Where to begin…

Kay, here are some random things I’ve been giving a lot of thought. Well, partially random. I guess they all have to do with things that I enjoy doing. And they all have to do with ways to make a little extra spending money. So I guess they’re not completely random. I have two part time jobs that I love. I don’t really want to give either of them up because I know I’ve got it GREAT at both. Flexibility, great hours (although more would be even greater), great pay, a kick butt laptop that I can use personally (more than I even do at work)… I’d really be a fool to leave either job. They pay the bills (although sometimes JUST) but it would be really nice to find a way to make a little extra without giving up either of these job and doing something that I enjoy doing. That’s everyone’s dream right? So here’s my random thoughts on the various things that I love:

LOVE sewing them. LOVE picking out the fabrics to sew them with. LOVE hearing how much people *heart* them when they arrive in the mail. Not a huge fan of doing the custom order type stuff. Really just not my thing I guess. What I love is making something that I would carry myself. At the same time obviously it’s important to make something that people out there just HAVE to have.

So, here’s where I’d love some feedback. If you were looking to buy a handmade bag what styles are you drawn to? Are there colors or patterns that you’d love to see? Is there a certain size that’s just right? Would you be looking for something a little more unique? I’ve been playing around with embellishing some of my newer bags (to be posted soon I promise). Do you think that makes them a little harder to sell since I may be narrowing my audience a bit or is that just what someone would be looking for when buying handmade goods? These are the tough decisions that come along with trying to make money at something you love, right?  I just thought maybe getting some feedback might help me with what direction to take the whole purse sewing thing.

 

At one point I had big dreams of doing digital scrapping for hire. I even had a website darn near ready to go live. It was going to be sort of a collaboration with myself and a few other scrapping friends where people could choose which of us to work with on a project based on which of our styles best matched their taste. Seemed genius but I think life just got busy and there were a few questions that we never really got ironed out so it got put on the back burner. Still would LOVE to do this but not really sure how to find the clients and there are so many questions of commercial use policies that I wonder if it would be worth it. I’m someone who tends to use many different designers on a single page. I could see myself scrapping a page and having a tally of 5 kits that I’d need to re-purchase for the clients project and I would think that would eat into any profits pretty quickly. I haven’t really checked recently if there’s still a list of commercial use designers out there. Anyone know? To me if I couldn’t scrap the pages for others the way I normally would for myself then  a) I’m not sure I’d enjoy it and b) I would think the client would be disappointed in the end-result if they hired me to do an album based on my current style. Wouldn’t it be great if things could just be much simpler? Have any of you done scrapping for hire at all? I’d love to hear your experiences with it and how you handle some of the issues involved. Another avenue I could take with this particular idea would be to offer wedding album design. I’d like to find a photographer (ideally locally) that has a photography style that would be fun to work with and team up to provide an album for their clients that’s a little more personal than the typical wedding album style. I was lucky enough to play with some of Shari’s amazing wedding photos a couple years ago and it was definitely something I would enjoy doing more but having great photos to work with makes all the difference.

I’ve also done some digi-scrapping classes. Love doing these and it’s so fun seeing people get so excited about the hobby. I know there’s some others of you who do this (Kari). How do you reach new clients? I think it would be great to teach these classes at a local scrapbook store but are they more open to that now days? I’ve considered contacting one that’s right near my apartment but I’m so intimidated by it and I’m not really one to sell myself. Gotta work on that. Do any of you teach at an LSS? I’ve noticed there are going to be seminars on just that at CHA this year so maybe they’ll start embracing that after attending some of those classes. :)

Another idea I’ve been tossing around is blog banner design. Do you think people would love to have a custom designed blog header? Enough to pay maybe $20 for one? And then the question again is how to advertise such a thing. I could add a little blurb in my side-bar but I think probably 90% of the people who visit this little ‘ol blog are perfectly capable of creating their own blog banner. I’d imagine most of you are also digi-scrappers and very familiar with graphic design. Hmmmm

Then there’s…

 

 

I LOVE creating slide shows. For the life of me I can’t figure out how to save them in a way that they can be inserted in a blog post but I WILL conquer that task. I just finished creating one the other night and have done a few others in the past. You can check them out here. The three earlier videos I’d actually love to redo now that I’m more comfortable with the software. I, for one, have such a love of music so something about seeing my photos set to a favorite song or one that reminds me of the event the photos were taken at just makes it so great. There are certain things that I think are so difficult to capture everything in a scrapbook page or even a whole album sometimes. Like a vacation or even something as simple as going to see Disney on Ice or a birthday party. I’ve never been good for some reason at scrapping those types of things but I can put together a slide show that makes me feel like I’m right back in that moment. Anyway, it’s something I enjoy doing and have gotten pretty comfortable with the software for it so I’d love to find a way to do it more often and make a little extra spending money at the same time. :)

And then not entirely unrelated there’s my love for…

 

 

 

I need to bring my camera in for a minor repair but after that I would LOVE to start doing some local photo shoots and get some practice to start building just a small side photography business. I have a great camera, a couple great lenses and some amazing professional actions for post processing work. Currently I seem to have to take about 100 photos to get 3 or 4 spectacular ones but with some practice, and a bit of studying what works and what doesn’t, I think taking photos for other people would be immensely rewarding. I already have my first guinnea pig family lined up, just have to firm up a date that works but I’m really excited about the idea of making photography something more than just a hobby. :)

So that’s the random ideas that I’ve been tossing around in my head. Would love to hear any advice or feedback on any or all of the above.

And this is where I should really start a completely separate post because now it’s going completely random and waaayyyy too long for anyone to possibly still be reading but oh well.

Here’s a recent photo of Pixel (per request)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the look she gives me after she’s just been scolded. Like ‘what? what’d I do?’. Typically lately I’m scolding her for any number of things like sneaking into my bathroom and getting my shower poof to chew on, or into the bedroom closet to find a flip flop ‘cuz apparently they’re the preferred type of shoes or her most recent silly adventure that seems to just make her SO happy is going into the spare bathroom and grabbing the last piece of tissue on the toilet paper roll and running as far down the hall and into the living room as she can get. It’s amazing how much toilet paper I’ve gone through from this little stunt of hers. Ugh! It’s a good thing she’s crazy cute.

I think it’s been about a week now since I’ve finished a LO. I was on a really good roll there for awhile and hoping to get back to it maybe tomorrow. I did have a pretty exciting morning though on Tuesday on the scrapping front. I was wondering why there seemed to be an unusual # of comments left on an older LO in my gallery at SisTv. Have I mentioned this site before? LOL Still infatuated with it and quite possibly even MORE this week :) So I started thinking that maybe my sweet friend Jayne was pimpin’ me in the forums there again. That’s what friends are for right? So I head over to the forum and scan through the threads on the first page and see a thread announcing that the new catwalk was posted and I thought ‘NO, GET OUT! I couldn’t be on the catwalk’. But YES! I WAS on the catwalk. And chosen by none other than Big Sis herself the founder of the site. Pretty exciting stuff. Made my day. :)  You can see the LO that was picked here. Funny cuz I wasn’t even sure I was happy with how it turned out and figured I’d likely go back and make a few changes. Guess maybe not. :)

Kay, believe it or not I had more to blog about but since almost the entire post has been sitting on my computer for over a week now I guess I better just post it and blog again later. Hope everyone’s having a great weekend. Mine has actually been pretty lonely and pretty crappy so I guess it’s a good thing I wrote most of this on a much brighter note. Also not looking forward at all to the holiday week ahead which I know is completely bizarre but weekends and holidays lately are not my thing. I actually prefer the work week where I keep myself busy. Fortunately I do have a busy work week ahead so that’ll help.

I do have a little tutorial to post that should’ve gone along with this post a week or so ago and maybe I’ll be back to post a LO or two if I get some scrappin’ time in after church tomorrow.

So, as Brittany says…Until