Most of you already know me as Unconventional Momma, or simply Mrs. B.

You know me through this blog, through the pieces I write about motherhood, chronic illness, neurodivergence, spirituality, relationships, healing, boundaries, and all the strange little corners of life that somehow end up finding their way onto the page. You may also know that I write books, because apparently one writing outlet was never going to be enough for me. 😂

What some of you may not know, though, is that I also draw.

I design.

I create.

And I have another creative home for all of that through Wise Hazel Design & Apothecary.

What once existed as Luna Owl has grown and blossomed into Wise Hazel over time. Luna Owl is still very much a part of who I am, but these days it feels more like a creative extension of my blog and my spiritual practice. It is the softer, more inward-facing space where reflection, spirituality, symbolism, intuition, and personal expression tend to live.

Wise Hazel became the place where those same creative instincts stretched their legs a little farther.

It became a home for my artwork, custom designs, digital pieces, tattoo concepts, book covers, character art, memorial work, symbolic pieces, and the kinds of ideas that do not always fit neatly into one category.

In a lot of ways, Wise Hazel grew out of the same soil Luna Owl did. The roots are still there. The symbolism is still there. The spirituality is still there. The love of folklore, nature, old stories, strange little creatures, meaningful imagery, and deeply personal creative work is still there.

It has simply expanded.

And honestly, that feels very fitting for me.

There are a lot of different versions of me living under the same roof, and most days they are all trying to use the same handful of spoons. There is the mom and wife, the blogger, the author, the editor, the business owner, the chronically ill woman learning how to negotiate with a body that frequently changes the terms of the contract without notice, and somewhere in the middle of all of those pieces is the artist.

She has always been there in one form or another.

For as long as I can remember, creativity has been one of the ways I process the world. Sometimes that has looked like writing stories. Sometimes it has been designing things, creating graphics, working with symbolism, building characters, putting together aesthetics, or taking a thought that only existed in my head and finding some way to make it tangible.

Over time, though, the artist in me has gotten considerably louder.

Through Wise Hazel Design & Apothecary, I have been creating digital artwork, tattoo designs, book covers, character portraits, memorial artwork, tarot-inspired pieces, symbolic and spiritual artwork, portrait collages, and whatever other wonderfully strange idea happens to wander into my creative orbit.

Somewhere along the way, what began as another creative outlet became something more. It became work I genuinely love doing, work I am proud to put my name on, and work that actually fits the life and body I have rather than demanding that I become someone else in order to do it.

That last part matters more than I can probably explain.

Creating When Your Body Doesn’t Keep Business Hours

One of the hardest things about living with chronic illness and disability is that productivity does not always happen on command. There is no magical switch I can flip that guarantees my body will cooperate just because I have a deadline, an idea, or a to-do list that looks like it was assembled by someone with three assistants and excellent cardiovascular health.

My brain might wake up completely prepared to conquer fourteen projects before lunch. I can have ideas stacked on top of ideas, characters shouting from one corner, artwork taking shape in another, and an entire plan mapped out before my coffee has even cooled.

My body may have entirely different plans.

There are days when I can sit down with a piece of artwork and completely disappear into it. Four hours go by without me noticing. The outside world becomes suspiciously quiet. My coffee is cold somewhere nearby, I have forgotten that human beings traditionally eat meals at intervals, and I am still adjusting the same tiny detail because something about it is not quite right yet.

Then there are other days when my body puts up a metaphorical CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS sign and refuses to elaborate.

Those are the days when fatigue wins, pain is louder, my brain is foggier, or my body simply decides it has reached capacity. It does not matter how much I want to create. Sometimes the answer is no.

Learning to work within that reality instead of constantly punishing myself for it has been a process.

For a long time, productivity felt tied to worth. If I could not keep up, produce more, finish faster, or function the way other people seemed to function, it was easy to feel as though I was somehow falling behind.

Chronic illness has a way of dismantling that kind of thinking, whether you are ready for it or not.

It has forced me to understand that my time, energy, and abilities are not less valuable because they arrive differently. They are simply mine, and I have had to learn how to build a life around what is actually possible rather than what some imaginary version of productivity says I should be able to do.

Art has helped me do that.

It gives me the flexibility to create in the spaces where creativity is available, while still allowing room for my body to need something else. I can work intensely when I have the energy and step back when I do not. I can build around good days, slower days, painful days, foggy days, and those rare magical afternoons when everything clicks into place and I feel unstoppable for a little while.

That flexibility is incredibly valuable to me.

So when someone purchases one of my designs or commissions a custom piece, they are not simply buying digital artwork. They are supporting a disabled creator who is finding ways to build meaningful work around the realities of her body instead of constantly fighting against them.

And I do not take that lightly.

What I Create

As more people have started asking about my artwork, what I offer, and how my pricing works, I realized it was probably time to put everything together in one place.

There are some pieces that are premade and ready to purchase, while others are completely custom and built from the ground up around the person commissioning them.

My premade digital art prints are $45.

These are finished, full-color pieces created around particular themes, concepts, deities, symbolism, aesthetics, moods, or inspiration. They are already completed pieces rather than custom commissions, and buyers receive a high-resolution digital copy with personal print rights.

I also offer premade tattoo flash for $45.

Those purchases include the finished full-color artwork, clean line work, and personal tattoo rights. My flash artwork is first come, first served, and once a tattoo design is purchased, I retire it from tattoo availability.

That means I am not selling the same tattoo design over and over to multiple people. If you purchase one of my flash designs, that design is yours to take to your tattoo artist.

Lately, I have especially been enjoying my Vintage Halloween collections. Ghosts, witches, monsters, skeletons, familiars, scarecrows, bats, spiders, zodiac pieces, spooky couples, and all manner of strange little vintage creatures have been taking up residence in my sketchbook. Frankly, they seem very comfortable there.

There is something incredibly satisfying about taking imagery that feels nostalgic, eerie, playful, and a little off-kilter and turning it into something that could live forever on someone’s skin.

Custom Tattoo Artwork

Custom tattoo designs currently start at $90.

These are completely different from my premade flash designs because they are created specifically around the individual person commissioning them. A custom tattoo commission includes consultation, custom concept development, finished full-color artwork, clean line work for the tattoo artist, personal tattoo rights, and up to three free revisions.

The design is created specifically for that client and is not resold as tattoo art.

The reason custom tattoo work has a starting price rather than one fixed number is fairly simple: no two designs require the same amount of work.

One person may want a relatively simple symbolic design with a few meaningful elements. Another may want a large, intricate piece involving several animals, botanical details, mythology, celestial imagery, architecture, portraits, or symbolism that all needs to work together as one cohesive composition.

Those are very different projects.

The more complex a design becomes, the more time goes into planning, research, composition, editing, refining, and making sure the piece feels intentional rather than simply crowded.

That time matters.

Which brings me to fully custom commission work.

Fully Custom Artwork

In addition to tattoo designs and premade digital pieces, I also create several kinds of completely custom artwork. That can include book cover design, character artwork, custom portrait collages, custom tarot card artwork, memorial artwork, spiritual and symbolic pieces, and other personalized digital concepts that do not necessarily fit neatly into one category.

This is where pricing becomes much more individualized.

A single character portrait and an elaborate fantasy book cover are not the same project. A memorial collage created from several photographs, flowers, meaningful locations, dates, personal symbols, and beloved objects is not the same amount of work as a simple digital portrait. A custom tarot-inspired piece may involve a person, deity, archetype, symbolism, numerology, flora, fauna, and specific visual references that all need to make sense together.

Trying to slap one universal price on all of that would not be fair to the client, and it would not accurately reflect the amount of creative labor going into each piece.

That is why pricing for fully custom commission work is available upon request only.

For custom artwork, my creative rate is $50 per hour.

That does not necessarily mean I sit beside a stopwatch and invoice someone for every individual minute I touch their artwork. Instead, the hourly rate helps me estimate a fair project quote based on the amount of design time, consultation, research, editing, complexity, detail work, and revision that a piece is likely to require.

Some pieces may take around four hours to complete. Others can unfold over several days or even a couple of weeks, especially when there are a lot of small elements, detailed revisions, consultation, or periods where I need to step away and come back with fresh eyes.

My health is also part of that timeline.

I am very transparent about that because I would much rather tell someone upfront that a highly detailed custom piece may need breathing room than pretend my body follows a standard business-week calendar.

It does not.

We have established this repeatedly. 😂

What Comes With a Custom Commission?

When someone commissions custom artwork from me, they are paying for much more than the moment I send the finished file.

The process begins with consultation.

I want to understand what the person is imagining, what the artwork means to them, how they want it to feel, how they intend to use it, and which details are essential to the piece.

For book covers and character art, that may mean discussing the story, genre, character appearance, mood, themes, symbolism, and audience. For memorial pieces, it may mean understanding who or what is being honored, which photographs matter most, what symbols hold meaning, and what emotional tone the person wants the final piece to carry. For spiritual or symbolic artwork, that may involve mythology, ancestral connections, plants, animals, colors, objects, or visual language that has personal significance.

Once I understand the concept, I begin developing the composition and artwork.

Custom commissions include the initial consultation, concept development, and up to three free revisions.

When the piece is finalized, clients receive a high-resolution PNG, JPG, and PDF, along with personal print rights.

For book cover design and character artwork, appropriate publication rights are also included so authors can use the finished work with their books and related promotional materials.

If a project requires additional revisions beyond the three included revisions, there may be an additional charge depending on the scope of the changes requested.

I try to be very clear about what clients are paying for because creative work is often misunderstood from the outside.

People tend to see the final image. They do not necessarily see the consultation that came before it, the research tabs, the sketches that went nowhere, the composition changes, the details that were moved repeatedly, or the tiny visual adjustments that took far longer than anyone would ever guess.

They do not see the hour spent trying to figure out why something feels wrong only to realize one object needs to shift slightly to the left. They do not see the discarded versions. They do not see the moment when ten different elements finally begin speaking the same visual language.

That is the work.

The final image is simply where all of that work eventually lands.

“I Have an Idea, But I Don’t Know How to Explain It”

One of my favorite things to hear from someone is, “I have this idea, but I do not really know how to explain it.”

That is completely fine.

You do not have to arrive with an art-director-approved creative brief, seventeen perfectly labeled reference images, a spreadsheet, and a PowerPoint presentation.

Although, for the record, I will absolutely look at your chaotic Pinterest board.

That kind of visual chaos can actually tell me a lot.

Bring me the photographs, the character description, the favorite colors, the mythology, the symbols, the flowers, the animals, the aesthetic references, or the one weird image you keep coming back to because it makes your brain light up in exactly the right way.

Tell me that your grandmother always had hydrangeas by the porch. Tell me that your character is angry, exhausted, brilliant, and morally questionable but somehow still lovable. Tell me that you want the moon in the background, but not that kind of moon. Tell me the raven matters. Tell me the moth has to be there. Tell me the color green needs to feel old and mossy rather than bright and cheerful.

Those details are useful.

That is where the artwork begins to become yours.

A good custom consultation is not about expecting someone to speak fluent “artist.” It is about translating emotion, memory, personality, symbolism, and visual references into something we can build together.

That process is one of my favorite parts.

Memorial Artwork Carries a Different Kind of Weight

Memorial artwork deserves its own little space here because I approach those pieces differently.

When someone trusts me with images of a loved one, a pet, a family member, or a memory they desperately want to preserve, I understand that I am not simply making something pretty. I am working with grief, memory, connection, and love.

Sometimes the details in a memorial piece seem small to someone on the outside. A particular flower, a favorite bird, a porch swing, a truck, a date, a necklace, a sunset, or a specific shade of blue can look like minor design choices.

But those things are rarely small to the person asking for them.

They are pieces of a life.

That makes memorial work both beautiful and incredibly meaningful to create.

I want those pieces to feel personal rather than generic. I want someone to look at the finished artwork and recognize the person or animal they loved in the details, even if the rest of the world would never understand why those details mattered.

That is one of the places where custom artwork becomes much more than decoration.

It becomes a way of holding onto something.

Book Covers and Character Art Let Stories Step Out of the Page

On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, book covers and character artwork allow me to play in one of my favorite creative spaces: fictional worlds.

As an author myself, I know the very strange experience of having a character live vividly in your head while everyone else is simply expected to understand what you mean when you say, “No, his face is close, but his energy is wrong.”

Authors understand this sentence.

Normal people probably do not. 😂

Character art is a way of taking someone who has existed only in imagination and finally giving them a face.

Book cover design goes even further because the cover has to communicate the story before a reader ever opens the book. It has to carry genre, mood, character, tension, tone, and enough visual curiosity to make someone want to know what is waiting on the other side.

That is why publication rights are included with my book cover and character artwork.

Those pieces are meant to live with the story.

They are not simply wall art.

They may become part of marketing graphics, promotional materials, launch posts, websites, social media, reader materials, or the actual book itself. Creating them means thinking not only about what looks beautiful, but also about how the artwork needs to function.

Booking Custom Artwork

If you are interested in commissioning something, the first step is simple: send me a private message.

Tell me what kind of artwork you are interested in and give me a basic idea of what you are imagining.

If you already have reference photographs, sketches, inspiration images, mood boards, character descriptions, color palettes, symbolic elements, or anything else that might help me understand your vision, send those along too.

If you are commissioning book or character artwork, let me know how you plan to use the finished piece so we can make sure we are discussing the correct rights and file formats from the beginning.

If you do not have any of that figured out yet, that is okay too.

You can genuinely show up in my inbox and say, “Okay, so I have this weird idea…”

Honestly, those are practically magic words around here.

We can talk through it together.

Once I understand the scope of the project, I will provide a quote based on the estimated time, detail, complexity, and usage involved.

I currently accept Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Facebook Pay, and Etsy.

Invoices are due within three days unless another arrangement has been discussed beforehand.

For limited premade artwork and tattoo flash, an unpaid invoice means the design becomes available again after those three days.

More Than One Kind of Creativity

For a long time, I think I treated creativity as though I was supposed to choose which kind of creative person I was allowed to be.

Writer or artist.

Author or designer.

Blogger or business owner.

Practical work or creative work.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I am no longer particularly interested in fitting myself into those little boxes.

Creativity does not have to travel in one straight line.

Mine definitely does not.

Mine is more like one of those strange Appalachian backroads where every few miles another road branches off toward something interesting, the GPS quietly stops pretending it knows what is happening, and I somehow end up finding exactly where I needed to go anyway.

Writing feeds the art. Art feeds the writing. My spirituality finds its way into both. My love of folklore crawls into everything when no one is looking. My books create characters I want to see. My life gives me memories I want to preserve. My curiosity keeps dragging strange new ideas through the front door.

Sometimes I want to create something deeply meaningful and symbolic. Sometimes I want to design a book cover that makes someone stop scrolling. Sometimes I want to preserve a loved one’s memory in a piece that a family can keep forever.

And sometimes I simply want to draw a delightfully unsettling vintage rabbit.

All of it belongs.

That has been one of the most freeing realizations of this entire chapter of my life.

I do not have to become less complicated to make my work easier to explain.

I can simply create.

Supporting a Disabled Creator Means More Than Buying Art

There is one last thing I want to say because it matters deeply to me.

When you support my artwork, whether you commission something, purchase a premade design, share a post, recommend my work to someone, or simply tell another person what I create, you are supporting a disabled creator.

You are supporting someone who is trying to build a sustainable creative life around a body that does not always behave predictably.

You are supporting the kind of work that allows me to create during the hours when I am able, rest when I need to, and keep building something even when a traditional work structure would be much harder for me to maintain.

That does not make the work less professional.

It does not make it less valuable.

If anything, it has made me more thoughtful about how I spend my creative energy and more grateful every time someone chooses to spend their money on something I created.

Every commission means time spent doing work that I love. Every custom piece is another opportunity to turn someone’s idea into something tangible. Every book cover means another story gets a face. Every memorial piece carries a little piece of someone forward. Every tattoo design may eventually become part of someone’s body and story.

That is not something I take casually.

It is one of the reasons I care so much about the details.

And if supporting my artwork also helps a disabled woman continue carving out a creative life on her own terms, then that makes every piece mean just a little bit more.

So bring me your characters, your ghosts, your memorial photographs, your deities, your strange dreams, your fictional men with questionable morals, your favorite flowers, your monsters, your family stories, your symbolism, and the chaotic Pinterest board that currently looks like six completely different people contributed to it.

Bring me the idea that has been living rent-free in your head.

We will see what it wants to become.

Wise Hazel Design & Apothecary / Jess Bicknell

Custom Art • Book Covers • Character Art • Tattoo Design • Memorial Art • A Little Bit of Strange

Much love and many blessings,
Mrs. B