About Vanessa Wyll

Okay, Vanessa is actually the one writing this blurb (and making this entire website), so instead of saying “about Vanessa,” I’ll just say: about me.

Up until March of 2025, I was just your typical suburban mom. Laundry, meals, making beds. I love my life—but I also wanted something else. I wanted to create. I wanted to put something beautiful out into the world. To be part of (what I hope is) a growing movement that aims to actively create beautiful things to help counteract all the not-so-beautiful things we’re faced with today.

I have always been an insatiably creative person. My first memory of what I knew as creativity was sitting with my Grandma at her ancient sewing machine, sewing a pillow. She had taught me how to embroider, and I diligently embroidered five pieces of fruit onto a square of white cotton. The pillow was finished with some very lumpy hand-stuffing and a (very ‘90s) turquoise cotton backing. I was probably six or seven years old. My dad displayed that pillow around his house for decades. Every time I looked at it, I felt proud—not of my rudimentary embroidery skills, but because I had taken scraps of fabric and floss and turned them into something real and tangible.

Creative pursuits followed me all through life. Knitting (still terrible at that), creative sewing (I love quilting, making clothes, and designing dresses for me and my daughter), singing (I thought I was going to be the next Faith Hill), perfumery, creative writing, and of course, painting and drawing. I love watercolor painting, which I got serious about in the early 2000s during college. I painted just for personal enjoyment and never thought I’d have a serious creative career, so I studied business instead. I spent my professional years traveling a lot for work and didn’t have much time for creative pursuits. I still painted here and there, but it wasn’t until I got married that I had space to focus on creative work again. I have always loved fragrance, I taught myself perfumery. I then started a small perfume company—Bloom & Fleur Perfumes—and found success with it. My perfumes were carried in over 70 boutiques across the U.S. and Canada and developed a loyal following.

As many people discover, everything changes when you become a parent. When I had my daughter, I found that I couldn’t keep up with the perfume business and wanted the chance to fully enjoy being a mom. I closed the business in 2022 and have spent the last three years as a full-time wife and mom.

Fast forward to March of this year. I bought an iPad and an Apple Pencil and discovered the ProCreate app. I was thrilled to be able to squeeze in some creative time without having to haul out all my art supplies. It meant I could draw in the little pockets of time I had—during my daughter’s nap, or in the evening while my husband worked on his own creative pursuit. I started by drawing birds with the intent of printing them out for my daughter to color - she’s also a budding creative person.

I draw using reference photos from all over—field guides, books, the Cornell Ornithology website, even digital tools that help me create composite images with just the right angle. I love working digitally because it skips the step of having to digitize art later. That’s how this book came to be. I had an idea, a bunch of drawings, and a way to put them all together into something beautiful.

In essence, I’m just a regular person who wanted to do something. I’m not an influencer. I’m not looking for fame. I just wanted to make something good. Wyll is a pen name—my real surname is an old English one, usually followed by a pause and a kind but slightly uncertain, “Could you spell that?” Not exactly Google-friendly. So here I am. That’s my real face up there. I’m doing this because I don’t want to hide—I want to show my daughter that you can do anything you set your mind to.

She’s the one who pressed “Submit” on the Publish Your Book button on Amazon.

I hope you get to have one of those “submit” moments in your own life.

I hope you love my books.

xo,