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It’s week 3 of the hack challenge! And I must admit, it was a close call this week to get a project done. But, ta da, here it is! I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to get any project finished for this week’s post done while we are out of town … I had a back up plan in mind, but I’m glad I didn’t have to use it because I wasn’t terribly thrilled about. Fortunately, my sister in law up here in New England was having a craft night at her house this week, and I realized … Read more

I wish I was a naturally organized person. The whole “a place for everything and everything in its place” idea is wonderful – but the first problem for me is finding a place for everything! Back before the holidays, orders started flooding in for my art and I felt like all I was doing was packaging and shipping orders – and the packaging was taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r. For one thing, I didn’t have a good inventory storage system. Also, every time I needed to package something, I had to go gather all my supplies together. I don’t have a separate studio, … Read more

Well, we’ve reached the end of the 6 weeks for the Creative Business challenge! And for the finale, we’ll be covering the single most asked-about topic from your handmade biz questions: marketing. I left it for last because one of the reasons marketing can be so difficult is because there are other things about your business that have to be in place first to be able to market more easily, and so I wanted to cover those in the first in the series. I hope you found those posts helpful. If you missed them, they lay out groundwork for how … Read more

I wanted to let any of you in the Boston area know about the Bible study series that I am very excited about coming up on October 20th at the Boston Public Library on Copley Square … below is the PDF with all the details. The theme is “To Live is Christ”, and we’re going to be studying the book of Philippians, which is such an encouraging book of the Bible. There are going to be a couple different speakers, and I am very much looking forward to it. All are invited! We would love to see you there – … Read more

Well, it’s time for the final post of the Adventure-a-Week Challenge! It’s been such a fun project over the last several weeks. You can see a list of all the Adventure-a-Week posts here. (If you’re reading this in an email or reader and can’t see the video above, just click here .. the video is where the substance of this week’s challenge is! Plus there’s some new stop motion video, as well as the announcement for what the next challenge will be, now that the adventure challenge is over!) Below, is the set of Bingo printables – I’ve created 6 … Read more

Well, tonight I needed to write the next blog post for the every-other-Wednesday series … buuuut I just realized I left my laptop charger at someone’s house. And our other charger is packed somewhere. And my battery is about to die. Oops. Plus we are still getting settled and it’s been almost a week since we’ve had a good night’s sleep. One night we got a full 45 minutes of sleep. Yeaaaah, that doesn’t quite cut it. 😉 So I’m bowing out for today, but I leave you a couple fun quotes our 4 year old said today while we … Read more

Wow, a lot has changed over the past year for my little handmade business! One year ago yesterday, I opened FlourishCafe. At the time it was one of my three shops … With a Flourish, Flourish and Debonair, and Flourish Cafe. Now, one year later, I have finally found my niche, and have narrowed down to just Flourish Cafe! And to celebrate this first anniversary/birthday of my shop… it’s giveaway time! 😀 As well as more fun planned throughout the week here on my blog… If you used to keep up with this blog, you’ll notice it looks very different. … Read more

Well, we’re preparing for the big move! And I don’t mean our move to Boston, although we are leaving for that TOMORROW! (WOOHOO!) But actually, in the context of blogging, I’m talking about how to move from Blogger to WordPress. This series is now in week 8 and we’ve been making great progress working on Lori’s blog redesign (and hopefully you’ve been making progress on your blog too!) as we’ve been going through this series. The goal was to use Lori’s blog, In My Kitchen, In My Life as a demonstration on how to create a new fully branded look, … Read more

Greetings from the land of Dunkin Donuts, crazy traffic, lobsters and rocky beaches – we’re in New England! I simply love road trips. And this one is especially exciting for a couple reasons – first of all, we are getting to see both my family in Pennsylvania, and my husband’s family in Rhode Island, as well as many other friends along the way! But the other exciting thing is that this trip is hopefully the prelude to a more permanent type of road trip: moving! We are hoping and praying to be able to move to Boston soon. This week … Read more

I’ve been getting creative business questions from various people, so I decided to make a vlog to answer questions, and hopefully help more people at the same time! Spoiler .. there’s a fun little “fast forwarded” packaging video toward the end. 🙂 Disclaimer: These are my opinions! I’m not in a position to give any kind of actual legal advice, so please understand that these are opinions. Thanks! 🙂 Thanks to Sierra McClain for this week’s questions! Some useful links: Etsy teams: helpful to join a team of experienced sellers in the same field Import/Export Information: the section labelled “Individual … Read more