creative branding

I've been talking a lot lately about living my dreams.  I thought it was about time I put some action behind those words.  One of the things I would really like to do is turn my crafting hobby into a legitimate income earning business.  In the past I have gone about this in a haphazard way.  Making a few things and listing them on etsy without any direction or follow through. 

I spent some time last week reading "How To Show & Sell Your Crafts" by Torie Jayne.  What a wealth of information!  So much good, practical advice.  I have already begun implementing a few of the things she suggests and have a long list of others that I plan on doing in the next few weeks.

I love the chapter on branding your business...identifying your colors, style and image and then building your brand around that.

Luckily, I am happy with the little water color logo in my header I painted last year so I decided to use it as my inspiration.  I have already updated my etsy shop and facebook page using a modified version of the same print to tie all the sites together.

I am really big on pretty packaging and love putting a little something special in each purchase I ship off.   Usually that means a blank gift tag or two.

Following the suggestion of cohesive branding I decided to paint some art papers to make the little gift tags out of.  Once again using my header picture for inspiration I pulled out my paints and doodle pen and got to work.  I ended up with four different papers that I photo copied and cut into tags.

I am so happy with how they turned out and can't wait to include this little bit of Lemon Lane with all of the purchases from shop.  I just love it when a creative idea in my brain actually works out on paper.

Have you ever thought about what your brand is?  It's amazing how easy it is to figure out when you start gathering the things you love together.  Take a look at your favorite blogs.  I'll bet you could identify most of them if all you had to go by was a picture or two.  What we surround ourselves with really says a lot about us.

I'll share a little more from the book and more of my dream later in the week...

xo, Patty

I'm joining Brenda at cozy little house for Tweak it Tuesday...