🌂 Welcome to Velvet Umbrella Records

A soft place for music, healing, and radical creative care.

Velvet Umbrella Records was founded not in a boardroom or studio — but in a circle of artists, survivors, and spoonies who had lost trust in the music industry… and slowly found their way back to sound, together.

We are a small independent label built on collaboration, community, and creative recovery — a home for the tender, the strange, the experimental, and the heartfelt.

Here, music isn’t about perfection. It’s about survival. It’s about connection. It’s about building something new from what was broken.

🦕 From the Ashes, a Dinosaur Roared

Meet Tea Kinsington, founder of Studio TeaZilla and Co-founder of Velvet Umbrella Records

Tea is a multi-media artist, designer, and musician who found her way back to creating through a character she invented — a dinosaur named TeaZilla. What started as a protective inner creature became a lifeline, helping her reimagine what art could be after trauma.

Tea had long written lyrics, melodies, and visual stories under the name Gala Violet, a personal dreamworld created in middle school and high school as a refuge from abuse and neglect. Much of it was later destroyed by an abusive partner.

Years later, after leaving that relationship and surviving further harm — including a traumatic experience at a band rehearsal when trying to re-enter the music world — she shut it all down. Music felt unsafe.

But art has a way of returning.

Gala Violet: The Band, The Revival, The Spark

Gala Violet came to life again — not just as a name in a journal, but as a band formed by a group of fellow Spoonies(chronically ill and disabled creatives) who met in an Artist’s Way book group. What started as a shared demo project blossomed into something more.

The songs were personal. The lyrics hit home for all of us. We weren’t just helping Tea record old songs — we were co-creating a safe space to feel, to be witnessed, and to rebuild.

We didn’t want to wait for gatekeepers anymore. We created Velvet Umbrella Records to support ourselves and others like us — artists healing from trauma, recovering from burnout, or simply needing a space that values softness over polish.

What We Stand For

• Music as medicine, not product

• Trauma-informed creativity

• DIY collaboration with community at the center

• Support for neurodivergent, disabled, queer, and underrepresented artists

• Art that whispers, weeps, dreams, and transforms

✨ What You’ll Find Here

• Honest, unvarnished music that speaks from lived experience

• Projects by Gala Violet and other artists under the umbrella

• Calls for collaboration, mutual aid, and collective growth

• Space to breathe, grieve, experiment, and begin again

You’re Welcome Here.

Whether you’re a fellow Spoonie artist, a curious listener, or someone who’s also carried too much and still dares to sing — this is your invitation. Come as you are.

We’re not here to make it big.

We’re here to make it matter.

Welcome to Velvet Umbrella Records.

We’re so glad you’re here.

— Tea & Gala Violet