💎 Just landed my DREAM collaboration
Gem #79 This still feels unreal
Bonjour my little demon,
Whether you just joined or have been here from the beginning, thank you so much for reading 🖤.
If you haven’t already, you can:
Read previous Gems
Explore what I plan for you in 2025
TODAY’S GEM
November 2023.
I had just landed in Thailand after flying from France. First long-term trip as a full-time artist. I open my suitcase for the first time, excited to finally draw… and almost all my pencils are broken. Snapped by the flight, the baggage handling, the travel. Every brand I had packed. All broken. Except one. A single blue pencil, still perfectly intact.
I remember staring at it, thinking: okay. I’m going to need something reliable if I want to work for the next few months. Something that survives planes, trains, backpacks, humidity, movement.
That’s when I bought my first full graphite set from Staedtler. Their iconic Blue Pencils. Easy to find in Thailand. Easy to find in Vietnam. Easy to find in Japan. And more importantly: they held up. Day after day.
At that time, I had no idea this small moment would matter. I was just trying to do my job. I was in my first year as a full-time artist. I needed essentials. Tools I could trust. I kept using those pencils, naturally, alongside other brands. They became part of my routine. Nothing fancy. Just solid. Reliable. Present.
Fast forward to September 2025.
Two years later, I get an email. Staedtler wants to work with me. A brand I had discovered out of necessity during a moment of stress. A brand I had kept using without thinking twice. We meet. The teams are kind, human, genuinely attentive. It clicks immediately. I send my media kit. I make a clean, structured proposal. They love it. We decide to test a first collaboration throughout December, focused on the Blue Pencils.
And then their first box arrived. Massive. So heavy I had to carry it with both arms. When I opened it, it honestly felt like gold—dozens of products, neatly packed, and three full boxes of their iconic Mars Lumograph Blue Pencils. I just stood there for a second like… oh. This is real.
During those collaboration weeks, I created three artworks using only Staedtler products: graphite pencils, mechanical pencils, erasers, paper stumps. No extras. Just essentials. Those five artworks reached over five million views. More importantly, the collaboration felt right. Natural. Aligned. Supported by the tribe.
So today, I’m incredibly proud to announce that I’ll be back with Staedtler in January, and I’ll be testing their new Artist Series launching at the beginning of 2026. Being able to discover a brand in 2023, and two years later be trusted to try their new artist-focused line… it feels surreal, honestly.
I think this is one of those quiet wins we don’t talk about enough. Things you start using without knowing why. Paths you take without seeing where they lead. And then one day, you look back and realize: something beautiful grew there. Slowly. Through work, consistency, and trust.
This is only the beginning.
Voilà , that’s all for me.
Je t’embrasse,
Léa
Nice, congrats