What I Accomplished This Year // 2016 Year In Review
Good morning, friends.
How was your holiday? Hope it was peaceful and relaxing. After opening presents and eating lots of yummy food, I decided to sit down and write this post. I try to write these every so often as a way of documenting my business journey. I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled to being writing this today as I don't feel it will be as full as previous posts. I feel like I let this second half of the year get away from me. BUT I will not let that discredit what I was able to accomplish.
I also need to remember that while I was doing all this is listed below, I was also attending college which may be a reason as to why the list isn't as extensive.
August 12th, 2016 - Fulfilled a wholesale order from a new retailer, Tupelo Designs LLC. My stamps were recommended to them by one of their designers which makes me oh so happy. Knowing others like my stamps enough to ask their favorite stores to carry them is just something I never thought would happen.
August 27th, 2016 - Susan from Buffalo Stamps & Stuff came across our booth at the Stamp Scrap Art Tour in Hamburg, NY and decided to become one of our wholesalers! Sharon owns a huge store in upstate New York that garners the attention of tons crafters in the community. It's such a blessing to have Susan support my dreams!
September 1st, 2016 - Added ten new fall and holiday stamps to my collection. It was my last release of 2016 but allowed my DT and I to make dozens of samples using them throughout the rest of the year. You can see all the ideas organized by stamp set in our Idea Gallery.
September 4th, 2016 - Received another wholesale inquiry, this time from Elisabeth who owns Paper Anthology in New Jersey. Hope to make it down to her store one day to see my stamps displayed in person!
September 8th, 2016 - Welcomed Maria Peters (@a_country_home on Instagram) to my DT. She is an absolute genius when it comes to cardmaking, especially watercoloring, so I was thrilled when she agreed to be part of my team!
September 14th, 2016 - Received a message from DT member Amy Kolling about sponsoring her awesome craft event. Her and Laurie Willison hold an overnight crafting weekend in the most colorful house house so I knew it was something I had to participate in. Being as over-the-top as I am, I decided to design a custom stamp set for her to make it even more special. See the set here! It will be releasing in my shop in the new year.
September 28th, 2016 - Released the first two coordinating die sets in my collection. One was for Fall Leaves and the other was for Find the Beauty. In the Find the Beauty Die Set I included additional elements that hopefully makes it more useful to the crafter, such as stitched rectangles and a "hello" script die!
October 3rd, 2016 - Opened registration for my Hello Fall Happy Mail Swap. Over 50 crafters signed up to participate, including my DT members! To help inspire those who joined in, we each posted a sneak peek of what was inside our boxes as well as a few tips for sending happy mail.
October 6th, 2016 - Added another online store to my retailer list, MarkerPOP. I was super excited to receive an email from Ashley as I knew her store was one of the largest in our crafting industry.
October 18th, 2016 - Agreed to collaborate with A Blog Named Hero for the month of January. I sent two new stamp sets to the entire design team so make sure to stay tuned for a ton of crafty inspiration!
November 1st, 2016 - Got a message from Marci on Facebook telling me about her fantastic Facebook group, Stamp Junkies. Little did I know the community I was getting into. Thousands of talented papercrafters are part of the group and work to spread love and positivity about our favorite hobby. I feel so lucky to have joined!
November 3rd, 2016 - Published a guest post on the Simon Says Stamp blog using some of my fall collection. I stepped a little bit outside my comfort zone with this project as I incorporated some mixed media techniques. In the end, I loved the grunge-y, textured result!
November 4th, 2016 - After seeing our booth at the Heirloom Productions show in York, PA, Laureen from Alive in Stamping Grace picked up a few of our stamps to add to her store shelves. This was definitely the year of expansion and distribution for my brand as our line became available in tons of new stores across the USA and online.
November 16th, 2016 - Two of my best-selling stamps, Script Greetings and Happy Mail Year 2, were featured in Jennifer McGuire's My Favorite Crafty Things 2016 video series. I was overjoyed to not only have one of my sets featured again in 2016, but that I that had two sets featured! Definitely one of my most favorite accomplishments of the year!
November 19th, 2016 - Joined Amy Tsuruta for her Winter Coffee Lovers Blog Hop this time just as a sponsor. Wish I had time to create a project for the hop but things just got a little too hectic.
November 26th, 2016 - Hosted my first Black Friday / Small Business Saturday sale and was overwhelmed by the response. So glad some new crafters decided to take advantage of the discount to give my stamps a try!
November 29th, 2016 - Collaborated with the amazing Angie from Concord & 9th on a fun holiday project using stamps from both our collections. Let's just say the results were fantastic. View my post here and Angie's here.
December 1st, 2016 - Jennifer McGuire featured my Deerest Friends stamp set in one of her technique videos. She used a stamp set I designed for fall cards on a holiday card and it looks amazing. Watch her video here!
December 5th, 2016 - Received an email with the most exciting news ever...my shop can now accept PayPal! Cue the confetti and fireworks.
December 13th - 18th, 2016 - The RAH DT hosted a week long blog series called Homemade Holidays. Each day a different designer showed a fun way to create holiday-themed gift wrap for either a sweet treat or a gift card for a lucky teacher. And, of course, they used Right at Home Stamps to make it all happen.
December 27th, 2016 - Received my 1000th order on my shop! Of course I had to celebrate by including a little prize inside her package. #dreamsdocometrue
Now that I see all that I was able to accomplish, I feel a little bit better about the end of this year. I know that every month is just another step in the journey and doesn't necessarily need to be packed with tons of accomplishments. Some months will be slow and some will be jam packed...it's all part of the journey.
I thank you for reading this today. Let me know what some of your accomplishments are for this year in the comments! That way I can help you toot your own horn!
Nicole
