and Etsy wouldn’t exist for another three years). So I relied on sales reps and direct marketing to try and get my products into bricks-and-mortar stores. I even attended a national gift fair, and was invited to showcase my wares at a private pitching session for a popular UK chain of gift stores as part of an Australian export initiative (sadly nothing came of it!).

Some of my greeting card and notebook designs, circa 2002-2003.

Me at a gift fair in 2004 – a very steep and expensive learning curve!

Despite my best efforts, I found it really hard to compete with larger stationery companies as a teeny tiny one-woman-show in the gift industry, eventually selling off most of my excess stock as bulk lots on eBay.

However, one collection endured – my Australiana cards and notebooks. I started designing these around 2004 for a sales agent who had a number of gift shop clients in tourist towns. The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Waratah and Superb Fairy-wren designs I offer today are based on the ones I created for my original Australiana collection over 20 years ago. Wow, how time flies!


My Australiana collection, circa 2004.

Things changed after I had kids

I had my first child in 2005, the same year Etsy was launched. Around this time, along with wholesaling my Australiana collection, I was painting artworks for my son’s bedroom, often creating extra canvases to sell on eBay. I was also brainstorming children’s book ideas during my son’s naptimes and teaching myself how to write. After my second child was born, I decided to set up a small shop on Etsy to sell handmade items with my characters and designs on them along with artworks for children's bedrooms like those I had been previously selling on eBay. After the struggles of my wholesale stationery business, it was a pleasure to sell directly to customers again like my old market stall days.

Some of my character designs on handpainted canvases, fabric for stuffed plush toys, and stationery items like notepads, circa 2007.

Soon after, I met an active community of small business women on Facebook and started doing graphic design jobs for them like logos, business cards, and brochures. This quickly grew into website design and social media banners and ads, and for the next few years I was inundated with graphic design work again, struggling to find time to write and create my own art.

A few examples of the branding work I created for other small business women.

Around 2011, I decided to streamline my design business into a digital-only model, selling children’s party printables as downloadable PDFs on Etsy. I used my own kids’ birthday parties as inspiration, and this was very successful. My designs were featured on many popular international party blogs, and my printables reached thousands of customers (even a couple of celebrities!).

Some of the party printables in action at my sons' birthday parties.

Moving into children’s books

While I was bringing up small kids and running my busy printables business, I somehow sacrificed precious sleep to keep my writing dream alive. I wrote late into the night, drafting picture book manuscripts and completing my first novel for YA readers. I learned all I could about the publishing industry and started submitting my work to literary agents and publishers, all with very little success. I wrote a second YA novel and managed to snag a US literary agent, but that manuscript never found a publishing home, and the rejections kept rolling in. I parted ways with the agent and wrote a third YA novel, finally landing my first publishing contract in 2017. Around the time this novel was released (2018), my dad became terminally ill and I made the decision to wind down my art business because I didn’t have the bandwidth for it on top of everything else. I concentrated on being a YA author, shoving all of my picture book ideas to the backburner.

Me in the 'serious' business of being an author.

While I was busy writing YA books, I tried to keep one foot in the art world. I created illustrations here and there for the 52-week Illustration Challenge and became part of the Challenge’s admin team. I licensed a small range of my Australiana designs to a greeting card company for some very modest royalties, shared illustration portfolios at kidlit conferences (to absolutely no interest from publishing industry people), and joined the admin team of another online illustration group, The Illustration Station. But, by and large, my art career had completely faded into the background.

(Above) My illustration portfolios at kidlit conferences.
(Below) Spotting some of my licensed Australiana cards and prints in gift shops.

Rebooting my art career at age 50

After a few years working solely as an author, I really missed my art career. It almost felt like it was too late to return to illustration as anything other than a hobby. But I now realise that I still have so much more to offer, so many picture book ideas to share with children, and so many fun and colourful design collections to brighten up the lives of strangers who just happen to click with my creative style. I’ve always loved sharing my art in the hopes that it might make somebody smile. I couldn't imagine keeping it all to myself and never sharing it with anyone ever again.

So, at age 50, I decided to reboot my art business, to create a new Shopify store, reopen my Etsy shop, and dabble with a brand new YouTube channel, utilising over three decades of experience and experimentation as a career creative. I've produced my first picture book based on all the work I've done with my Australian bird designs over the years, and have gone back to my roots with a range of greeting cards, notebooks, art prints, stickers and gift products.

Where to from here?

I plan to combine my writing and illustration skills as much as possible with a range of fiction and non-fiction picture books, along with associated merchandise. I have new design collections in development for stationery and gift products which I will release gradually throughout 2025 and beyond. Join me on any of my social media pages to come along for the ride as I re-explore my love of design and illustration in my 50s.

And if you've read this all the way through, thanks for being here!