Small Blog Tweaks

Now that we're half-way through 2019 and things have settled to a more natural pace, I wanted to make a chatty post and share a few of my plans for the rest of the year (and hopefully onward). I'm hoping that these changes will make both sharing and creating a little easier. As I like the idea of regular sharing, this kind of schedule should help me stay on track a little better.

The first is a posting schedule:
- Cards/projects shared daily Monday through Friday, with minimal text.
- Saturday and Sunday are my days off, with occasional chatty posts shared on Sundays.
- Once per month, I will be doing a recap post of the previous month.
- Once per season, I will be taking a whole week off to catch up or take a creative break.

I'm hoping that this new schedule will help me stay active on my blog and on Instagram without feeling overwhelmed. As it takes significant time to create, photograph, edit and schedule all the posts, I've found it really difficult to do this daily and still produce quality content. If I have a bad week where I'm sick or where there's a ton of events happening, it becomes extremely stressful to try and keep up the pace.

The second thing I wanted to share is that I will try to do a destash giveaway or two in the near future.

While I don't want this to be a giveaway blog, I do have a few stamps and supplies that could use a new loving home, and I would love to pass them on to someone who will truly enjoy them. I thought about selling them at a discount, but I don't have enough free time to be a seller and it seemed like an extra layer of stressful little tasks to ensure the exchange goes smoothly. So, I'd rather just do a giveaway when I can afford to ship off some goodies.

Lastly, I will be working on some personal mini-challenges again to keep things interesting.

I have a notebook full of ideas, themes, sketches and palettes and I want to turn it into cards. I would like to work my way through it - and have it help me work through a few other secret projects I've got going on.

Thanks for reading!
~Elle~

Crafty Chat - New Year, New Goals

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2017 treats you all well and brings many moments of joy and laughter.

I don't make New Years' resolutions. However, I do set some sensible goals for myself each year. In 2016, my goal was to make and share 100 non-DT cards on my blog, and I have reached - and surpassed! - this goal.

For 2017, I decided to focus on my current crafty stash and see how long I can go without making a single crafty order. I have a few projects and ideas to help me make good use of my supplies - things like monthly stash kits, blog features and reviews - along with an occasional challenge or two.

In preparation, I've made a few final crafty orders with my favorite companies - I took advantage of Black Friday and Christmas sales, so I really got a lot of bang for my buck. My orders were for a few staples like cardstock, envelopes and adhesive, as well as a bunch of stamps, inks and dies that were on my wish-list. With this goal, I hope to whittle down some of my existing consumables (like paper, embellishments, etc) as well as make a plan for what I want to do with my stamps. As much as I'd love to, I can't keep an overwhelming and infinite stash of stamps and dies. So, that will be an interesting task for the last half of 2017...

My secondary goal for 2017 is to try and interact with crafters more, so I'll try to be less of a lurker and make time to chat with others. I do spend a bit of time browsing blogs, FB pages and YouTube videos from crafters I admire, so I'm going to try and comment (on top of a quick "like" of content).

Lastly, I plan to continue blogging regularly. I'd like to have it be a daily thing, but I know work and life will keep me a bit busy sometimes. So, I'll just work on posting on a regular schedule instead and work ahead for some of the entries.

Thanks for reading!
~Elle~

Update and crafty chat

You may have noticed that there haven't been very many cards lately. And I'm very sorry about that! I've been very busy at work, and it's left me with virtually no time for anything else. I have one more week to go, and then I get a week off to spend time with my family. I'm hoping to go back to a semblance of a regular posting schedule after that.

Even though I haven't done anything particularly crafty lately, I've still been in a bit of a "craft" mindset/mode. So, I did some more planning out on what I'd like to do after the holidays. I actually got this big elaborate plan in my notebook about what to do on a week per week basis, and a ton of fun and exciting new series. I don't know whether I'll be able to keep up with it all, but it was fun to plan.

I've also bought a few supplies to try out new techniques. I got some stencils and some texture paste, and I'm curious to see the kind of thing I can make with them. During the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, I also got some Tombow markers and some Peerless Watercolor sheets. So, I'm very excited to play more with watercolor.

I've started organizing my patterned paper towers. I just love patterned paper, and I have collected a huge variety of it now - something for every occasion. However, I often find myself "saving" the favorites and not using them. But, as I remind myself, they were bought to be used not to collect dust in a closet. So, I'm going to make an effort to create extra things with patterned paper. And maybe get away from only using it as a 4 x 5 1/4" mat.

Lastly, I'm going to be starting a personal challenge for the next year. It will be a 100-card challenge based on a list of words (some of the words are concepts or ideas, others are objects and colors). I'll post the list of words and the details of the challenge very soon. I hope you'll join me. :)