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!