Someone asked me recently how I keep things fresh and new in my creative business… and I responded with an initial “I don’t know.” But after thinking more about it, I responded by saying that creativity is a muscle. If you only use it every once in a while, it won’t consistently produce as effectively. However, if you make a point to exercise your creativity on a consistent basis, your capacity for growth and consistency increases exponentially… and continues to grow as you continue to challenge yourself. There are definitely days when I feel like I can be creative anymore… like it’s all been done already. It’s SOOO easy to get stuck in the rut of “what works well”, but I have to find new and “outside the box” ways to challenge myself in order to keep getting better and to be come more of who He created me to be.
I wanted to share a few “creative” projects that have been my challenge in the past 10 days….
1. My OWN Save the Date Cards. The problem with being in the wedding industry is I feel like people EXPECT greatness from me in anything regarding weddings. So when I’ve been trying to decide on colors and themes and places and flowers and photographers and invitations and caterers…. it’s been so hard to remove myself from that unnecessary pressure in order to make a decision that reflects Christopher and Me… and not what I think other people expect of Christopher and Me. So, finally, I finished the design for our Save the Dates and I feel pretty good about it. 
What do you think?
2. My OWN Wedding Website. I’m finally getting excited about my wedding day. I’m in the middle of putting together our wedding website… but I love it so far… and it’s been so fun being “the bride” in all this! I’ve still got a lot to go, but I’m stoked.
3. 6 Items or Less. My good friend Holly in Heels turned me on to this challenging social experiment… and I’m excited to say that I’m DOING IT! Click here to read my first blog post about it…
So all this to say, January 2011 is a time for new beginnings, and I’m fighting hard to challenge myself creatively, to find and establish who I am creatively aside from the world’s perceptions… and, hopefully, become more like who He created me to be. Happy Monday!
So your photographer is giving you a disc of your wedding photos. COOL! Now begs the question… what do you plan on doing with them? How will you store them? Where will you store them? Good questions. While a simple clear jewel case with a plain CD-R in it can seem like the best way to have your wedding photos delivered… I think there’s a better way.
What if your discs came packaged like this…
And upon untying the bow, opening the cute little brown boxes, and peeling back the crispy tissue paper…. you discover some custom designed cases for your discs? What a novel idea…
They’re labeled and customized with your desired style… and if you have a lot of images, you get several… all labeled with their Volume number….
And instead of keeping them on your cluttered desk where they’ll get mistaken for the disc of pictures you took from Aunt Mildred’s 90th karaoke birthday party… you can neatly place them in your bookshelf next to the other novels. PERFECT!
I’m a big fan of being creative with how you store and use pictures… and, as always, finding a more creative way to do things makes life that much more exciting…
Today I did something I never do. I spoke at a women’s bible study at church. As I told them, I’ll tell you now…. I’m not really the public speaking type of person… it’s way more comfortable to speak from my blog where I don’t have to worry about saying “um” too much or stuttering. But I did it and I’m pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to work Keynote, pair a remote to my laptop, and connect the correct cords to make it project on a screen… all while talking about something (hopefully) remotely relevant to the audience of women.
A couple weeks ago, Christopher and I sat in the clubhouse at Forest Home talking about life and lessons and the challenges of living on the road less traveled… all pretty light a fluffy subjects (not). It’s a wierd season of life for both of us… feels sort of like a staging ground… or a change of tides. Do you ever have those season in your life? So who knows where the wind will blow or what He’s got up his sleeve for the next chapter of the adventure. I suppose I’ll know in all good time… and when I find out, I’ll be sure to keep you posted. But for now, here’s a few pictures from the same afternoon at camp with Christopher… we made a ship at the craft cabin and it’s my new favorite desk decoration! More weddings and fun shoots to share in the coming weeks!
One of my best friends turned 21 this week and she asked me to make her some cards to send to clients. (she’s a super cool photographer from Lubbock, TX) She did have some requests… she said… “I want them to be yellow. And pretty. And OLLLLD. Yeah.” So I spent some time thinking… “If I were Betsy… and I was a greeting card… what would I look like?” This is what I came up with… Enjoy!
In case you find the “how-to” portion interesting….
It was all really quite simple. I found the shades of paper I wanted & cut rectangles, glued them, printed the “note from betsy” cards onto Card Stock and cut them, sewed them with goldenrod needle point thread, and cut the corners off some square doilies and sewed them on as well. I glued the squares onto some cream off white textured square folded notecards, bought some yellow envelopes and BOOM! Betsy Greeting Cards! Many thanks to Paper Source for their awesome selection of paper! Aaand Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!
