At long last, after I fear way too much hype, I am excited to share details about my newest business venture. This post has a lot of text, but first, a short video trailer :
MAKE29trailer from elise blaha on Vimeo.
It's called make29 and it officially launches on 2/22, my 29th birthday.
If you have followed along here for a little while, you know I love a good birthday challenge. The original was when I turned 22 and decided to decorate a playing card everyday for a year. Then for a few years, I would make a list of things to accomplish where the number of things matched the age I was turning. I switched things up when I turned 26 and decided to complete 26 craft projects. When I turned 27, I set out to use 27 different materials to create 27 different projects.
Over the years, I have had varying degrees of success with these ventures. Only once did I complete my original mission within my birthday year. But ultimately, I flexed my creativity muscles and attempted something new because of the challenges.
I wanted to re-enter the birthday challenge game on my 29th birthday and I really wanted to try something different with my business. This venture combines the two and was imagined last October in a long, late-night notebook scribbling session.
Starting on February 22nd, I am going to launch one handmade product in my shop a month. The items will be produced and sold in editions of 29 or 290. They vary greatly in materials used, but all are related to something I have tried, written about on the blog (which I have been keeping since I was 20!) or loved over the past nine years.
Some of the items are relatively easy to produce (like letterpress prints!) and those will be the larger editions of 290. Some of them are very time intensive (like knit blankets!) and those will be the smaller editions of 29.
The goal is to celebrate the past decade and challenge myself professionally and creatively. I am taking this year to really experiment with my business and see what sells and what I like producing best. I am taking this year to play with new and old methods and materials. I am taking this year to develop some really awesome items that make me proud.
It has been a really long time since I have been so excited about a business project. I am so pumped about this venture. I am starting with an empty shop. And a year from now, I'll have created myself or collaborated on twelve wildly different items.
This year is going to be crazy busy, crazy inspiring and I can already tell it's going to fly. You can see the "official" website for this project here (man, do I love playing with HTML).
Product one will go live here on February 22nd but I will share more details (including release time) on the blog during the week before.
