enJOY it by Elise Blaha Cripe

happy halloween!

Here's my ladybug all dressed up and eating cheddar bunnies in .gif form. We're excited to go trick-or-treating a bit tonight!

And thank you so much for the excitement over the planner. It's going to be good. I promise. I had a great time sharing my story this past month, mostly because the hardest part of blogging for me is coming up with things to write about. For the past 30 days, I only had to come up with half the ideas! Major win. But things will be back to normal around here starting next week. And I'll be sharing bits of planner progress (including what the process for getting a trademark secured looks like!) throughout the next few months.

I am so grateful for your support. Happy Halloween!

AND OH MAN, WELCOME NOVEMBER. A new month is the best.

this is what's next for my business story.

My word for 2014 is whole.

I thought it was going to be a more personal word, but I realized as I've looked back at this year, that what I have been doing most with my work is trying to tell the whole story.

I'm sharing the behind the scenes with MAKE29 products and so many of my blog posts. I'm asking others to do the same each week on the podcast. I just spent a month sharing what my business path looked like.

I know (because I have done it) that it's really easy to look out at Blogland and see ducks floating on a lake: it appears super serene, well-lit and calm above. But when you take a peek underwater, there is a lot of intense paddling going on underneath. (Those donuts aren't going to photograph themselves.)

And so, in the spirit of sharing the whole story, I'm excited to announce (way too early) my plan for a new product:

In 2015, I'll be launching a day planner/goal setting workbook.

I absolutely believe that the only way to make progress on your BIG GOALS is to take small steps EVERY DAY. This product will help you combine the two into one rad, well-designed spiral bound book.

Some of you are thinking "What? Lame. I have an app for that." And (hopefully) others of you are thinking "What? Cool! Can't wait!" But I doubt that too many people are thinking, "Wow. Elise is launching a planner? How totally off-brand and out of left field."

This is my DUUUUUUH, project. As in, of course I would like to try and make my own planner, how did I ever think of wooden ampersands before this?

It's happening. And if all goes as planned (pun intended) it's going to be KILLER.

I am working with Jolby & Friends out of Portland, Oregon on the design. It will be produced in the USA. It will be full of useful space and it will be meant to get scribbled in. This is not a fancy "let's decorate it!" book. This is a GET TO WORK BOOK^TM. (Don't worry though, it's going to look good too.)

The catch is that it's October 30 and I'm telling you about a day planner that will not be available on January 1. This is a risk because Blogland (including me!) tends to want stuff...yesterday.

But hey, it is what it is.

Instead of staying secret and dancing around it for six months, I've decided to share the process as I work on this new project because that's what I like to do.

So, the current plan is to sell the first edition of the planner early next summer. It will be designed for use from July 2015-June 2016 following an academic calendar. This will sort of be a "soft-opening" for me to see how things go and get an idea about quantities. I love that I can stress the "you don't have to start working towards your dreams on January 1" message (which is true) and I know that some people - like students, teachers, parents and new college grads - might like to work with the academic calendar anyway.

Then there will be a big launch of the 2016 traditional annual planner. (And hopefully more to come after that.)

I'm waiting what feels like forever to launch because first of all, MAKE29 deserves it's due. I have three more ideas I am excited to work on and share. But second, and more important: I don't want to rush it. This is the product that I can see really growing. It's a planner right now but in five years, it could also be a desk calendar. A wall calendar. A notebook. A wholesale line. An app. A goal-setting community website (with a much catchier title than that). 

But that is not important today. What's important right now is that I make the best product I can.

There are some really cool features being worked into this planner. Different concepts that I haven't seen before (though I am sure they've been done by someone). But more important than the "extras" is the fact that this is going to be a planner built for practicality. I am testing every design we come up with (literally working with the pages at my desk on a daily basis) to make sure it's IDEAL for keeping track of to-dos and making progress on your goals.

So, that's the news. That's the finale. Exciting? Hopefully! Anti-climatic? Very possibly! Over-hyped?! Almost always! But what's that saying? Sometimes the journey is better than the destination? Let's hope!

Thank you so much for reading. Cheers to following your dreams.

love and thumbs-up emojis, elise

ps: did you miss the small business story? start with post one and work your way through all eleven.

this is my business story : part eleven.

read part ten here.

After having a baby in 2013, I entered 2014 feeling a bit more like myself. I had a plan to close the stamp shop, launch MAKE29 and start the podcast. Basically in that order.

As I mentioned earlier, my markup on stamps was not enough to grow or fuel this business and truthfully, I was bored and ready to move on. If I can't get excited about my own product, how I can expect anyone else to? So closing shop was an easy and non-stressful decision.

I was ready for the next thing: MAKE29. I have written a lot about this already but in sum : the goal of MAKE29 is to figure out what's next for me. I am experimenting with a lot of different mediums, products and price points to see what works. I used MAKE29 as a reason to launch a newsletter and have rebuilt parts of my website to support it.

MAKE29 has been a phenomenal learning experience and creative exercise for me. A huge amount of my energy this year is going into developing the 12 editions and creating a shopping experience that focuses on the story behind the products I am selling. I have just three editions to go and I am 99% sure I know what they are going to be. Maybe the most important thing to note is that I'm still loving this project. Usually, 3/4 of the way through something, I'm itching for the next thing, but (maybe because the products have been so varied?) that's not the case this year.

In April, I launched my podcast. I've talked about the process of starting the podcast, but I never shared why I decided I wanted to host a podcast. In fall 2013, for a online workshop at Big Picture, I hosted a video chat with some students. For an hour I answered questions live via video. I finished that super chat hyped up. I came out from the office nearly giddy and told Paul I wanted to be doing something like that.

What if I hosted something similar to small business owners like me? People could pay a small fee to take the class and then I would just talk for an hour or so about whatever came up, answering questions along the way. We agreed it sounded fun, but complicated. So then I thought maybe I could do one-on-one coaching and question-and-answer sessions via skype. That also sounded fun, but also redundant.

So then I realized I should just do a podcast. Same idea: I get to talk about business, other people (including me) get to learn about business. There's no initial money, but there is also no pressure or expectation. I'm "giving away" content but learning so much. I am so glad I went this route instead of the others.

Throughout everything, you have probably noticed that the blog keeps chugging away. The blog is the foundation for all of this and I am well aware of it. Some people can run a business without a blog. Right now, I am not one of them. 2014 has felt very natural at the keyboard and I have enjoyed writing so much this year.

This summer, thanks to the blog, I had the opportunity to speak at WDS. It was the coolest thing I have ever done (other than normal life milestones like graduating college, becoming a family, finishing Harry Potter, discovering a new show on Netflix, etc.). If you're curious, I didn't get paid to speak at WDS. I didn't notice a major uptick in blog hits or shop sales in that month or the months that followed. It hasn't really contributed to my bottom line in a tangible way yet. So, why, I wondered, does it feel so huge compared to other things I have done? What I realized is that at WDS, for the first time, I was able to speak in real life about my real passion.

And my real passion, I've learned over the past decade, is not working in a tall building and wearing a suit. It's not making frames, mini books or Project Life spreads. It's not blogging. It's not taking photos. It's not selling art prints or plant stands. It's not decorating playing cards or my house. It's not planning an orange and gray wedding or sewing quilts. 

My passion is helping people realize that what they want is attainable through a bold statement and hard work. My about page has said this clearly since 2010:

The one piece of information that I would want a reader of this blog to take away is everything is what you make of it. Have a goal? Write it down. Then set a plan and make it happen.

At WDS I was able to stand up and share that message. I was able to look back on my seemingly random body of work and see that the thing that holds it all together is the idea that I feel my best when I am actively pursuing a goal. It was awesome speak to such a wide variety of people about one unifying subject.

After WDS, I had a chance to speak on the phone with book agent about writing a book. What's held me back in the past and continues to hold me back now is that I don't just want to write a book to write a book. I want to write a book because I can't not write a book. Today, I feel like I can say everything I need to say through the blog or an ecourse or the podcast. Maybe someday the current outlets I have won't be enough and that will be the day I get working on the rad table of contents I have saved on my iPhone notes app.

In the meantime, I've told this story. I've written over 9500 words to share how I believe I got from A to B. After hammering this out, I have realized it's less complicated than it seemed, but that might be due to selective memory.

Here's what I know: I feel better about my career path today than I felt in 2003, 2007, 2010 or 2012. I feel like everything I've done has led me exactly to here. And here is a pretty great place to be.

About two months ago, I had My Idea. Elise's Big Idea, if you will.* I figured out what the point of all this (the reading, the writing, the business major, the marketing emphasis, the Type A personality, the retail working, the handmade, the selling, the teaching, the PR internship, the stamps, the oversharing, the speaking, the everything) has been and (finally) found The Product that I am supposed to be working on. It's not MAKE30. It's not a book. It's not bread baking. It's (tragically) not the 2014 version of The Baby-Sitter's Club.

I'll share more about it tomorrow, in the final installment. I'll warn you though, the path to getting that product to market is longer than my average four day turn-around and we won't "see" it until next spring.

to be continued...

*I'm not ashamed to admit that on 10/14, when I figured out a way to bring this story full circle I high-fived myself.

Today on ELISE GETS CRAFTY I am chatting with author Kari Chapin about following creative dreams. Click here to subscribe or stream the episode from your computer here.

project life 2014 : october.

I am taking a less traditional approach to Project Life in 2014. Often that means not many layouts, just one or two a month. It's been fun to just make SOMETHING each month without worrying about documenting EVERYTHING.

click to enlarge

This month I used Studio Calico's Walden Project Life kit and the film photos I shared earlier this morning.

This month, I really loved playing with the color in the patterned cards and the color in the photos to make an almost an ombre transition across the spread. The patterns were so great in this kit. And I loved that heart filled with triangles stamp.

Ahhhhh, these photos. I love. And that floral card is not too bad either.

I used just one card for journaling and then pulled all the photos together with small journaling spots that matched. Just random, tiny details about Ellerie in October.

Thank you so much for following along. See my title page for this album here and 2014 album progress here.

Supplies : Studio Calico Walden kit, teal stazon ink, zig Millennium pen.

october on film.

These past few months I have talked about my attempt (and so far success) with the capsule wardrobe plan. I've also talked about how I don't care to organize my digital archives. And I have mentioned that there is nothing quite like film.

All of these things have been on my mind.

Less stuff ... could that translate to less photos? Should that translate to less photos? Hmmmmm.

I like film for many reasons but one of them is that you get what you get. It's limited to 36 photos. That's it.

I decided to try an experiment and for the first half of October and I kept my film camera in plain sight so I'd remember to take a photo of Ellerie each day. (It sat right on her bookshelf which meant I ended up capturing a lot of post nap photos.) It's crazy how badly I wanted to just use the whole roll at once. Or how much I wanted to glance down and see if I had indeed captured her head tilt.

But I waited (as film forces you to do). And tried as hard as I could to just take one photo a day.

And almost every day I failed and took at least two (which is why my experiment ended on 10/19 instead of 10/31).

But there were more than a few times when I thought maybe (hopefully?) I had captured magic.

Last week I dropped off the photos (I develop at a local place) and waited my one hour until pickup. And then frantically ripped open the package before I was out the door.

Sigh.

I got it. I got it. The head tilt.

But what thrilled me more is that these photos are so her right now. The expressions! EEEKS! Some of these are not the expressions that would catch my eye if I was picking from 40 different but similar photos from my DSLR or iPhone. They are not the moments I would choose to print if I had my pick from infinite digital storage. But they are the ones that I got during the month of October. And somehow that makes them so amazingly her. Her fifteen-month old personality radiates through these.

It's a little early to be setting 2015 goals (just kidding, it's never too early), but I think I'm going to attempt to take one roll of Ellerie a month next year. I'll stick my printed 4x6 photos in a beautiful album just like the old days. I'll frame my favorites with huge white mats in our hallway (finally! a plan for the hallway!). I'll worry less about getting my big camera out and see if I can make it work with just film and the iPhone.

Sounds like a plan.

*I've had a Canon EOS Rebel XS since high school that I still use whenever I shoot film. I shoot with this 50mm lens. My photo developer sticks the images on a CD for me, so these are the un-touched digital files.