Friday, February 15, 2008

A New Line of Products – & a New Way of Working

by, Lynne of Cozy Cottage Creations

After the craziness of the holiday season, it felt so good to sit back, take a short break from crafting, and reassess how I go about making things. Cozycottagecreations is about to pass it’s first year anniversary, and in that one year time period, I have learned so much about turning a hobby into a business.
It’s been an exciting process to explore this medium of wool and felt – to say “hmmm, I wonder if that can be out of wool” and then figuring out how to do it. After a year of experimentation, I’m ready for the next step: creating product lines.

Up until now, I had avoided an “assembly line” way of working. I like to ruminate over things, which leads to fretting a bit over them, too. I never wanted my items to look mass produced (HA! like making things 10 at a time could be called mass produced!), however I often found myself “paralyzed by possibilities”. In deciding to work differently, I never expected how freeing making several of one item at once could be! I’m always brimming with ideas, and now instead of having to pick which idea to pursue, I can pursue all 10 ideas for a product at the same time! Voila! Now I have product lines!

My goal is to introduce a new line of products each month, along with the occasional felted bowl, since those are my first love!

First up – the felted trinket box. I started with these for Valentines day, and everyone needs a cozy little box to house their jewelry treasures in!
I created the actual box form over several evenings, embellished them over several more, and then reserved a single morning for photographs. Within a week, I had 6 new items to list. Hooray for productivity!

Be on the lookout for more product lines brought to you by cozycottagecreations!

4 comments :

  1. I love insight into other people's creative processes Lynne...I can relate to your desire to avoid "assembly line" production, although I find that I have evolved in a way, toward indeed, having "lines" and as such, having a standardized process for them, that involves creating batches of items at a time!

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  2. Good blog Lynne. I think you'll find this way of working more gratifying because it's so much more productive. When I make just one of something I feel like I am hopping around wasting time but when I crank out many of the same thing at once it is time well spent and yet I am still being very creative because each piece is different. Here's to your 2nd year !

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  3. I am the felting editor for Craft Gossip and I did an article about you ETSY shop and you blog. Please come by and leave a comment and have you friends do the same.
    http://felting.craftgossip.com/2008/02/15/cozy-cottage-creations/

    Regards,
    Linda Lanese

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  4. I think you're on to something. I'm definitely planning to produce en masse (again, like 5-10 items can be considered mass production), just in order to better be able to complete something. When you've got too many ideas festering, you tend to have too many UFOs hanging around, right?

    Great blog and fantastic products.

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