Diary of a Ketubah artist: So now what?

Dear Diary:

This week’s Ketubah orders under control—check. New designs for ketubah.com in production—check. Daily perusal of Design Sponge, Print and Pattern and Apartment therapy done—check. First load of laundry in the machine—check.

So now what?

There has been a lot of visualizing, and a lot of tossing and turning about whether or not it makes sense to expand my ketubah work into full blown collections. I can't help myself. Every time I develop a new ketubah design, the elements immediately transform into other wedding related products—like invitations, thank you cards, save the date... Yikes!

And then of course I am also really (really!) hoping to find a way to economically move forward with Chuppah designs on silk. There are still a lot of challenges ahead but I am hoping that I can work through them. It would be soooo exciting to see my designs (like this one) on beautiful flowing fabric!

This week there was time to think about all of these things. A little window to put together mock-ups and see if any of these ideas are worth pursuing. I get really excited about every new idea but I also realize that my getting giddy about this design or that is not exactly marketing research! So one small step at a time...

I have made some progress on one other idea. I am calling them wedding mementos. For couples that have already purchased one of my ketubah designs, this mini ketubah will have their design (with their customized text) nicely placed on the page with their names and wedding date in a beautiful calligraphic font. This really feels right. Such a nice gift for their parents, grand parents or members of the wedding party. I managed to get some time to work on a couple of mock-ups this week and hope to have them finalized for the shop soon.

And what about e-vites? If getting into the wedding stationery business proves to be just a bit over my head, I may take the next little window of time that makes it self available to me, to investigate developing a line of customized wedding invitations that go out by email. A green alternative!

I have also been thinking about how lucky I am to be living in this beautiful city, doing what I love.

Enough thinking for one day. Over and out.