Monday, March 23, 2015

Store closing sale - It´s not really a retirement




On April´s Fool of last year, I was opening my first digital scrapbook store, because I love to design and I wanted to have some extra bucks, specially for the months where usually my craft business doesn´t have that much profit. I chosen to start at ScrappyBee when Charly made the first designer call for that store - the idea of starting together with the store was really attractive to me.

But since the beginning I struggled to keep up with all the store duties - bear with me, they´re very few, but I´m really perfecctionist and still a beginner designer. So, in the first months, doing the store colabs and other duties took up almost all my designing time. My first challenge was to start to design faster - and I just accomplished it around November of last year. So, in the end of the year I was planning to use the long gap that my craft business usually have in December, January and February to design kits to put at the store from there to August (the next gap) and do the store colabs and such in advance too - in a way the designing time from March to July could be used to blogtrains and eventual stuff... Seems a good plan, right? I was also planning to apply for at least 2 other stores during the year...

However, the 120-140 days with very slow moviment that I was predicting (because it happened in previous years) ended up being only 27 days - the store only got slowest after December 20th (and not November 25th, as usual) and was back in action on the third week of January. It´s profting around three times the same month last year and a month like Faburary, that used to be a very slow month, has a slightly bigger profit than a "ok" month from last year.

As I work only with help of my DH, that is involved in a medium-term really draining freelance job, I´m working 24/7 on my craft business! It´s been hard even to find time to relax in some weeks. I´m in fact working more than I used to do when I was a 44 hours/week employee - but my job now is for more pleasant!

So, I had to give up on something. I needed to chose between giving up on having one free weekend day a month to do something with my friends, quit my really relaxing and inspiring volunteer work on a cat shelter that I´m totally in love with or closing for a while my digiscrap store till I have around 4 new kits ready to go - well, it was really hard, but I deceided to quit the digiscrap store, because in my pause I could only work in two store duty kits, one blogtrain portion and I´m almost in the end of my next pack set...

So, I´m not retiring from design. I still design sometimes even in these very busy days - sometimes I simply feel the urge to do so - and you´ll always find me answering questions and chatting on Pixel Scrapper forums. But, for now, since I can´t furfill the store duties (of doing colabs, etc) and design my own kits at same time, I´ll be storeless till I have some kits ready to go. Desinging is way more relaxing when you´re doing something you´re really interested on, when you choose all the creation process (or are really engaged in a colaboration, which not always happen in duty kits - for example when they are about a date you don´t celebrate, or they´re about a season you´re not in - I´m a southern-hemispherer, remember?)

It´s possible that my Heart Rock Song kit is retiring forever - but not the template pack - because although I was completely passionate about this kit at the time, I´d have done it way better these days, The others will be back in my next store when I find one :)

Meanwhile, if you know a neat store, where all products are full sized and there´re no posers that could shelter my creations with no store duties, please let me know! I would also love to know of some people that would like to QC or make some sample layouts with my next kits even knowing that they´ll take some time to be released.

Even if I take some months to write again in this blog, feel free to contact me via e-mail (loriensworkshop at gmail.com), facebook and Pixel Scrapper.

Happy Scrapping!

Thursday, January 1, 2015

ScrappyBee Blog train - Another Year

Happy 2015! 2014 was a great year to me, since it was the year I first opened a digiscrap store, and also got really busy with my craft business. But I´m taking time on January and Februrary to start designing kits to put on my store through the first semester - Maybe I´ll have time to join some more blog trains before the events season starts?

Well, I´m very happy because, for the first time, I was able to join the ScrappyBee blog train. This palette is so nice to work with, it´s been a long time since I had so much fun designing. Here is what I have for you:

Download expired

Note: If you saw my preview on ScrappyBee thread, I´m sorry for having to substitute the orange/red paper. The texture on the other wasn´t good enough for quality standards and I didn´t have time to redo it - so, since I alrerady have more stuff with this colors ready to go to the store in February, I picked a paper with the same color combinations in exchange.

Did you like these colors just like me? Don´t forget to hop along and collect all the other blog train portions. And don´t forget to live a thank you/happy 2015 to all designers who joined. The list is below:

Still want more? I have a kit that don´t have the exact same colors, but they coordinate very well: It´s My Day: Autumn, and you can purchase it at my Store. It will be 30% off through all the month of January. In February I´ll release some digiscrap goodies expanding this blog train portion :)

Thanks for reading! Have a Bright New Year!

Monday, December 22, 2014

Sales at ScrappyBee

Happy Monday!

This week is a special week at ScrappyBee, since we are having our first Stocking Stuffers sales. Each design has at least 4 items for sale, and I deceided to mark all my kits and extra packs down. I hope you enjoy!


Check my store clicking here

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

12 Days of Christmas - Designer Blog Hop

Welcome to Scrappy Bee Designers 12 days of Christmas blog hop!


It may still not be Wednesday for you, but since we´re in summertime here in São Paulo, Brazil, it´s already time for your freebie!

I deceided to hand draw some frames for you. I hope you´ll like them as much as I liked to make them. I think it´s a pretty little freebie that you can combine with your favorite Christmas kit, as well as with the other portions of this blog hop! They were made from scratch - even the texture was scanned by me...


I needed to scale down the frames a bit so all of them would fit in the preview, so I made a kind of sample page, using the simple frame and the freebie from my friend Pamela, from PBDesigns for this blog hop (it will be up for grabs next Friday on her blog!), in a way you can see the frames´ size and how it looks mixed with other designs:



Sooo, did I convince you? If so, download your freebie here (it´s a direct download) or clicking in the preview above.

 I have to warn you that those cute kitties aren´t included on the zip file, but you can find very similar ones on your local cat shelter. Did you know that animal shelters always face trouble on the holidays? People donate less, have less time to do volunteer work on the shelters and there are more animals to help... I´m working as a volunteer on a cat shelter these holidays and, although ther´re hard work involved, it´s an awesome! These cats, however, aren´t from the shelter. They are my very own cats, all rescued from the neighbouring streets...

Now, back to the blog hop :) You have another spot today - if you still haven´t been on Sweet Dreamer By Sharon E. Grant´s blog, this is your next hop. (note that we´re on different time zones, and I´m ahead). And tomorrow, December 18th, your blog hop continues on Gypsy Butterfly´s blog. If you get lost, or want to see the previous entries, you can find the master list at the Scrappy Bee Forum. If you´re new to my blog, don´t forget to check my other freebies clicking on the free stuff link in the top bar.

Have fun!

Saturday, November 15, 2014

$1 deals of the weekend

Hello all!

Can you believe that it´s the third weekend of November? It means that the Scrappy Bee is having it´s $1 weekend sale, a.k.a The Honey Hive. For this weekend, I put the following items on sale:


To see more details and grab yours, go to my store. My template packs are usually $2,99, so, for the price of one you can get both of them and the Seashore or the harvest paper pack (that goes very well with My day: Fall kit) as a gift. Cool, isn´t it?

Friday, November 7, 2014

Do you want an alpha?

Today, I have an alpha for my loyal readers. It coordinates with my last kit: My day: Autumn. Click on the preview to see the full kit in my Scrappy Bee Store:


As you´ll see on tomorrow´s Scrappy Bee newsletter (don´t forget to subscribe!), this kit is 30% off right now:


Now, for your freebie *drum roll*: I made this alpha to coordinate with My day: Autumn, but I realised that it can coordinate with lots of other kits, not only by me. And, as I used a freeware font, I think it´s fair to share for free, with a CU license. Check the preview here, and the direct download link is below the preview:



Have a nice weekend! 

Friday, October 31, 2014

DSD Fun at ScrappyBee + New Release

Today I am releasing a new kit at ScrappyBee: It´s called My day: Autumn, and is a very special kit for me. It´s the first full kit when I used lots of hand-drawn elements - Now I feel that my drawing skills are getting to a satisfactory point :) It´s also my first full kit where I mixed elements made with blocked daily life style in mind.

As always, I made the kit in a way I´d like a kit to digiscrap with: No "just recolored" stuff - even the solids have one texture each, no stacked flowers - they´re awesome, but I really like to have flowers that I can stack myself - and with a touch of artsy stuff and the woodgrain design trend - I simply love to play with different trends in my kits!

Click here to see the details on my store

A closer look on the papers:



The kit also includes this tiny pack with wordarts and title cards:


The harvest subway art and the wordart on the top are both in no-texturized black, so they can be used in several ways to match not only this kit, but any other you´d like to use. Do you want to mix and match My day: Autumn with another kit? Maybe clipping a paper from the other one in these word arts can be a good start :) What are you waiting for? Buy it here!

I didn´t make too many sample layouts with this kit, because autumns here are very different from the fall I´m painting on my kit. But I made a layout about some kitties and their mother - Who can go wrong with kitties? - And I´m preparing my first quick page pack, based on this kit, to be released very soon:


This kit - and all my store - are 50% off this weekend on the ScrappyBee DSD store wide sale:


Cool, isn´t it? Don´t forget to stop by my store to see what I have to offer - and buy while it´s on sale - and take a look on the awesome ScrappyBee designers - we have hundreds of cool products waiting for you!