Lisa, Tim, and Me

I know I have not been the blogger that I should be these last few weeks. The truth is, I am on a mission. I am on a mission to improve all things JKC Creations. I have been enrolled in a class for a while now called 'Build a Better Creative Business'. Tim Adam and Lisa Jacobs have been teaching this class. Tim also is the mastermind behind Handmadeology. This is my story of how it all began...
One day while perusing my Facebook page, haphazardly and not really engaged, I came across a free webinar to be offered by Tim and Lisa. I am a huge fan of Handmadeology and Tim Adam. Tim has been a person of influence for me for quite some time. I decided to sign up for the webinar because I am always trying to improve my business and this sounded like another opportunity to do just that. I tuned in for the webinar and in doing so, I set myself up for an unbelievable journey. The webinar gave me a taste of what I had been seeking for quite some time. It teased me with ways to improve my Etsy shop and other things that I had been dying to figure out. In the webinar, Tim and Lisa made me an offer that I could not turn away from. They offered the 'Build a Better Creative Business Course' for a ridiculously small fee. I immediately left the seminar and signed up. I have been on a course of self discovery and revelation ever since.
In 2009, I had a career that I absolutely loved. I had been at this place in my life for about eight years. I reveled in it. I loved it. I thought that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had found my career and I was never going to leave. I have to tell you, even though I thought that this was 'it'~ the career that I had been dreaming about all my life; there was a part of me that was discontent and unsettled. I felt as if I was supposed to be doing something and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I felt like a part of my inner self was missing. My inner peace was not quite whole and content.
I continued on with my career, always there and always present, thinking that I had my dream job and I was going to stay at it for the rest of my working days. I had that dream come to a screeching halt in June of 2009. I found myself without a job in the middle of a time that it was extremely difficult to find another one. I was devastated. I went home and told my husband my heart wrenching news. He didn't get angry. He didn't get mad and throw things. He knew how badly I was hurting and he was compassionate and loving. He took me into his arms and told me that all would be OK. I wiped away the tears and began to search for another job immediately. I call it a job now, because I felt as if my 'career' was lost to me forever. I wrestled with my demons for many weeks after this. I found myself crying silently when I went to bed. I had nightmares of people in power sitting me down and chastising me and ridiculing me. through all of this, I continued to look for work. I was on the internet every single day trying to find something that I could do. I knew that I needed to find work before long. Outside of searching the internet, my days were pretty much empty.
I am not one to sit around with nothing to do so during this time that I was pursuing another job, I found a hobby. I had dabbled in jewelry making all through my childhood and teen years making little baubles for my friends and family along the way. I love beads and I love the feeling I get when I gaze upon some beautiful necklace or bracelet. Jewelry has always been something that has the power to speak to my soul. I picture myself somewhere else when I see a beautiful piece. It is like it has a will and a soul of its own. I took up this hobby once more, but with more determination. I made necklaces and earrings and before long, I had accumulated many pieces. In June of 2009, JKC Creations was born.
I still needed to find a full time job, as this jewelry thing was definitely not enough to pay the bills; after all it was just a hobby. I continued my quest to find a job on the internet but in doing so, I found something else. As I was searching for a new path, I became bored. I began to look at jewelry pictures trying to spur some creative juices. While doing this I came across a ring. It was one of the coolest rings I had ever seen! I gazed at it, totally intrigued by the design and the elements used. It was made with wire and I had never seen anything like it! I immediately knew that I had to have this ring. I didn't want to 'own' it, I wanted to 'create' it!
I left my desk and went straight to my jewelry bench. I had some wire that I got a while back for scrapbooking projects. I took that wire out and I created that ring. I loved the way it looked and I loved what working with the wire did for my inner self. I immediately began to scour the internet in search of more designs. I found so many things that spoke to me. I was totally engulfed in a world that lit a fire in my soul. I had to find someone that could teach me this artistic talent that I was so drawn to. That is when I came across wire-sculpture.com and Dale 'Cougar' Armstrong. She could teach me what I so desperately needed to learn. Wire Sculpture was selling Dale's DVD series at the time. I purchased every single one of them and immediately began teaching myself this incredible art form, with aid of Dale right in front of me on my computer screen. Right then and there, I became a self taught wire artist.
During the time that I was looking for a new career I honed my skills as a wire artist, always striving to do more and get better at the craft. I broke away from the patterns and started my own thing. I taught myself to weave wire designs and that is when I combined the techniques of weaving with the techniques of wrapping. From that moment forward I began creating pieces with my very own style, a style that I love.
Little did I know that this little hobby of mine was going to take on a life of its own. I was approached by a friend telling me about a local craft fair and that I should really try to get in it and sell my stuff. I had never done this before but one thing was for certain, I had a lot of jewelry! I took that friend's advice and I signed up. I didn't sell much, but I got my feet wet. I signed up for a couple more of them. I sold more, but still not enough to pay the bills.
I went back to work full-time in June of 2010. I had to get a job that could help with the family. Something happened to me though, that part of me that felt incomplete was no longer there. I had found what my soul was longing for all those years when I was at, what I thought was, my career that I loved.  Creating jewelry with wire is what my soul was craving all along. I cannot ever give it up.
I kept on with the wire creations, opening my Etsy shop in 2011. Since that time, I have been trying to hone my marketing skills and my online presence. I honed my wire artist skills and became brave enough to submit a piece to wire-sculpture.com to become the Wire Artist of the Month for March, 2012. Since my early days I have learned to master the craft fair, selling my items at several every year. I am still working full time at a real job, but my dream is to someday quit and be a jewelry artist full time instead.
Creating jewelry and implementing a business is a difficult thing to do with no one to guide me. I sometimes feel alone in my endeavor, but it is not enough to stop me. I don't know that I have ever been so passionate about anything as I am JKC Creations. I strive every day to do something productive in hopes that I can improve my business and create something wonderful for myself and my family by doing so. Tim and Lisa have been instrumental in putting the pieces in place even more to pursue this dream. I am part of the Maker's Movement, as Lisa calls it, and I am determined to be successful!
The 'Build a Better Creative Business Course' has given me more tools to add to my arsenal. Tim and Lisa believe in me and what I can bring to the table. Lisa says that to deny the world of my talent would not be beneficial for anyone so therefore, I will never deny the world. I have some new friends on my side and the loneliness has retreated one more step into the shadows. I plan to incorporate more of what I am learning in the next few months and build my business even more. I thank my lucky stars every single day for the social networks. Without them, I would have never found Tim or Lisa or any of the other people that I plan to let into my life in the near future.
Thank you Lisa Jacobs and Tim Adam for what you have given me during this course. I plan to take it to the next level and I hope that you will check in once in a while to have a look and see the changes that I will be incorporating. You guys helped me to see that I can take my purpose to another level and I can do what I feel in my heart I was intended to do. With sincerest appreciation, thank you!
If you have a creative business and you would like some guidance, please check out Handmadeology. If you ever have the chance to learn from Tim or Lisa, I would highly recommend it. They can teach you things that you didn't even know you were missing out on. They truly are in my corner, and I believe they would be in yours too.
I am continuing to implement the things that I have learned in this course. It will take some time, but I know that I am heading in the right direction. I plan to be more on schedule with the tasks at hand and I have put my Etsy shop at the front of the list. Once I have implemented the changes that I want to incorporate there, I will move to my blog and other places that I have an online presence. I am implementing small steps for right now, but I hope to be on track and have a better schedule soon. Until then, I hope that you will hang in with me as I strive to make JKC creations better than it has ever been.
And now I would like to show you what inspires a lot of my creative thoughts and designs. I would like to take you into a world that I never really leave. It is a place where my thoughts reside a lot of the time. I am not really sure why this is, perhaps I am a being that is unequivocally attached in some fashion to this long ago era in our history. What ever it is, I have an invisible line that draws me back in time to this...The Daily Wire Transfer.