When Does It Stop Being a Hobby? (And Are You Ready for What Comes Next?)

Are you quietly wondering if your creative hobby is becoming… something more?

In this reflective and practical episode of the Creative Juggle Joy podcast, Kaylie Edwards and Delores Naskrent dive into that fuzzy in-between zone where making for fun starts shifting toward business. 

Whether you're selling a few items to friends or beginning to dream bigger, this conversation helps you get clear on what you want and what comes next.

Kaylie and Delores unpack the key differences between hobby and business — not just in legal terms, but emotionally, creatively, and practically. They discuss:

✨ How to know if it’s time to register as a business
 ✨ Why it’s okay to stay a hobbyist
✨ Common pitfalls that lead to burnout when selling without systems
✨ What scalable income streams can look like for creatives
✨ How to market without relying solely on social media
✨ The importance of building a simple content system to support visibility
✨ Real talk about pivoting when life or circumstances shift

Whether you're a full-time artist, weekend crafter, or creative side-hustler, this episode will help you step more confidently into your next season — with clarity, permission, and practical steps.

Don't miss an episode—subscribe to The Creative JuggleJoy Podcast! Follow us on social media and join our email lists for more tips, stories, and updates on new episodes.

Kaylie Edwards - Instagram - Website - Facebook - Threads

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Delores Naskrent - Website & Digital Art School - Instagram - Facebook - Pinterest - Youtube

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Transcript

Kaylie Edwards (00:05)
Have you ever thought, I just make things for fun, but maybe I could sell a few? That's where most of us start. But at some point, things shift. And suddenly, it's not just a hobby anymore. Welcome to the Creative Juggle Joy podcast. I'm Kaylie and I'm here with my lovely co-host, Delores

Delores Naskrent (00:24)
Today we're digging in to that blurry, blurry line when creativity turns into business. Whether you're a younger mom trying to monetize nap time hours or retired artists experimenting online, if you were like me, I was working full time and I wanted to make some additional money, this episode will help you get clear on what you want and then what's next.

Kaylie Edwards (00:49)
and we'll share a few gentle truths and strategies that can help you avoid burnout, make smarter choices and build something sustainable if that is what you want. What's the difference between a hobby and a business? It's 100 % valid to keep your creativity as a hobby. Not everything has to become a product or a business but...

Delores Naskrent (01:01)
Hmm

Kaylie Edwards (01:15)
When you're regularly selling with the intention to earn income, even if it's just to cover materials, you may already be considered as a business.

Delores Naskrent (01:24)
I when I was selling my at art fairs when I first started, I was already taking regular orders and attending events and I knew that I had to treat it as a business. That shift in mindset was important, not just for legal reasons, but for my confidence too. I had made the odd thing here and there to sell before and I had worked freelance. I had done a lot of stuff kind of like on the side doing graphic design kind of work.

And I was often approached to create art for someone's project or someone would see something I had created and asked me how much would it cost for one of their own. Then a couple of friends of mine and I decided to create some stuff for a craft sale that was hosted by the local art gallery. It was a really small event, but I think that's where it started. It's odd to think that was the...

beginning of what I call my business today. I didn't even think of registering it or anything at that point. I was still really young.

Kaylie Edwards (02:29)
Yeah, you don't think at that point. It's like even if you are selling sporadically to friends and family, if you're making some money from your craft or your art, you then need to start looking at it if you're making money from it. Here's a rough breakdown of when different countries expect you to register yourself as a business. The UK, HMRC,

expects you to declare self-employment once you're trading, meaning you're selling goods or services on a regular basis with intent to make profit. In the US, the IRS requires all income to be declared and selling platforms like Etsy, PayPal and Shopify often report your income automatically once you hit a certain threshold. In Canada, any income from product sales is taxable and must be reported even if it's a side gig or irregular. In Australia,

Earlier the ATO states that once your creative activity is being done for commercial purposes, especially if it's regular, organised and you're promoting it, you may be running a business and must declare income and potentially register an ABN. It's not just about how much you're earning, it's about intent, consistency, promotion. So it's worth being honest with yourself early on.

Delores Naskrent (03:53)
Yeah.

Kaylie Edwards (03:54)
and it's okay to stay a hobbyist. Just be honest with yourself. You don't have to monetise every passion that you have. That's not the goal for everyone and it shouldn't be. But if you're secretly hoping it'll take off or feeling frustrated that it isn't, that's a sign you might already be thinking like a business without giving yourself permission to fully step into it.

Delores Naskrent (04:17)
Yeah, I think there's definitely a beautiful freedom in creating for the sake of it, especially later on in life. I mean, you know, just for relaxation. Sometimes you're rediscovering your creativity or you're finding your style again. But I've also seen how women, especially those of those of us who grew up in a time where our creativity wasn't always taken seriously. We sometimes.

We hesitate that, you know, title or putting that name to something. We hesitate to claim it as a business. There's often this internal battle between joy and legitimacy. We've been conditioned, I know, to believe that if it brings us pleasure, then it can't also bring us income. But that's just not true. I speak for myself here and I know I speak for a lot of you too, but clarity still matters.

Being caught on that line without intention can drain your energy and your joy. I realized after doing a few of those custom projects for people that wasn't really what I truly enjoyed. I personally would rather do the art that I enjoyed and then put it out there with the hopes of selling it. And in the end, that's what worked for me. I wasn't constrained by specific instructions, but

I kind of created, I don't know, it was like a fun, creative time for me and I could do things that I just felt like doing. I didn't have to specifically do what a customer was asking. I didn't have to alter things because of what they wanted. And really that's, think personally where I started to really develop a style was by letting myself just do that.

Kaylie Edwards (06:08)
Yes and I think that's a lot of people that bypass that as well like maybe you started a hobby because you actually thought about wanting to monetize it and maybe that's where you're at. Whereas some people obviously have been crafting for years and they've never monetized it at all and you could be in either camp or you could just...

been crafting for a while and then suddenly people are asking about it and wanting to buy some stuff for you. So yeah, I think you still need to craft for your joy, no matter what, you still need to do that. And if you turn it into a business, still create when you can for the joy of it. Otherwise you will start to resent it eventually. I did candles for enjoyment and for like my own,

I wanted to make money out of it but I also wanted it for my own health because I wasn't wanting to buy the store-bought stuff because it was making my asthma really bad and that's where I started

to resent it eventually because it was so much work putting into it and I wish I'd had either another creative part of like to actually work on. I love art, I love doing traditional art and I used to use oil paints and watercolours and things and I wish I'd kind of kept some of that on the go whilst doing my candles but because it took over my life at the time around full-time work

didn't think like that and a lot of me ended up yeah resenting it and not wanting to do it as much because it's so much work and you do have to really think about it because you yeah the problem comes when you straddle both

selling things but without systems, boundaries or pricing that supports your time and effort that you're putting into it. That's where burnout hits, you start resenting custom orders, you lose track of your goals, you feel like you're working constantly but never making real progress. And real talk? When the pandemic hit, loads of handmade businesses were wiped out. No events, no backup income, no digital offers because they didn't think like that. It was heartbreaking and it really affected

my business as well because I'd only just started and I hadn't established myself online. I hadn't got any events to go to because they were all cancelled so my income dried up from that. I was lucky I still had work but then I was furloughed so I was at home not being able to do anything. But a real wake-up call it showed how important it is to have some kind of system or backup that isn't reliant on your physical presence 100 % of the time.

Delores Naskrent (09:01)
Yeah, yeah. For me, it meant pivoting. I realized for myself that in order to scale, I just couldn't continue to hand paint individual items no matter how much I was enjoying it. And that's when I started scanning my artwork to create magnets. That's what I originally started with. And so I created them originally in a hand painted...

you know, maybe in a art journal, then I would scan them. I would use that artwork to create magnets. I would add quotes or whatever. And that's what or how I figured out how to manufacture things in quantity for myself. So instead of making like that one single item, I was able to easily make a dozen or 18 of a particular artwork. And these items,

I literally dissected every part of what it costs me so that I could figure out how much I had to sell it for to make anything. So I even added in things like the overhead cost of the sale, like getting into the craft market, how much it costs me to set up, like how many hours it took, how long it took me to dry mount and how much it costs in materials. And I figured out the exact cost of what I thought

it was for the individual item. Then once I realized that, once I figured out that I was able to leverage it because I knew that that single artwork originally cost me, let's say 70 cents to make, I could sell it for $2 and make money, but I could sell 100 of them.

Kaylie Edwards (10:45)
Yeah, so that's just such a great way to leverage your time and your effort putting into things. Like, yes, you've created this lovely piece of artwork, but now you can really nail it and figure out what the costs are like you've done, like you did, and really know where you're at. And then that's how you know how to scale.

Delores Naskrent (11:07)
Exactly. Yeah, because that's what I did. I eventually used that artwork on other products because we'd have people saying, well, do you have this any bigger or do you have this any smaller or do you have this on a card? And that's how we built our original sort of lineup of products that we were selling. And once I was selling them at sales and it was becoming something that I knew could scale.

then I was able to start selling them online as well. So then we created a website and everything sort of fell into place. But it's not like it happened overnight. That definitely took ⁓ quite a long time to perfect. And it's definitely been a layered journey. But it gave me options when the world shifted. It definitely did.

Kaylie Edwards (11:59)
Yes, and that's what I say to everybody I come across who are crafters, are handmakers, artists, traditional artists. Like, find a scalable way of doing it. I know, like, if you're doing something like, I don't know, really intricate doll houses or something, I know you can't digitise that. Like, I do know that you can't do that. But is there a way you can serve the same audience or a similar audience with a scalable option or something

scalable to go along with it maybe an add-on or something maybe you could create a PDF of how you intricately make these doll houses you know go through the process something that you can add on maybe if somebody wants to know you can say ⁓ for a few pound or a few dollars or whatever you can buy this and you can maybe put not personalize it but kind of add a little bit more personality to it which people will pay for

It's just looking at it out through a strategic way of how can you serve your audience even more? How can you be more personal, be maybe a little bit more customized, but without making too much work for yourself? And then you can scale and I'm rambling a bit now, but yeah.

Delores Naskrent (13:22)
It all comes down to, you you really do have to stop and really think about it. So you need time to just take that time to think about each aspect of it. And I understand exactly what you're saying, Kaylee. And it's all part of learning about what you can do that can make it into a business that you can sustain, because you are the person that has to sustain

sustain that business. whether it's a side hustle or a job, you know.

Kaylie Edwards (13:58)
Yeah, I like going back to my my little ramble of an example with like let's say you do intricate doll houses and you make them all handmade and things. What could you package up? ⁓ How to make I know make a template or instructions on how to create some of like the furniture that you make in the doll's house. I know I'm going off this because I've seen I've seen somebody doing intricate doll houses on Instagram. I don't know why it came up in my feed, but it did. ⁓ But she made like these really things.

thinking I wouldn't and obviously she hadn't figured out how to scale yet and yeah but just figuring things out like how can you serve either the audience you already have or an audience maybe that you can segment and earn an extra income from that could be a scalable income stream even in teaching somebody how to do some of these little furniture pieces or if you do something else like maybe you make toys or anything else you can think of how can you serve another audience or serve the

you do with a scalable income stream. And even if you're keeping your creative work as a side hustle to a job, not setting up properly can leave you vulnerable. You might miss out on tax write-offs or worse, get hit with penalties as well, you need to watch. Having systems, basic accounting, and a clear offer helps you take your creativity seriously, even if it stays part-time.

Another thing, marketing without social media overwhelm.

I know not everyone thrives on Instagram or TikTok, I don't, so I know that and that's okay. Let's look at a gentler way to stay visible if you do start making it into a business. You can join or co-host seasonal collaborations or bundles with other makers. You could contribute to curated directories or PDF guides for gifts or if you're in that space. You could use Pinterest

and email to drive traffic to one of your core products or let's say a few products that you have. You could guest blog or speak on podcasts that serve your specific niche or industry. So there are a few of them.

Delores Naskrent (16:15)
think the biggest shift for me, I totally wasn't doing any of that, Kaylie. I'm really not a social media person, as you probably all know. I might do my best, but I'm not. And you're great at, you're very good at my marketing. But I think the biggest shift for me was in the period of time when I started teaching on Skillshare. And I soon learned that the people who were interested in me as a teacher,

Kaylie Edwards (16:27)
do great with social media now. ⁓

Delores Naskrent (16:45)
were also interested in the kind of work I was doing when I wasn't teaching. So I had started posting my art on Instagram and I had started to build my following there as well as on Skillshare. So they're two different worlds completely in a way. It's not my favorite thing to do, like I said, to be consistent with my Instagram marketing. I don't do that much on Facebook, but I still like to be present there. But I also started creating blog posts for my site.

So, you know, that would also draw people into my world. I've been listed in several directories as an expert, believe it or not.

Kaylie Edwards (17:25)
Well you are, so yeah.

Delores Naskrent (17:29)
And I use Pinterest, you know, really heavily. I was a very early adopter. I've always loved Pinterest. So I had a lot of success with just driving traffic and, you know, getting leads from Pinterest, people coming and just wanting to learn more about me. And then now most recently, just participating in summits has helped, you know, to drive traffic to my school, my membership and...

and my blog and website. of course, working with you, Keely, working with you has helped me so much because you've got great ideas about how to leverage what we create in one place and use it elsewhere. So we've been trying to do so much of that. I think it's very important. You have to think like a business.

Learning how to do the marketing part of it is really important.

Kaylie Edwards (18:27)
yeah it's figuring out how things piece together and where your audience are and how you can draw them into your world and then how to lead them down what's called a customer journey so which product are they buying first can you lead them to another product or can you up your order value through like add-ons or maybe direct them to

products that or offers that are similar or relevant like maybe they're in the same theme or style you know it's just figuring out stuff out I know it can be very difficult for somebody who's maybe new to this so that's fine

I will, we can talk through that in a different episode if that needs to be. If that's something you want, please let us know and we can do that. But another thing is building a content system. A lot of people will be like, what? Why? Why do I need to do this? And that's fine. But it's giving your audience something to figure out who you are, what you do, and to really connect with you and start to trust you and know and like you. And then they can be drawn into your world. Yes, you might get one.

off buys from your products but you also want to bring them back and build that relationship with them so they buy again and one way of doing that is a content system so maybe you do blogs or like blog posts maybe you do videos on YouTube or maybe you do the pins on Pinterest or you may even do short tutorials on Instagram or something

So one blog or tutorial each month or week can then be turned into three smaller posts or ⁓ your email or your Pinterest pins or a short video. You could do shorts of your main video on YouTube. So that's another thing you could do. There's a site called captions.ai. I know I'm going into AI here. I apologize for people that don't know. But there's a site called captions.ai. You can literally upload your, let's say you do YouTube videos.

of a tutorial or something you can upload it to captions.ai and it will go through automatically and slice up that video into smaller videos I've not long come up on to this I have an account with them now which I want to use because it chops it up and it even gives it a viarity viarity ⁓

Delores Naskrent (21:05)
Go

Kaylie Edwards (21:07)
I don't know how well that works so I haven't tested that out but it I put a podcast episode in there to test it and although it wasn't the best podcast episode but because it has to be like an mp4 video whereas ours are audio so I'd have to convert it and that was the only one I could find that I accidentally converted ⁓ so I put that in and it chopped it up into like 32 like short videos I was like what ⁓

huge amount of content I can post over like a month or two maybe even more and just post them up as reels or shorts on YouTube so that is a massive way to reuse your content and it can be so easy if you can be strategic about it so it doesn't have to take you so much time to do it like like I said one blog post or one big video that you have created you can chop it up and repurpose it and there you have for like a month worth of content

schedule it monthly to avoid your burnout. So it's all about strategic systems and being a bit smarter with your content.

And this doesn't mean abandoning your handmade products, but you might need a backup stream that isn't tied to your hands or your hours. So like examples given in previous episodes, you could create digital patterns or kits, templates, printable art or tutorials, mini courses or paid guides. You could even do a membership or bundle. And yeah, there's plenty you can do.

Delores Naskrent (22:45)
Yeah,

there's no real path that can be described to you that you should take or you must take to get success. And if you've been following podcasts like this and you've been going to workshops and there's been so much available lately, you've heard so many different ideas. I mean, I've had much overlap with all the different things that I do.

For example, teaching, like I said, has had me kind of learn and do a lot of experimenting with the software, which has led me to the development of things like the brush sets and the assets for my classes. First of all, it started as things that I needed for myself. And then it became something that I could sell. And I would sell on Creative Market or ⁓

what was the other one, design cuts when it was still available and even Etsy. And this was before I even started teaching. But then once I started teaching, then I realized, okay, well, for this class, it would be great if I created some assets or I created some brushes. And, you know, it had almost come full circle. It was the strangest thing, you know?

So I know that was a little bit of a segue into selling digital product, but that has turned out to be just one of the income streams that I have going on. So it's a steady thing. It's coming in all the time.

I still create product and I still do the odd custom job. I don't love it, but every once in a while I've got some customers that I've had literally since their children were born and I'm still working on doing magnets for every birthday and they're, you know, in their teens. So, you know, it's, I'm not going to not do it, but I still, that's just one of the little things that I do. And of course,

teaching is where I make my biggest income at this time, but it has fluctuated over the years and one didn't happen without the other in my opinion. I just feel that this is what is working for me, but it might not necessarily work for others. I could give you a ton of advice. I could give you a list of things, but if they aren't the things that you want to do, then I don't know, it might not work for you. it just, you know, I hate to those cliched

phrases like it's part of the journey, but it literally is. I've learned that I just need to be ready at all times to pivot if necessary. It's happened to me enough times and I'm old enough now that I can look back and I can see, you know, very, very clearly how many times I've pivoted. But then I can also look back at all of those pivots and realize, but they're all related.

They're all related.

Kaylie Edwards (25:32)
Yeah, it's sometimes it just happens. And like sometimes it can happen in like the worst way possible, but then it can actually be a blessing to have happened because you see something in a different light and then go, ⁓ okay, I should be doing something different here. And that's just the same thing that happened with my candle business, like the pandemic hit. And I was like, what? This is horrible. What's going on? I've only just started. And then I was like, well, try it. I tried to work through it.

And then I was like, no, there's gotta be a better way. Especially when I fell pregnant with my son and doing like a three AM rush to do a market fair. It was not sustainable. Packing at that time of night. And knowing I was having a baby. Things happen and you just have to really think about it and go through the flow. And sometimes it just happens before you even realize it.

Delores Naskrent (26:18)
Yeah.

Kaylie Edwards (26:28)
Yeah, and things like you can build, you maybe make something and then go, oh, actually, I could maybe make this in a different way and sell it again. And you can package it up. It's like with a course, with a course, you could take bits from that course, like me and Delores do it. We take bits from that course and then turn it into maybe a digital download. Or maybe we go through the course or like the tutorial and then think, ah, how can we make this easier for the student to make this, to help them implement it? Okay, I'll do a template.

or I will do a brush pack so they can create with this or I'll give them what I used. So it just, yeah, it's about thinking strategically and then looking at different ideas of how you can repurpose and figure out different ways to do things. Yeah. And if you're wondering what would I even do that is scalable, that's exactly what I cover in the Creative Clarity Challenge that I will be doing at the end of July, beginning of August.

dates down yet so if you are hearing this it'll more than likely be an evergreen challenge

Delores Naskrent (27:35)
To be announced. To be announced. ⁓

Kaylie Edwards (27:38)
I'm still waiting on the completion date of our house buy so I have no idea

So I've put it provisionally for the 29th to the 31st of July 2025 but that may change if I'm in the middle of packing and moving things but it will be either the end of July or beginning of August around that time so if you're listening to this at that time just it'll be in the show notes if not it'll be evergreen and you'll get the link anyway so yeah you'll basically in the challenge you'll discover your strengths and your weaknesses and how to avoid all

work with them and narrow down and pick your first scalable idea that you want to do and then we would do a 30 day plan that fits your life and the simple tasks that you need to do to actually start that in process.

Delores Naskrent (28:27)
That sounds absolutely fantastic, Kaylee. I can't imagine anybody not wanting to do this. I hope that ⁓ everybody takes advantage. This is something that even if you are already doing something, you might want to go through this to just figure it out. Figure out something else. Maybe figure out that other thing. I would recommend it, definitely. If you've

been helped by this episode, by our meanderings and talking about this. Please share it with any fellow creative or DM us, either of us on Instagram. We love hearing your stories. We really do. And we've been so lucky to hear of so many success stories. And it gives us so many ideas. You guys give us so many ideas for future episodes. Yes. Thank you so much.

Kaylie Edwards (29:25)
creating, keep juggling and most importantly keep finding joy in the process.