Country Living: Crafting a Business

Country Living Crafting A Business



Nurturing Your Creativity Serendipity aside, the refined concept that is key to a thriving business is unlikely to leap full-blown from your brain. It takes time, thought, and experimentation for the germ of an idea to mix with your specific skill or passion and grow into a vision you can articulate clearly and realize as a viable venture. The process is different for everyone. Here are thoughts to get you started. Give Yourself Room Just listen to your heart and don’t pay attention to what other people say. * My goal is being in my studio, keeping my hands in beauty. * I’d paint until ten or eleven at night, and I realized it made me come alive. * The more my passion was shaped to my purpose, the more I started living. * I need to be relaxed in order to create. * Give yourself room to experiment, to come up with ideas. It has to be a priority. Life Gives You Clues Meet people. It’s amazing how a conversation or even one word can make something click. * They showed me how creativity can be woven into your life. * People say your career chooses you. * Just start something and see where it takes you. * I figured out how to do the stitching. That was it-I’d found my calling. * Be open and watch for the clues that come drifting by. If you ignore them, they disappear. Honor Your Passion Sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and write down everything you like and can do: This is what I love, this is what inspires me, and this is what gives me courage. * Be quiet; taking time to sit and be quiet for periods of time allows your mind to create and visualize. * My joy is going up to my studio with all that sunlight and color. * For me it’s always been ‘make something, make something, make something!’ * I just want it to be beautiful. People need hope now. * I’m inspired by the emotions I feel when I do a custom piece. * Being able to walk out my kitchen door and cut herbs in this beautiful environment is heaven. * My jewelry came from my love of collecting old glass, beads, baubles, trims-all the different little notions I’d always loved. * What I’ve always done is saturate myself with places, experiences, books, or environments that make me feel creative. Trust Yourself I have a page in my sketchbook, and when I’m feeling all scared and think “This is not going to work,” I write down all the good things that have happened. * I think lack of courage is the number-one obstacle. * Yes is the magic word. * I just did what I knew and trusted my ability. * Don’t ever go below your standards. * After the first two dolls I made, I knew I had to make these dolls. * It comes from somewhere inside of me. I don’t know where, but I’ve learned to trust myself.

Reprinted with permission of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., from COUNTRY LIVING: CRAFTING A BUSINESS by Kathie Fitzgerald. Copyright © 2010 by Kathie Fitzgerald.