Monday Motivation

Blogging can be challenging, and it can be difficult to stay motivated when you are trying to balance your home life and your business.

Creating and maintaining your blog can be time consuming, and it's hard to stay motivated when you are felling stressed about the upkeep of your blog.

There are a few simple ways to stay motivated through your blogging process and have the time you need for your family and business.

Plan ahead - Create a blogging calendar to keep track of your ideas. Having a list of ideas ready makes blogging easier. (More ideas to plan for your blog tomorrow 5/23)

Write short posts - They say you only get 1 minute to attract someones attention and if it takes more then 3 minutes to read a post they will move on. Sometimes a posts with few words or just photos is all you need.

Mix it up - Plan a variety of topics. Keep your readers coming back with something new each week.

Create regular features - Having regular features makes it easier to schedule your posts. I have two regular features Motivation Monday and Be Inspired making my blog planning easier.

Pre-publish - Write your posts a few at a time, and schedule them to post throughout the week. I usually write posts on Sunday for the entire week, then I don't have to worry about my blog for week.

It's easy to stay motivated about your blog when you don't have to worry about what you are going to post.

What is one thing that you find challenging about blogging?

Inspired Success Week

Inspired Success week is a monthly series till the end of 2012. The week will be filled with ideas to stay motivated, lots of tips, product suggestions, and highlighted with an interview from a leader in the handmade community.

Inspired Success Week starts tomorrow.

What you can expect:
Monday -  Motivation tip
Tuesday - Business tip
Wednesday - Be Inspired Business Products
Thursday -  Featured Interview
Friday - Your Home Office / Studio

This week (5/24), I am thrilled to have Sonya Kanelstrand, a photographer and writer of the blog Kanelstrand. Sonya has created a popular blog about green and simple living with a thriving community in less then a year. Stop by Thursday to see how she achieved her success.   

Join me All week for inspired ideas for your online business!

Share Inspired success Week your blog community. Add this button to you blog today.

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If you have any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions of people you would like me to interview contact me at additionsstyleblog@gamil.com

Lots of good stuff stop by everyday!

DIY Friday - Vases

Flowers are the perfect way to add a touch of spring to your home. A unique handcrafted vase will make them even more special. Check out these simple DIY ideas for creating vases that have your own personal touch.

Painted Glass Vases

Coil Wrapper Vase

Twig Vase

Tape Vase

Glass and paper Vase

PVC pipe vase

How do you like to display flowers in your home?

Inspired Success week is back! Starts Monday.

Five Questions

I have had an enormous amount of work lately. Working around the clock on wholesale orders, Etsy sales, and future shows. It has been very challenging to keep up all my regular activities, (that includes commenting on all my favorite blogs) but I hope to be back on track soon.

Through this process I realized that I can't do everything, and that I needed to scale back on a few of my online activities and re-evaluate my the overall plan and vision for my business.

To figure things out I asked myself these five questions:

What is your vision?

What do you enjoy working on?

Are you exploring too many new directions? (list all your ideas)

What habits are you clinging to? (make a list)

Do you take more pleasure in having the idea or making that idea a reality?

Going through each question made me think about what I really wanted to achieve in my business and what was not really working. I knew I had to let a few things go, but until I saw everything written down on paper it was hard to decide what was not actually helping me and my business.

Click here to print a copy

Print out the form with the five questions. Take some time to evaluate your business, to see what is working and what needs to be changed. When your done with your form, create a new plan getting rid of actives that are time consuming and not working.

You could use this form once a quarter, to help you stay on track. As well as at the end of the year for creating your new year plan.

We are already busy, why not make sure the work you are doing is going to help you achieve the success you desire.

Do you need to let go of a few actives that are not helping your business?

Inspired Success Week is back May 21 - 25

Be Inspired - The Moon

Words to Inspire

“Clouds may come, but clouds must go, and they all have a silver lining. For behind each cloud you know, the sun, or moon, is shining.”

Idea to Inspire

The moon is one of the few things in nature that is close to being a perfect circle. Be inspired by the moon today use circles in your work today.

Photos to Inspired

I love sitting outside at night to view the every changing moon. These photos of the moon from Pinterest show the amazing colors, and textures of the moon.

Source: malinconialeggera.tumblr.com via Kim on Pinterest

Source: art.com via Hil on Pinterest

Source: snopes.com via LoLo on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Omar on Pinterest

Source: ciracar.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: tumblr.com via Michelle on Pinterest

Inspired Success Week is back May 21 - 25

Artist to Know

I enjoy finding inspiring art in unexpected mediums.Today's Artist to Know, Gesine Marwedel, uses the human body as her canvas and create unique pieces of one of a kind art.

Gesine Marwedel

Gesine Marwedel was born in Eckernförde, Germany 1987. After leaving school in 2005, she worked in an Indian orphanage for some months.

The experiences she made there, predetermined her future education as a physician. While in India, Gesine met with the skill of painting with henna. The Indians have centuries of experience in drawing on the body.

Since 2009 she had been working as a speech-therapist. In Addition she continues to work as an artist, doing bodypainting, hennapainting, wallpaining and paintings on canvas.

As you will notice, her style is mostly realistic or surrealistic. Despite the relatively good level of works for her art in all its forms, remains a hobby. We hope you will enjoy Gesine’s work as much as we do!

If you wish to see more of Gesine’s work, check out her personal website: Gesine-marwedel.de

Inspired success Week is back May 21 - 25

Motivation Monday

                    Source: sweetandlovelythings.tumblr.com via Valerie on Pinterest

DIY Friday

I love to make cards during the holidays and for gifts. When you make cards yourself you can personalize them and make them look exactly as you want. Here are a few tutorials for creating your own cards and envelopes. These idea are perfect for personalized Mothers Day cards.

gift cards and envelopes

Pop up Cards

Watercolor card ideas

This link has lots of great ideas

What is your favorite type of card to make?