Productive Weekend and Mailing Lists
Structures #47 ©2007 - In progress.
Last Friday I posted a rather long list of goals for the weekend. I didn’t expect to get everything done but I was hoping it would help to get me motivated and back on track. Looking at all the things I wanted accomplish this year definitely was the kick in the butt I needed.
Here’s how I did:
- I will spend 15 hours in my studio. Accomplished!
- I will finish my taxes for 2006. Accomplished! Well almost - I have to organize papers to send to my accountant for my personal taxes tonight.
- I will set up spreadsheets for the 2007 art business and get all my expenses to date entered. Accomplished!
- I will create a budget for 2007 for my art business. Accomplished!
- I will finish my goal spreadsheet. Accomplished!
- I will research and identify 4 possible venues for future solo shows (Accomplished! I’ve chosen 6 locations to send out proposals this month) and prepare and send off proposals to the venues. More realistic deadline for for this task - 2/23/07
- I will select mail list software for my upcoming studio newsletter and start setting it up. Accomplished! More on this below.
Feels great to be motivated again. Spending time breaking down my goals into smaller tasks that I can complete in a few hours definitely helps me to feel like I really can accomplish what I’d like to this year. I now have a list of goals for each month. For February and March the goals are broken down into small tasks with target completion dates. The months later on in the year aren’t as detailed but as priorities and goals change I will update those lists and break down the work into smaller tasks.
Tomorrow I will post an example of how I broke down a goal (my studio newsletter) into small pieces. So far what I have accomplished is to select the software I will use to email out the newsletter.
I was leaning towards constantcontact as almost everyone I know that has a small email newsletter uses it, but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the monthly fee. I’m only planning on sending out 3 or 4 newsletters a year and paying $180-$300 a year for that service seems a bit outrageous to me. My web hosting plan provides more functionality and costs less!
Instead I have selected free downloadable software to use for my mailing list. I will maintain the software for the mailing list and the mailing list itself on my web hosting account. After doing a bit of research I chose phplist.com as it seems to have what I’m looking for. I’ll start installing and testing the software over the next couple days and in a few weeks it should be ready to start taking sign ups.
I finished quilting Structures #47 this weekend. The above (rather bad) photo was taken in 2005 when I finished sewing together the top.
It took me 30 hours over the last 2 weeks to quilt this very large piece (about 7′ x 5′) and I’m quite pleased with how it came out. I’m hoping to photograph my newly completed work outdoors next weekend so I will have a better image soon.
I’m now quilting Structures #65 and plan to be done with it on friday. This will leave me with 3 unfinished quilts in the Structures series, which I’m planning on finishing this month (or at the latest the first week in March).
Posted by Lisa in: Goals
Tricia McKellar said,
February 13, 2007 @ 11:57 am
I’ve been leaning toward campaignmonitor.com for mailing lists, Thanks for the mention of phplist.com, I’ll check it out. :)
cynthia said,
February 13, 2007 @ 4:56 pm
Thanks for the heads up on phplist.com, I’m all for free!
My goodness, you were busy this past weekend! I just did a similar exercise…Wrote down my goal (as if it were reality) of what I want to accomplish this year, then wrote down what I have to do this month, this week, and each day. It really helped bring clarity to my schedule.
Mary said,
February 13, 2007 @ 6:53 pm
wow–that was an ambitious list. You did all that AND spent 15 hours in the studio????….you are very disciplined and I applaud you. If I do all that financial work it causes me enough stress to keep me from doing much else but I’m hoping getting it all organized will help decrease if not eliminate the stress around it. It is on my list for tomorrow. All day….I’m impressed with your dedication.You inspire me! As always, beautiful work!
Pat said,
February 13, 2007 @ 8:07 pm
How large are your design walls? I am having problems laying out large stuff like this one of yours and want to remedy that we I get my new work space.
Patty Altier said,
February 14, 2007 @ 5:40 am
Thanks for sharing your accomplishments! It helps remind me to look at what I am doing with my time. I was getting a lot done until an eye infection and the resulting blurry vision in one eye. It is hard to machine quilt and read, but I can still piece ok. New glasses will be coming soon! The next bump in the road the last 24 hours is shoveling snow! We got at least of foot in Akron, OH - I know by Colorado standards that’s not much - but its a lot for us at one time. Keep up the wonderful work Lisa!
Charmaine said,
February 15, 2007 @ 7:42 am
You inspire us all, Lisa. Way to go!
Lisa Call said,
February 22, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Thanks all for the congrats. I wish I could always be that motivated but some weeks (like this one) - the business stuff gets left on the back burner. Making the art is just too appealing sometimes to worry about marketing it!
Pat - check out this link to my studio for info about my design walls - they are 8 feet high. I have 48 running feet of design wall. The largest is about 20 feet long.
Pat said,
February 22, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
So, if some of your quilts are 8 foot square, have the 8 foot high design walls hampered you at all? The thing I keep going back and forth on is a good ceiling height.
Lisa Call said,
February 22, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
You are right Pat.
My studio ceilings are about 8 1/2 feet high in my basement. The bottom 6″ are baseboard and dont’ have flannel wall. If I had a choice I would have higher walls as I do find that to be restrictive. Most of my work doesn’t get bigger than 7 feet tall because of this.
After our workshop in Idaho with the tall ceilings my studio felt confining to me (at 600sq ft it’s not bad but it’s not a huge barn either). I think the bigger the space the better.
If you can do higher walls and want to do larger work then I say go for higher walls if you can. My next studio will have 10-12′ high design walls. And some ladders!