Thoughts: Short introduction from the Calligrapher and Primary Artist.

So Himself just figured out how to add me as an administrator so although I’ve been posting all along this is the official “hey everyone! It’s me!”

My story … I grew up in an incredibly creative family. Like, they are all making a nice living following their passions creative. I don’t remember being intuitively creative but one day I decided to pick up beading. And calligraphy. And I wasn’t bad.

But then the usual happened, life, jobs, going back to school with kids (I don’t recommend that) and last year I ended up “retired” from the company I had worked for in various positions (don’t go there, although I did, but no, this was a bookstore) for twelve years.

It was the plan, we wanted to home school, and Himself’s degree was going to earn more than mine, so it was logical. But not doable, not really, not for me. I like to work, I like to have deadlines, I like to sip coffee in the morning meeting. I needed to do something in addition. So I started talking to God about it, which is the usual for me. Various possibilities were brought to mind and I duly debated the merits but eh, didn’t sound too exciting. And then I thought of calligraphy.

I had no idea how I could turn my skill into a business opportunity but (fortunately, as it turned out) my brother had decided to propose so there was a wedding in the works. I offered to do the invites and the happy couple thought that was an amazing idea. And their enthusiasm was my catalyst. And finding out how much I could charge for doing invites was my carrot. And Etsy provided a way into the scary online business world.

And then I discovered I could draw. You have no idea how mind-blowing that was. It was the first moment that I thought I could maybe, just maybe call myself an actual artist. And that art is something I’d do whether or not I actually sell anything.

From there my vision for what I could do, what we could collaborate on, has rapidly expanded. Some of the pins in my “drool” category on Pinterest are no longer drool-worthy but stuff I think I could attempt.

I don’t use air quotes when I tell people I’m an artist. It’s awesome. We’ve got ideas we’re ruminating over, plans to put in place. I’m redoing the website, making it ecommerce compatible (we’re going to put pieces not available in my etsy store there, the one I’m working on now looks AMAZING) and working on the visual component (the angst, oh the angst involved in getting it to a look I was happy with). If you’ve visited the site at all you might have noticed the many changes; photos and sizes are not my forte so there was quite a bit of trial and error going on (I still have no idea what I’m doing but I think I did a good job for an amateur). I like the look we have right now and I’ve promised I’m not going to fiddle. At least for awhile.

And we’re not moving away from blogging, we’ll still be updating Monday-Friday, just adding in a “business” element (hopefully one day I won’t feel the need to put air quotes around that word) and making our subject matter more predictable (i.e. Tuesday and Thursday I’ll be posting pictures from my projects, Friday will be a “Thoughts” post from one of us, that sort of thing). Both Himself and I enjoy reading and visiting blog sites that are more personable and story-centric and we want to keep that feel. To that end we’re working on a new page, “The Stories”, and you’ll be able to find the completed stories there (right now it only contains “A Night For Skrervy”).

So thanks for reading and for sticking with us as we figure out our direction. Blogging is more fun with an audience!

Happy Friday!