How I Design Every Piece (From an iPad on My Couch)

People are sometimes surprised to learn that Adventurelust is basically me, an iPad, and a spot on the couch with a permanent dent in it.

A few folks have assumed there's a big warehouse somewhere, or that I pull designs from a catalog. There isn't, and I don't. Every sticker and every crewneck design in the shop started as a drawing I made by hand, usually late at night after my kids are asleep, usually thinking about a place we've been.

I thought I'd walk you through how it actually works, since I love this part and don't talk about it enough.

It starts with a trip

Almost everything I draw comes from somewhere we've actually stood. My family and I spend our free time in national parks — hiking, camping, getting a little lost — and I take an embarrassing number of photos. Not the polished kind. The kind where I'm trying to remember the exact color the rock turned at sunset, or the shape of one particular tree.

When I get home, those photos become reference. I'll pull up ten pictures of the same ridgeline and try to boil it down to the few shapes that made it feel like that place, and not just any mountain.

Then I draw. And redraw.

I do everything on my iPad. A design usually goes through a lot of ugly versions before it's right — I'll get the mountains looking good and then hate the lettering, fix the lettering and realize the whole thing is too busy. The stamp stickers especially took forever to get where I wanted, because I was chasing the feeling of those old national park passport stamps without just copying them.

I'm picky about it. If a design doesn't feel like something I'd actually want on my own water bottle, it doesn't go in the shop.

Made to order, on purpose

Here's the part people ask about most: our crewnecks are made to order. When you buy one, it doesn't come out of a bin. I make it after you order it. That means it takes a little longer to reach you than something mass-produced, and I'll be honest, that's a real trade-off. But it also means I'm not sitting on piles of inventory, I'm not throwing away what doesn't sell, and every piece gets a little actual attention before it ships.

For a small, woman-owned shop run out of a house, that's the model that lets me keep doing this without it swallowing our lives.

The part that still gets me

A while back, our designs started showing up in a few shops near national parks out in Utah and Washington. We took road trips just to see them on real shelves, and the first time I watched a stranger pick one up and turn it over — someone I'd never meet, holding a thing I drew on my couch — I got a little emotional in the middle of a gift shop. My husband has photos. They are not flattering.

So when you buy something from us, that's what you're actually getting: a design made by one person who really loves these places, printed or stitched when you ask for it, and sent out with a genuine thank-you. Not a catalog. Just me.

If you want to see what's come out of all those late nights, the crewnecks and stickers are all right here.

Tara