In November I decided that I'd pull together a calendar for 2012. And I started sketching out ideas for every month.... school bus, rain, flowers, Santa Claus and so on... until I had an idea for every month. Then I spend a good couple of hours starting my project before my project became too much for me to handle. Who starts a project for January at the end of November?! Especially as a craftswoman. I just didn't have time to really find that extra inspiration and time to complete the task at hand.
So I got this idea...dig through my favorites from the previous year!
I mean... hellooooo...duh.
I already had all of the months gathered up and scanned, I just had to curate the project and add in the months.
Plus! The project was almost all digital so I was able to offer it for FREE to my followers. I got so many happy comments about my calendar because people also loved my favorites as much as I did. Gathering the inspiration AND the materials from my year before helped me also to keep the project really cost affective, time affective AND also matchy-matchy.
FREE CALENDAR DOWNLOAD: GO GET IT HERE
Here is Feb... just in case you want to download it to your desktop.
I want to encourage all of us to really think about the work we already do... how can we mold what we do into another project... take a piece of something, reuse it... push it into something new and exciting for yourself and see your inspiration come from within.
Since I posted my calendar online...I have had more than 130 views of the calendar, many people printed it AND I even sold 10 of them that I had professionally printed. I see a 2013 calendar in my future.
If you're an Etsy seller in the San Francisco Bay Area, contact Jen from Mama's Magic Studio about joining SFEtsy!
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4 comments:
What a great way to generate ideas and stay in contact with your customer base and community! Awesome. I'm currently having some trouble focusing. Every time I work on a craft (or any kind of task, really) I feel like I should be doing something else on my to-do list.
Anyway, love the blog and the SFetsy community. I'm slowly coming out of my shell and trying to participate more, but I'm really grateful for all the advice/info, etc.
Cheers,
Donna
Donna,
I had the same issue! I kept putting things off until November and then got stuck. It took a bit, but I realized that my inspiration was right there AND there is no reason that I can't re-use my own art and give it to people as a "Christmas Gift". I hope you find time to be creative when doing your other items on your to-do list. :)
-Katy
Ya I have a mountain of unfinished projects. I realize that when I don't finish them when I initially get the idea--it'll never finish.
Ditto, sometimes I just need to open that box of fabric and remember the inspiration I felt when I bought it. Love your calendar, I'm going to download and use as desktop pics. ~Heather
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