Looking back and Planning ahead

Just spent the morning looking for a new 2010 desk planner at the bookstore. How quickly the dates are already filling up. We thought we would do a quick post about this past year and what we hope to accomplished in the coming new year.

~ Lots of changes happened to us personally this year. We had a second baby in April and we moved into a new house in the fall (after searching all summer long) right before our busy holiday season. Who planned that?

~ We have found over the years Halloween is becoming a very popular holiday in terms of decor. This makes our Christmas collection planning trickier with scheduling and production of the 2 holidays so close together!

~ Craft shows: knowing we were having a second baby we really had to figure out how many craft shows we could handle. As much as we really enjoy them, they are very tiresome to do. So we thought this year we would try less shows and do more print advertising. The shows we did do were very successful for us but the print ads, not so much. We are still wondering if the cost of them were they really worth it (If you ask Lianne, she was against the print ads from the get go). I was more willing to try because we had such great success with the ads we did in Mary Engelbriet Home Companion Magazine. We still are getting emails from people who are going through their old issues. Which leads us to another fun little project we are doing for the ME Studio Workshop happening in the spring of 2010. We are contributing an ornament to their workshop goody bag. To learn more about the ME Studio workshop go here.

~ This year we also jumped into the crazy world of social networking. Swirly Designs is on Twitter (are you following us?) and you we have a fan book page of us on facebook.

~Change: Not only personally but we deal with constant change when it comes to our favorite tools and materials. It's no fun realizing once you have something you like they go ahead and change it or get rid of it. The paper we use for our ornament tags is no longer available, the ribbon we love for our ornaments has changed and we have been searching for months for a replacement. Certain paint colors and scalloped scissors are gone. It keeps us on our toes that's for sure. Makes us think twice now every time we come across a tool or material we think we could use... we end up buying way more then we need because of fear we will never find it again.

In 2010 we are hoping to get our stuff together. Our focus is on organizing the studio and really focusing on getting some PR for the company. We are scheduled to do a new Valentine, Spring, Halloween & Christmas collection again for 2010 and hopefully start earlier (of course we are already behind on Valentines...Yikes!). We are working on a new line for kids and will continue adding more mini ornaments for the other holidays, along with some fun how-to projects.

Only time will tell what is in store for us as we are approach our 10th anniversary of Swirly Designs.

Thanks to you all and a wishing you all a Swirly 2010!
~ Lianne & Paul