Bored Panda Helped Me Quit My Day Job To Make Fantasy Book Covers For A Living

Hello! My name is Aniko! All of my life, I knew that one day, I am going to be a successful artist, but many life circumstances tried to push me off course and tried to make me do other things for a living. My parents always wanted me to have a well-paid job, and as a teenager, I listened to them, although it was hard for me to reject my dreams of just being a free spirit and make beautiful things for others.

Over six years ago, I graduated as an interior designer and architect’s assistant, and straight after that, I moved to London, UK. I only used my educational skills during my studies, and I worked in a few interior design and architecture companies. It never fascinated me, so as soon as I graduated, I never came back to my primary profession. Ever!

Apart from creating unique art, I had a craze about Photoshop and photo manipulations, which I had practiced as a hobby since I was 14. Surprisingly, this exact hobby got me my very first job in London and kept me employed for the next five years. Parallel to that, I had established my small business from home and discovered such art mediums as polymer clay and sculpting. First, as a hobby and then with a much more professional attitude, sculpting very quickly took over my whole life and became visible to other crafters in social media. But it wasn’t enough to survive on, and even if I was already a world-known artist and had quite a big following of my fellow crafters, it never reflected on my wallet. I had to be a “Boring Day Job girl” during the day and an artist in the evenings and weekends!

Then, in May 2015 came out a post about my personalized journals here on Bored Panda. Literally in 1 day, I gained thousands and thousands of new likes, e-mails, questions, requests, interviews, reposts on other viral websites and in 1-2 week’s time I was booked for the next 6 months upfront to make clay book covers and jewelry for all those wonderful people who saw me on Bored Panda and appreciated my work.

I quit my day job in a Fashion Studio almost instantly after this successful publication and never looked back. This is what I’ve been waiting for all that time! I worked in a fashion studio as a photo retoucher before, and you may say that this is an amazing job in itself, but all I can say is that my dreams laid elsewhere… in making BEAUTIFUL and most importantly MEANINGFUL THINGS for other people and give my love and blessings to them this way! You can’t even imagine how happy it makes me receive photos of people who received my book cover ideas as a gift, and to hear stories of my clients who often say that tears of happiness appear on their eyes when they unwrap their packages and discover their ordered items inside!

All of the pictures below are the artworks I made after Bored Panda promoted my art (2015 and early 2016, except the frog and owl ones). I am eternally grateful to the Bored Panda team for giving me this chance. This is priceless! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

More info: Etsy | mandarin-duck.com | Instagram