What It Takes

I'm really excited to tell you about a new group that I'm starting with my creative friends Joanna of Joy in My Studio and Moira of Literary Tease. It's called What It Takes: Your Indie Business Buzz, and we're organizing it through The Hive Archive, a women's art collective here in Providence.

What is What It Takes?

Joanna, Moira, and I noticed that we like to get together on a regular basis to check in on each other's indie businesses, and share ideas and resources like great articles to read, technical tips, and moral support.

What It Takes is going to be an extension of our informal conversations - a monthly meeting of people who want to turn their creative work into a sustainable living. We plan to cover different topics each month, like product photography, branding your business, selling your work online and in local shops, and any other challenges that people who come are facing. What It Takes is for all experience & skill levels, all creative mediums, and for anyone who has found themselves saying "I really need to get my stuff together." We hope that people will come to ask questions, share knowledge, and learn from others' experience to get organized, get ready, and get on their way!

What It Takes meets on the first Wednesday of each month from 5:30-7:00 in the cafe at Whole Foods on North Main Street. Our first meeting is next week, November 3rd, and we plan to talk about Goal Setting - come with a rough list of your goals, or just ready to think about what's on the horizon for you!

If you don't live close-by, think about starting your own group! All you need is two or three creative folks in a room, and it's amazing how being together and sharing can really move you all forward. As my friend Maria once said: "When you join people together, you just have...more." And she's so, so right.

So come to What It Takes!

My Favorite Crafty Website

Ever since I discovered One Pretty Thing, I have never had to worry about feeling uninspired.

Rachel, One Pretty Thing's founder and administrator, created a website that is what I consider to be the most comprehensive gathering of creative projects ever. It's like having a gi-normous encyclopedia of all things crafty on your shelf, only more and more projects are added every single day.

Rachel scours the web daily to find tutorials of handmade projects in all different mediums - sewing, quilting, knitting, decor, revamping furniture, jewelry-making - and posts round ups of photos and links to all of the projects.

My Favorite things about One Pretty Thing:

• It supports all different levels of crafters. The range of projects and skills required is so vast that there is definitely something to everyone there. When I first got my sewing machine, I discovered this website soon after. Everyday, I bookmarked projects of all levels, and have steadily seen myself tackling more and more complicated projects. In a sense, One Pretty Thing taught me how to sew!

• It's super easy to find anything you're looking for. All of the posts are archived, and it's super easy to search all of the projects she's gathered. For instance, this morning I was thinking about making a necklace out of ribbon. Naturally, my first thought is always to search One Pretty Thing, so I hopped on, and searched for "ribbon necklace" and tah dah! Thirteen inspiring projects!

• It supports creative AND entrepreneurial skills. Not only does Rachel post round ups of creative projects, she also posts a "Crafty Reading Round Up," featuring articles about business and blogging strategies every Thursday. This is how I've discovered some of my favorite business resources.

• It's easy to submit your own project. To submit your project, all you need to do is send Rachel an email with a link to your tutorial. All of my tutorials on the left side of the screen have been featured on One Pretty Thing. It feels great to be someone contributing to the creative community, and I hope to post more tutorials in the near future. It's also a great way to get some new readers to visit your blog.

Not a day passes without me scrolling through everything she's gathered. It's just unbelievable how much creativity is happening out there in the world, and how open the online community is to sharing ideas, inspiration, and tutorials with each other. The crafty online community is so lucky to have a resource that gathers all of these into one website!

Thank you Rachel, and thank you One Pretty Thing!

Learning the Biz

Every morning, I check my google reader list for new ideas, inspiration, and tips over breakfast and the Today Show. With my commitment to take Connect the Dots to the next level, I especially look forward to learning about the biz skills required to start building products, a brand, and a business.

I thought I'd share a few of my favorite resources here. In the wide world of the internet, there is so much information about everything that it's completely overwhelming. I've narrowed my intake to three main blogs - they feed my curiosity in bite-sized, manageable, and delicious chunks.

Meylah - http://meylah.com/meylah

Meylah is a fabulous blog with lots of information about biz skills like marketing, communicating with customers, and keeping your work fresh. I love how everything is always broken into steps, like "Branding You: 5 Ways to Build a Community." They're focused on connecting people together (see why I love??) to share information and resources, and they even recently completely changed the site so that readers can add content, set up shops, and share byte-size learning (mini tutorials). One thing that I particularly like about Meylah is that while the strategies apply to businesses across the board, it's specifically crafts focused - so it's directly relevant to my work.

Art Biz Blog - www.artbizblog.com

Art Biz Blog was created by Alyson Stanfield, an artist consultant, as a resource for artists to learn more effective ways of promoting their work. After following her daily bits of advice on things like promoting your work by guest blogging and strategies for collecting contact information for a mailing list, I was convinced to buy her book, I'd Rather Be in the Studio: The Artist's No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion. The book is helping me realize how being artist means so much more than just creating art - there are so many things that need to be done to effectively share and sell that art! This book is FULL of resources and guidance. It's mostly geared toward more fine art, but I think the ideas can apply to any business. I highly recommend it!

Crafting an MBA - www.craftmba.com

I just started following this blog by Megan Auman when I saw her post on Running Your Business vs. Pursuing Your Hobby. She shares daily business skills and strategies for crafters, and also offers ebooks and workshops on specific topics. I can already tell that this is going to be a directly relevant, useful resource.

Your turn: What are your favorite online resources? I'd like to hear about what blogs you look at. Share them below!

Carole Ann