Whether you’ve seen her work on the back of a laptop or on someone’s waterbottle, Conway’s Anna Sting-Myers, aka Honey+Hearth, has earned a loyal following for her delightfully creative stickers.
Sting-Myers said, “At the beginning it was a little bit slower, but that was kind of what I expected. It built up over the course of several years, and now it’s to the point where I do local markets, I have my monthly sticker club, and I also do work for universities or government agencies or sometimes just different organizations that reach out to me. So yeah, the stickers have done really well, and they’ve done a really great job at getting my name out there and getting me connected with other community partners.”
Sting-Myers first started her monthly stickers club over two years ago, ranging from different themes such as foxes, dragons and even Chappell Roan.
“It has grown quite a bit,” Sting-Myers said. “I went from — I think the first few months I maybe had two members, and I’ve had it here recently as high as 30 but obviously it fluctuates from month to month, but it’s really been an interesting experience, and I’ve loved getting to see it flourish into something even bigger than what I imagined it initially. And I can’t wait to tinker with it more, adjust it to my needs as I go.”
The artist released “Pokémon” stickers for the club in August, and will be releasing cryptid-themed stickers sometime this month. Sting-Myers also plans to release “Lord of the Rings” stickers in Oct.
“I try to take in what I see in pop culture. That has been a more recent change. Up until this point, I’ve really tried to draw from nature and what I personally like around me. So like a lot of my past ones have been, you know, either cats, dogs, mushrooms, or a specific animal breed,” Sting-Myers said. “But here recently, I’ve been trying to incorporate more pop culture items like popular singers or movie franchises that people like, and kind of seeing how that takes me. And it’s been not only a really good experience for me to brush up on my skills of drawing such different styles, but people really seem to be interested in it. So that’s probably where I’ll keep going for inspiration for the time being.”
Aside from the monthly sticker club, Sting-Myers has also created stickers for UCA-specific events.
“Primarily I’ve done work for the University of Central Arkansas. I did their — I believe it was last year — their first time voter stickers, and it was a little bear, and it had a little banner across the top of it that said, ‘first time voter,’” she said. “I’ve also done some stickers for Gear Up Arkansas, which is a grant out of the College of Education.”
Sting-Myers drew inspiration for her monthly sticker club through some of her favorite artists.
“Since my teenage years, I have really been inspired by a lot of artists online … there’s an artist, her name is Cheyenne Barton, and then she’s based out of Seattle, and there’s another one named Lee Ellickson … They are both self taught illustrative artists, and they do a lot of monthly sticker clubs and themed sticker releases,” she said. “And I was just really inspired by that, and I really loved their work, and I wanted to emulate some of that that they bring to their communities.”
Although time is up to sign up for Sting-Myer’s Sept. set of monthly stickers, spots are still open for her Oct. set.
“Whenever you sign up for my sticker club, you sign up the month before to get the sticker. So like, if you want September stickers, you’ll sign up in August, and you just pay a little fee, and I let everybody know what the theme is going to be the month ahead, and I work on the illustrations,” she said. “And then once I have completed the illustrations, and I get the physical stickers back of my hands, I send you a little happy card, kind of like a little birthday card, and in it is all of your stickers for the month, and I include a little lovely note for you, and [a] thank you.”
Sting-Myers art work and links to her monthly sticker club can be found on her instagram @honeynhearth.