Brittany's Art Journey: A Leverage Your Art Success Story for Multi-Disciplinary Artists

If you've ever felt like your creative path is too weird to follow someone else's blueprint — too many disciplines, too many pivots, too much of a zigzag — Brittany Warner-Smith's story is going to feel like a deep exhale.

Brittany is a full-time artist who considers herself a bit of a nomad, currently living in Massachusetts. She does murals, patterns, lettering, and design. She licenses her work. She runs an Etsy shop and her own website. She's part of artistic communities everywhere she goes because connection is as core to her work as the art itself. And she did all of it after a career path that looked nothing like the straight line most art business advice assumes.

Brittany's Background: Everything, Not One Thing

Brittany has been an artist since childhood, cycling through every form of craft, art, and design she could find. Her professional career has been entirely unique: tattoo artist, footwear designer, pattern designer, small business owner — and a learner who traveled the world taking workshops to find what she truly loved.

She loved learning and novelty, which meant she'd always had a pattern of going back to school, taking workshops, following her curiosity wherever it led. She loved seeing how all of her past work informed her newest creations. But the variety that made her so rich as an artist was also making her feel lost in business. She didn't know how to package all of it into something coherent and profitable.

The Challenges That Kept Her Stuck

For a long time, Brittany was flying by the seat of her pants — creating what she wanted and seeing what happened, with no structure or strategy underneath. She kept hitting the same walls.

Every discipline she'd studied had a very specific set of rules, and they all contradicted each other. The worlds of tattooing, illustration, fine art, typography, and surface design each had their own best practices that felt mutually exclusive. It made her feel like she had to pick one world and stay there — or stay confused forever.

She also had the idea that all of her art had to be exactly the same style, or that everything had to be clearly distinct from everything else. She hadn't figured out yet that there was a third option. And when physical injuries forced her out of tattooing, she needed a new path — one that worked for her specific shape, not the predetermined path most of her peers were following.

Why She Signed Up for Leverage Your Art

As a 4.0 student, Brittany expected that success in her art business would happen naturally if she just put in the effort. Over time, she realized the problem wasn't effort — it was direction. She needed expert guidance on how to make her own path, bring structure to her business, and make moves that would actually work for someone with her background.

She also needed the freedom to travel, be her own boss, and avoid hustle culture while doing it. And she needed a mentor who'd already been through the scary parts — who could speak from real experience about what worked and what didn't, without pretending it had been easy.

What drew her to Stacie Bloomfield specifically: authenticity. Someone who shows up as herself, not a curated version. Who talks honestly about insecurities. Who had already been heckled on the internet and could show the way through that from true experience.

The Farming Metaphor That Changed Everything

The concept of leveraging your art clicked for Brittany in a specific way. She started visualizing her different income streams as different plots of land on a farm: you plant seeds in one section, and while those seeds are growing, you go to a new plot and plant a different crop. You don't just wait for one thing to mature — you tend multiple sections simultaneously.

That metaphor replaced the idea that she had to choose one thing with the understanding that she could build all of it — just not all at once, and in the right sequence. The course showed her the sequence.

Here are a few of the specific lessons that changed how she operates:

You can show up as your authentic self — the whole of it — in your business and on social media, and still be a powerful brand. Authenticity isn't a weakness; it's a differentiator. Searching for companies whose demographics match yours can grow your audience with less effort than cold outreach. You don't have to reinvent the wheel — people who love your style are drawn to similar things, so one design can go far. A print can become wallpaper, a shower curtain, bedsheets, and bag lining. One design, many applications. Planning and discipline still allow for spontaneity — they just stop you from getting stuck in the version of spontaneity that never builds momentum.

What Leverage Your Art Did for Brittany

Leverage Your Art helped Brittany become sure of her goals, understand why she could achieve them, and learn the specific steps to get there. It connected the dots between where she was — with a complex, multi-discipline background and no clear business structure — and where she wanted to be. She even convinced a friend to take the course because she believed in it that much.

If you're a multi-disciplinary artist who's been told (or told yourself) that your path is too complicated to build a business around, Brittany's story is the direct counter-argument. The path that doesn't fit the template can still be built into something real. It just needs the right system under it. Find that system at Leverage Your Art.

Frequently Asked Questions About Art Business for Multi-Disciplinary Artists

Can you build a successful art business if you work in multiple styles or disciplines?

Yes — and the key is learning to connect them through a consistent brand identity rather than keeping them entirely separate. Brittany Warner-Smith works across murals, patterns, lettering, and licensing. The through-line isn't medium — it's her aesthetic sensibility, her market focus, and the way she shows up for her audience. Stacie Bloomfield's Leverage Your Art course teaches specifically how to build coherence out of range.

How do you structure an art business when you don't want to choose just one thing?

Think of your income streams as different plots of a farm: you plant seeds in one area while tending another, cycling through them rather than waiting for one crop to fully mature before starting the next. This farming approach — which Brittany learned in Leverage Your Art — allows you to build multiple streams simultaneously without any one of them carrying all the pressure. The structure matters more than the breadth.

How do you price and market art when you have a complex, hard-to-categorize practice?

Find the companies and audiences whose demographics overlap with yours — they're more likely to recognize and value what you make. You don't have to make your practice simpler; you have to find the people for whom your complexity is exactly right. Stacie Bloomfield teaches artists in Leverage Your Art how to identify those buyers specifically, which takes the guesswork out of marketing a multi-disciplinary practice.

About Stacie Bloomfield

Stacie Bloomfield is the founder of Gingiber, a surface pattern design and art licensing brand she built from her dining room table into a multimillion-dollar business with products in 1,400+ brick-and-mortar stores. She has earned $500K+ through art licensing and has taught 5,000+ artists how to build real income from their work.

She is the author of The Artist's Side Hustle (Hay House), a Moda fabric designer, and the host of the Art + Audience podcast. Her programs — including Side Hustle Society, Leverage Your Art, and the Art Licensing Pitch Playbook — help artists at every stage turn their creativity into consistent income.