Hi - welcome!
If you received my newsletter (firstly, you might be sick of being welcomed, but one last time - to my blog!) I touched on how long website building has been on my to-do list!
Truth is, I thought as soon as I moved to Montreal and began designing full time, I would have a chance. However, upon arriving, the first priority became learning french (appropriately).
One amazing thing out of the french program I took (besides le francais of course) was meeting a super sweet nail artist Sara. She shares my love of DIY (..makes amazing sourdough bread), potlucks (..go for the sourdough) and of course jewelry design. She also has a background in ecommerce having worked at Shopify for a number of years before starting her own business full-time. She offered me guidance with a website several times early on, but the full-time program + LV made anything else hard on a work-life balance.
Despite not feeling close to bilingual, after 8 months of learning, I couldn’t put off my business any longer - so I wrapped up school just in time for summer, and for full time holiday-season-prep!
PHEW! Once the new year hit, while recovering from the holidays, I began working on all-things new collection and was SOOOO lucky to have managed to get to the photoshoot just before the end of February - which was about 2 weeks before COVID really hit Montreal.
Wasn’t it so surreal? I was in denial for at least a week. Admittedly, I rebelled by making extraneous trips to the grocery store just to get out of the house and panic ate three desserts one night. As an extrovert, and a rule hater - I was not coping well. As I got to understand the severity, and importance of these rules though - I started to behave accordingly.
With the photoshoot out of the way, and the limitation on other things to do - my schedule cleared so... immediately I sent a “I’M FINALLY READY, CAN YOU HELP?” message to Sara. Within a couple minutes and messages, we had set up our first Zoom meeting and the wheels were finally in motion.
I had a lot to learn! But Sara’s been VERY patient, and guided me through the whole process. First step was to send her all of my product content: images, descriptions, etc. - this took us to starting to standardize all copy, and organizing all my miscellaneous photos on my computer. Not even 2 weeks later, she was showing me a number of nearly completed sites to choose from - with only some small tweaks and refinements to go.
Our ZOOM meetings meant glimpses of friendly faces - a little socializing and sharing the triumphs of the days - with tropical beach or outer space backgrounds.
I’m not going to lie, this project, my work in general, has been a huge part of my stability. It gives me a sense of purpose and accomplishment, collaboration, and you - this LV community.
Speaking of that community… it is one that is making the most of COVID with care packages!!! It started with receiving a message from an Edmonton based artist friend of mine (@colourmeweird), saying a sexy black see-through crop top she makes was on its way. (I’ve had my eye on it since we did Etsy Made Edmonton last Sept). After just one post about it, messages from other artists suggesting swaps started coming in. (If you’re loving this idea - send me a message on IG!) What better time to find homes for samples, supplies and experimental projects - like velvet panties!
Despite handmade artisans facing market cancellations and temporary closures of all of our loved local shops and stockists, it is a good opportunity to work on personal and business growth and development - including (for me) progressing online sales systems. Who knows when I would have had a website for y’all otherwise!
A huge THANK YOU for your continued support.
We are all in this together, so I will continue to do my best to give you some things to read, some DIY tutorials and of course, the sexiest of jewelry.
Hang in there!!! Love you all,
Nicola