all things girls can tell

the view from here

 

this morning, i got up early (well, early for a monday when you're self employed and therefore dictate your own schedule), got dressed, played with janie dog for a little while, put on my clunky boots, then quickly made my way out the door.

i finally got my new studio workspace (mostly) set up for business on friday afternoon - i was so excited to get in and get to work. so excited that the slushy snow from the 28.5 inches (!) that fell over the weekend and that the great cafe i was hoping to grab a cup of coffee from on my way was closed barely bothered me.

so here i am at my desk and it's really lovely. everything has that great 'fresh start' feeling, where productivity comes super naturally. so i thought i'd share my new view, and mention that i've been hard at work on some great new springtime designs (to counter balance all that snow!). i'll share them here soon, as well.

 

drexel school farewell party

 

at the end of the block, south of my house, has stood this stately, decrepit, old school building. you can see its gorgeous arched brick openings with its dignified keystones from my backyard (here's a photo i took the summer before i moved in looking down the alley from my yard toward the school). as years have gone by, i knew that the likelihood of the school being salvaged and made into something amazing (the type of potential you're trained to see in such lovely bones of buildings in architecture school) was decreasing by the day.

as beautiful a relic as it is, it began to cross the line from lovely and abandoned to ominous and threatening over the past months. trees rooted themselves at the roofline, their roots weaving their way down the brick facade, causing a hazard to pedestrians and cars on the street. the fenced off areas of sidewalks attracted the grossest types of litter. it became an unfortunate eyesore at street level.

finally, the city put up demolition notices. our neighborhood association scrambled to arrange a meeting with L&I and our city council representative to learn what the impact would be on us and our houses during the project. so, we're now a week into what we're told will be a 5-6 demolition. i'm posting photos of the demolition (as i happen to walk by) in this flickr set.

best tip: what a difference a year makes

 

in wrapping up some of my figures and things for january (how is it february already?), out of curiosity, i took a glance back at my numbers from the same month a year ago. last january was officially the first month that girlscantell was my full time occupation (after three years of being my favorite side project).

much to my surprise, and despite having so many other giant projects begging my time all month, my online sales were more than double what they were last year. but that was the least of it - in january 2010, i also added several new stockists (check out the newly updated list here to find great local shops that carry girlscantell!), and i managed to restock almost half of the shops on the list that were in need of more wares after the holidays.

i'm not tooting my own horn, i promise, as much as i'm saying, whoa, what a difference a year makes. most people who know me learn pretty quickly that i'm not a patient person, but i've learned a huge lesson in these past months -that those wise old words "slow and steady wins the race" totally hold true. great businesses aren't built quickly, they develop through week after weeks of putting in the time. so many small business owners get frustrated when they don't see crazy successful results overnight. that's not only totally unrealistic, it's really not even what you want (unless being a flash in the pan is your end goal, i suppose). 

hero blog: urban cartography

 

if you're a fan of info-graphics or edward tufte, there's no way you won't enjoy urbancartography . i pop over to wander through and get a little lost (intentionally, of course) on the internet whenever i need a little visual stimulation or just want to be wowed with gorgeous information. there's just so much there to poke through, it's completely overwhelming (in a very , very good way). it's a site i love - just a great, thought provoking collection of images, really, and hope you enjoy it, as well.

 

be mine- new designs!

at long last, here are the brand new, super sweet valentine's designs i've been working on for the past few weeks. without further ado, i present two lovely new diagrams:

i have to admit, i think i had more fun drawing the valentine candy more than i've enjoyed drawing any diagram so far...

(three guesses as to why...)

finally, i have to thank my sweet friend, rachel (who makes makes gorgeous rings), not only great idea for the diamond ring design, but also for her help in researching the bits and coming up with proper terminology for all the pieces and parts. i love it!

i'd wanted to post these sooner, but between bathroom craziness (it's coming along, slowly) and getting my wisdom teeth pulled (yes, january was a fun month to be sure), today was the soonest they could make their debut. better (almost) late than never, right?

and through sunday, all these valentine goodies and more are 20% off at http://shop.girlscantell.com! just use the code "BEMINE" at checkout for 20% off your entire order.

best tip: establishing genuine relationships

 

people often ask what the trick is to supporting yourself through a small creative business (or, we'll pretend that's what they're asking when they gawk "you can make a living doing that?" when i mention what i do for a living...).  while there is, of course, no magic tip or trick to make it easy. there are simple things you can do to make things go as smoothly as possible.

the first would be to establish genuine relationships. this probably applies not only to making a living through your handmade art or what-have-you, but also just to, you know, life in general (but i won't claim to be any expert on the matter of "life in general", so i'll stick to blogging what i know...)

• customers - because without them, cheesy as it might sound, you don't have a business. this might sound obvious, but i think people forget this sometimes. so be real. be relate-able. be honest. give them your best. it'll pay off.
• 'employees' - you might not have people on the payroll (dream as you will), but it probably takes more than you to make your business work. the people who make your venues run, who manage the boutiques or shops that carry your work, the bloggers who feature your products... it's really important to not only communicate well with these people, but being consistently easy to work with, helpful, useful and just plain friendly can be the most important thing you do for your business.
• the 'competition' - the truth is, you don't have 'competition' unless you decide those other sellers are your enemies instead of your friends. which is just silly. be consistently honest, open, original and level-headed and things will fall into place. share something you learned with another seller who asks your advice or when you fall in love with someone's work, let them know - no one gets tired of hearing that people like what they do. these are the seemingly casual relationships that not only make work more fun, they really add up to more than the sum of their pieces.

the wise and witty conan o'brien said it best when he mentioned that if you're kind and work hard,amazing things will happen. truer words couldn't be spoken of succeeding in handmade business.

dressing my new bathroom

you may recall that i mentioned just a few short weeks ago that i was completely renovating the (tiny) bathroom in my little house. i'm really excited about the progress we've made, but now i need your help!

i've done all the big decision making by now - picked the tile, the fixtures, tweaked the layout and everything's falling nicely into place. so now comes the fun part - picking the accessories! i need a shower curtain and a pretty (little) bath mat / rug to make it feel nice.

so far, i really like the following curtains and things, but i'd love, love, love to see what you've been drooling over! i'm positive i'm missing something really wonderful (ideally in the less than $100 range...) so link away in the comments! so you know what you're working with, the tile i chose is primarily white (forgive me for being dull -  think of it as a lovely new canvas), with really classic patterns (overall, i'd describe it as neutral retro... does that make sense?) a pop of color would be nice, but i'm not opposed to staying nice and light and just playing with texture, either...

 
from urban outfitters 

from india rose

from sprout home

what can you find that's more exciting?
(ps. in case you've never checked, the selection of shower curtains on etsy is pretty dismal. almost in an entertaining way, i guess...)

tags by place

 

mid-printing for a couple wholesale orders i recently shipped, i realized i was running dangerously low on hang tags (do they count as hang tags if they don't really hang? they just sort of lay on top of most of my work... lay tags?). luckily i remembered that my friend and studio-neighbor, jeff, prints all kinds of beautiful things on his fancy schmancy photo printers, and so i whipped together a new tag design and we printed them up. 

 

i'd always wanted to customize tags for a few of the fun places that sell my work, so i was incredibly pleased with the results. yay!

super poppies!

 

surely you've seen some of your favorite artisans and craftistas begging your vote for the 2010 poppy awards in the past few weeks. poppytalk handmade has assembled several ballots full of outstanding talent, and girlscantell is proud to have been nominated for the "favourite textiles" category. yay!

so, you know the drill, loves - click here and vote for girlscantell. then be sure to pass the link on to your friends and family through facebook, twitter, email, etc. and tell them to vote for girlscantell! voting lasts until this friday, january 29, at midnight.

if girlscantell wins a poppy, i'll post a special victory sale (which means you all win, really!) so get to voting!

hero blog: daily drop cap

ored of typographically dull blog posts? look no further. the perfect cure for the fonts that ail you, daily drop cap is a blog that posts a superfun new capital letter goodie each (work)day. what is a drop cap, exactly? well, it's when you take the first letter of a paragraph and you enlarge it (and usually make it quite ornate) so that it drops down two or more lines (as seen on the left at the beginning of this paragraph). drop caps are often used to begin works of fiction, or, if you're feeling fancy, you can use a drop cap to begin a special blog post.

superfun, right? totally. the blog is a side project for jessica hische, and she's posted each weekday since september 2009. according to her website, the project will go through approximately 12 cycles of the alphabet (yay!). enjoy!