Thursday, February 23, 2017

My Journey As A Creative Designer - Woodworking and Beyond #1823: Hello, Painting My Old Friend

One would think that with me having a full-time business as a designer, that the majority of my day would be painting, drawing, and cutting new designs on the scroll saw, wouldn’t they?  But lately, it seems that the ‘business’ aspects of our business fill much of the day, and sometimes there is little time left to do the creative things, let alone create for my own pleasure. 



I am not complaining, mind you. I am thrilled that things are moving in a good direction. I truly enjoy doing things like cutting orders and helping customers. I just need to find a way to better balance things out so that I also have time to have some fun working on projects created by other designers that I admire. After all – that is how I started creating in the first place. 



In my mind, I frequently designate a certain time of day as 'quitting time’. That is the time that I choose to stop working on “work” and allowing myself a few hours in the day to let go and do whatever I please. This was a time when I used to paint for myself (which is things for family and friends that I don’t intend to make into patterns to sell) or work on patterns from other designers or even embroider. But lately, I have been so busy that I sometimes can’t bring myself to stop – even if it means that I work after dinner until I go to bed.



While it is good to be conscientious about the business, I do find that not having any 'off time’ can sometimes really make me feel anxious and tired. I need to allow myself time off in order to have a good and healthy attitude and feel as if I am in a good place emotionally. That is so important for me as a designer. So I have taken steps to (try to) stick to a cut-off time and put my 'work’ to bed at a decent hour. Otherwise, I will get frustrated, tired and burn out. 



I have been mentioning that I want to continue painting on my “12 Days” ornament project for some time now. I can’t believe that we are already at the end of the month of  February and I am not done yet. I think it is high time I finish things up and move on to other projects. The list of things I want to make (for myself) is long and if I don’t take a hard stand and get these finished, I can’t in good conscious move on to new projects. I have my dear friend Vera cheering me on, as well as the people in our Facebook group. I need my cheerleaders more than ever now to get me over the finish line. I can see it ahead. 



Last night, at about 5 pm I finally got to sit down and paint. I had begun my Day 11 ornaments several weeks ago, and the outer frames are all done except for the printing on them. It was time to get to the design part and begin working on that. It felt wonderful to actually paint again! 





I put on Netflix and watched the end to a series that I was watching and then tuned into Lisa Clough’s live lesson on YouTube (Lachri fine art) and enjoyed my evening a great deal. By the end of the evening, my little pipers were well on their way to being done:





I am really pleased with them and think they will be awesome!  



Since I am all 'caught up’ with things, I think I will devote the entire day today to them. After all – I am making up for much lost time. I think I earned a little time to do what I love, don’t I? After the “Day 11’s” are done, I will go back to putting some of my ideas on paper and creating some new patterns. It will feel wonderful to get these done. I will certainly post pictures. 



I also wanted to show you all the new design that Keith has up on our site. After showing the “Thin Blue Line” plaque dedicated to policemen, (SLDK707), he had many requests to create one for firemen. He did and here is the result:





This is his SLDK708 plaque for the firemen. We hope everyone likes it. 



I suppose the point of my blog today is to remind you all to take time to do things completely for yourself. It is fine and good to be dedicated to your job, but if you don’t take time to feed your soul with the things you enjoy, it will affect your overall attitude and maybe even your performance. While this is hard to do when you are self-employed, sometimes I think it is even more important than if you worked for someone else. In that case, you do get to 'punch out’ and leave the job behind for a while every day. We need to do that for ourselves, too. I think it will make things better overall. I know it really helps me have a better attitude. 



I wish you all a wonderful day! Happy Thursday to you all! 



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