Goals: Trying to Avoid the Epic-Fail

Goals.
We all have them.
My goal for this year (and I have said it before)...Taking my blog to it's potential.

How is my progress?
EPIC-FAIL!

It always seems that something gets in the way and I always have an excuse.  Work is busy, the kids are sick, I'm a whiny-poutin'-baby...blah, blah, blah.  This goes for being active in the blog community, too, not just working on my own blog.

I used to have it worked into my daily schedule, however, this has changed somehow.
Presently, my schedule is as follows:
      6am - 7:30am  .....Get up, get ready, take kids to school.
      7:30am - 8:30am  Come home, do an hour of housework and a load of laundry.
      8:30 - 9am ..........Take pictures of products completed the previous day.
      9am - 11am  ........Price said items and fix said pictures for posting.
      11am - 11:30am   List buttons I won't use for work on my button selling site and my destash site.
      11:30am - 3pm ...Creating in the studio.
      3pm - 7pm  .........Dinner, kids homework, family time.
      7pm - 8pm ..........List new items and work on shop.

So you see, I got it down to a science, but now to work in the blog time.

Here's where you come in:
Where is your blog time worked into your schedule?
What do you find that works to keep you on your blog schedule?

Go ahead, don't be bashful....Share!
     

ArtBeads Winter Enchantment Challenge

Artbeads.com presented another challenge which I simply could not wait to partake in!  The challenge called to design pieces that represent what you find beautiful or inspirational about the winter season.  Well, glistening ice certainly comes to mind for me!  I hate the cold, but I love translucent, glistening ice!  After a hard starting, the final pieces worked out beautifully.  You see, sometimes when designing jewelry, things don't always work out the way you sketch out your design.  Designing jewelry is somewhat like architecture: the foundation must be solid or it will all topple down.  Well, my original design worked out great on paper, but made for an unstable piece that just did not drape well.  So, after disassembling and redesigning, here are the results:

Necklace

The major components of the pieces (outside of the antique buttons) is the fire polish beads and the silver plated clasp in the front. 

One of my favorite choices in creating pieces are Czech Fire Polish Beads.  They come in many sizes and finishes and really pack a punch in the sparkle factor!

 Necklace

For these pieces, I actually chose a few Fire Polish Bead Mix.  I really appreciate the bead mixes as they combine great colors together around a theme and allows you to sample all the colors without having to invest in full packages of each color and each mix comes in packages of 100, so there are plenty of beads to work with.  As for quality, these beads are made by hand in small batches, so they have the high quality of handmade beads but yet, ever so slight "differences" that makes handmade so charming.  For being hand made, they are very uniform and the differences are really so slight that you have to really study them to find them, if you can even do that.

 Bracelet

In these pieces, I used the fire polish beads in bead woven "beads", as well as hand wire wrapped them into components and strung on tiger tail.  In all three applications, the beads were just a dream to work with.  In fact, I could not stop designing after the necklace and made a bracelet, earrings and a ring with the left-over fire polish beads!

The second major component used was a silver plated base metal clasp, which can be found in the Base Metal Clasps.  This particular clasp is the Antiqued Silver Vintage Heritage clasp, and I really wanted to design the piece so the clasp is part of the focal point. 

After ironing out my design flaw, the clasp is acceptable as a front hooking clasp that remains part of the design.  In fact, I think the boldness and the vintage look really pull this piece together.  It was certainly inspiration for the earrings that I created with remaining fire polish beads.

Earrings

The antiqued silver plating just goes so well with the fire polish beads. 

Earrings

All of the pieces were wired with silver plated wire to give it that added icy sparkle.

I am very pleased how these pieces worked out, despite the fact that the original design had to be altered. 

So, at this stage of the game, the pieces reflect more of the melting ice from winter.  Oh well, either way, they did turn out gorgeous!

Now is the time to shop at Artbeads.com.   Order $60 or more in supplies and get $20 off!  Sale ends at midnight tonight!

****This post is NOT a paid post.  All supplies were furnished by Artbeads.com at no cost to me in exchange for a review of the parts used in conjunction with their blogging program.  I was not paid or compensated in any way from Artbeads.com.****

Obstacles

And isn't that oh, so true!

I have hit many obstacles over the last several years of running my own business.  However, of all the obstacles I have hit and over come, I think that the most difficult one is...

Finding a Balance between Family and Business

This is a tough one.  Without my family, I am nothing.  Without my business, I'm working for Big Corporate America again.  Sheesh.  

The first step in finding that balance was gaining support from my family and coaxing them to believe that my business is more than a hobby.   I used to be asked to babysit during the day all the time.  I used to be asked to be the family taxi.  I used to be asked to do all the errands.  While I did all these things in the beginning, I still attempted to put in an 8 hour day with my business at the very least...many times, a few hours more.  Soon, my family saw that my life was full of errands, babysitting and work with not much time for anything else.  I had to stay firm with my discipline in getting work done and they saw this.

The second step was to stick with my discipline.  I only get asked to babysit when it is an absolute emergency now.  My husband has taken over the stupid errand running on the weekends.  And I am not asked to taxi everyone around unless it is a serious medical condition.  I drew the line in the sand and firmly planted my feet just behind that line.  Now, I don't let anyone cross the line again.

The benefits?  I saw a profit in my second year.  Last year's profit was even better, and isn't that the goal of every business?  To make a profit?  My accountant was impressed that I pulled a profit in my second year.  I do strive to keep overhead down, which does help.  But the bottom line is that I stuck to my guns and continue to yield them on a daily basis.  

I do all this because I believe my business is definitely worth fighting for!

Heartsy.me

I found this super-great site!  Okay, most of you probably already know about it, but for those of you who don't, you have really gotta check this out!

It's called...well...Heartsy.  What is so great about it?  I'm glad you asked, especially if you love handmade things!

It is a site that features a new Etsy seller every day (sellers have to sign up to be in it).  Every day, the featured seller offers a discounted gift certificate to their shop for less than 50% the cost.  For example, today a woman is offering a $45 gift certificate for only $20!  You then redeem that certificate in her shop where you can get $45 worth of merchandise for...you guessed it...20 bux!

Better still, you get input on who is being featured next!  The site lines up all the sellers interested in participating.  Viewers get to vote on which shops they would purchase from.  Sellers have 72 hours to get votes.  If the seller gets the votes, they get featured on Heartsy. 

 Go check it out...come back and tell me what you think!