This week on Brand Your Passion, I’m chatting with the super-talented, Daisy Braid aka DIY Daisy. Daisy is a content creator, textile artist and author who is a self-taught sewist known for her colourful, creative style that combines handmade clothing with fairly made and second-hand fashion. We talk about the keys to confidence when filming yourself for social media, what strategies you can use to create consistent content, you’ll learn how to know when you’re ready to get branding help, and so much more.
This week on Brand Your Passion, I’m chatting with the super-talented, Daisy Braid aka DIY Daisy.
Daisy is a content creator, textile artist and author who is a self-taught sewist known for her colourful, creative style that combines handmade clothing with fairly made and second-hand fashion.
In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to know when you’re ready to get branding help, the keys to confidence when filming yourself for social media, what strategies you can use to create consistent content, the things that are working right now to grow brands on TikTok and Instagram, how to expand your brand to new interests while staying on brand, and so much more.
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Connect with Daisy Braid aka DIY Daisy
Instagram: @_diydaisy
Website: www.diydaisy.com
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Hollie Arnett: The voice that you just heard is Daisy Braid. Daisy aka DIY Daisy is a content creator, textile artist and author based in the Gold Coast in Yugambeh country. Daisy is a self-taught sewist known for her colourful, creative style that combines handmade clothing with fairly made and second-hand fashion.
In this episode, you'll learn how to know when you're ready to get branding help. The keys to confidence when filming yourself for social media, what strategies you can use to create consistent content, the things that are working right now to grow brands on TikTok and Instagram, how to expand your brand to new interests while staying on brand, and so much more. So now, if you are ready, let's start the episode.
Welcome to the show, Daisy! The people who are listening will have heard a little bit about you and what you do and what you are up to now in the introduction but I would love to hear a bit more about how you have got to where you are now.
I would love to know if you have always been a creative person?
Daisy Braid: Yes, I have always been a creative person and I think I can thank my parents for being so encouraging and supportive of expressing my creativity, however, that may be. So if you didn't know Hollie, I'm a twin and so my twin sister and I were the firstborns of my siblings. There are four of us but ever since we were babies out of the womb, Mum and Dad have always encouraged us to be creative by showing us how they are creative. My mum was a chef and she had her own cafe restaurant which we grew up in the cafe. And my dad does everything, but he also built our house. We grew up in the house that my dad built and for my whole life up until now is still in renovation. So we've always seen people doing, and creating, and building, and cooking, and all sorts of things.
From an early age, we went to art class. Mum made sure we went to art class to see what we wanted to do as our creative form of expression. Dad would sit us down and get us to paint model aeroplanes or build a crystal radio and all sorts of things. But just showing us that like you can make things and always teaching us, don't say can't, you can do anything.
So we’ve never really felt like (I say “we”, it’s a twin thing) we can't do anything. So I'll just give it a try. And that's been something in the way that I was brought up to just give something a go, use my initiative and figure out something.
In high school and university, I've always had some form of creative expression. It used to be photography and music, and then it slowly developed a bit more. I always had an interest and a love of fashion and I wanted to be a fashion designer. And somehow everything that I've done has led me to where I am now.
Hollie Arnett: I love the idea of don't say can't. I think that is such a good attitude to have and there's never such a thing as you can't. You can always find a way, or you can figure it out, or you can at least give it a try. Even if it doesn't work out, you can at least say that you tried.
And I think that having role models around you to show you that it's possible to have a career or to have hobbies, or whatever as a creative, it must have been so good to just have that around you to show that that's something you can do, or that is a possibility.
Daisy Braid: Even now I'm sitting in my Auntie's house and shop in Tamaki Makoto, Auckland. She's a plus-size fashion designer, and I'm sitting surrounded by all of her clothes, and that's what she does as her career. She's been doing it for 30 years. So I've always been watching people in my family just go for it. There's a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit, and so I think that's definitely inspired my dream to be something of my own, do my own thing.
Hollie Arnett: I love that. So you said that you started originally or at some point, you were involved in or interested in photography. So how did that then turn into doing sewing and materials and textiles?
Daisy Braid: It's actually really funny. In high school, there was Home Ec, but in Home Ec, you would do cooking, and you would sew maybe pyjama bottoms, I already at that point could kind of sew, and so I thought, I want to do art, so I'm going to do art, but I'm going to ask if I can borrow a sewing machine from the Home Ec room, bring it into the art room, and then for my projects and my submissions that I would make for my assignments, I would make a little clothing collection and I would photograph it on my friends and then I would submit a lookbook or a group of photos as my finished work and write a rationale and write a state artist statement and so that's how I was doing art at school because I wanted to figure out a way to make it all make sense. I didn't need to learn how to make a pair of pyjama shorts. I didn't want to go and do that whole process in the home ec class. I already knew how to cook because I learned from my mum and I already knew how to sew because I'd figured it out on my grandma's old machine. So my art teacher was very cool and we had an amazing art room. She was super supportive and she was like however you do it, do it, do what you want to do and then submit it.
She accepted my alternative way of submitting my assignments, but I was still getting to do what I wanted to do, which was make clothes, and photograph them. I wanted to be a fashion designer. I was like, look at me, I'm making my own collection.
I was inspired to do photography because my twin sister was doing photography. And she's still an amazing photographer. But then as I went through high school, that's how I did for my assignments. Then I finished and went to University and I kind of forgot about what my creative expression was going to be. There was a period when I didn't do photography. I was going through that, I'm 18 now and I can go to the club. So I had a little hiatus from expressing that creativity and then I slowly came back into it as I finished uni and started going out into the world.
Hollie Arnett: So you went to university for something completely different?
Daisy Braid: Business and marketing.
Hollie Arnett: Ah, right. Yeah, so something that eventually came back into it. So when you started to get back into Sewing and find your love of that again, how did it eventually become a business and become DIY Daisy?
Daisy Braid: It must have been 2016, I moved to Auckland and I was working for 27 Names in the shop in Newmarket one day I saw a job come up for the fabric store as their Media and Design Manager and I thought, ooh, that's kind of like what I studied at uni. So I applied for that job.
I got the job and I was working in the head office and, the job was to write blogs, do the marketing, social media, all of that kind of thing and so this is the first time I was introduced to influencers. This was when influencer marketing was just beginning. We had brand ambassadors that we would send fabric to, and they would write a blog post, or they would make a post, or they would basically promote the fabric store, but just through making their clothes and showing the fabric.
I thought one day, maybe I could do that. But I never took it seriously and I said to my co-worker, wouldn't it be funny if we were sewing bloggers? And I was called DIY Daisy and you can be called Needlepoint Nicole. Yeah, obviously we had great ideas then. It didn't work out for her, but I was like, okay, maybe this isn't a funny joke. Maybe I can do it. So my boyfriend at the time was my Instagram boyfriend. So I would make him take photos of me in my outfits and I just started posting and it wasn't a business at first and it only became a business in the last couple of years.
So at first it just started as a blog, a place for me to share what I was making, and then I started sharing projects, and sewing tutorials. They were always free so there's no money involved for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 around COVID time that I really started doing content creation for brands and doing things in exchange for money.
Hollie Arnett: Interesting. So when you started it out as a joke, I guess, in the beginning, and then started taking it a little bit more seriously, did you do any branding work at that time?
Tell me about the branding journey of DIY Daisy in terms of design, but also in terms of, did you think about anything strategically in terms of your audience?
Daisy Braid: At first I wasn't thinking about branding because I didn't know where it was going to go. I knew that the way I photographed my makes, there was a certain theme or a style that I wanted to keep consistent, but it was all really lo-fi. It was just photos on my phone camera and I didn't have a logo, or nothing like that.
But then I moved to Tokyo in Japan and one day at work I had a bit of downtime. So I thought I was going to make a logo for my website and I knew I wanted to have a flower because obviously Daisy, it's a flower. And I wanted it to be something colourful and also joyful and something that feels cute but not childish.
I borrowed my co-worker's iPad and I hand drew this flower and a face and then I took that and turned it into a vector on Illustrator. I played around with the colours and the sizing. And my original logo is the most simple form of what my brand mark is now. So the flower with a face and the eyes and the nose, and the mouth spell out DIY.
I just knew I wanted it to have a smile. I love smiles and I love flowers. So I was like, let's combine that but do something interesting with the eyes and the nose. And so my original logo is what my logo is now but just now my logo is way better.
Hollie Arnett: That’s amazing! And so when you are working with these brands, how do you keep things on brand for you while also managing what the brand wants as well? How do you balance those things?
Daisy Braid: I only accept content creation work if they are willing to work with my idea. So I've had opportunities to create content for brands, but they want it to be a certain way. They want UCG content creation and I’ve had to say, that's not what I do. I am DIY Daisy and I'll make content that works in with my content. It has to make sense. It has to provide value and it has to align with what I'm known for.
People have called me out. They will send me a message saying, Daisy, is this an ad or what is this? They'll ask me because they've said that I follow you because I trust what you have to say, but this seems dodgy or whatever. So I've just learned to only work with people that are going to let me have creative freedom not complete control, but it has to make sense for the DIY Daisy brand.
Hollie Arnett: I think that's a really good boundary to have and good to get in place. So that's amazing. And you're not only creating content for brands, but you create content for yourself on Instagram and TikTok. And as you said, you have 82,000 followers on Instagram and 52,000 on TikTok, not that those followers matter, but it's pretty impressive. What do you think has worked for you in terms of building and growing your brand and what do you think has worked?
Daisy Braid: I think something that I've always tried to do is have a way that I shoot my photos so that there's consistency. I love consistency and when something seems out of place, I'm like, Oh, what's that doing there?
So I always try and keep my content consistent. And I started dabbling in this idea last year well, it's not my idea, it’s just what I've seen other people doing is the idea of a series. So a content series, I tried to start it last year but I guess I was just a little bit too busy, a bit frazzled, a bit distracted so I'm trying again this year and by starting a series people can get invested in what you're up to and they want to see what's happening every month or every time you post and they want to see an update and so by starting that series you're kind of hooking people in.
They're not necessarily subscribing but they're keeping an eye on what you're up to and they're waiting to see what's happening next and I think that's been helpful for my engagement last year because I wasn't consistent and wasn’t creating content in the way that I used to. And I guess I can't either because the algorithm has changed so I'm just trying out some new things. I tested out a few things last year, and I thought, okay, that worked, that didn't, I'm gonna do what worked, and I'm gonna try and stick to it and be consistent. So I started a content series, and I've seen my engagement increase heaps. I couldn't tell you the exact numbers, but I know for sure that last year, it didn't make me sad, but it made me feel like, okay, you've got to figure this out again because I was at this point where I felt like, am I going to stop being DIY Daisy? Am I going to stop creating this content? What the heck am I going to do? I was like, am I quitting? Am I logging off? But then I spoke to some of my closest friends and my partner and they just said to me, you can't stop. Like, that's literally who you are. People wanna see what you're doing. I just needed a little bit of a shake, a slap across the face, metaphorically. And when they said that to me, I just thought, I can do it but I'm gonna have to set myself a plan. So I've set myself a plan, I've signed myself up to a theory, and I'm going to try and stick to it.
Hollie Arnett: I love that. Yeah, I mean, I know that you're doing the, like, Hexie Quilt. Is that the series you're talking about?
Daisy Braid: Yes. Well, that's kind of one of them. That started unintentionally. But yes, that's a series now. So me sharing my updates on the Hexie Quilt, that's a series. But the other series I'm doing is kind of the year of DIY. So every month, I have a different prompt and from that prompt, I will make one project for my gallery wall. But, I'll let you in on a secret. Just because the prompt is for the gallery wall, I will be making projects based on that prompt for other areas of my house. I pitched a book last year and it got, it didn't get rejected, but they didn't want it. So yeah, it kind of got rejected and all of the ideas that I had for that book, I want to share them. So I'm going to share them as free content.
Hollie Arnett: Why not! You made the ideas so you might as well use them for something else.
Daisy Braid: I thought if I spread it out over a year, I'm not putting too much pressure on myself and I can do one project a month or I can do three projects a month. And that way, it doesn't feel so scary to try and stick to it. So all I have to do is at least one project a month and if I share it, then I'm consistent and hopefully, people will want to hang around and keep seeing what I'm doing and maybe it will inspire them to make something too or it will inspire them to try quilting a hexie quilt and people have already told me that they want to get into it now. I'm just excited that my initial goal when I started is still happening. People are still getting inspired or they're getting motivated to try something new and try sewing or try DIY.
Hollie Arnett: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I already got inspired to go get the stuff to make a Hexie flower, so I'm only one step there. I'm going to make the little wall Hexie flower. You inspired me already. So yeah, and you definitely do seem to be posting consistently and sharing lots and showing what you're making and thinking and doing. So how do you think of your ideas and document them and what is your process to get them from idea to Instagram or TikTok? What does that look like for you?
Daisy Braid: I do have my list, I have my pitch. And so that's something that I refer to every now and then, but I guess I have my calendar and on the calendar, it has the prompt for each month and then I have the project ideas from that prompt. So in the month or a couple of months leading up to that prompt, I will start gathering materials, making notes and something that I do in the car or the shower or just walking around my house is practice a script so I will practice what I'm going to say in a Reel or a video because I don't want to spend three hours filming. I want to do it and try and get it done in one or two takes. So I have notes on my phone. I'll sometimes have a document where I type out a little script and then I practice the script in the car. And that's sort of what I'll do first, and then when there's a day where I'm able to film, so in the afternoon when I finish work or on the weekend, I'll set myself up to work on as much content as possible, and get it all banked for the week or the month. Then I just slowly drip it out.
Hollie Arnett: Nice, that's such a good way of doing it. I like the idea of practising a script because sometimes I get to recording something and I'm like, what am I gonna say?
Daisy Braid: Exactly, but your little intro at the start there, you just did that like you were reading it off paper. Or maybe you were?
Hollie Arnett: I have bullet points on Notion. Notion is my go-to. One of my questions was that you seem very confident filming and photographing yourself and I was curious if you have any tips for people who maybe aren't very confident filming. You're very good with the tiny microphone talking to the camera and all of that stuff. Do you have any tips for people who are maybe feeling a little less confident filming themselves talking to the camera or photographing themselves?
Daisy Braid: Definitely practice. Practice before you get behind the camera. Know what you want to say. Some people are okay with just going off the cuff, but for me, I need to be efficient because I don't have all day to film one video, and that's also a very long time to spend on one short 30-second Reel or minute-long Reel. So, #1 is practice.
Another one, make notes. I'll have bullet points or I'll have notes, breaking down what I want to achieve in that in my script, whatever I'm trying to say and practice it. Then make yourself feel confident. So I feel most confident when I have a little bit of makeup on when I'm not sweating. When my house is a little bit quiet, so I don't have to ask anyone to be quiet and set my space up. I make sure my space is clean and then I'm ready to go. So I always set myself up because like everyone else, I have my insecurities and sometimes I do get behind the camera and then I'll see the footage back and I'm like, oh my goodness, my eyebrows are uneven or sometimes I look at myself in the recording and I think, oh, I don't like how I look today. Sometimes I'll film for an hour and then I have to do that all again tomorrow because I just don't feel confident. I've learned to accept the fact that that's what I look like and I can't change how I look. I can add a little bit of makeup though to feel a bit more confident and so that's what I'll do.
And then I guess I just make sure that I'm consuming other people's content to see what's like best practices for structuring a video. You want a start, a middle and an end, but you might need to change the way that you edit. Or different kinds of music that you add, things like that. I just make sure that I'm consuming content so that I'm not getting stuck in my own little mind bubble and I'm going, okay, I could try that trend, or I could try that trick, or I could try that editing style until I found how I like to edit. And I like to think of it as clean, lo-fi, a little bit minimal like I don't like having too much going on. I just sit down and put my tripod on. Oh, that would be another thing. Get a little tripod.
Hollie Arnett: Hmm. Yep. Great hot tip. I love that. And you mentioned, trying new things. I’ve followed you for a while and I've seen that you obviously started out with sewing clothes, but over a couple of years, you've somewhat branched out into making textile art and other things with fabric.
How do you balance wanting to try new things with having and maintaining this brand that you've built? And I guess you sort of alluded to that with wanting to branch out into shoes and coats and other things too. So how do you balance wanting to try new things or branch out into other things with also maintaining your existing brand and the audience that's there for the things you have been doing?
Daisy Braid: The thing about that is I can only make so many clothes for myself and I'm a selfish sewer, so I don't make for other people unless it's a gift. So after six or seven years of sewing my own wardrobe and developing my personal style and figuring out what I like to wear, I've got enough. I've got what I need. So I just had to start sewing other things because I still want to express myself creatively and make things, but I can't keep making clothes. I also feel like if I'm always making new clothes, in essence, maybe I'm encouraging people to constantly want new clothes.
That's one part of it but I think by always having something that is part of my core niche, so sewing every now and then, maybe once every two or three months, I'll make a clothing item and share about that. That's how I feel I can maintain that audience of people who are following me for that reason. Then I'm also branching out and hopefully meeting new audiences by sewing new things. But there is so much more to sewing than just clothing. So I guss I've reached my peak of clothing and I'm like, okay, what else can I do?
Hollie Arnett: I like that. I think that's a good healthy balance of like, okay, I'm still maintaining the people who are there specifically for the clothing, but still allowing myself space to create and try new things. I like the attitude of I'm attracting new people with this new stuff.
Daisy Braid: Yeah, hopefully! And if people don't want to see that new stuff - they know what to do.
Hollie Arnett: Yep! They can scroll past. I have two last questions for you, which are the questions that I ask every single person. So my first question is, what do you think is the biggest lesson that you have learned about branding your passion?
Daisy Braid: Biggest lesson? Hmm.
Hollie Arnett: I can ask you the second one if you want. They’re similar questions but it might just prompt it differently. What piece of advice would you pass on to other creators who want to brand their passion?
Daisy Braid: I think my advice would be to spend time figuring out who you are. It's so easy to look around and see what everyone else is doing, and it's so easy to copy people or to be influenced by what they're doing.
But I think if you want to have your own brand, and you want to stand out and be unique in some way, you have to know who you are. Like, deep down inside your soul. You have to always be yourself in a way. So it does take time to develop your own look and feel and brand and voice and it just comes with time. Mine has developed so much as I've gotten older and made more and met more people and it doesn't come from just being all alone. You have to go and experience things, but I think if you're trying to be yourself and be honest and authentic, then your brand will make so much more sense to people. Rather than trying to look or create content or make the same things as other people, it will always feel like someone else.
Hollie Arnett: Brilliant advice.
Daisy Braid: Do you want me to try the other question? What was it again?
Hollie Arnett: It was, what is the biggest lesson that you've learned about branding your passion?
Branding my passion. Oh, I got it! You can evolve. Your brand might not look the same as it did 10 years ago. It's okay to evolve and change.
If I still had my original logo, I would hate it. It's okay to change and try new things when you are working towards your brand and you're making your brand your own. It takes time but right now I'm like this is my branding and it feels so authentically me. It feels so much like who I am right now that I think I could probably use this for the next five to ten years and It would still work. I can change the colours, but I feel like this is gonna be with me for a while, and it's gonna feel like it fits. I think it's okay to change and evolve.
Hollie Arnett: I agree. I always say that because we as people evolve. So, it would be silly if the brands that we embody or that are supposed to reflect us didn't evolve with us. So yeah, I love that amazing advice. Thank you so so much Daisy. Thank you so much for sharing your journey, your advice and your lessons and everything that you've learned along the way. Do you want to tell the people what you have going on and where they can find you, or both?
Daisy Braid: Well, if you're interested in sewing, maybe seeing a girl make a quilt and want to get inspired by some home decor or some colourful fashion, you can find me at diydaisy.com. Or my Instagram handle is underscore diydaisy (@_diydaisy) because someone stole the name before I got to it.
Hollie Arnett: Amazing! I will leave all of those links in the show notes and all of those goodies. So you will be able to find Daisy everywhere she is at. So thank you so much, Daisy.
Daisy Braid: Thanks, Hollie.