About Nicola

Hi, I'm Nicola. I'm an illustrator and writer from Scotland and work from my cosy little studio by the sea in Fife, just over the beautiful Forth Bridges from my favourite city in the world, Edinburgh. When I'm not travelling or drawing or writing about my travels and drawings I'm living the simple life and running my little business with my family.

I wrote a Scotland travel blog for 10 years until Covid happened and everyone stopped travelling. It coincided with me hitting the delightful perimenopause, having a breakdown and discovering I had ADHD. It's a scary time now know many many women go through having spent the first half of their life ‘quirky’.

So now I live simple, healthy life when I can, although I do have ADHD so I love the thrill of finding a bargain flight, discovering a tiny family run restaurant serving hand-made pasta in the cobbled back lanes of a old town in Europe, or escaping to the bonnie wee villages in Scotland to look at pretty things whenever I get bored.

One of the big realisations that came out of that rubbish time of my life was that there was actually a reason that, for 10 years, worked 14 hours a day running my blog, stayed up all night for deadlines and ran about like a headless chicken and I could still not manage my business as successfully as my peers.

So, with the knowledge that I just couldn't function without a business to run I built Nicola Nicola. I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't building some kind of business so I sat down and really thought about it.

I wanted a business that would allow me to write about my love of travel, and my love of Scotland. I wanted to do said writing as freely as possible.

I wanted to draw, paint and make products I love. So I tied them all together into this little corner of the internet where write about things love, to hopefully inspire others to grab life by the gonads, get off the internet and explore the world.

I wanted to build a community of people who love travel, finding a bargain, authentic local food, cute cafes and cobbled old towns. Who love waking up somewhere new and exploring, learning other ways of life, meeting people, seeing how they live, sipping local cocktails by the beach as the sunsets over a gorgeous harbour somewhere... I could go on. Feel free to follow along if this sounds like you.