I recently finished a project that I started in fall of 2025 on impulse. At the time, I had just finished some SKZOO emojis to share with a small fan server I’m in on Discord.

One of the channels in the server is where everyone posts photos of their pets and one of the pets in particular is a very cute french bulldog with a killer side eye and I thought, “Oh, he’d make a cute emoji/sticker.” So I drew him!

And then after I’d created it, I was like, well I can’t just do one person’s pet, that would be rude. So I decided to go through the channel and find all the pets and make all of them I could.

Well, it turns out there are a lot of pets in our server. 😂 44 to be exact. So the project immediately ballooned. I also wanted it to be a surprise so I didn’t tell anyone who was involved in the server that I was making them. I think this exact combination of conditions helped me complete the project when I have several others I want to do but haven’t made nearly as much progress on. These are the factors that helped.

Finite

There were 42 photos of individual pets I was able to collect on my own and I told myself that at the end of the project when I shared them, I would extend the offer to anyone else in the server who wanted one who I might have missed.

Small Chunks

Each individual piece only took me about 2 hours to finish. So I could bang one out on a work evening or two and make steady progress. I did not make steady progress, but I could have. 😂 The point is, the pieces were small enough that I didn’t get overwhelmed. Once I decided to try to maintain a color palette that also made it quicker in some ways.

No pressure

Because I kept the project secret and didn’t tell any of the recipients, I didn’t have the pressure of needing to get it done by a certain time (although at one point I did try for Christmas 😂) or the pressure of anyone’s expectations. I knew because I was making them as a little gift, everyone would be very appreciative and if I made mistakes or they weren’t perfect that was okay. I still fussed over details and tried to make them the best I could without making myself crazy. The tabbies and the long-haired ones were probably the most difficult to figure out.

In the end, I wound up with these 45 pet stickers/emojis for Discord (or anything really) and I’m really happy with how they turned out and the pet parents really enjoyed them which made me happy. I’m really glad I did it. So yes, consider a small, impulsive project just for fun to make someone else happy.