"Busy"

It's been a hectic month - a fast-developing 9/10 month old, health issues, family visits, general lethargy with the inevitable winter... but I'm actually making progress on the 'make money' scheme.

I narrowed down what I want to do to make said cash to doing what I do 'best' - design. I'm going to (and actually am in the process of) designing gift tags, book nameplates, notecards and placecards for sale on Etsy once I get a store set up. I'm also looking at selling prints of some of my photos and eventually branching out into calendars and 'party kits' for kids.

And if I get going a good clip (and make some decent cash), I'm going to try expanding to also produce shoes/slippers for babies/toddlers and if that goes well, start making jewelry for children.

How successful do I think I can be with all of this? Marginally. At least for the first year. I want to be a stay-at-home-mom for my daughter until she goes to school, but that does not mean I plan on eating bonbons all day while watching soaps. I like being busy, and if I have the skills, why not use them?

There's still a bit of fear behind all of this, but there always will be, I think. This - the whole 'half-assed self-employed' thing - is a very different direction than I thought I would be going in. I had been looking into doing something along these lines a few years ago, but gave up due to boredom. Now that my life is completely different, thanks to a little monkey, why not keep heading down this different path and see what happens?

I still plan on having to work part-time for the first year. There is no doubt about that. Bills have to be paid, food has to be bought, etc. I don't want to be working for anyone but myself within the next 18 months though. I don't have a business plan or a set-in-stone time line or anything like that yet, but once I start doing the heavy planning work, I plan on contacting this man to find out what he recommends I do (and hope that he responds).

So, hopefully within the next couple of weeks, I'll have an Etsy store full of products just waiting to be purchased. Or collecting dust. Either way, it's nice to be finally on the move.

Clichés abound!

Now that fall's been eliminated from our calendars, winter's starting to set in and it's definitely not welcome. Take a very early season change, add in the craziness over H1N1, mix in a general feeling of 'blah' with everything else, and you've got the makings for one hell of a depressing 6 months.

But there are tiny, minuscule glimpses of potentially good things in the near future. Now that I've settled on what I want to do - various forms of non-traditional/standard stationery - I can start moving forward and doing research. I'm still debating the whole 'Do I become a small business now or wait?' question; there's the matter of all the upfront costs of not only becoming a small business in my province, but the money I'll need to actually get supplies to get started. Good thing I've got all this time on my hands to do the grunt work on all of this.

I did have a plan similar to the one I'm about to enter into a couple of years ago, before I got pregnant with my daughter. I know the very basics of what I need to do (incorporate or not? do a name search or not? come up with a business plan or not?), so I shouldn't have to go through all of that again. The only question is when - do I start going full steam ahead on all of this now, or do I start putting out feelers, see what products actually sell and then get the ball rolling on setting up a business?

Thinking about all the work I have ahead of me just to be able to sell little bits of paper makes my head hurt. A lot.

But I want to do it. It gives me the freedom I've been looking for in a job for years now; it also allows me to raise our daughter. Is there a local market for what I want to do? Yeah, no. Is there a more broad - perhaps, online - market? From what I've seen, yes. Can I tap into that? Yes, if I get my act together and take the plunge rather than harping on about wanting to do it for a change.

For the time being, I'm going to look into selling my photos. I'm hopefully going to get printing quotes this week from local printers and then I can go ahead and start hawking them online. It's not what I was originally planning on doing, but if I was going to do what I had originally planned on, I would be up to my eyeballs in papiér mache and craft paint. I think I'll be much happier in the direction I've settled on.

Fall? What fall?

Summer's over.

Officially.

Crap. We didn't even get a fall this year. Straight from gross heat 10 days ago to snow. Fantastic.

It's also officially 2 months until I go back to work. I'm reconsidering my pledge to not go back for more than the required 2 weeks. My boss quit (today was her last day) and her departure is making me think really long and hard about leaving for good. I may just try to make a deal with my new editor to work part-time when I go back. The money's almost worth it, but there's still a lot of other things to take into consideration, too.

I've started doing a bit of designing every day this week. With my return to work coming up and Christmas and winter, not to mention Maddy's ever-increasing development and the start of her realizing her independence, I'm finding myself wondering what I'm going to do to keep the cabin fever at bay. I think I've narrowed what I want to do to bring in some extra money (besides work) down to either a small stationery 'business' (I don't want to use that word necessarily, but it's the only one I can come up with right now) or an attempt to make little bits of jewelry and other small handicrafts. I'm probably going to set up an Etsy store to get my potential work out to the masses, but at this point, I'm still figuring things out. But I am much farther along than I was a week ago. Even pulled out the smelly laptop to do some work this week. Made me realize how craptacularly slow it really is, but handy nonetheless.

Fingers crossed I can keep up the small amount of momentum that I've got going for me.

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I used a technique on the lily photo I found on Dooce.com. I love the look of Heather's photos and am always looking for new ways to make my pictures look just a little different than the original.

Also, should anyone pop by and deride me for supporting Dooce, stuff it. I like what Heather writes, but don't always agree with her. She seems like the type of person I'd probably be friends with if she lived on the edge of the Canadian prairies. In fact, I think I have a friend just like her and her personality (and sheer outrageousness) is what makes her (my friend) bloody awesome. So take your little junior high bitchfest somewhere else. I'm beyond caring what you have to say :)

Stumbling links

I'm a big fan of using StumbleUpon when I'm bored and feel like I've reached the end of the internet, something that happens on an almost-daily basis.

I've found some amazing sites by stumbling - FOUND Magazine, Gawker, The Pioneer Woman, and a re-make of the Star Wars opening credits. Of my 1100+ bookmarks on del.icio.us, most were found by stumbling.

Today's finds - craftgawker and COLORlovers were my prime finds. I have only spent a few minutes at each site, but I'm sure that when I find more than 10 minutes where I'm not trying to play catch-up with everything else on my to-do list, I'll end up lost in one of those site's depths.

craftgawker is already making me think about what I can do to possibly make some extra cash. The designs and ideas that some people come up with are just astounding and incredibly intimidating for someone like me, someone who hasn't really accepted the fact that I have, in fact, been a crafter for years and it may just be time that I take advantage of this 'talent' and make some money off of it. (And with craftgawker comes foodgawker, another site that will likely become a favourite fairly quickly.)

COLORlovers... god. What a beautiful site. Colors intrigue me - I'm fascinated at how some colors can work together so well and accomplish so much for a designer. I've used kuler as my go-to for color ideas for the last couple of years, but I think I've found a new favourite. (It's been really, really hard to write anything about this site without spelling it COLOUR. Damn Canadian spelling rules.)

So there's how I spent a chunk of my Sunday, when I wasn't occupied with my 9-month old (how the hell did that happen?) or baking bread or doing laundry. See, I can procrastinate and accomplish a lot all at the same time. Perhaps I deserve a slice of chocolate chip banana loaf for that achievement today :)

Running behind bandwagons

I'm notorious for not following trends - fashion, literature, entertainment, technology - so it should come as no surprise that I've just discovered the wonder that is Google Books.

I knew it existed, but never visited. It was on one of my many to-do lists that I've misplaced over time. I came across a link to every issue of LIFE Magazine ever printed. I'm a sucker for black and white photography and old advertisements, especially ones from pre-1965.

Think I might have to peruse some issues this afternoon during someone's nap :)