The Procreate Layers

Jenna posted the grand-opening reel on a Tuesday, three days after we buried Mom, and I recognized my own handwriting before I recognized my sister.

Willow & Wick. White serif on sage green. The same wax-melt mold I'd bought at the Hammond craft supply. The same product photos — my kitchen table, my window light — with the corner watermark cropped out like a bad haircut.

The caption said: *Finally doing the thing I've dreamed about.*

I'd dreamed about it too. I'd launched *Hearth & Wick* fourteen months earlier from the same rental house, the same iPad, the same Procreate brush set I'd customized until the linework looked like mine and not a Pinterest template.

4,247 sales. Five-star average. A wholesale inquiry from a boutique in Nashville I'd been too scared to answer because Jenna always said I "played shop" while she had a real job at the county clerk's office.

Now she had my shop with her name on it.

Mom's funeral lunch was still in my fridge — ham slabs in foil, potato salad in a Walmart tub. I sat at the kitchen table where I'd photographed every listing and opened Jenna's Etsy page on my phone.

She'd copied the scent names. She'd copied the pricing tiers. She'd even copied my FAQ about shipping in summer heat, word for word, including the typo: *pealse* instead of please.

At the church craft fair that Saturday — the one Mom had vended at for twenty years — Jenna had a booth two rows from mine. A woman from the altar guild stopped at Jenna's table first.

"Oh, I love this aesthetic. Did you start recently?"

"Inspired by some family creativity," Jenna said, not looking at me. "I finally stopped waiting."

I didn't make a scene at the fair. I don't perform grief for an audience. I went home, opened Procreate, and exported the master file for my bestseller: the *Winter Orchard* label, a line drawing of apple branches I'd sketched on a snow day in 2022.

Procreate saves more than pixels. Export the .procreate file through iTunes/File Sharing and you get creation metadata: canvas size, layer stack, modification history, device identifier, time-stamped undo branches. The first layer — the rough pencil — was dated March 3, 2022. The published Etsy listing carried a first-sale timestamp of January 9 the year before Jenna's shop went live.

I wasn't going to send a dramatic cease-and-desist letter she'd wave at the craft guild. I was going to send what Etsy actually reads.

Their IP infringement form wants creation proof: dated originals, work-in-progress files, sales history predating the copy. No courtroom. No screaming match at Mom's house.

I built the packet on my dining table with a mug of cold coffee and Mom's rosary clicking against the wood when I reached for my mouse.

File one: Procreate export with layer history expanded, first sketch highlighted.

File two: my Etsy shop statistics export — listing creation date, revision log, public URL.

File three: side-by-side PDF of Jenna's listing and mine, watermarks aligned.

File four: notarized affidavit from the print shop in Valparaiso that had been running my labels since 2023, with invoice dates.

I didn't tell Jenna. I didn't tell Mom's friends. I filed at 11:08 p.m. on a Sunday, when Jenna was usually posting "small business hustle" stories.

Etsy's system auto-acknowledged. Then nothing for forty-eight hours — the part that makes your stomach eat itself.

Jenna escalated the way she always did when she was cornered: sideways. She told our cousin Mindy I was "jealous because her shop was prettier." She posted a story about sisters supporting sisters, with a photo of Mom's booth from 2019, before I'd ever sold a candle.

Mindy texted me: *Is it true you copied her?*

I sent Mindy one screenshot: my listing date. Jenna's listing date. No commentary.

Mindy replied: *Oh.*

On Wednesday the craft guild president called.

"There's been a complaint about duplicate vendors. Can you prove your designs are yours?"

"I already did," I said. "To Etsy. I can send you the same packet if you need it for the fair committee."

Silence. Then: "Jenna said she filed first."

"Check the timestamps."

I wasn't bluffing. That was the whole point — I wasn't going to win by being louder. I was going to win because Procreate doesn't care who sang louder at choir practice.

Thursday morning my phone buzzed. Etsy case update: *We have removed listings that infringe on your reported work.*

Jenna's shop banner went gray. *Vacation.*

At 2:11 a.m. she'd changed every listing to private. The internet keeps receipts anyway.

---

She showed up at my door at 6:40 a.m. in the same green apron she'd worn at the fair, eyes red, mascara smeared like she'd rubbed it with ham-fisted grief.

"You ruined me."

"You copied me."

"Mom wanted us to share—"

"Mom wanted you to sign the booth application with your own designs." I kept my voice level. The neighbor's sprinkler was ticking. "You used her funeral week to launch a duplicate shop and told people I was inspired by you."

She looked at the kitchen table — my laptop still open on the IP confirmation page.

"I didn't know you could prove it like that."

"That's the problem."

She asked if I'd tell the guild. I said the guild already had the dates. I said I wasn't seeking damages — Etsy's takedown was enough. I said she could keep making candles if she made her own labels, her own photos, her own story.

She said I was cruel.

I said cruelty was cropping my watermark while I was picking a burial dress.

She left without asking to come in. I watched her car pull out past the lilac bush Mom had planted when we were girls.

The guild reinstated my booth for the fall fair without a hearing. Jenna didn't apply. Mindy brought me coffee and didn't mention sisters.

I redesigned one label — not because I had to, but because I wanted a line on the page that existed only in my layer history. New branch sketch, dated the week after the takedown.

My new rule: I back up every master file to a drive Jenna can't borrow, and I never again confuse family love with business consent.

The shop is still small. Still mine. The sales counter ticked up again by Friday.

Mom's rosary stays on the desk. Not as a weapon. As a reminder that some things you don't share just because you share a last name.