Bright and Cheerful

Now that I've moved on from making Christmas and holiday buttons I'm excited to be working with bright and cheerful buttons.  It's refreshing to be working with the colours again.  I love these owls https://www.etsy.com/listing/115450639/6-small-owl-buttons-handmade-buttons-sew  These are smaller and just the perfect touch.  I'm also very excited to be using a new printing process which makes the buttons even more durable.  It's a bit of a learning process again as it is taking some time to work with the new process and get the colours as I want them.  I'm not looking at this as a setback though.  I'm looking at it as a wonderful opportunity to make my product even better.  I'm also being more selective in what I choose to make.  I'm fortunate that I don't rely on my buttons to pay the bills so I can be more selective.  I do like making custom orders for people because it's always such a thrill to be able to give them exactly what they want.  It brings a smile to my face when they're happy that I have been able to create the perfect embellishment for them.  At the same time I find custom orders stressful because I do want to make the exact button that the customer has in their mind.  For this reason I'm turning down orders that I need to make in a short amount of time if I feel that this will add stress to the process for me.  I don't want to disappoint so I'd rather turn down work than stress about being able to meet an unrealistic timeline.  I hope that doesn't disappoint but I really think part of the joy in the handmade process is to be able to control, to some extent, the work that I take on.  I also want to be able to spend some time making some of my artisan ceramic and glass buttons so I have to step back a bit on the resin buttons to have time to do this.  I do know it's getting close to the cut off for people to purchase buttons for Christmas.  I also plan to put my shop on vacation mode on about December 10th or so.  Most years I leave the shop open and people purchase but I am always concerned that orders won't arrive in time and people will be disappointed.  I'm in Canada so even if purchase by December 10th there is a good possibility the buttons won't arrive in time.  This will cut down on this.  This also allows me time to have a bit of a break and take a vacation without worrying about responding to conversations/emails.  We'll see how that goes.  It does make me a bit anxious about putting the shop in vacation mode but I think I'm going to try it this year.  We'll see if I actually do it when it comes time.  There is a balance I'm trying to achieve between my art and the joy of creating and providing custom orders to my clients while not putting too much additional stress on myself.  I guess that's always the challenge when a product comes directly from the artist.  We'll see how that works out as I try this approach during the upcoming new year.

Christmas Buttons

As I write this it is just mid November but for those of us that make supplies it's now time to start moving on from Christmas items.  I always enjoyed Christmas as a child and I do enjoy making these seasonal buttons.  I especially love the Kawaii Christmas themed buttons https://www.etsy.com/listing/114668972/5-kawaii-christmas-buttons-handmade These are just so cute.  Even though it's just November it's time to start thinking of Valentine's Day and spring themed items.  There really isn't enough time to make more Christmas buttons and get them listed in my shop and in the mail to their new homes.  I have several Christmas themed/snowman themed items already made and I'll try to get these listed this week or on the weekend.  It's hard to tear myself away from these really cute designs though. 

Now it's also time to start thinking about whether I want to go on vacation in December.  We have a vacation booked for February to the Bahamas and I'm really looking forward to that.  We sometimes go away in December as well.  I'm always torn about whether to go or not.  I know - what a terrible dilemma to have to decide on one vacation or two.  Now that the weather here in Canada is getting colder though a warm sunny destination in December sure looks appealing. Since I have the day off from my day job in honour of Remembrance Day (which fell yesterday on Sunday but since it was on a weekend we get the Monday off instead) maybe I'll take a look at the travel sites and see if I can come up with something to entice the hubby to get away.