A swell way to spend the afternoon, business talk and homemade ice tea w/ @brian_bergeron (Taken with instagram)
April was Sexual Assault awareness Month, to help send it off with a bang, I packed my car & headed down the 101 to vend at Walk a Mile in Her shoes, event on the central Coast! Walk A Mile In Her Shoes is an International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence.
These are my friends marching in their red pumps.
I stayed in town with my college roommates a couple days extra to relax and catch up. I will be headed back up to the bay tomorrow.
Next weekend, Sunday May 6th, See me at Urban Air Market.
Sunday, May 6th 2012 11am-6pm
Octavia Blvd @ Hayes
Hayes Valley, San Francisco
Did you all know that I illustrate too? I sure do, I hand illustrated these new studs & preserved them in resin & silver for you!
Each is one-of-kind & made with tons of love!
Answer:
Hands down, The Greek Isles
I think it’s time for me to start using this as a blog ‘blog’ & less as a sketch book. Now that Pinterest is up & going (you can follow me here) I can separate two of my favorite past times.
1. spending hours and hours looking at all the amazing-ness the world wide web has to offer.
2. talking about how all those amazing things inspire my design work!
So here we go, Isobell’s new blog about Jewelry & design!
xo
One year has ended and another one has begun. The sound of new leaves turning over abounds. It’s a popular time to refocus, reprioritize and get serious about ‘getting organized’ and being productive.
It’s tempting to think that a new app, software program or spiffy new set of filing folders is going to transform the way we get our work done. There is, however, no one silver bullet tool or tactic for radically changing the way we work.
Rather than a set of tactics, what is needed is an understanding of the basic steps that make up the building blocks of every project management, productivity or time management system out there.
If you surf around micro-business blogs or participate in forums for time management, you’ll discover a lot of great things like to-do list apps, techniques for focusing, templates for lists and the like. These tools help, but they are tactical rather than strategic. In other words, they are tips for addressing one specific aspect of accomplishing work but don’t give you much in the way of working within an overall framework to accomplish your goals.
You need a system, not a series of ‘tricks’.
When I was developing creative project management development methodology at my old day job, I learned that there about a zillion productivity, time management and project management systems out there. But more or less they have the same six core components, which are:
Defining Goals – your objectives, what you want to accomplish Creating objectives are part of goal setting, to do lists are part of defining scope, productivity tricks fall under executing. These are all parts of the puzzle, but are not the entire picture. It’s important to understand how all these steps work together to take you from having an idea or goal and turning it into a reality. To do that you need to: Define goals, then ‘Why’,’what’, ‘how long’ and ‘when’ describe the building blocks of any project or activity. The more jargon-y terms for these three things are goals (or objectives), scope, estimation and planning; and they are a critical part of getting things done. These steps are tool and app agnostic. You can use them with paper, or sophisticated planning software. However understanding the basics of the underlying system will allow you maximize the effectiveness of whatever tool you’ve decided to use. Let’s look at each step in a little more detail: Goals are the ‘Why’, the objectives and reasons you are doing what you are doing. These are the foundation of everything you scope, plan and do. Scope is the ‘What’. What kind of projects, activities and deliverables are required to meet your objective? What do you need to grow your mailing list? Scope items can be anything from regular guests posts, to traffic boosting activities like SEO optimization to redesigning your website’s home page to more prominently feature you’re mailing list subscription fields. Estimation is the ‘How Long?’ How long will it take you to write two guest posts a month? Are you going to spend a month doing nothing but SEO optimization or is it an ongoing, weekly activity that you will do for 3 hours twice a week? Will it take you a day, a week or a month to redesign your home page? If you’re hiring someone to do it, how much time will you need to allot to overseeing the work? Planning is the ‘When’. If you have a goal around increasing revenue, presumably by a certain date, what needs to happen beforehand and when? When do you need to have that homepage redesigned to start reaping the benefits of increased sign-ups? When do you need to launch a store on a new online marketplace to start seeing an uptick in sales three months later? Executing is the getting it done part; sitting down (or standing up) and actually working. In order to execute you need to understand how and when you work best and set up processes and habits to support yourself in producing your best work, and producing as much of it as you can. Reviewing is about the need for assessment. If you don’t ‘come up for air’ from time to time you may not realize if you need to adjust, change or even abandon some of your original goals, or do some re-planning. Course correction is part of the process. Once you begin to internalize these steps, you’ll realize you can use any tool or, better yet, create one that works best for you. In time these actions will become second nature. Planning, structuring and executing your work can become seamlessly integrated into your life rather than a daunting task to tackle at the beginning of each year.
Developing Scope – What you’re going to do to achieve those objectives
Estimating – How long it’s going to take
Planning – When are you going to get this stuff done
Executing – Getting it done, productivity
Reviewing – Periodically reviewing and assessing your goals, scope, estimates and plan
Break down those goals into projects and tasks, then
Plan those projects and tasks along time and manage it, then
Complete those projects by executing: being focused and productive, and also by
Reviewing your goals, projects and plans as you get new information and/or things change Whether you’ve set out to earn five figures in revenue each month or grow your mailing list to 200 people, you’re going to have to figure out why, what, how long and when.
(via)
I feel as though I should say something profound — it’s New Year’s Eve after all. This year has been a roller coaster and I can’t believe how quickly it has passed. I remember last year at this time having so much enthusiasm for 2011, which may have been because I had just started Isobell Jewelry & moved to the Bay Area…but with so much that has come and gone, I feel slightly indifferent to the arrival of a New Year. Not that I’m not optimistic and excited about what’s to come but I want to take the days one at a time—not be fixated on the future. (image by danske)
Monday!!!!! I hope you’re all having a fabulous day! I had the most amazing weekend, I’m the newest artist at Collector Gallery in Berkeley, Ca and managed dinner & drinks almost everynight this week, with my amazing supportive friends.
I hit a milestone in my Etsy shop on Thursday and sold 200 items!! That means it’s time for a giveaway to celebrate and say, “Thank You,” to everyone who has loved my work.Since it’s a 200 sales giveaway, I thought I’d give away two pairs of studs to two different people!! That’s right, there will be 2 winners!
Enter to win a pair of hand cut brass hammered hearts! Silver plated posts (lead & nickel free) A new addition to the Isobell Jewelry family! & A staple for any winter wardrobe!
To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is “LIKE” my facebook page & leave a comment on the page. (a simple :) “smiley face” will do)
The giveaway ends next monday, so enter before it’s to late.
