The Avid Scrapper: January 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010

{January's Poll}

Here are the final results of January's poll:
What Scrapbook Items Are You Most Interested In?

50Votes Total! {Awesome Ü}

Pre-Made Pages
23 votes (46%)

Pre-Made Chipboard Albums
7 votes (14%)

Pre-Made Die Cuts
5 votes (10%)

Pre-Made Complete Albums
11 votes (22%)

Pre-Made Cards
5 votes (10%)

Page Kits
24 votes (48%)

Card Kits
6 votes (12%)

Page Helpers {Titles, images, journaling tags}
14 votes (28%)

Patterns
16 votes (32%)

Blank Chipboard Albums
5 votes (10%)

Instruction Sheets
15 votes (30%)

How To's & Tips
19 votes (38%)

Thanks again, everyone! ♥

Monday, January 18, 2010

{Just Asking...}

Above, you will find a poll that I am running for the next couple of weeks. I have had a lot of new ideas come to me about how I want to move forward with my craft and this blog. If you can just take a few minutes and let me know how I can better serve all you scrapbookers and crafters, I would really appreciate it!

If you have any other suggestions or comments, just leave me a comment here. Thanks♥

°Ü°

Sunday, January 17, 2010

{Taking Back the Reins}

Happy New Year! I hope 2010 has gotten off to a great start for you. Mine started out a little bumpy, but it is smoothing out and I am really trying to enjoy each day of this year.

I have spent the past week, or so, organizing my scrapbook supplies. Going through every paper pack, all of my embellishments and tools and just taking inventory. For those of you who have, what can be considered, a small scrapbook store of your own, you know how quickly it all piles up and just how easily it is to forget what you have! It's a lot! I've got to get busy and start scrappin' if I plan on buying anything new anytime soon. °Ü°

I have also been working on pages for a class I will be teaching this year: Disney pages! I am so excited about it. Our first pages will be "I ♥ Mickey" and it will steam roll from there. My motivation for doing the class is so that I can get all of my DisneyLand and DisneyWorld photos into albums. What better way to get motivated and actually do it than sitting down with 10 friends each month and scrapping! I'm really looking forward to it. For those of you who have a Cricut and the Disney cartridges, I will post how-to's here on my blog so that if you like the pages, you can create them for your own albums. {The pages cannot be copied and re-created for sale, but I am more than happy to help you with ideas for building your Disney albums.} Look for the first of the pages to be posted in February.

Now, with a New Year comes the dirty "R" word: RESOLUTIONS. Like most, I work on them for a few weeks and give up and move on. So, this year, my resolution was NO resolutions! Trust me, it's not because I am perfect, I am far from it! It's just I don't want to add anymore failures to the already too of a long list. I do, however, have one goal for myself and that is to stop and smell the roses more this year. If there is anything that 2009 taught me it is that life is passing me by way to quickly. Time has become a thief, stealing away precious moments. I spent most of New Year's Eve wondering where the year had gone. SO, I have taken my days and my life back! I am slowing down and learning to enjoy the moments, even the icky ones, because good can come from them, too. I am taking more time to read, exercise, think and plan my days. I am spending more time with my girls and my sweet husband and even showing more love to our cat, Boo-Boo kitty! I am managing my time more wisely and have taken back the reigns so that not one precious moment passes me by this year. There is at least one rose in each day, ladies! Don't forget to take the time to stop and smell it, enjoy it and allow it to enrich your life!

A Little About Me

Hello! My name is Carla. I am a wife to a wonderful man and mother to two beautiful daughters and two adorable fur babies. I have always loved taking photos and creating a special place for them to be cherished and shared. In my childhood and teen years, it was my journals that played host to my early scrapbooks. I really started to work on my craft in 1999 and there has been no slowing down since then. Scrapbooking is very therapeutic for me and gives me a chance to express "Carla" in ways I couldn't do otherwise. This blog is where you can see a little of what I create. I hope that you are inspired by all that you see here. I welcome questions and comments, so please feel free to drop me a note on my posts, or you can contact me via email. I ♥ hearing from you! °Ü°

Understanding the Cost of Custom Work:

I get emails for custom work all the time. I would say, that on a weekly basis, I get at least 8-10 emails requesting specific themes. I love hearing from everyone and truthfully, I am honored that there are so many of you who love my designs, style of scrap booking and work so much that you would love to make it apart of their memory albums. The part I find frustrating and sometimes hurtful, is that when I reply to these emails and give pricing, one of three things happens: 1) I never hear back from the person 2) I get an email back arguing price and saying they won't pay it unless I drop the price 3) A sweet apology that they can't do it right now (this would be the rarest of the emails, however, it is the most appreciated!)

I understand that in today's economy, that scrap booking pages and albums are truly a luxury purchase. I also understand that everyone is trying to get the most for their money. Aren't we all?

Here is the side I would like you to try to understand.

I am a crafter by trade. I scrapbook for fun and I scrapbook for a living. I need to be home with my family taking care of them and our home, and this is the working relationship that works best for us and our family's needs. Although I get to be home with them, I still spend 30-40 hours a week designing, planning, cutting, hand-cutting at times, and piecing together pages, albums and projects. Pretty much a full time job. Sometimes, ALL of that time is spent on just one album. Sometimes all of that time is spent on just 4-6 pages.

When it comes to my work, I do not cut corners! I only buy the best papers, metal embellishments, adhesives and so on. I take my work seriously, I go over every detail and I know I am not the only crafter who does this. I am simply just one of many who are in this "crafter's boat", if you will. What is minimum wage these days? I honestly do not know. From what I see and know, is it about $7 per hour. Maybe I should look it up... okay, according to US Dept of Labor, the minimum wage is $6.55 hour. The average person making M.W. makes $262 for a 40 hour work week BEFORE taxes, etc. Wow. that doesn't leave a lot for the bring home amount, does it? The average spread, (2) 12X12 pages together, takes me 8-12 hours to design and put together. {There have been a handful that have taken me closer to 16. I keep track for how long it takes to make each.} So let's say I am in "The Zone" and get one done in just 8 hours and I charge $6.55 per hour. That is $52.40. That doesn't even include the materials cost for that spread, that is just my time. Keep that in mind. I actually charge a set fee of $45 for a custom spread. There is extra time and steps that go into each project, like custom names, dates and details. Now, divide $45 by 8. I am making about $5.63 an hour, and then, not even that much because that doesn't include the cost I have already paid for the materials! That is JUST my time. At the end of each custom spread, I am only making about $2-$3 per hour. (REMEMBER, that is only if it took me just the 8 hours, any longer than that and it brings my hourly wage down even more.) That is not a lot for my time, for my design and hard work when it is spelled out that way. What do you think?

Please keep these things in mind when shopping sites like Etsy.com, Ebay.com and personal websites. We crafters put our all into our craft. Each design, every piece is a part our personality and we take a lot of time to put it all together.

I think that everyone, no matter who you are and what you do, wants to have their work appreciated and they don't want others to make them feel that what they are paid for their time and talent isn't worth it. I think my time and talent is worth what little I ask for it. Remember that when you see hand crafted items, time, talent and effort was put into each project. Think about how much time it would take you to do something like that if you were to personally make it, think of professional crafting as some one's career and think about how truly little, the time making it is actually charged for.

Thank you. °Ü°