3 More weeks before my first Market Stall, My 13 month journey

Ok it is 3 more weeks before my first market stall and I am starting to wonder if I have enough stock, am I reaching my audience correctly, will people like my items. Nerves aside I have to admit I am having fun and really enjoying allowing the right brain creative side of my brain time to play and have fun. Being a Geologist, Scientist by training, right brain thinking is not as easy as it sounds. I must admit 12 years of painting folkart for relaxation helped train the left brain to switch off and let the right brain have a little fun. LOL Last year at about this time, due to health reasons, I decided to take time off to focus on my art, re-evalutate what was important for me and spend time with my family. My youngest son and his family moved here to Melbourne last year and his wife was expecting their 4th child. (I still can't believe I have 4 grandkids!!) I wanted to spend some time with my two sons and their partners and the extended family of 3 grandkids at that time, now 4 grandkids. What was suppose to be 6 months ended up being over 12 months. What a year I was in for!! After feeling the empty nest syndrome for 5 years and wondering what my next life goal was, quitting my day job and taking on family duties, working on my art was so hard for me. I had spent the better part of 15 years as a professional in the 9-5 work force. Not having the financial stability, working for a boss, and taking on a new venture that is an unknown financial risk was scary for me! I like to know what and where the next goal is!! Six months in after taking time off work, seeing family in the US, being grandma to 4 grandkids, I was wondering what was I going to do with my life. I was worried about the lack of money side of things and thought maybe I could use my IT geek knowledge to help others with their home computer problems. I was still unsure where I was going and felt like I was floating on a poorly made life raft waiting for a ship to sail in and rescue me!!! Being a person who likes to know what the next goal/step is I was less than excited about my prospects! Where am I going??? Being out to see with no goals, no life raft, no idea where I was going, NOT me at all. After 10 months, I had a plan. I enrolled into a course to learn how to write a business plan (still not fully written). At that course, I thought I was going to do 2 businesses, one being Home Computer support, the other wasI to use my art and my husbands photography to start an online business. At the end of the course, my DH surprised me by saying that he thought that I should take my art and make that my main focus of my new business. So, Warratahstree was born as a small business and I registered as a business and started writing a business plan of what I wanted Warratahstree to be, how I wanted to market myself and what I wanted to sell online. It is now 13 months and after a thoughtful phone call from my DIL to tell me that my grandson's primary school is having a fair in March and it would be a great starting place for me to do market stalls. Well, three weeks from now I put all my work on display for everyone to see. It is kinda like my reoccurring nightmare when I was in University, you know the one where you have that dream where you walk into an exam and you are in your underwear!! EKK!!! Market day, three weeks from now, I have to keep in mind that art is often personal. What one person likes is not necessarily what another person will like. I have to remember that it is not personal if someone does not like my work. (A hard ask for me sometimes) I have to take the bad and learn from it. I have to take the positive and run with it. I have to keep in mind that day what one blogger said once, that it took her 2 years to find her market, to develop her "product". Though I may like something, it is what my customers want that I have to keep in the back of my mind at all times. I have to focus on what my buyers want and make that my focus for my product. I have to let go of the left brain that wants to control and let the right brain have the freedom to create. The next few weeks before the market stall I will try to remember to post some of the work I am putting into my market stall. Please stay tuned, and if you live in the Melbourne area, please support my grandson's primary school by visiting Croydon Hills Primary School Fair, on 23 March 2013. Here is a card I worked on today. Not sure if I like it but the idea is that the card is a book, with a wise old owl on top of books wishing "Happy Birthday" to the recipient. The colours of the Owl are the school colours for my grandson's school. Happy Blogging; Warratah @ warratahstree