Its Holiday time already?!?!?

Its been longer than I thought since I posted an entry, I’d love to blame the summer but honestly I just forgot! More orders than I expected have come in keeping me completely occupied. I am beside myself with how grateful I feel! Starting your own business is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Its not at all what I expected. I thought hey, why not start telling people outside of my friends and family that I make cards and gifts? Maybe someone will buy something. It is NOT that easy. To do this right, I spent weeks researching how to properly open a business. Where do you start? How do I get my product online? How do people pay for it? What are the tax requirements? How do you manage social media so it brings in more views and therefore more purchases? How do you compete with the thousands of others making similar items and often selling for less?

All of that aside is the actual product that I love to make! How much inventory do I need to keep on hand? What are my actual costs to make these things? and wait I need to figure out how to pay myself for the time it takes to design the stuff? And then my time to make it…. Sigh. But I’m getting through all of that because I love the feedback I get when someone buys one of my items and raves to me about how much they love it. Somehow all the other stuff is manageable. More about the business side in another post later...

Onto the creative stuff!! Making things!! Its only August, you might think, but for me, I’m feeling so late on starting my Holiday designs. The set of cards pictured here is the first for this year. Funny story about these… Last Spring, I went to a scrapping retreat with my sister and some friends. As always, I set up a paper bag in my station and tell the ladies, put your scraps in here do NOT throw them away! These cards are from that bag. For my first Christmas design, I literally went to my scrap bag and found this one 12” x 6” sheet of glittery bright plaid paper that I think my sister had put in my bag. Instantly,

I knew I needed them to be ornaments! I went to my Cricut and used shapes to create the ornament and got started making the cards. I’m so happy with how they came out, I’m super energized to keep the designing going this weekend and see what else my scrap bag has to offer!!

PS – Because I really don’t like throwing anything out, I’m using the cutout ornament pieces on another card in progress…. Keep checking in for those designs!