Check Out Julie Hiltbrunner’s Story

Hi Julie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers. 

The Possibilities are Literally Endless

I think everyone desires a life where they can create what they want and also earn a living at it.

You can earn a living or have complete autonomy. You can’t have both.

Even pop stars can’t make the music they want. A producer changes it to market to a broad audience.

I live a non-traditional life. Every day, I wake up and decide what project I want to work on that day.

After getting a Bachelor’s Degree and almost half an art degree. I quit art school soon after my car burned up in a fire.

You see, when I was about 5 years old, I created an abstract mural in crayon. It was full of passion and movement. I didn’t get a spanking, so I felt encouraged to keep creating.

I made some very impressive sock puppets for art class in elementary school. I loved art class and stayed after school sometimes to hang out with my art teacher. This was further encouragement.

My friends coerced me into art classes in high school & I learned how to draw. Then, I was hooked.

I wake up with so many ideas. It’s probably because I live a pretty low-stress life as a homemaker and small business owner. I can relax enough to think about what doesn’t exist yet but could.

Even before I fell down the rabbit hole of Pinterest, I got a thrill from having my ideas take physical form. I always loved attention and sharing what I’ve created with anyone I could find. I love the wonder in people’s eyes when they see my imagination come to life.

An artist needs to create with a lot of freedom, but sometimes a limited scope helps.

For example: I’ll take commissions with one criteria: it’s a building. Usually 16 x 20” and it will cost in the $500 range for a canvas painting.

I’ll paint your building either digitally or in acrylic.

Most artists are flaky & free-spirited and perhaps, therefore, lacking discipline.

I’m unusual in that I also love spreadsheets and organization. I also like my house to be mostly clutter-free. My mind is cluttered enough.

I recently started filling a sketchbook of all the things I might never make as a way to organize my thoughts and to keep things I would like to experiment with organized while not actually ever committing to them.

I go through periods of intense focus and then periods of moving from one type of project to the next.

A sketchbook is very useful in that you can sort through your ideas. With every possible creation in the world available, choosing one direction or one path is incredibly difficult. In fact, I never seem to.

I’m a Jack of all trades and master of none… but probably one of the most creative people you will meet.

I realize that my over-excited brain might be my superpower but also my biggest weakness, as it pulls me in a lot of directions. If this is also you, don’t feel bad. Leonardo Da Vinci had many interests, also.

The Daily Doodle –

On the advice of the YouTuber Struthless (who I don’t know personally.) I started drawing a doodle every day from April 13, 2021, through April 12, 2022. The doodles were posted to Facebook every day.

I drew up to 10 hours a day and am still suffering the physical consequences of overworking my body that way. I don’t recommend it. Yes, draw daily. But do take breaks and stretch often. Being hunched over an iPad is so bad for your body.

The daily doodle gained me local recognition and was featured on the cover of 76008 Magazine. I’d drawn a doodle map of our little city and the surrounding area.

(Map Picture Below)

With a bachelor’s degree & a minor in art, I continued on to art school at UNM. After my car burned up in a house fire, I was in debt and tired of living at home.

I launched into the world of boring desk jobs until, in 2007, when I’d had enough of the corporate lifestyle, I started a business making sterling silver jewelry.

My grandfather was a jeweler. He taught my mom a few things that she, in turn, taught me.

My grandmother was a professional embroiderer. So, I may be genetically predisposed to working with my hands. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of careers anymore for people like me.

If there are, please give me a holler.

I made maybe a thousand custom designs. Some of my favorites were miniature sterling silver book charms, a guitar money clip, an impossibly tiny wrestling ring.

I got back into making YouTube videos with the encouragement of my son, Jack in 2018. I was doing so many things that the thought people would be interested in what I was doing. Maybe I could teach other people what I knew.

Although my first YouTube channel started in June 2007, I started taking YouTube more seriously in 2018, at Age 47. I took it pro and made a small income from it.

I started with a video about building a wood-fired pottery kiln from clay that I harvested in the dry creek bed behind our house.

After seeing the video, a friend told me she’d give me her electric pottery kiln if I’d set her grandmother’s diamonds in a bracelet. I was scared half to death to risk breaking her diamonds, but I really wanted the kiln, so I agreed.

My business morphed into a pottery business Called Tiny Chick Pottery, LLC. When the weather is agreeable, I make pottery in my 8 by 10-foot tiny pottery shed in our backyard.

I didn’t have a definite niche for my YT channel, and despite it having more than a million views and having gained monetization status, it wasn’t growing.

On YouTube, it’s grow or die. People won’t subscribe unless they know what to expect every time. The audience likes predictable – and I’m the queen of random.

I needed something to teach that I could do repeatedly without getting bored, so Tiny Chick Pottery got its own very predictable YouTube channel.

On the Tiny Chick Pottery Channel, I started making miniature pottery as I saw those videos are very popular online. It was easy enough to make one reel per day for about 3 months. It’s not yet ad-monetized, but it does get sponsorships now and then.

The subscribership grew to 3,500 – but what it didn’t deliver to me was an audience with money ready to throw at me. Craft and YouTube channels are free to start but costly to do well.

Mostly, kids tuned in. I thought I would get a mailing list of people I could offer mini pottery to; I haven’t figured out how to market to them yet. What it did do was increase my channels to a total of 2,000,000 combined views on YouTube. That’s a lot of people seeing my creations. It’s incredible.

When the weather is nice, I like to throw and make pottery. When it’s cold, I like to do textile projects like sewing miniature clothing or hand-stitched embroidery.

Imagine an old water well pump thing. You pull the handle down over and over, and you get output. But when you only ever have one set of hands to pull the handle, your output is limited by how much you can physically do, you are limited in how many times you can pull the handle.

But you can make a YouTube video once and have it viewed thousands of times, therefore multiplying your efforts.

Your audience can be much larger than the number of people who will attend a pottery or art show.

Depending on the season, my interests might lie in sewing, embroidery, pottery, sterling silver jewelry, doodling, painting, doll-making, DIY repairs, or crafting scale model miniatures. Each thing that I learn adds to a collection of life experience and informs the next creation. For example, I recently took courses in stop-motion puppet making, building scale model rooms, and making miniature clothing.

(See pictures of my character puppets below.)

My website is TinyChickPottery.com

Email me at [email protected]