The Gnaked Gnome
& Magic Mushroom Paper Co.
Company
Self-founded
The Challenge
I graduated in 2009 into a rough economy. By 2013, I was working two jobs: a 9-to-5 as an account manager at a publication house, and 5-to-9 at Pier 1 Imports. I was committed to making it to Chicago full-time. Whatever it took.
The work load was crushing, and I knew there had to be a smarter way.
So I did what I always do: I researched. The DIY boom was everywhere. People were getting crafty, and I knew I could design and I could make things. I took $25, bought five plastic dinosaurs, five airplants, and a can of spray paint, and brought my idea home to my parents' house.
"I hope you didn't invest too much in this."— My mom. August.
By December, their garage had a space heater running and we were spray painting hundreds of dinosaur planter orders. I made $20,000 that Christmas alone.
$250,000
Combined revenue
2
Stores built solo from scratch
$25
Initial investment
The Gnaked Gnome
Magic Mushroom Paper Co.
-
The concept was simple: upcycle plastic dinosaur toys into something people actually wanted in their homes. Gold-dipped, hollowed out, topped with airplants. Photographed on concrete and window ledges and whatever surface made them look considered.
The brand name, the logo, the photography, the copy, the SEO - all of it was mine.Whatever I listed, sold. Brick bookends, coasters, magnets, planters. The store became a second full-time job on top of the full-time job I'd finally landed as a designer. And I loved it - until the physical production started eating more hours than I had.
But I didn’t slow down. I pivoted. -
I wanted to stay in consumer goods but trade the spray paint for something more scalable. I landed on vintage-style travel posters (mid-century, retro 1930s aesthetic) based on fictional places from pop culture. The Hogwarts Express. The Forbidden Forest. Isla Nublar. Hill Valley. The TARDIS.
Here's the part I'm most proud of as a creative: I am not a Harry Potter devotee. I hadn't read the books. I'm not a Star Wars obsessive or a Marvel completist. But I understood something more useful than personal fandom. I understood how to research an audience. I studied these communities. I learned what they loved, how they talked about it, what was missing from the market. Then I made exactly that.
Nobody was selling vintage pop culture travel posters on Etsy at the time. I had the whole market to myself.
Through my design job, I'd built a relationship with a professional printer who ran my prints in bulk at a discount. My employer let me use their corporate printer for shipping labels. By the second Christmas, orders were coming in faster than I could package them.
Eventually, the IP risk became impossible to ignore. People were buying my prints, scanning them, and reselling them as their own. Every time I found a copy, it stung - the work was good enough to steal, and there wasn't much I could do about it.
I decided to close the shop and focus on my professional career which was starting to take off. -
Brand identity, naming, logo design
Product photography and staging
All copywriting and product descriptions
SEO strategy and optimization
Customer experience and relationship management
Product design, upcycling, and hand production
Illustration and print design
Packaging and fulfillment
What This Work Actually Built
The revenue paid off the student loans. It paid for my wedding. It put a down payment on a house. It bought a car.
I didn't know it at the time, but everything I would go on to do professionally - the research, the systems, the audience obsession, the ability to build something from nothing - started in a garage in 2013 with $25 and five plastic dinosaurs.