Kailey Klein, the owner of Magpie West Leather Co., called it “Sketching Into the New Year” in hopes of starting the year off right- with some creativity. 

The challenge has come to its rightful conclusion with the end of the month. Let’s take a look at the beautiful results! 

We look forward to future challenges and seeing what these talented artists can do! 

We reached out to see how COVID-19 has affected not only her business, but her husband’s. And, of course, we had to know more about her life as a professional graphic designer and world traveler.

CG: How has your life as a designer changed?

KJA: Business has most definitely slowed down, but then I started getting more and more emails of people starting new adventures. I think the time away from work and being at home made a lot of people start thinking about new ideas of what they could do to make them happy.

CG: How has the pandemic affected your traveling?

KJA: This pandemic has affected our traveling in several ways! First being that we bought a place in Texas in December and started remodeling it in January, so half of our stuff and half of our horses are still in Nevada.

Another thing is that all our horse shows were canceled and that is a big part of our income yearly. While we might be saving money in diesel, those shows usually are a tremendous help to our wallets as long as we do well.

CG: What have you learned so far in your design career?

KJA: I have been in the design world for ten years now and it constantly is changing. New software, new products, easier ways of doing things. So as a designer, its important to stay true to who you are, but also grow with this times. I have learned to never turn down a project because it’s not my style or what I would typically do. A lot of times, those projects that push my boundaries seem to turn out to be my favorites.

CG: How do you think Western graphic design is different from contemporary graphic design?

KJA: I think western graphic design is a little harder than contemporary design because the Western world is so small. You have to make things stand out from the rest of the “herd,” I would say. Everybody wants something that includes horses, cows, cactus, cowgirls… etc. So coming up with new idea after new idea of all the same thing is truly difficult at times.

CG: What is it like being the wife of a horse trainer?

KJA: Being a horse trainer’s wife is just like any other job in the Western industry. Some days its easy and some days its hard. For me, personally, I have always been the one to get attached to animals, but being married to a horse trainer, I have had to learn how to keep myself from doing that. We make a living off selling horses so every time I look at our house or our fences or stalls, I think about the horse we sold that blessed us with those things instead of dwell on having to sell them.

I get to work next to my husband every day, seven days a week and I love that. I love getting to see every step of the process of horse training. I get to watch the first time they have been haltered and have a saddle put on their back to when they walk into the show pen for the first time two years later. There is nothing better than seeing your horse go crawl around a cow after the blood, sweat, and tears you put into it.

CG: How has the pandemic affected horse training, from your perspective?

KJA: I was thinking about this the other day now that horse shows are starting to come back. I think that its going to be a game changer for the rest of the year and next year. In our sport, you start a horse January of their two-year-old year and you have until December of their three-year-old year to get them where they need to be to compete. Two years might seem like a long time, but they are babies and its a process.

Most years, horse trainers in our industry would be traveling to shows very frequently and some of those shows last three weeks. A lot of trainers bring 20 – 30 horses with them to shows to keep training, but some still stay at home, which means some of your horses are at home are getting time off. This year, with the pandemic, all the trainers have been at home training horses full-time with no time off, which can only mean they are getting better! So I think the competition level is going to go up this year and even next year.

Katy Jade’s designs can be found on her Instagram as well as her website, katyjadedesigns.com.