Madeline Harris Studio

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08/07/2026

GRWM for a Sunshiney winters day ✨

08/07/2026

Good day - school holiday edition

04/07/2026

Part two: (find the first 6 on the previous reel)

7- Being an artist, a mother and a business owner at the same time:
The skills that make someone a good artist are not necessarily the skills that make someone a good entrepreneur. (I do think mostly motherhood and entrepreneurial skills do have a lot of cross over though!)
My artist self struggled with trying to adhere to the systems of business, I spent years trying to excel at both roles simultaneously, often feeling like I was failing at one whenever I focused on the other. And with motherhood, the role I found most sacred mixed into both made things feel hard.

8 Saying yes too often:
I am the first to admit I like to be a good person. But I would say yes to everything. Custom requests, last-minute deadlines, special discounts, extra favours—I loved everyone’s ideas and having the honour of making for special occasions. To be kind and a friend to all, all the time. But every “yes” came at the expense of my own capacity, and energy. Especially with customers who struggled to support my slow made ethos.

9 Ignoring burnout because I thought passion would carry me through:
I love what I do, which made it easy to justify working longer hours and pushing through exhaustion. For years I literally glorified it. Passion can fuel a business, but it cannot replace rest, boundaries, or recovery.

10 Assuming I had to earn every break: 
Many creative business owners treat rest as a reward rather than a requirement. I often waited until I was completely depleted (many miscarriages and stress vommiting for MONTHS) before allowing myself time off. Even feeling guilty for not replying to folks over the weekends etc knowing that they “needed me”
Looking back, regular rest would have been far less costly than prolonged burnout.

Last one found in the comments ✨

02/07/2026

The world feels built to reward what is loud, measurable and endlessly productive. I’ve fallen prey to this myself over the last few years. Endlessly trying to prove “look! You can thrive in motherhood while running a million miles an hour”

Slowness quietly slips through the fingers of the world. It feels obtuse and intangible and honestly so out of reach sometimes.
Motherhood has confronted me with this more than anything.

To cultivate a slow childhood for them isn’t to curate an aesthetic, most of the time it’s anything but aesthetic. It’s letting the house be messy, surrendering, surrendering, surrendering.

Slowness is to resist a culture that insists every hour should produce something visible. It’s choosing slow mornings over optimisation, wandering over scheduling, boredom over entertainment, presence over performance.

Learning to slow down is asking me to reclaim my attention as my own.
To stop witnessing my life through imagined spectators and instead dissolve into the experience of living it. The irony of posting about this topic also isn’t lost to me lol.

I’m re-learning how to sit in slow paced situations, with the story my children invent between themselves, the changing light on a wall, the feeling of the washing between my fingers.
Not because they’re beautiful enough to capture, but because they’re beautiful enough to keep, as my own.

Thank you to every mother.
You all do the invisible work - and you show me how to find safety in slowing down myself.
We have been gifted impossible expectations as women and as mothers.
Let us be honest, and human and brave

Slowing down in my favourite house dress
Painted, printed and designed by mother maker Mikayla Almaira

30/06/2026

1. Not charging enough
I consistently undervalued my work, my skills, and the years it took to develop them, even though the prices were still considerably high, i tried to stay affordable rather than being honest with what the work actually cost to create. I kept using the same formula that I made in 2020 even though by 2026 the price of silver had a 220% increase costing me 6x more.
The result wasn’t accessibility really, it was exhaustion.

2. Not hiring enough help
I spent too long believing I needed to do everything myself. I loved wearing all the hats, until I didn’t. Admin, packing orders, customer service, bookkeeping, marketing, photography, website updates—it all sat on my shoulders. The cost of help felt expensive, but the cost of doing everything alone was much greater at the end of the day.

3. Keeping everything within Australia
I was committed to sourcing and manufacturing locally, yay for high ethical standards!
But I underestimated how difficult that would become financially. While supporting local industries aligned with my values, it often meant higher production costs and fewer options. I don’t know if I still would change this element of my work next time though.

4.Attempting to have extreme sustainability and ethical standards while also “pricing for the people”
I tried to absorb the true cost of ethical production rather than passing it on to customers. Sustainable materials, fair labour, local manufacturing, low-waste practices—all of these have real costs. I wanted luxury standards with accessible pricing, and eventually I became the one paying the difference.

5. Not creating a solid weekly routine
Without structure, every day felt urgent. I bounced between making, shipping, emails, accounting and problem-solving without clear boundaries in the end. The more motherhood and exhaustion crept into my world it was harder to commit and stick to a plan for work.
A business needs systems just as much as it needs creativity.

Number 6 in the comments! ✨

30/06/2026

Art begins long before I sit down to make it—it begins with noticing,
I’m not forcing myself to create a new body of work right now.
Instead, I’m focusing on staying aligned with the person who creates it.
Here are a few things I’m doing during my artist hiatus (or, affectionately, my crash out era).

✨ A small creative practice every day.
Not everything needs to become a business. Knitting, painting, sewing, baking, colouring—these remind me that creativity can simply be joyful. Making doesn’t always need an audience or an outcome.

📖 Morning pages.
Three pages of unfiltered thoughts, ideally before the day begins but it rarely turns out that way with motherhood - this has been more effective than therapy (for real)

🐉 Reading (mostly fantasy).
Fantasy has always been where my imagination feels most alive. Myth, folklore, magic and impossible worlds remind me why I became an artist in the first place.

🌿 Resting without earning it.
This has probably been the hardest lesson, and the hardest one for me to do without the guilt. Rest isn’t something I’m rewarded with once everything is finished. It’s part of the creative process, not separate from it.

🎞️ Watching films that inspire my visual world.
Magical realism, gothic stories, medieval folklore, quiet fantasy... I’m collecting feelings rather than ideas. Colour palettes, textures, costumes, landscapes and atmosphere all find their way back into my work eventually.

Continued in the comments ✨✨✨

30/06/2026

Art begins long before I sit down to make it—it begins with noticing,
I’m not forcing myself to create a new body of work right now.
Instead, I’m focusing on staying aligned with the person who creates it.
Here are a few things I’m doing during my artist hiatus (or, affectionately, my crash out era).

✨ A small creative practice every day.
Not everything needs to become a business. Knitting, painting, sewing, baking, colouring—these remind me that creativity can simply be joyful. Making doesn’t always need an audience or an outcome.

📖 Morning pages.
Three pages of unfiltered thoughts, ideally before the day begins but it rarely turns out that way with motherhood - this has been more effective than therapy (for real)

🐉 Reading (mostly fantasy).
Fantasy has always been where my imagination feels most alive. Myth, folklore, magic and impossible worlds remind me why I became an artist in the first place.

🌿 Resting without earning it.
This has probably been the hardest lesson, and the hardest one for me to do without the guilt. Rest isn’t something I’m rewarded with once everything is finished. It’s part of the creative process, not separate from it.

🎞️ Watching films that inspire my visual world.
Magical realism, gothic stories, medieval folklore, quiet fantasy... I’m collecting feelings rather than ideas. Colour palettes, textures, costumes, landscapes and atmosphere all find their way back into my work eventually.

Continued in the comments

29/06/2026

So easy peasy!

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