April 13, 2012

Friday the 13th and nothing really bad happened. How about that. As a matter of fact my son in law and his father both went out and got new cars today. Son in law got a used minivan that cost about as much as my first house did. It's really nice for his family. Huge and mega insured for the 6 years of the loan and fully featured. Very nice for the family. Not great mileage, but he doesn't have to go too far with it except vacations. I can't wait till I can afford a car for myself. I could pay cash for one if just one of my designs sells big next year. I need to find more clients soon.

Speaking of finding clients, I finally did a little research on the portfolio website. I found some great links. Build a Killer Online Portfolio in 9 Easy Steps is the best one I found yet. An Online Portfolio is not just for designers either. Artists and craftspeople should have one too. If you want to do juried shows, you should definitely have one.  It's the way of the world these days. I love my Weebly site. They make it so darn easy to build. You don't have to know HTML to make a simple and lovely site.

Mine portfolio still in progress, because now that I read how to build a killer portfolio I have a lot to rebuild.
If you want to take a peek, it's here cmdreifortportfolio.com . You can bookmark and see where I take it. I think it's too tabby. I need to have a portfolio page with links to those design pages I think. Cleaner look.

Not only did I start really focusing on my portfolio (with big focus on resume), but I also made a logo today for my flower shop. I'm really pleased with it. It' is just what I wanted, simple, symbolic,  and using my flowers graphically. I will mostly use it on my images as a watermark, but I may have a few other places for it.

See how cute it looks as a watermark?

I'm very pleased with the design. Guess 6 years of training in Art didn't go entirely to waste. Maybe I should do logo design. Didn't know I had it in me. But I should also say that it is easier with yourself as a client. You know what you want. Sometimes it's hard to get into your clients head to see what they are visualizing. I was working with someone who was trying to make on for me, and I was a bit too demanding I think. But I like how this turned out.

April 4, 2012

Today I finished some new flowers and shipped the ones I sold. I'm pretty happy that I'm finally selling jewelry, and it seems I sell brooches in lots too. I suppose I should try that on eBay. Lots of pick your own bouquets. Might get some wedding orders there.

Things are still quiet on the design front, so I'm enjoying the peace and getting some personal things done today. I really need to clean up my area. I've been working so much that it looks like a tornado hit inside the room. Too much work and too little time to organize. I didn't really mean to work quite this hard. It's not the designing or the production that is the issue, it's the planning and extra blogging that I won't be doing in the future, that is adding to my work load. I really didn't think that my plans would work so well before I had completed them.

It is really amazing what just taking a step back and looking at what you're doing can do for your business. At the end of the four months, I will give a summary as to all the changes I've made in my business as a result of my examination. Those of you faithful readers, probably know already.

Tomorrow I plan to spend a little time on my sewing. My new product there, has been taking off like mad too. I added bow ties to my line, and they are great sellers and pretty profitable too. I'd love to cut back on everything else and just make bow ties. Not that they are entirely original, but I did make my own pattern, and because I have so much grosgrain ribbon, I used that for the neck portion. They actually look really cute on a bare neck for women, and they are fastened with hook and loop. I'm making Jack Skellington tomorrow, but so far the Beatles fabric and Batman are my best sellers. Genre Bow Ties.

March 31, 2012

I feel like a huge weight has been taken off my shoulders. I think I'm caught up with my product designs. For the past two months my client has been feeding me projects one after the other and with only a few days to complete. I'm not even sure there isn't more, but I think there isn't for now. I am sure there will be changes to be made, but those won't be as hard as the original designing, because I've been making changes so the designs for the first retailer, while designing for the second retailer.

I think these presentations are only done annually, but my client is keeping me in the dark right now. There may be other product to design for them at other times of the year though.

I worked on my design portfolio website today, all day, and there is still a LOT to do to it. I was just taking the images I'm posting and putting a copyright banner over the client info and design number. Then posting the images on the pages. I don't like the format as I have it, so I'll be working to redo them all soon. I think I'm going to limit myself to an hour or two a day, and at the end of the day, so I don't spend all my time in front of the computer. After all, I do have to make a few more jewelry pieces if I'm to do a photo shoot this week. Not sure, it's good Friday so not sure the model is really available.

Hopefully today I get some time to work on my jewelry, and take some pictures. I also have some new items to make with fabric I have, and a few orders I have to do. I spent a lot of the day watching the baby for my daughter too. That was also a good time to work on the portfolio website.

I had to take a day of mindless work, to rest and refresh. I hope I'll have energy tomorrow.

March 29, 2012

Today was one of those crazy days again. It was really all about designs today. I had a few flowers that I had to make for someone. So I finished a few of my new flowers at the same time.

Yesterday I receive my new yellow centers in the mail and they were so perfect. If I sell too many flowers I will be out of them, but I bought 2000 so I'm not sure how quickly I will run out. The beads are yellow painted wood rondeles taken from strings of never worn vintage jewelry. I love the fact that I have bulk new reclaimed beads. I have to try to do that again. I'm using these on my Shasta Daisies and maybe a few other daisy centers too.

As for the rest of the day, I spent it finishing up designs for a client. I got the request at the end of last week, but I was finishing up the last of their drawings from the last request over the weekend. I didn't get all the specs for this project until Monday. I worked all Tuesday on my own items, sewing and flowers, so I didn't get to even think about their project until Wednesday.

I did some sketches on Wednesday, because it's hard to draw designs if you have no idea of what you're making. I sketched up five different concepts, most of which would have two to four different variations. They were easy to do, because they were based on plants, and all I had to do was sit on the porch on a beautiful sunny day and look around me. Late in the evening I started working on them a bit.

Today I spent most of the day finishing the drawings. And rendering them. I got the project done at 11pm. These late nights are killing me, but I think that these projects will come in clusters. Mostly, only this time of year. The nice thing is that for my other business, this is the slowest time of year (next to the dead of summer).
Last year at this time I was eating the spring grape leaves and visiting the local food pantry. Foraging is not bad you know. It can be healthy, but we don't have a lot to forage for here.

I wish I could show you my designs. But I will when they get into your local stores. For now they are proprietary.

March 18, 2012

Today was a crafting day. I also worked a bit on my next design project. I have to get them in by the end of the week. A few phone calls, one from the person I am designing for to discuss the project, and one from my cousin to arrange visiting my sick cousin. I understand he has a terminal illness, but is feeling very well considering. Terminal doesn't mean the same thing it used to. Many people with terminal illness can live longer than those without. As I've said before, my son who we were told would not live to adulthood, has outlived many of his friends.

I was reading this wonderful post on Handmadeology about Offline Marketing for Online Businesses. I can't even begin to tell you how much Handmadeology has helped me put together my approach to promoting my business. It's almost as if they are reading my mind and know the next stem in my progress. Are you watching me Tim?

Speaking of watching me. I've noticed that certain places like Groupon, Facebook, Vitacost and of course eBay and Amazon, seem to know what I'm browsing and coincidentally send me ads in key places. I even get ads on Google or AOL that relate to emails I get. I'm not sure I really like being spied on like that.  I suppose one day I'll have to invest in software that block spying, because my freeware doesn't seem to be doing the trick.

Back to Handmadeology. The post is about cross promotion and using shops or other venues to get your product seen. I hadn't considered this before. It's about not just taking your wares to a shop and dropping it off to sell, but also offering a service to your shop. For instance, I have a fairly large following on Twitter. I suppose I should grow that following locally too. But I could promote the business that I might sell at too. I could promote myself to local papers and say that my product is available at .... cross promoting them as well.  It's just brilliant.

I know you would like to think that your product alone is what would sell you, but we live in the real world.  Remember that Our past president couldn't pronounce the simplest of words and got all D's in school. It's not all about the product, a lot of it is the packaging.

I also think that I need to be using this information in my everyday life. Even in my design business. I need to sell myself. I've been working on my design portfolio website, and haven't even made a front page yet. I finally  realized what it is I need to do to promote myself. High End design at Low manufacturing cost.  Brilliant epiphany.

March 12, 2012

I was a Girl Scout leader for many years. I was involved in my troop and my unit. I actually received honors as an outstanding leader and volunteer. I had to pay those girls a lot of money to nominate me. (enter snicker) I'm proud of the work I did with the girls. They are all grown now and wonderful strong women. It's almost like my co leaders and I made a difference or something. Well at least I know Scouting did. It made a difference to me too.

Today I did some lighting designs again. I'm having to learn/relearn a lot of things. My server bounces emails from their server so I have to use gmail. I'm not fond of it at this point because I don't get everything there. I use it as an alternate address and have mail forwarded to my other account. Another skill I must learn.

Then there is this darn CAD program I have. It's kind of like Autodesk, but not. Every time I try something I learn something new. I can almost draw on it now. I can at least add dimensions now, but I still can't figure out how to draw things the size I want in the first place. I find the tools, but don't know how to use them. It's really annoying. And I really need to learn it if I'm going to do work for people. Or I could just shell out $500 for an old used Autodesk program. Not likely to happen.

I remembered a friend suggested another program, just looked up the price $1200, better than Autodesk $2600, but if I had either of that, I'd have working car. Oh well, I'll just struggle with the program I have and someday, I'll be a better person for it. After all, I was one of the first designers, at least in lighting to use CAD to design at all. I've talked many a designer into using it too.

At least I can use the program right now to alter my old drawings to make new ones. That's better than nothing.