How a Comic Artist Turned an Instagram Crash Into a $4.5K/Month Blog

Who built it, and what they built

Angela Mary Vaz runs Stray Curls from Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, serving as its creator, illustrator, and writer. The blog teaches young women how to launch creative online ventures, using comedy and hand-drawn artwork to make the lessons memorable.

Beyond articles aimed at women entrepreneurs, she sells digital downloads such as eBooks and printable planners designed to help readers blog consistently. Her standout title is an eBook that walks readers through setting up a side hustle combining their own products, services, and personality.

Where the idea came from

Angela holds a Computer Science and Engineering degree but had no interest in a nine-to-five corporate role, preferring to stay home with her new puppy. She taught herself web design, picked up clients through Facebook Groups, and did graphic design work on the side.

After saving up for a Wacom tablet, she opened an Etsy shop for digital prints and began posting curly-hair comics on Instagram in 2017. The account attracted illustration clients and grew to 180K followers in 6 months, and she began selling notebooks, badges, and calendars through her own site.

In January 2018, a glitch locked her out of posting, and she spent three months discouraged until friends pushed her to build a website, warning that a business resting on social media could vanish overnight. She launched the Stray Curls blog in April 2018, first writing broadly about art and creativity before narrowing to online business advice for artists and creators.