A festive collaboration with Jasmine Calloni

This Christmas, our digital card has been created by Jasmine Calloni, a recent Illustration graduate who previously received funding from our Powys Community Endowment Fund, to support her studies and early professional practice.

Jasmine studied Illustration at Cardiff Metropolitan University and works in a distinctive style that blends traditional printmaking with digital techniques. With help from her grant, she was able to continue working with physical print processes after leaving university, set up a home studio, and take early steps towards becoming a self-employed illustrator, including self-publishing her first book.

For the Christmas card, we invited Jasmine to take our brief and interpret it in her own way, creating something warm, thoughtful and very much in her style. Here’s more about Jasmine and how the Christmas card came together…

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?

I studied Illustration at Cardiff Metropolitan University. My style blends traditional processes with digital art to create printed, nostalgic imagery. Currently, the focus of my practice is to create stories and resources that I feel I personally would have loved or benefitted from as a child. Whilst I find that my style of art gears itself most naturally towards children’s illustration, I don’t wish to ever limit myself strictly to a child audience, and I’m very drawn to the idea of creating work that can be enjoyed by all ages.

How did your grant from Community Foundation Wales help you as an artist?

The grant I received from Community Foundation Wales helped me to set up my own studio space so I can keep using physical print processes after moving back home from university. Most significantly, this grant funded my art supplies throughout my degree course. As art courses generally require students to provide themselves with their own Materials and pay for printing, a grant such as the one received can offer students such as myself the opportunity to explore and experiment with materials on equal footing with the rest of their cohort without worrying about the expenses so much, ensuring that the progression in education is determined by learning rather than income. This grant helped me to fund the self-publishing of my first book, following the final project of my course.

Jasmine originally applied for funding to help her continue a printmaking-led practice beyond university, including access to professional tools, materials, scanning equipment and the ability to develop a small creative business through pop-ups, online sales and self-publishing. The funding also eased a lot of financial pressure during her final year, allowing her to focus fully on producing and exhibiting her degree work. Earlier this year, we invited Jasmine to design our 2025 digital Christmas card.

How did you approach turning our brief into your own style and illustration?

For this brief I wanted to create a Welsh winter scene in my style that evoked a sense of togetherness and warmth, as these are themes central to both my work and Community Foundation Wales’s message. I created four initial concepts exploring different winter scenes and characters. Once a direction was chosen, I finalised the image using my usual blend of painterly imagery and warm colours. My goal was to create a card that felt heartfelt and wintery, and fitted with the themes of Community Foundation Wales without appearing too corporate.

The finished artwork has been shared with our donors, partners, fund holders, Friends, Trustees and supporters across, alongside our 2025 highlights video.

Looking ahead, where would you love your creative work to take you next?

My next steps are to continue to build up my business, using the last instalment of my grant to expand my self-published catalogue. I also hope to connect more with children’s mental health and bereavement organisations regarding my debut book ‘The Fallen Tree’. Further down along the line, I would love to take a masters course in Children’s book Illustration and approach independent book publishers in Wales for my future stories.

Where can people see more of your work or follow your business?
You can find my work on Instagram at @wimsii_illustration, where I post my illustrations, book projects, and shop updates. I also sell my books, prints, and handmade bits through my Etsy shop.

We’re really grateful to Jasmine for or sharing her work and story with us this Christmas. If you’d like to see more of what our communities, partners and supporters helped make possible this year, you can explore our 2025 Year in Review here.