Just Keep Creating...Yea!

So I have been focusing on getting back up and moving forward now that the house projects have slowed down..owning a home is fun but let me tell you...EXPENSIVE! LOL
So anyways, I have been able to stay motivated to get going again, and I realize the schedule I came up with over the weekend is just not....well lets just say "easier said than done"...at least for now. I know I should be creating and networking a bunch on a daily basis but I have figured out I am too creative and I change my mind alot on designs because I only have a few hours a day to work them out and I always come up with a better idea! I guess I shouldn't expect to be fully motivated all the time because I work full time, and my job is an hour away from home. So  M-F I drive an hour, I work 8-10 hours a day, then drive that hour back home. So needless to say most days when I get home, I don't really feel like pressuring myself to create and market as much as I am able to on the weekends. So bottom line...come up with a new schedule?
I think my best step would be putting all the stuff I had out from previous pieces I have made away, and starting with a clean board and desk. Plus my home office is a bit cluttered right now, and I think I need to rearrange the desks in there to free up more floor space. Maybe then I wouldnt feel so....unmotivated LOL
I was trying to keep a schedule of a minimum of at least one piece per day (started out as two per day) with a one hour window for marketing/networking/listing. Here is my issue with that: Im not a stay at home mom and dont have that kind of time to play with. I'm not the type to be able to just throw something together real quick, I take my time to make sure it turns out gorgeous! And to make sure I dont make mistakes that require the entire piece to be reworked.  And if i try sticking to the 1 piece per day rule, I would be feeling pressured all the time to make my own quota and obviously that would take the fun out of it.
I have spent so far three days on my current piece, because I have changed my mind about three times, and then again this afternoon I was looking at it and decided on making two pieces out of the beads by using additional beads to make it work.I still have a piece that has been finished for a week now and I keep forgetting to get pictures taken of it and listing it for sale! Well hopefully that will be done soon and i can keep moving forward.
Honestly this week my knee has been really hurting since Saturday and I have a hard time sitting and creating when I am in pain and just want to lay down. As a matter of fact, Im laying on my cozy leather couch with my cozy little handmade blanket my daughter created, (its beautiful and Im so happy she is so creative and such a fast learner and loves to make things!) typing this blog. I wanted to keep working the piece I started while laying down, but I just know I will need to keep getting up to go get more supplies or additional/different beads and that defeats the purpose of my R & R!  So anyways, hopefully by the end of the week I will feel better and can continue what I started- My valentines Day pieces!
So until then...I hope to get some new fans over to my facebook page to help me gain more exposure. I will continue networking while Im down, and go back to creating when I'm feeling better. I wish you a Happy New Year and Thank You for reading my blog. It will be more interesting with pictures soon I promise! :) https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kimberly-Lynn-Designs/141969352521411?hc_location=timeline

Refocusing Desire

This weekend I have accomplished half of the the not so fun tasks that are inclusive to creating. I had alot of new items I made and finally got the pictures all taken and edited. I began listing items in a variety fashion but then very quickly lost track of what items I posted to which site! lol And by the time I was ready to start that task, I had already been dealing with all these pictures and such for days now so my eyes and brain are having an argument and they both stormed out on me so to speak. lol I have added three new lines of beaded items and hopefully two more in the near future. I now have Letter openers, Wine bottle stoppers, and book marks! For now its late and I have ro get up early so my next blog will include pictures and hopefully a success story of getting all my items listed cause theres quite a few! Til next time....

Motivation Management and new additions

I am using my smartphone for this particular blog and unfortunately i don't have the pictures of the bracelet I finally finished. I posted a couple of them on Facebook if you are interested in seeing them right away. I can hopefully get them in my blog tomorrow. Im also adding some new items to my artistic creation stash of beautiful beaded things but you will have to keep up to find out what they are hee hee! Not too much to ask of a jewelry artist right? well maybe if i could post more often huh?
Well I have had some life changing events happen in the last year and I have been struggling to keep my sanity and of course that makes all motivation out of reach for me! But Im attempting to overcome the challenges and get back to the things I love. Throughout the week Im going to continue editing pictures I have taken of my new additions, and by new I mean things I didnt offer before but now I do and I cant wait to present the pictures for everyone to see! Its getting late now and I better get to sleep so I will have the energy tomorrow to add all my new stuff to all my sites! Have a beautiful evening to all you night owls out there reading my blog! :)

A WIND OF CHANGE

Here it is 2 Years and about 12 days later since my last blog and I have since then moved twice, with the last move being due to the PURCHASE OF MY FIRST HOME!!:) We have been in our new home now for about a year, and let me tell you, the  fun projects and design ideas never stop! There is so much more I want to do to this house! I feel alot more stable in general now too, and that leads to better ability to focus on Jewelry stuff! I have an office/bead room designated, and really would like to focus on just that room for a bit and get it all decorated up for inspiration, make it a room I just absolutely love to be in.
I went through all my ideas and had to start over in a sense to figure out what needs to be done to get the ball rolling again with my business stuff. Lets just say I had a list of 4 things and all of them are in the works for being resolved.
I am finally to a point that I feel a bit more settled in the new house and feel like I can pick up where I left off, now theres no more moving!
I would like to get some new techniques mastered, and Im thinking maybe I can learn a new technique every couple of months or so and see which ones I like most. I am grateful that even through not being able to dedicate as much time as I need to fully run and market my business as I would like, my creations are still found on the internet and are still being bought! This tells me all my marketing and advertising I was doing is still working for me, so I must have done something right!
Hopefully by next week, I can get some pictures up of my new packaging and get some feed back! Til then have a great week and Thanks for reading my rambling thoughts!

What is holding me back???

The other day I realized I haven't been doing anything lately for my business, why? what is holding me back???  Its because I just feel like its too overwhelming, too much to do, and too much to keep track of, and like I will never get caught up. I haven't wanted to make more jewelry for the same reason, I'm feeling like I'm already so far behind on everything that making new pieces would just add to overflowing cup (yeah, you know one of those 64oz super big gulp cups? lol) of things to do.
So I sat down and started thinking to myself, and organized my thoughts into exactly what is my problem, what is the most frustrating thing, or biggest task that is holding me back?
So I thought, OK how many websites do you have? Answer = 2. Not bad. Just my Art fire store and My Website- Kimberlylynndesigns.com. OK.
Next, I need to go to each site and get out all my pieces, and see which pieces I have on each site. OK.
I did that today, and I shocked myself! I have 15 Pieces that are not even listed on either of those two sites, and an additional 14 Pieces That are not listed in my Art fire studio! What is wrong with me???
Then I remembered. Ahhhhh yes, that's right- MY LOVELY HUSBAND ACCIDENTALLY DROPPED MY ONLY GOOD CAMERA IN KERN RIVER BEFORE I HAD TAKEN PICTURES OF THE REST OF MY PIECES!!
So upon returning home, I still had pictures to take and no way of taking them, and money was tight, so I had to just deal with it. Well, I now have a new camera, and I now know which pieces I need to get pictures of. I think that was a big roadblock for me, I felt overwhelmed for some reason with knowing that I had to figure that out. Now that is done! What a relief!
 So I also googled how to make my own light box (which I have done before, but couldn't remember what it was I was missing to make it correctly the first time) So I went to the store and home depot and bought the stuff I need and now have it set up, you can see here:

I have black cloth and white cloth as well as some other tiles I can use for backgrounds or whatever I need. This picture is just the basic idea, When I set it up it has more detail to it. Things like the tripod come into play and other little details.
Here a a few pix of my studio:

 I have an extra monitor hooked up to my laptop, because its much faster to get stuff done with being able to see two screens at once, then there's no flipping back and forth from screen to screen.

Soon, I will be placing my supply order, and will have tons more beads to play with! then I will post those pics for you all to see too!
So continuing on, after I finish this post, I will take the pictures of my pieces and post them to my two sites. Then I won't feel like I am so far behind. Then all during this week, I will get back into my Link Love stuff on Face book. Well, wish me luck, I will blog more often and update more frequently from now on.
Thanks for stopping by to read my blog and best wishes to you and all your paths traveled!

Getting closer....one bead at a time

Long time no blog!
 Well, I am about 90% finished with entering all my beads into JDM (Jewelry Designer Manager). What a relief! Then I can enter the new jewelry I have made, then get back to making new pieces! Whoo hoo! It is so much easier when you can enter one piece at a time instead of having several pieces to enter. I love beads, but I hate counting each one (and no, I do not count the seedbeads!)  Once it is all finished it will go much faster. My goal was to have everything ready to go and have my very first sale for valentines day, but the closer it gets, the more I realize it just is not going to happen. I have so much to do to get all caught up with everything, and it takes so much time. I have a full time job, so I am away from home for 10 - 12 hours a day, and when i get home, some nights, I just want to watch some television and relax. Its funny that when I am at work, I keep thinking of all the stuff I plan on doing for my business when I get home that day, and then when I get home, I end up not doing any of it! I just get so tired. Im almost there though, one day very soon, I will be able to just come home and make jewelry. I got smart with my inventory entering, I now have an extra monitor hooked up to my laptop so I can run two screens at once, so instead of having to minimize windows, and go back and forth, I can keep both windows open, and with a glance I know which beads I have entered and which ones I have not. I got so many done tonight now that I have the two screens going. It takes half the time too! Well, hopefully I can get everything entered in the next week, and then take my next steps from there. Oh yea, and I finally bought a new camera too! I also bought some stuff to build myself another lightbox too! That only takes a few minutes, not much of a project there. I will get some pictures of my "bead room" up soon for all to see my studio space, so I call it. Its great to have a whole room just for me. I share it for the kids to use the other computer in here, but thats as far as they go, they never mess with my stuff. Well til next time, hope everyone has a great week!

Here is to the new year in my beady world!

Well Happy New Year to anyone reading my blog! I had a great New Year celebration with wonderful friends. I had a resolution or two I wanted to follow, but I realize if I call it a "resolution" and I feel as though I have to stick to it, and then Im not able to stick to it, (which many of us are not! lol) I figure thats just setting myself up to be dissapointed. So I decided to make myslef just a little promise to "try my best" to change the things I can in my life for the better. I figure I need to start somewhere, so I started by not telling anyone really what those changes would be, because then I wouldn't have to worry about what someone might think when I stray away from those changes. Ok, Ill tell one of them to whoever is reading this....
One of my "New years self improvements" is to keep my car cleaner. I know that sounds silly, but it is something I need to do that I think would make me feel less cluttered at times. Not that my car is horribly dirty, but it definately needs to be washed like once a week instead of once every 6 weeks or so!
And the rest have to do with my jewelry business and keeping motivated.
Anyways, I hope everyone had a great New Year, and have the ability to start fresh with a positive attitude and plenty of support. I bought some things today to help me in my journey of keeping motivated. I am going to work on building another Lightbox for better pictures of my jewelry. I have done this before and it actually worked out great until I needed some of the components for other stuff! Well, here is to new beginnings, and best wishes for all the crafters out there for the year 2011!