Meet Faye Bell: Wallpaper Designer and Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Faye Bell and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Faye, what role has risk played in your life or career?
Risk taking is essential when it comes to making progress as both a small business and an artist. To push yourself and evolve as an artist you need to be willing to experiment and make “bad” art. Behind every successful pattern I’ve developed there are at least 10 left behind that didn’t come together. Some of these abandoned designs involved a lot of investment of time and effort so that can be frustrating in the short term. But in the long term, consistently being willing to spend time on ideas without the guarantee that they will result in anything is what creates the spaces for new and better things to happen. And when it comes to running a small business I’ve found that small risks have been necessary in order to make progress. When you’re setting up a business, no matter how lean the model, there will always be upfront expenses that you don’t immediately get a return on. And it can be especially difficult to know what to expect when you’re endeavoring into an industry you don’t have a ton of experience in. When I made initial investments two years ago when I launched my first collection of wallpapers I had very little experience and had to base most my decisions on my best, educated guess and the advice of a few contacts. Having much more experience today, I would make some of those decisions differently. But the lessons I’ve learned could only have come through experience and the willingness to move forward not knowing the outcome. As I work on my next collection I’m able to intuitively make decisions in a way that I couldn’t last time. 

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My work has always shined on a larger scale so the transition to wallpaper design made sense. It required a lot of trial and error to self-educate on how to make it happen technically. Now that I’m on the other side and able to see my patterns installed in new projects every month I can say it was definitely worth the work!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Ellen Hanson Designs http://www.ellenhansondesigns.com/ This designer was generous with their time while I was in the editing stage of my first collection. She gave me straight forward feedback and a designers perspective on how to market my line.

Website: www.fayebell.com
Instagram: @fayekaubell

Image Credits
Main image and last 2 uploaded are by Kristin Ferro.