How Did This Nonsense End Up on a Mug?

From Charming Oddities to Everyday Womtras, this is the tale of how these sass stuffed affirmations came into being.

I draw. Constantly. Always have. School, university, corporate meetings where I was definitely supposed to be paying attention, I’ve always been drawing (and occasionally nodding off - if you've ever been in a meeting with me - you know).

When I started trading at markets, selling my fine art prints, I would sometimes have long stretches of time between customers. So I doodled. A lot.

Then one crisp autumn morning in 2024, at Gloucester Green market in Oxford, someone noticed what I was doing, laughed, and asked if it was for sale.

Reader, I charged her.

Some perfectly sane woman handed me actual money for a grotesque doodle paired with a rogue thought. (If that was you - hello. You started this. I owe you everything.)

At the time, they were all called Charming Oddities. Hand-drawn, signed, slightly chaotic little A7 folded cards, scribbled onto whatever paper I had lying around. I’d draw them in quiet moments at the stall and sneak them onto the display.

They sold. Quickly.

I regret not photographing all of those early ones - but also, there’s something quite right about them disappearing into the world. I refined the characters down to a bank of around 20, polished them up, designed photographed and refined a consistent alphabet - and boom, I was printing on mass.

With the cards doing well at local markets, I thought: why stop at there? I ordered a small batch of mugs for Christmas.

They flew.

Which was great. Except buying them from a third party wasn’t going to cut it long-term. So I did what I always do, I figured it out myself.

A dangerous mix of YouTube, AI, and sheer stubbornness later, I was printing them in-house.

Some might call that controlling. I’d call it… consistent with the brand.

From there, things escalated (naturally). Mugs, tumblers, bottles, totes, notebooks. I even experimented with umbrellas, shoes, t-shirts and caps, because once you start putting your thoughts onto things, it’s hard to stop.

But the greetings cards? Still the best sellers. There’s something about handing someone a distinct drawn insult that really lands.

A few months (and many sales) in, I realised this might actually be a thing. Which meant it needed a proper name.

Charming Oddities had been plucked from thin air, with zero research and even less foresight. So I took a step back and thought about what these little characters actually were.

They’re not just drawings. They’re tiny, chaotic affirmations. Mantras, if you will, but for women who are done being polite.

And just like that: Womtras.

Not a real word. Not then, anyway. Now? It means female empowerment, with a side of sass.

“Everyday” came from those hyper-positive Instagram affirmations we were all force-fed years ago, but this felt like the antidote. Same intention, very different delivery.

And that’s how these loud, slightly unhinged, deeply honest little characters came to life.

Welcome to Everyday Womtras. They’re not here to behave.