Pondering the future

I've been thinking a lot about the future, what I can do with my crafty and design passions, can i support myself, or at least boost my income now, or when we have children. Is there a market for whatever I can produce, make or even assist with etc and I'm still no further really!

I had a smallish wobble at work after having to update the staff profiles for our department on our website, we now have a graphic designer with 10+ years experience and no older than I am. Why did I choose a non-employable degree, was it simply to paint pretty pictures and have that piece of paper in the end or was I completely not thinking it through for 3 years, probably the latter, that and the fact that most career advisors I saw said that Fine Art was the most transferable of the art degrees, which obviously isn't true in the slightest! But you live and learn, and hindsight is a wonderful thing! So onward!

What can I do then?

This is what I came up with while brainstorming:

• Stationary design - printed or digital copy
• Printing - handmade lino, digital
• Quilt/patchwork/sewn items - coffee cup cozies, bunting, other little stuff
• Crochet or Seared Fabric- flower brooches, hair decorations
• Cakes or baking
• Wedding planning

I've always had more of a passion for the design side of things, that the side of my career I'd like to develop and what I always seem to gravitate back to - when I'm in a coffee shop I mentally redesign their menus, look at websites that look wonky or something.  Out of all my many interests I think stationary design is one that I can concentrate on the longest, my biggest personal interest (from everything to the font to the type and size of paper its printed on) and the one thing I seem to be naturally good at.

(sorry for the blurry censoring, I wanna keep some things private!)

The big question is am I good enough and would people pay for my design services at the end of the day? I had sooo much positive feedback, ooo's and aaah's from the wedding stationary, but was that just because I focussed so much time and effort on making it perfect for me & my hubby, would I be able to do this at some extent (probably not as over engineered or over designed) for real actual paying clients? Thats the $50million question...

So I think my next step is to develop a kind of stationary template which I can design to the best of my ability which is customisable to the clients names and details. I can offer a range of customisation levels and costs from just changing the names, to me spending a little more time coming up with a whole new theme based on their requests and theme.
I think that the wedding market is the biggest for me and my work, but I'd still like to offer other stuff, baby announcements, birthday cards and stuff, possibly a little out of my comfort zone as you really need to be unique, identifiable and all in all a bit funny for things like that to sell. So for the moment, I'll probably concentrate on doing stationary for weddings, its what I know and the range of different items that you can or need to produce is huge, theres not just the invitation, theres the stationary bits for the day, table plan, seating name cards, even branching into themed signage for pointing guests towards the loos etc etc.
I think and hope theres the scope for me to do this professionally, or at least on the side as a hobby type business and will cost me little to try, so watch this space for more!

x

PS yay this is my 20th blog post, at least its something semi serious this time!!