I’ve finally sent out all of the Fresh Art New Year’s cards so I want to share these photos! Here are the details…
It was a GIANT mess. I can’t stress that enough. I had NO idea what this confetti would do to my studio. I had to hire a cleaning lady to come deal with it because it gave me hives just thinking about it! The confetti itself was awesome and came from HERE. I could have ordered like half of what I got so if anyone needs confetti I have a huge box of it!
When you see these photos please know that my kids HATED this. With a red hot passion HATED it. They were itchy because it was in their hair and clothes and everywhere so it’s all they could focus on. At first I was all “HAVE FUN! Laugh! This is so fun and WOW what a blast we’re all having” but then it turned into me screaming at them to just fake it and SMILE! HA! If that’s not the life of a photographer shooting her own kids I don’t know what is! I am great with other people’s kids and mine get in there and I lose my shit with them!
And that leads me to – photos can be deceiving! My kids look (mostly) like they’re having fun but in reality they were pretty mad at me. Chris was the one dropping it on them and couldn’t get over the mess we were making plus he didn’t want to be there in the first place and right away I knew what I had envisioned wasn’t going to happen so I was grumpy too. Which was actually a great reminder for me for social media photos in general.
Sometimes I can get wrapped up in seeing women getting together who didn’t invite me or families who travel all the time and seem to have such a great time or whatever it might be that makes me feel less-than or not popular or just unhappy on social media – especially FB. But then I remember that it’s just a photo I’m seeing. It doesn’t tell the whole story. I think it’s just a good thing to remember – at least for me it is!
SO without further ado here are all the outtakes from shooting the Fresh Art New Year’s card! ENJOY!
And here is the card….
Also on the outside of the envelope was a sticker that says “throw kindness around like confetti” which is a salute to my 2015 word: KIND. That quote is how I’m going to try to live this year!
The card turned out cute and it was fun to send out something to my clients that was after Christmas when all the fun mail has stopped and bills are coming in! My whole idea to do a New Years card this year instead of a Christmas card was that maybe in the rush of the holidays my business card would get overlooked. And sending out as many cards as I do is a pretty significant investment in time (addressing, stuffing, stamping, etc.) and money so I want them to at least look at it for a minute before recycling it! By doing this it was a little marketing experiment I guess but with no real way to measure it’s success! Ha! I just thought a fun card to come mid-January when winter suddenly seems forever long might make people smile and think about fun ways they might want to capture their own kids or families. Maybe it’s cute enough they hold on to it and give it to their pregnant co-worker. Or maybe just my mom and mother-in-law will love it and stick it on their fridge! When running a small business so much of what I do is guessing. Is this idea going to work or isn’t it? Usually I have no idea. And usually what works surprises me! Sessions I’ve offered in the past that were a huge hit die the next year or ideas I threw together in two minutes totally book solid. I never really know.
SO in an effort to find out what do you all think? Christmas cards or New Year cards? Or no cards and use the money another way? Anyone with a small business want to chime in on what they do? It could be fun to get a discussion going in the comments!