My blog has a new home...

Hi all!! I just transferred my blog over to WordPress after much trepidation. My main sticking point was that there's an app for WordPress as opposed to Blogger. Now I can post on the go which will hopefully mean more posts!! Please adjust your links to the blog's new home:
http://schmickface.wordpress.com

Also, I should note that I will soon be upgrading/redesigning the SchmickFace Design website, complete with a shopping cart and everything (yippee!!), and my blog will be hosted over there once that happens (another reason for switching to WordPress).

In the meantime, enjoy your weekend! Brian and I are headed to the shore for a mini-vacay (ie- long weekend)- yay!! xoxo!

2 months...

The title of 2 months means a couple of things. Firstly, it's been almost 2 months since my last post, before which I had declared that by June 11th (my 30th birthday), I would have been well on my way to establishing the SchmickFace Design brand. This lack of action brings me to the second reason that 2 months is important. Exactly 2 months from this past Sunday, I will be getting married! Yippee!! And- HOLY CRAP I have a TON of stuff to get done before then (and I ton that I've been working on for the past 2 months). I was definitely aware of the amount of work, time, and planning that goes into putting together a wedding but I don't think I really got it until the past 2 months. From securing a dj, to finding an officiant, to going over arrangements with the florist, to figuring out the menu and the details for the tables, guestbook, place cards, etc. etc. etc. Anyway, that's where I am and what I'm doing. I'm realizing that my bigger career goals will have to wait until after the wedding. But in the meantime, I'd love to share with you some wedding inspiration and post some of my "reference" images from around the web!! Enjoy!

Bouquet

Source: Style Me Pretty



Source: Garden On The Square


Ceremony


Source: United With Love



Source: Style Me Pretty


Centerpieces


Source: Style Me Pretty



Source: Style Me Pretty


Just a little glimpse into the overall feel of what I want my wedding to look like. More updates to come on that. Please be patient with me! Thank you!!

Rue Issue 5!!

Tattoo Tribute

Just been obsessing over ink lately!! Dying to get more tats after the wedding and to hold me over, here are some pretty pictures:

Source: Les Cicatrices Du Bonheur's Blog


Source: Les Cicatrices Du Bonheur's Blog


Source: Pinterest


Source: Ffffound


Source: We Heart It

Weekend

This weekend was a getting crap done weekend for me- but in a good way! We worked a ton on preparing our backyard for putting up a fence. There were SO many overgrown and random bushes, trees, and weeds all around the edge of the property. We probably gained about 10 feet on either side! Here's a picture of the aftermath on the back right side of our property:

Now we just need some clear skies and a woodchipper!

Vania Ruiz - casaKiro

Thank you, thank you, thank you The Carrotbox! You have introduced me to the the mind-blowing work of Vania Ruiz and her jewelry line casaKiro! Her work really speaks to me and reminds me a lot of many ideas I have for the SchmickFace line! I don't run across a lot of resin jewelry in my internet trolling so I'm always super excited when I find someone working with it! Check out some of her amazing work:

Nisha Moodley

I just wanted to take a few minutes and give a shout out to Nisha Moodley of Nishani Wellness and Fierce, Fabulous & Free. Nisha is, among many things, is an entrepreneurial adviser (my term). I was lucky enough to find out last minute about a phone seminar she was giving last week entitled, "Get Paid for Being FABULOUS: A surprising guide to attracting clients by creating a fabulous life for yourself." I'm always into gathering more information that I can apply to my business and my life so this was right up my alley. The seminar was great and Nisha really had some great tips! If you want to listen to the seminar, she has actually posted it at the top of the Fierce, Fabulous & Free website. Just click the play button next to "Get Paid For Being Fabulous." You can also take a look at the seminars she's offered in the past, here. After the call, Nisha also gave away 7 free one on one Biz Strategy Session via telephone and I was one of the lucky winners- Yay me!! I had my call with Nisha last night and she was so super helpful in really getting me to envision what I want my life to be like and specific steps to take now to begin achieving my goals. My favorite tips of hers are to tackle the high level, most important tasks first and to set a goal and work backwards (set a launch date for SchmickFace Design and figure out what needs to happen to accomplish it and how long that will take, then divide up the work). I am super psyched by my goals for October and I know that they are totally do-able! I can't wait to share my progress!! In the meantime, Nisha shared some of her services and upcoming events with me and, since I'm not able to participate at the moment, I wanted to pass along the information in hopes that someone reading this could benefit!! Nisha offers both one on one business advising and strategizing as well as group opportunities. You can visit her Fierce, Fabulous & Free website for more information!!

Pinning

So what have I been up to this week? Well besides setting up my studio, working on wedding stuff (oh yeah, did I mention that I'm getting married on September 17th?? I'll save that for another post), and deciding to (and almost fully committing to) become a certified personal trainer (ok- again- another post in the future for this)- I've been pinning like crazy on Pinterest all with the intention of blogging the images! What's Pinterest, you ask? Check out my review written last year. Anyway, here are a few cool things I stumbled across in my web travels this week:

I am SO in love with this chick's hair!! I just wish I had the source info in hopes of seeing other pictures that show her whole head. What does the top look like?

Source: Unknown (please contact me if you have source information)

This outfit is so great- I'm going to one of my best friend's 30th birthday bashes (boozey brunch in NYC and all day rooftop bar hop) and if it were a bit warmer this would be the PERFECT outfit!!

Source: Oracle Fox

I'm definitely ready for some more tattoos (I currently have 1) and I've been tossing around different locations and designs. This one is so cute and I love the location. Small, simple, and beautiful!

Source: Patrick's Pinterest Board

I love the raw, jagged look of these rings- as if they were picked up from the bottom of the ocean.

Source: Nicola Clarke

Art-tastic!!

I ran across the AWESOME artwork of Sabine Gebhardt recently. You HAVE to take a look:








Source: Sabine Gebhardt

Follow Your Passion!

My dog is part deer

So after watching this pretty awesome music video for Matta by Kim Holm, all of my suspicions were confirmed and I've come to the conclusion that my dog is part deer.

Source: Studio Sweet Studio

Schweeeeeeeeeet Jewelry Inspirations

I'm a regular peruser of the blog, The Carrotbox. The blogger, Alice, searches the internet for inspiring rings to post about and she never disappoints! The blog is a wealth of inspiration and it is one that I check on the regular. A post from Friday really caught my eye as a lot of the rings featured remind me of ideas that I have for my new jewelry line. Through this post, I discovered a few new jewelry designers to watch:

Snou


Michael Gayk


Five and Two


Sticks & Stones


Love the colors, textures, shapes, and styles!! What do you think??

Guerilla Art - Knitting

I love the concept of guerilla art and this particular example is super cute! German "yarn bomber," Strickbombe, is creating knit feet for street signs, among other amazing, amusing creations!


Source: Strickbombe

The little yarn feet definitely appeal to my anthropomorphic tendencies! I like looking at the pictures and pretending that the street signs actually do have feet. In that sense, they remind me a bit of one of the games on the tv show, MXC, during which I like to pretend that the contestants are actually really clumsy horses. This makes the following clip 10,000x more funny:

Vintage Jewelry Ads

Source: Lilly's Vintage Jewelry

SHINE: The Entrepreneur's Journey

I finally got a chance to watch SHINE: The Entrepreneur's Journey, a short film by Dan McComb. I recommend setting aside the 24 minutes it takes to watch the video as it is both inspiring and realistic. The candid interviews and anecdotes of the entrepreneurs and academics interviewed are definitely insightful.

Creating a working plan...

Ok- so piggy-backing off of my post from last week wherein I declared my intentions of following through with launching SchmickFace Design, I realized that I need to create a list of steps and mini-goals in order to accomplish this.
Steps
1) Finish putting together my studio (I have recently moved all of my jewelry equipment and supplies from the space at my dad's shop to my house but have yet to finish putting it up in my studio and setting everything up to be functional)

Dream studio inspiration:

Dream Studio!!

2) Finish my website redesign (In branding my jewelry line, I've realized that my current self-made web design doesn't really give off the image I want the brand to so I've come up with a new design which is now being worked on by my lovely fiance, Brian, and his design company, BriK Design)

Companies that Inspire my Brand:

Inspirational Companies: (top to bottom) Fleet Jewelry, Gypsy Warrior, Pamela Love, Dannijo, and Samantha House Jewelry

3) Sketch out and experiment with new ideas (I have at least 70,000 ideas right now and I need to get them out of my head onto paper and into prototypes so I can test their feasibility)

4) Get online store ready and post items in inventory (I have a bunch of designs that I would like to sell as a pre-launch to make room for a new full line of jewelry)

Storefront through BigCartel:


5) Take care of business-type things (I have to do my annual renewal and set my business up to collect sales tax, etc.)

I think those are my first steps before I can move forward. Once those are accomplished, they'll lead to a variety of other pre-launch tasks like creating new pieces for the jewelry line, photographing and pricing them, posting them for sale, updating the SchmickFace social media accounts, etc. etc. I'm looking forward to the next update when this list is accomplished and I can write down the next list of steps!

Weekend

So my fiance, Brian, is away for the weekend which leaves me with some quality bonding time with the pup, Oakley (my furry son). As I write this, he's snoozing on the couch next to me. Tomorrow morning we are doing a walk for lymphoma in my parents neighborhood and on Sunday we're going to the beach while dogs are still allowed. I grew up with dogs and they've always been members of our family, but let me tell you- having your own dog is a feeling like no other and he is REALLY Brian and my baby!! Here are a few of the best shots I've taken of Oakley:






And by the way- Oakley is a pit bull. Brian & I have never had a pit bull before and we have really fallen in love with the breed. Oakley is the sweetest, funniest, cutest dog with such a big personality. It's such a shame that pit bulls have gotten such a bad rap in recent years. It's my firm belief that no dog is innately bad and it is most definitely people who create bad dogs.
Enjoy your weekend!!

Colors

Since I took the day off from work tomorrow to go see some hotels for my wedding, today feels like Friday to me! So in honor of my pre-Friday, Friday feeling- some colors that captured my eye through my blogroll:


Source: Cursive Design


Source: The life of a Gypsy and a Warrior


Source: The life of a Gypsy and a Warrior

Want to Wear

Ever run across a picture of an outfit (even a partial picture in this case) and know that you were meant to wear it? This is mine:

Source: EmersonMade via elephantine

Just love the blouse with the blazer, the way the blouse is tucked into the pants, and the simple necklace. I would totally wear the outfit with either platform wedges or Chucks.

Motivation

I just wanted to share some business inspiration. I've been reading these blogs and books and finding them extremely motivating. I'm hoping that they will inspire you as much as they have inspired and motivated me!

Websites

Make Under My Life
First up is a blog that I was JUST introduced to by my fantastical friend, Crystal, and I have found it to be a HUGE source of inspiration and motivation. Make Under My Life is the blog of Jess Constable, designer and founder of Jess LC. The purpose of Make Under My Life is to help people design lives with intention. In this blog, Jess touches on Thinking with Intention, Designing a Business with Intention, Designing a Home with Intention, etc. I can't say enough positive things about this blog!



Crafting an MBA
Next up is the great blog, Crafting an MBA, started by Megan Auman. This blog is aimed at helping readers build successful creative businesses. Crafting an MBA touches on everything from marketing and pr to branding and product development. I always enjoy Megan's business buzz posts which list the best weekly links for craft, design, and business related news and information.



Meylah
Last, but not least is Meylah, which can best be described by the blurb on their website: "Meylah is devoted to building an online creative community for individuals to learn, share and support each other’s business growth online. We know how hard and time consuming being an entrepreneur can be, but with the proper skills at hand, we believe anyone can succeed!" In addition to informative blog posts, Meylah also offers a marketplace and storefront among other resources I haven't fully investigated.

Books

Changing Your Course



Making a Living Without a Job



Craft, Inc.