Updates Again

Well.....last night was quite the productive evening, and morning, since I did not get to sleep until 4am.

I trimmed 3 balls and have enough ribbons to finish only one, maybe two more.  When I finish the batch I will be blasting my pictures everywhere. 

Speaking of pictures, the other half of my night was spent editing original photos with new watermarks to erase the old Kanzashi Temple name and move to LilyAshes Emporium.  It should have been more of a priority, but at least it's done.  I am only missing two picture sets, which I am just going to reshoot on Tuesday night when my photographer comes. 

I am also bringing the teapot back as an integral part of referencing how big the kanzashi is.  I also looked over some older ones I had made, and need to remake.  They had come out quite well. 

One last bit of news, I have a major project coming up.  I've been invited to join several other artisans from around the world to contribute to a new kanzashi techniques tutorial book. I was beyond flattered and am really excited about the prospect.  Especially since I have that rose kanzashi tutorial almost completed.   It will be a lot of work, and a lot of photos and editing, but it will be well worth it to be ranked among some of the top kanzashi artisans like Arleen from Wisteria Gardens and Hana-Sakuri and EruwaedhielElleth and many others.  Plus something this big I could never finish on my own.  I don't know if any of the artisans could.  We are too busy creating!

So the sequence goes, get paid on wednesday, get ribbons on wednesday, finish ornaments.  By then my custom order fabric comes in and I have THAT piece to make.  Then I am probably going full into this book thing and not surfacing until november when Christmas season begins.  

I think that is all for now.  I also have some news, my sister is moving back from australia to America, and only 4.5 hours away.  We are talking about starting a business, selecting fabrics, making stuff like fake obi belts and such (she is much better at machine sewing than I am for certain), and opening a different shop on Etsy, depending on what we make.  Then I could sell the scraps, or use them for ornaments or somehting like that. I have always wanted to do more with the shop, but the past few years have been difficult.  With my kids and my health and everything going on, it's just hard to keep up most days.  But next year my son will go to school full time and we will probably quit several of the things he does now.  It will definitely open up my availibility to work and expand my product.