Hi! My name is Alana- it's so nice to meet you. I have been an artist for over 6 years now, but only in the technical sense. Truthfully, I have been an artist all my life. I fell in love with drawing when I was no more than 5 or 6, and I have been doing it ever since. I never set out on being an artist, so it is quite surprising even to this day when I get to talk about how I ended up here! 

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During my high school years, I knew one thing for certain. I DID NOT want to go to college. I did not like the structure of school and found it difficult to waste my time doing things that I know I didn't want to do! I was very transcendental about the way I viewed things and still am to this day. However, during my junior year of high school I discovered something else- that I really enjoyed painting denim jackets to wear to concerts! I was getting very into rock n roll at that time (boy, that was just the beginning) and I saw a Queen inspired jacket that Wrangler had released. It had lyrics from "Don't Stop Me Now" on it and I had to have it! Once I realized that I did not, in fact, have the money to purchase it, I went to Goodwill and bought a denim jacket there. Then, with my acrylic paints and some textile medium, I recreated the jacket myself! I was hooked.

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I started painting on any blank clothing I could find around the house. Jackets, shirts, jeans, you name it. Everything the was painted was also related to classic rock- it was the perfect mix of everything I loved! Once my family started to catch wind of this obsession, they encouraged me to sell my custom art services online so that others could get painted jacket from me. So, still in high school with no plans on what to do after graduation, I opened an online shop to sell painted jackets in my free time! 

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It didn't take long for this dream to be crushed after months went by and I didn't receive even a single message on my Etsy page. I resigned myself to failure, left my shop up, and went on with life. I was still painting though, and I even decided to start making painting timelapses to post on YouTube! You can imagine my surprise when I finally received a message asking about a custom order after even more months had gone by. This person told me that they had found me through a Rolling Stones painting timelapse that I had posted to my YouTube page, and wanted to know if I could paint him one just like it. I still remember this so clearly: I was on vacation at the time. I was on the balcony of our hotel looking at the ocean and bing! Here was this message for a custom order that seemed to fall out of the sky! I remember being so panicked because I had no idea what to say back to them. It's so sweet to look back on and realize how far I've come from that first message. 

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From this order onward, things slowly started to build over the next year. I started to receive enough customs through promoting myself on YouTube and Instagram that I decided I wanted to make myself a website- thus, Scorpio Denim was born! It's no coincidence that the name is so similar to the one you see here today. At the time I thought, I'm an astrology freak, I'm a Scorpio, and I'm painting on denim! Perfect! I didn't really think that I would have this business 6 years later thinking to myself "did she think she was just going to paint denim and only denim forever!!!"

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The biggest turning point in the business came when I fell in love. This is where Greg joins the story! Greg and I are from the same town and even went to the same school. We started to date about a year and a half after I had started my business! We fell in love extremely quickly and he would often help me do my orders when he came to my house. Greg was in college for biology and absolutely hated it. He would work on papers while I worked on paintings and he would always stop to help me with what I was doing simply because he enjoyed it more! After a while, he decided that he wanted to drop out of college and help me with the business instead. I was starting to have trouble keeping up with emailing people back, painting everything myself, and keeping our socials updated so I was glad to have help! It was also amazing to have a partner who cared so much about what I had created.

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Then there was Tiktok! One of our close friends advised us to put our stuff on Tiktok to have a greater chance of our art being seen! Wow- did that work out well. Over the last few years on Tiktok we managed to gain over 1 million likes on our page and 40,000+ followers. It took one video to go somewhat "viral" and our commission requests were flooded. We couldn't keep up! However, overnight internet frenzies never last. Things then slowed down for a while and we kept chugging. 

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The next thing that radically changed our shop and popularity on our socials was the start of our Rock N' Roll tarot designs. We, being the classic rock lovers that we both are (our love for The Doors is sort of what started our relationship), decided that it would be so cool to merge our favorite musicians and tarot cards together! Once the first two designs hit Tiktok, we gained so much interest in the idea. We quickly tried to ride the wave of the views again and started to figure out a way to get our designs on shirts! We tried EVERYTHING. Over the course of a year, we went from screen printing to sublimation to heat transfers. It was a crazy year! We kept releasing the designs and more interest came with each one. 

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However, then came our own personal health issues. I of course will not dive into the whole story, but our world was turned upside down when I became a shut in basically over the course of a few months in the summer of 2022 with seemingly no explanation. I was being rocked with panic attacks daily, and I wasn't even leaving my boyfriend's room during those months. This was confusing for everyone- what happened to this bubbly, creative girl and why is she suddenly terrified of everything! Well, only recently this year in 2024, 2 years after this began, we have discovered that it was in fact derealization / depersonalization disorder and unmanaged OCD. The discovery of this finally put me into recovery mode and I have been there ever since. Unfortunately, for an entire year and a half (and with many personal hiccups that caused my seeking treatment to be delayed) we had no idea what was wrong with me and the business suffered. I could barely function in my normal life let alone continue to paint commissions and run the shop the way it needed! I stopped posting on our socials and our orders went down.

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Only in the last 7-8 months at the time of writing this in July of 2024 have I finally been able to get some sort of grasp on this condition and slowly start to paint again. I am eternally grateful that I was lucky enough to find the right people and doctors to help me get to this point again. Throughout this whole time, Greg was right by my side, keeping the business afloat the best he could and never giving up on my recovery. The business however, had come to a halt and it was difficult to get the engine running again,

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Our popularity had come from our rock music influenced art and our tarot cards, but both Greg and I were wanting to shift to something new after the few years that we had slowed down with our art. We of course still LOVE rock music and want to continue incorporating it, but we wanted to drift farther from just recreating logos and album covers and make something more unique to ourselves and our own brand! With the changes we went through in those two years of struggle, we also had new plans for what our future looked like.

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Our dream now is to open a little brick and mortar store by the ocean- a shop that sells everything from bikinis to paintings, rollerblades to skateboards, and include a little of everything we love. With this in mind and the slow traffic of the business, we thought it was the perfect time for a rebrand. So, Scorpio Cove was born!

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In the last 6 months or so, our focus has been on making art inspired by the things that make us happy! I read so many business books that would beg you to pick a niche and condemn you if you didn't- and I hated that idea! I want to make art for all sorts of things! I love tattoos AND rock music AND astrology AND nature. I don't want to just pick one! So, my designs now have been based around just that. They are sort of a mix of everything all in one. Some things you'll find here are detailed canvas paintings, some are digital tattoo style drawings, and there are also plenty of custom painted clothing pieces.

 

Recently, I have also been interested in one day gaining a tattoo apprenticeship and have been building a portfolio as well! Thus, you can see a lot of American Traditional / Neo Traditional art designs flooding the site- each one usually accompanied with a rock n' roll influence. My love for commissions also still runs strong and I hope to rebuild my custom orders back up to where they were a few years ago with some time and dedication. 

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For now, Greg and I are just happy that we are still here and still creating after so much hardship. Just know that you are never alone and that you can get through whatever dark times you are struggling with.