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Artistic Endeavors

Running a Business

the world tour!

I’m being a bit facetious with that title.  Or perhaps hopelessly optimistic.  The amazing thing about this blog journey is that it always surprises me.  I think, “Oh, such-and-such would be pretty far-fetched, so it probably won’t happen.”  But then it does in some unexpected and amazing way.  So, will my book end up taking me on a world tour?  Who knows.  Probably not, but I’m getting an updated passport just in case I have the chance to visit our northern neighbors or visit my girls in the UK! I don’t have a grand book tour scheduled through Thomas Nelson, my publisher.  This is going to be a grassroots “book tour.”  Me coordinating with people who want me to come to their place of business to sign books, teach a workshop, give a seminar, or to fetch coffee and doughnuts or all of the above.  Having never done this before, I’m totally

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Running a Business

writing a book | how it happened

Despite the fact that I just wrote a book I feel like I’m totally the wrong person to give advice to an aspiring author on how to get published.  I thought it might be helpful, though, or at least interesting, for me to share my experience and the process.  So, here we go… I’ve shared before that I’ve never thought of myself as a writer.  I was never good in English at school, disliked writing papers immensely and have always been lousy at spelling and grammar.  I have always thought it would be fun to put together a decorating book, but that thought was the kind of thought you have like – it would be so fun to own a horse farm or it would be fun to live in Paris.  It’s something you talk about and think about, but it’s something other people do.  Not you. I started to think it

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Running a Business

from blogger to author

 November 17, 2010, I put it out there – I said I was going to start working on a book and just see where it took me. In November 2011, I had a book contract in hand from Thomas Nelson.  In November 2012, I’ll be at my first book signing.  Totally insane.  I finally have my book, Inspired You, in hand.   I posted it on Facebook, but haven’t mentioned it otherwise.  My friend Barb Blair texted me last night, asking why I didn’t call her screaming when I got it in the mail and she called me a stinker.  Once I got the giggles out about a grown woman calling me, also a grown woman, a stinker, I thought about it.  Why didn’t I?  I’m in love with the book.  I’m proud of it.  (I can, of course, see tons of things I would do a little differently, but

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Photography

growing as a photographer

I know photography is an area of blogging that be overwhelming.  You may drool over gorgeous, magazine quality photographs on other blogs and feel like you can never do that, so there’s no point in trying.  That’s how I felt when I first started my business, then my blog.  I just raised the white photography flag and took pictures on automatic.  This was the result of that mentality…     Nice.  Yes.  Those are pictures I took and sent along to my designer to use for my website.  She politely encouraged me to work on my photography skills.  I had taken a photography class a few years ago, so there was really no excuse.  I understood the way a camera worked, but I had focused most of my early photography efforts on cats and kids and things outside in pretty natural light.  I hadn’t tried to stage and photograph my home.  These

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Before and Afters

didn’t make the cut

I had to do a lot for my book. A lot. It was so much more work than I anticipated.  Weeks of writing, hundreds of pictures, hours of photo editing, weeks of rewriting, dozens of projects and days of staging.  After all of the work, some of what I did didn’t make the cut.  That’s a good thing.  When I’m writing for my blog, I don’t have to carefully edit myself, because I can write another post tomorrow with new content.  With the book, we had to edit everything down to the best I wanted to share and the most important words I wanted to say. So, a lot of great, but not perfect-for-the-book stuff hit the cutting room floor, so I’m going to scoop some of it up and share it on my blog. Exhibit A: A dated china cabinet, but one with really cool lines and lots of potential.  I

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Photography

50mm

I’ve become a bit of a lens junkie over the past year.  It all started when my old Nikon lens (that came with the film SLR I bought about eight years ago) wasn’t working with my new D7000 Nikon.  It worked, but it took forever to get it to focus, so it was finally time for an upgrade.  Since then, I’ve bought four new lenses and just added one more…a 50 mm.  (If your curious about my camera and other lenses, you can read about them HERE.)  It’s not the one I really wanted, but this one is $130 and the one I really wanted was almost $700, so I decided I would get this one for now and upgrade later. One reason I wanted this lens is because the aperture can open to 1.8, which is big.  That means the camera lets in more light, which is nice for interior

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the book

My life for the past couple of months has basically revolved around the book I’m writing.  Things are finally starting to come together.  We’ve edited through chapter nine (out of ten) and I just finished my last photo shoot today.  YES!!  It’s been a lot of work, but very rewarding and I know I will be absolutely over the moon when I see it in print.  So, I wanted to answer a few questions I’ve been getting about the book, so you have an idea of what I’ve been up to. How it happened… First of all, in case you’re new(er) to my blog, I want to let you know that my business was started just to help out with the family finances and I had no idea I would ever have the opportunity to write a book.  I started writing one about 1 1/2 years ago and shared about

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Miscellaneus

more peeks…

Well, the flurry of activity will be prolonged for a few more days…fortunately.  My original deadline for the photos has been extended.  Whew!  I was going to make it, but I was definitely going to be limping to the finish line.  I feel like with a few extra days, I can make the photos even better.  I started out the morning by moving things around in my office to make room for hanging wallpaper.  I brought in a professional for the job for a few reasons…  One: I have never hung wallpaper before and this is unpasted paper, two: I have dozens of other things I need to get done in a short period of time, and three: the paper is for a special project and it’s not a time for me to expand my DIY horizons.  I couldn’t help myself, though, and I was soon up on a ladder,

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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