all things girls can tell

book report: ruhlman's twenty

photo by matthew kayahara

i used to think it was odd that erik pretty much only reads cook books. well, cook books + culinary magazines. aside from a few prized cookbooks i've accumulated over the years (amazing gals nigella + julia), i never paid much mind to cookbooks. that's changed a bit now, since there is always at least one on the coffee table, and i'll read just about anything you put in front of me.

the most recent cookbook to grace the coffee table is ruhlman's twenty - twenty methods + basics of cooking knowledge, with accompanying recipes for each one (erik got the ratio book a few months ago, and swears by it - i admit, it's a slightly dry but incredibly fascinating read). when flipping through twenty the other night, i couldn't help but notice how the first chapter - mise en place - was not only the most logical, sensible way to begin cooking, but really the only way to begin any sort of project. ruhlman advocated not only setting out the things you need for your recipe, but clearing the work surface of everything else. it was so sensible. before i successfully set out to get anything done, i need to clear my work table and get everything i need set out. when i don't observe this habit? the project never goes as smoothly, if it gets finished at all.

so i thought i'd share this little revelation with you - there's so much that we, makers, share with other artisans, and this chapter just got me thinking about what i do a little differently. it's fun to learn something about what you do from people who do something so different, but so similar.

process: cutting coasters

i hand cut each + every girls can tell coaster. first i cut felt from a giant, 12 yard bolt of industrial felt into 7.5" strips. then i cut the strips down into squares.

then i print each square by hand with the diagrams you buy, allow them to dry overnight, then cut the printed squares into 4 equal coaster-sized squares. each set is then tied with one yard of baker's twine, and topped with a girls can tell button.

and now you have the perfect place to put your cup of tea! xo!

a word on knock offs

I've been hesitant to post on this topic for a few reasons today (not the least of which being that I'm supposed to be packing up the studio to move into the new work|shop today), but I've been mulling + mulling... Here goes...

If you'd prefer to have a random towel that you traced artwork that isn't yours onto with (what's more or less) a sharpie in your kitchen, so be it.

Professionally handmade work isn't for everyone. If you don't want to buy a towel that I hand printed through Anthropologie's website or through my own website (where I've been selling these towels myself for years), I probably can't stop you from making a cheapie version for your own use.

However, you should know the hours upon hours that I've put into sourcing the very best floursack towels (100% floursack cotton, in what I've deemed the best size ever, milled in the US, that gets softer with wear) and that I've honed my style of illustration for years as my little tiny business has grown (I don't have an MFA, rather a degree in Architecture, but that's a whole other story). I've printed thousands of towels over the past few years for a living (hereby making me a professional). Most importantly, I've worked so very hard over many, many long hours to build my little business and perfect my products.

But if you'd prefer your traced-on sharpie version, knock yourself out.

I stand by my work. And I support my peers - other independent artists - whenever and however I can. I buy less, but sleep easier at night, knowing that how I spend my money is aligned with what I believe.

Those who know me (virtually or, gasp!, in person) know I've been doing this for some time, and that I'm a real person (brutally honest at times, and with a weakness for locally crafted beer). I work really hard and I'm generally pretty nice. While I've been more than fortunate in enjoying some unbelievable successes lately (seriously, pinch me!), I certainly won't be wallpapering my bathroom in benjamins anytime soon. So if you'd rather make your own cheap knock off than support someone who has inspired you in even a tiny way, and if that gives you satisfaction, so be it.

fontifying

i've been having a good bit of fun lately, playing with fontifier. it's the simplest way to make handwritten fonts you could dream up, and while it's not perfect, it's pretty amazing.

  

inspiration (or the opposite)

probably the question most commonly asked of artists is about inspiration - "what inspires you?". and this is is typically followed by some flowery response about a) nature, b) urbanity, c) something about childhood, d) great successful artists or any combination of the above. i have to say that this question always makes me cringe when people ask (and not just because it's one of the most average questions you can ask an artist). 

while some (dare i say most?) artists are happy to carry on about all the things that they absorb each day to inform their work and inspire new ideas, my process doesn't quite work like that. in a word, looking around, the thing that inspires me most is what i don't see. i'm a working artist - sincde trade shows full of retail work in convention halls and craft shows surrounded by my peers on busy streets during the summer months are where i spend a large chunk of my time, it's hard not to let those experiences influence my work. when looking around, i often find myself thinking about what's not being done, where there are gaps and what i'm not seeing. then i begin to formulate ideas for new products and designs from there.

i have to admit that this isn't the most glamorous inspiration (or lack thereof), but it makes me happy. not only do i rarely or never have concerns of my work being too similar to other work that's out there, but from a very practical standpoint, if i haven't seen much of something in the world of handmade, odds are most customers haven't either, which is also good for business (for the most part). how does your inspiration inspire you to create work that is different?

best tips: facebook as a tool (not a toy)

slowly but surely, i've noticed several of my peers shuttering up various online presences, most notably, facebook. the reason for this, for the most part, has been that they find maintaining a presense on so many applications to be a time-suck. and i totally understand that - it's easy to lose valuable hours of your week poking and browsing and snooping around on facebook. we've all done it.

but i do think it's a shame to just give up such a potentially useful resource because of an inclination to get click-happy. i've always been of the mindset that it's important to be where people are going to look for you. and whether we like it or not, there are certain people who are potentially going to look for you on facebook. they internet through facebook. it's not how i internet, but it's 20111, and facebook is a force to be reckoned with for sure.

so how can we, as tiny creative business people, use facebook as a tool and not get sucked into facebook as a toy? here are some ideas and guidelines i've been following (and plan to follow through the year) to make the most of facebook:

• only post to facebook if you have actual content to post - no filler! and if you want to post something often, do something worthy of posting first. which means creating actual work often.
• take facebook off of your bookmark tool bar. or however you click into facebook. don't make it easy, because then you're more likely to "check in" without thinking about it. make your visits to the site intentional and purposeful. 
• use a service like postling to monitor comments + activity on social networking sites all in one place, without having to log in. postling is great - they send you a daily synopsis of all activity related to your profile on sites you link to from them. i get an email each morning with comments from twitter, facebook, flicker, my blog, etc right in my inbox without having to check each site or the temptation to click through my friend's posts (which is the inadvertant time-suck).
• choose a set "down time" to actually go through and browse, click and comment to your heart's desire. there's a lot of great stuff out there - i know you don't want to miss it all. pick a routine that works for you - maybe a half hour coffee break at 10:30am to sit and absorb the internet. set a timer and don't let yourself play past your designated browse time. 

the whole point of setting up a business profile on facebook is to keep your fans + friends apprised of what's new with your business. you don't want to overwhelm them with too many posts, and you don't want to let your profile sit totally domant, either. obviously the strength of an application like facebook is the potential for feedback and interaction, so consider creative ways to engage people with the content you provide on your business's profile. by focusing on quality and not quantity and really remembering to treat facebook as a tool and not a toy, you can totally find a happy medium for social networking.

inspiration + comparison

one of the things i most want to work on this year is to keep getting better at making sure that i use all of the great stuff i see being made + getting as inspiration. because the alternative - just comparing myself and my business to all of the other amazing people and content around the internet - is really counter productive. for me, this comes in waves. like most people, i'll go through a period of being really motivated by all the fantastic stuff out there. i know i'm not the best at always documenting and sharing what i'm working on (that's another thing i'm determined to work on this year), but it always feels great to know i'm doing good work and being really productive.

then there are periods where i look around at my peers, at other people who are professional creatives, and i feel admittedly jealous of the work they're doing. it's hard to look around, check my twitterstream full of amazing artists, browse blogs packed with unbelievable projects and not compare what i'm working on and how i spend my time to these people.

i have the awesome privilege of making things for a living and yet, sometimes i still can't figure out how people manage to fit it all in. then i have to remember that they're all human, too, and they also only have 24 hours in a day. it's just choices we make on how to spend our time.

this year i'm attacking this dilemma of inspiration + comparison with a two pronged sword: on one hand, i'll keep reminding myself that i do a whole lot of pretty cool stuff and on the other, i'll work harder to figure out better ways to free up time by letting people help me as my business get bigger. it's hard to find the balance between being inspired by everything you see around you and being intimidated by comparing yourself to it.

the fine line of a business blog

happy new year!

i can't believe it's been a whole month since i've posted any real content here! it's almost embarassing just seeing all those posts of things i've been cleaning out lined up there in a row...

there are just a couple reasons why i didn't compose any real posts here in december, the most obvious of which being that i was fortunate enough to be featured in some amazing holiday gift guides, and holiday sales were out of this world. it was fantastic, hard work, at times frustrating, stressful, exhilirating and overall, completely amazing. in prioritizing my time, i realized that getting all of my customers exactly what they wanted by the time they wanted it was more pressing than getting out my thoughts here - which probably seems obvious.

the other reason i didn't post anything here (other than photos of things i've decided i don't need anymore) is the smart, simple rule "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". as i mentioned earlier, the holidays were fantastic, hard work, at times frustrating, stressful, exhilirating and overall, completely amazing. for every rewarding moment, there was usually a moment of wanting to tear my hair out when something beyond my control stressed me out. there were a few times that i started to write, but realized nothing i had to say at that point was constructive, useful or something that i'd want posted on the internet for any length of time.

i realized that it's important to use my blog for good and not evil. there's a fine line between using your blog to show the inner happenings of your business and exposing too much of the guts of your job.

just two short years ago...

right about two years ago, i received a short phone call and learned that my job had "been eliminated". as i'm sure many of you unfortunately can relate to, it was totally unexpected and kind of frightening. it was the night before thanksgiving, and my parents were already on their way over to our house. i let myself cry and feel truly upset for about five minutes, then quickly cleaned up and decided to wait until just after the holiday to tell anyone (mostly because i wasn't really in the mood to spend all of thanksgiving dinner talking about it). honestly, i think i also wanted to forget what had happened for just a little longer.

best tips: spreadsheets: the big picture!

i noticed i've been explaining this apparently little-known fact about myself to a whole bunch lately, and so i realized it was probably worth mentioning here. i have a spreadsheet for just about everything. not surprisingly, given i draw diagrams for a living, i loooove when information is super well organized, and for me, spreadsheets do just that.

what types of spreadsheets do i have? mostly, i have one big giant spreadsheet i use for every year, as sort of a "big picture" tool, to keep me on track every month.why? well, because girls can tell is how i make a living and pay my bills, and when you're a fairly type A person, not knowing how much you're actually going to make in a given month can be scary, to put it mildly. this big picture spreadhseet really calms my nerves (or, you know, scares the shit out of me and motivates me to get printing!) and also helps me to run my business more effectively. which is, of course, super important since 98% of girls can tell is just me. knowing information is all in one place can be a big time saver, and being able, for example, to see that a good wholesale client hasn't placed an order in seven months is much easier to notice when you have this information documented and organized. so, in a nutshell, spreadsheets sometimes earn me money, in a way.

within this big picture spreadsheet of mine, i have many tabs for different aspects of my business. sales records, for consignment, wholesale and craft show by month. a comprehensive look at spending - on materials, shipping and more, a sheet for craft show income + expenses, and a database of any consignment or wholesale boutiques that carry my work. these are all organized on their own sheets, which i then pull the totals from and put them on the big, mega front sheet (sort of my overview... when you see the file, you'll see exactly what i mean). you can also download sales info from your etsy shop as a csv file and use that information to complete your spreadsheet, as well.

so, because i like you, Download Big picture 2010, the blank template of the file i use. yay! it's an xls (excel) file, and honestly pretty bare-bones, because i actually just use google docs (because i'm a mac! and i also love google! you can open this file with google docs, too, if you don't have excel) but you'll get the idea. just the habit of forcing yourself to sit down every so often and fill in all these blanks makes a world of difference in how you operate on a day to day basis. realizing how much you spent on materials in a certain month vs. how much you actually sold online in the same month can be eye opening. i also have spreadsheets to keep track of which of my products are listed in which venues online, since i seel my work in a few places. there's no limit to how many spreadsheets can be useful.

is this system slick and perfect? nope. it's actually pretty crude. but it most definitely works for me. will it work for you? maybe, maybe not. i highly recommend tweaking it in whatever way makes sense to you. because, when it comes right down to it, tweaking things to make them fit what you're doing is what building your own business is all about anyway.