living creative thursdays

Y'all I am very excited and nervous at the same time.  For about a year now, I have highly respected Amy Locurto as a professional business "blogger" woman.  I knew she did something creative with party things, but I never knew what.  It has only been recently since I started creating paper goods myself that I have come to understand what she does and how talented she really is.

As you all know from me posting here.  I have a love for graphic designing.  I only got interested in graphic designing when I thought I wanted to design websites and blogs.  But when I started I knew absolutely nothing about Gimp, let alone, Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign.  Being who I am, I told myself, "Oh that's nothing.  I will learn it all in a couple of weeks.  So I set out to teach myself.  I was in for a very rude awakening.  However, thanks to Creative Live and Lesa Snider among a few others after three years of staying up 24/7, crying and having hissy fits, I had learned enough to start creating where I felt comfortable.

I started editing my photos first, and then I would show my work to my to my husband and children. After a while I began showing a few friends.  Ronnie, the friend I'm now doing business with, suggested I show my work to the world online. Ha!  I was intimated and knew that I still had a lot of learning to do.  I was not perfect yet!  After a while though, I felt like I really didn't have many excuses and realize through reading great books about entrepreneurs that I was dealing with fear that needed to be conquered.  How in the world could I be okay with myself knowing that I let fear conquer me.  That's when I decided to just do it.  So I did it!

Now you all may look at my work here and not think much of it!  But I gotta tell you, I am really proud of myself for not just learning the software and doing the designs, but putting it up!  This is such a great big fear of mine.  And to put my work up for people on Amy's blog to see and even for Amy herself to possibly see is a huge step for me.

With so many things that have gone on in my life in recent months, like um, let's see getting my house foreclosed on, filing bankruptcy, my daughter leaving home at 18 and then moving to Colorado I would have taken to my bed and allowed myself to go into the deepest depression ever. But I couldn't. I knew God was doing a work in me, a new thing.  He was leading me to a different season, but I had to persevere.

I knew that learning, working and pushing myself in spite of whatever came my way is what God wanted me to do.  He wanted me to persevere.  God wants me to succeed and I know it!  He didn't want me giving Him, myself or others another excuse for why I gave up this time.  This was so hard for me to do. This is still so hard!  But God is seeing me through, giving me the strength and the ability to do what He has called me to do for this season!

I've put up the shop, but not everything is in it yet.  I had to put up what I could other wise that would have been another excuse and my work wouldn't be in it.  I'm having to blog at two blogs.  I'm the product photographer, writer, illustrator, designer, PR person, marketer, janitor, cook..., you get the picture, at 47 I'm telling myself, "It's now or never girl!"

One of my other female admirers is Laura Casey who wrote a note to herself that became very popular says, "You know that thing you've been wanting to do?  You should do it"  That's exactly how I feel.  I should do it.  I am doing it and I will not quit.  Not this time.  This is it baby.  It's now or never.

Anyway, Amy has something on her blog on Thursday's called Living Creative Thursdays.  She gives people like me, the creative types, the opportunity to share what we've been working on!

I'm not showing my work over there because I want to sell something mind you.  I want people to see that good or bad I did it!  These are my designs... they are my work of art.  This is a part of my living creative.

This is a big deal to me because I have always been dreadfully fearful of letting people see my work. It sounds funny saying that.  So I will repost some of the stuff here that you may have recently seen, but now you know why!

Thanks in advance for your support,

xoxo, Angela

blog subscription  | twitter | facebook