Welcoming a Cricut!

Well, would you look at that, the hobby hoarder finally got a Cricut — let's make some snail mail and shop stuff! ☆

The first Cricut cuts had me cursing, but now we're kinda rolling!

Sometimes, all you need is a little kick in the butt (or several hundred words of encouragement) to actually dare to do the thing you've been wanting for years. A little-known fact about me: I fell in love with the bookish-stuff-community before I fell in love with the book community. I loved books and reading long before all of that, but the physical things I'd get stuck on while scrolling socials were not those fancy special editions, or those intricately painted/sprayed edges, or even those stunning covers of upcoming releases in series I'm reading. Nope. I always got stuck on the magnetic bookmarks, the die-cut bookmarks and bookish quotes stickers, or those gorgeous quilted booksleeves that were all the rage a few years ago (but, a Cricut won't help me with the recent dismissal of my old sewing hobby, so...).

NOW I CAN MAKE ALL THOSE THINGS I'VE HAD IN MY HEAD FOR YEARS! WHOOP!

I started with bookmarks —my first round was a disaster because my sticky mat was too sticky and tore everything, but the second round of bookmarks turned out brilliant — and as I learn the settings of my new printer (I finally invested in an Epson EcoTank 8550, worth every penny) and how to handle the Cricut, I'll start to do stickers and possibly vinyl as well. It's all very exciting and completely overwhelming — there are too many options, too many designs I've created these past years, and far too many things I want to create that are just loitering in my head, among a silly amount of doubt in my own skills.

It's quite stupid, as I've learnt everything else on this journey, so why not this, too?

These purchases also tie in 100% with starting a Snail Mail Club, as well as opening my very own shop. Being able to create my own bookmarks, stickers, punch cards, and anything else I can think of feels so wonderful. Knowing I'll be able to sell my own creations, designed, made, packed, and shipped from my little office here in Sweden to almost anywhere in the world — AMAZING! I feel blessed and beyond fortunate to have this opportunity. It's such a privilege to have big dreams, big hopes, and the loving, unwavering support necessary to pursue it all. My life certainly hasn't always been safe enough or held enough support for such things, so I'm incredibly grateful.

Major website overhaul coming!

I'm working on implementing and creating everything needed for the necessary changes to make sure I keep up with everything and keep my sanity, too. For this to work in the long run, I need things to be in one place. So, I'm going to take this website that I've worked so hard on and completely overhaul it, again (sigh on that), including changing my site address. I'm not revealing anything else at this time, but I'm hoping to be able to release the changes AND THE SHOP at the end of June --- it sounds like a lot of time, but it's really not, so I'm really digging in to sort everything on time to keep the schedule I've concocted in my head (hopefully).

But why?

I'll be launching my Snail Mail Club at the end of the summer, and within two years I'm hoping to launch a second Pen Name for monster and alien romance --- I want to keep my contemporary romance separate for many reasons, but I don't want to be severed or split apart, so even if I'll have different names I'll keep everything in one place with full disclosure I'm just one little human behind everything. Hence, I need to change the URL and how my site navigates to accommodate all these different aspects, as well as keeping everything available at one single place; one shop, one cart, one account, one space easily accessed and used --- you get the gist of it.

It's for my sake, too.

From making little updates to full on accounting, from keeping things organised to streamlining how I'll be able to run things in the future. Centralising helps a bunch in general, too. I have far too many things to juggle, to keep track of, and to keep rolling.

Things easily get muddled and lost when you're doing everything, so I'm hoping this will be a service to future Rosana, even if current Rosana has a lot of work to do to make it happen. I'll persist, though, and work hard.

Honestly, I'm so excited I feel like screaming and showing everything straight off, but if I do that, I'll curse myself later for the exuberant blabbering when plans inevitably change, or things don't work in practice how they theoretically ought to. So, I'll work hard quietly for now.

Can I do the scary vlogging thing?

I love watching YouTube. It's absolutely my favourite form of media consumption --- and especially small business and artist vlogs. I'm a huge fan of JulianneDoodles (currently watching her latest vlog about her next shop update while typing this blog post), and I'd love to be able to vlog how she does, just...with less leaving the house and less exercise involved, probably. I'm not an active person, that's for sure.

Anyway, I'm currently attempting to do a vlog, just to see if I can, to test how much effort and time it takes, and to see if it's actually something for me. It's quite intimidating, but also exciting. And I've watched too many "how to vlog", "how to film yourself", "how to post on YouTube", "how to edit videos", and many, many, many other forms of similar instructional/informative videos to waste it, I ought to put it to use...

I'll get back to you about this. Perhaps it's a disaster, perhaps I need to full on try for a few months, or it might be something I realise isn't for me right away --- who knows?

Erh... Well, nobody, not even me, until I try it. So, best crack on and get to it!

I hope you're trying new things, and that you are experiencing the best of moments ❤