studio tour no. 042210

If I could just show you photographs of spreadsheets this week, well, I would. I know what you're thinking: But, Lolly, you own a creative business where you make things and, well, spend your days going from one super cool crafty, creative, heavenly project to the next. Um...not quite. While some days and weeks I do get to do stuff like that (and thank God for that or I might be an insane person...or...more insane), there's usually a spreadsheet behind the creativity. There's a list, there's organization, rhymes, reasons, all of that good stuff. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point in this business I've switched from just creating and making to really managing. My new collection ideas usually come to me while I'm doing something mundane like prepping dinner (might explain why I tend to burn most meals) or cleaning the house (might explain why most corners are left dusty) or something like that. And once the idea comes, I figure out how to make it happen, get the prototypes going and then produce. It sounds kind of cold, I guess, but I think, as far as my business goes, this sort of thing is what I've been working toward the whole time. Getting processes down, working quickly...dare I say manufacturing? As long as I still keep creativity in my life with personal projects and such, I think I can manage to stay balanced. So, anyway, what you get this week is a few pictures of spreadsheets and lists and projects and a little snippet of happiness from my desk. I worked on a b-u-n-c-h of sterling customs from the Elements collection - my bestie Erin was a leader for her church's purity night this past weekend and she was so kind to include laurel denise in the event. I'm making custom necklaces for all of the girls that participated. It was beautiful to see all of the words they chose. I also added a few new sales rep teams to my growing list and started to get things organized for all of their many sample sets and got to work on some glass silhouettes customs for Le Papier Studio.