The Brief
Penny Ruthberg is a Tasmanian artist working out of a converted tin shed overlooking native forest, with two schnauzers (Otto and George) for company. Her practice explores the emotional bond between humans and dogs — sculpture, ceramics, original drawings, and a steady experimentation with new materials — and her dog figurines in particular were attracting a lot of attention on social media. The job was to translate that following into actual buyers, without the friction of DM-style ordering or a generic Etsy storefront.
She came in with a refreshingly clear vision for the site — rare and genuinely welcome. The brief landed in that sweet spot of a strong creative direction and a specific commercial need: a proper online shop, but built around her personality rather than templated to look like every other handmade-art store online.
Our Approach
For an artist, the website is the gallery. So I built it to feel like one — generous whitespace, big imagery, and a content structure that lets the work speak rather than the marketing. Every page treats the art as the protagonist; the copy gets out of the way of it.
Underneath, it’s a custom WooCommerce build. WordPress + WooCommerce was the right tool for the job: Penny owns her data, controls her own listings, and isn’t paying a third-party platform a clip of every sale. She can add new pieces, update prices and run promotions without touching code or asking me.
Two details turned the site from a generic shop into something distinctly Penny:
- A custom dog-shaped cursor that appears whenever you hover over a link. Small, delightful, completely on-brand — the kind of touch that makes someone screenshot the page and post it.
- A “holiday mode” built with custom WordPress hooks that disables purchases site-wide when Penny’s away. She flicks a single switch in the admin and the shop closes gracefully — products stay visible but cart actions are disabled, with a clear message about when she’ll be back. No lost orders, no disappointed customers, no admin scramble when she’s on the road.
Neither of these was an add-on. They were the brief — Penny knew her business well enough to ask for exactly what she needed, and the build is better for it.
The Outcome
Penny now has a proper online home that matches the personality of the work, and a shop that funnels social-media interest straight into purchases without the DM-juggling she was doing before. The holiday mode means she can actually take a holiday without coming back to a queue of unanswered orders. And the small flourishes — the dog cursor especially — give the site a memorable hook that competitors with off-the-shelf storefronts can’t match.