Nashville Paint-by-Numbers Kits Become Etsy Bestsellers

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

The Nashville teacher I'll tell you about in today's story starts her side hustle to increase her family's household income so she can travel. In her words, she says most people know that teachers are underpaid and sometimes undervalued. I was tired of seeing our friends taking their families on wonderful vacations. Although my husband and I were off work during the summers, we couldn't afford to travel. We have finally met our goal of traveling and are taking our family to Mexico this summer and have trips in the works to Europe and Asia for later this year.

It feels great to be able to dream up trips that I now know will become a reality. So what's her side hustle? Well, she creates paint-by-numbers kits to help others experience joy through painting. Her kits feature popular figures like Mr. Rogers as well as Nashville highlights like hot chicken.

Last year, this teacher/side hustler earned $30,000 from these kits and this year she's on track to double it. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. If you find your budget constrained or your experience is limited, like the ability to take international trips or vacations, maybe you need another source of income. And perhaps you'll draw on something in this story to help you take the next step.

Stay tuned. It's all coming up after this message from our sponsor. Camila Spadafino loves to create. Growing up, an atmosphere of creativity seemed to surround her. Her mom encouraged her to express herself through drawings and her uncle was a local well-known artist.

Over the years, she found other forms of expression through sewing, decorating, and storytelling. Camila now spends her days as a visual arts teacher in Nashville, Tennessee. People always told her she should teach art, but she was reluctant, worried about her passion becoming a job. It turned out that she was wrong, and it turned out she loves it more than ever. She also owns the boutique Paint by Numbers Studio, aptly named Paint the Town by Numbers.

There she creates curious Paint by Numbers kits of people, places, and things that reflect positivity. Some of her bestsellers include pop artist Andy Warhol, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also known as the notorious RPG, and famed television personality Mr. Rogers. The color names for Camila's paint palettes also help tell the story of each kit with flair. For example, her Nashville Paint by Numbers kit features color names like Hot Chicken, Biscuits Y'all, and Barbecue Sauce.

These kits have not been enjoyed by people in every state across the country, but how did it come to be? Well, it just started as a project she was creating for fun. When she finished, Camila knew it was special. She ran across the street to show her neighbor, boldly declaring, "I'm going to turn this into a Paint by Numbers kit." Little did she know how much work that would become. It took her two years to produce the first kit.

Those years were spent primarily on developing her product with an overseas manufacturer she found online. And the learning curve was steep. There was a great deal of back and forth, lots of snail mail across the ocean, lots of consideration of sample kits, test paintings, the quality of the paints and brushes, etc. And all of those factors combined with a lag between time zones prolonged the process. Luckily she had some help in the form of a more experienced friend who guided her through the development.

Start-up costs were $12,000, all of which went to cover production and shipping of her first product. She said her costs were higher in order to raise the quantities produced and lower the prices for her customers, because some manufacturers have minimum ordering quantities. These are known as MOQs. In order to foot this sizable sum and recover her costs, Camila turned to crowdfunding projects through Kickstarter and iFund Women. To gain additional campaign exposure, she wrote press releases and received a couple of spots on local TV.

These efforts paid off, raising over $10,000. She covered the remaining costs by selling hand-built kits at local art festivals. Her customer base grew out of those first campaigns. Camila said when they ended, she personally delivered her kits to the doors of every person who ordered from her local area. And that's broadly speaking.

She actually covered hundreds of miles and says now that meeting the people who believed in me and took a chance on the product was one of the most soul-satisfying experiences of my life. She's also got some words of wisdom for anyone wanting to begin their own paint-by-numbers hustle. That advice is to start with research, collect samples of various paint-by-numbers kits, meet with local printers and assembly companies to have in-person conversations about different kinds of paper or other material used in production, test a variety of paints and brushes to become familiar with what's available in the industry. Camila recently stepped away from her overseas contact in favor of producing her kits locally. Her selling platform of choice is Etsy.

She says it just keeps things simple. And since launching in February 2017, Paint the Town by Numbers has artfully crafted a significant income. The kits run between $20 and $25 each. In 2018, she earned $30,000 in net income. She's now on track to double that number in 2019.

She's also approaching a point where it might be possible to leave her day job and pursue Paint the Town by Numbers full-time. Preparation for such a leap, she and her husband have begun looking more seriously at how it might work. So before Camila had this business, long ago, she had a couple other things she was doing. She had a hand-painted invitation business that she was trying to get started. And she did a coloring book series, and she also created original works of art, custom acrylic portraits, a few different things.

None of these projects really took off, but she says now that these failed attempts, she even describes them as a failed attempt, were what led to her Paint by Numbers business. So you can kind of see a trajectory, you know, she grows up really creative, she becomes an arts teacher, she does a bunch of other stuff. She tries doing invitations, coloring books, original works of art. And then she's like, "Oh, what about Paint by Numbers?" And so it doesn't completely come out of the blue, it comes out of this history, this track record of exploring different things within the arts. And then figuring out, okay, how do I go from project or at least from idea to actual product that is for sale, you know, on Etsy?

How do I, you know, figure out the branding, how do I figure out how to manufacture these first overseas and then locally, et cetera. So that's essentially the exploration and the process there. And she's got a really fun-looking Etsy shop. So be sure to take a look. I'm going to link it up in the show notes page, of course.

As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Those show notes. All right, sidehustleschool.com/922. I'll be back tomorrow. Thank you so much for listening.

Be sure you're subscribed. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.