Happy 2018 everyone!

I spent the majority of 2017 putting things into place so I strongly believe that 2018 will be an incredibly productive year for me and cannot wait for all the things to come!

If you have read parts 1- 3 of this blog series, then you have learned a bit about me personally and my younger years as well as my first true attempt at starting a business. All of the experiences over the first 24 years of my life lead to what I am going to write about today.

Let's rewind a bit... I took a bit of a hiatus, regarding my business ventures, about 4 years ago due to finding out that I was growing a tiny human inside of me so I won't bore you with that year of sleep deprivation, crankiness and eating god knows what.

Just about exactly 3 years ago, when my daughter was 6 months old, my family and I decided to move from California (where I was born and raised) to Nashville, TN. This move was brought on by a job promotion I was offered and it was such a blessing in disguise! Like I had mentioned, I had taken a bit of a break from the entrepreneur world and focused on my new life. New daughter, new husband, new state, new home, new job...even a new cat. I still painted for fun, for that was it, just for fun.

After living in Nashville for just about a month, i started to notice that there was the start of an art "scene" here. Artwork by local artists filled the walls of almost every restaurant, coffee shop, brewery and retail store. It got my wheels spinning and I started to feel like I was missing out on something great. I ended up getting my first art show at Tailgate brewery. I was their featured artist for the month. I had never had an art show before but was so excited to give it a shot. To my surprise, I sold almost ALL of my original paintings I had hanging up for that month.

After this, a whole new fire was ignited in me!

I started booking art shows left and right. I was doing an art show almost every weekend because, like any career in the arts, I needed to gain as much exposure as I could get! I set up at coffee shops, bars, art crawls and pretty much any place that would accept me.

Doing these shows so often did make me stumble upon a few obstacles. I couldn't keep up with the producing original paintings which cause I lot of extra time and stress. I needed to work smarter, not harder (yes, corporate lingo applies to the art world as well.) I needed to expand my product line in order to free up more of my time as well as be able to provide a product for EVERYONE! (Believe it or not, not everyone collects original art haha.)

The process of how I expanded my "brand" will definitely take up a whole new blog so I will sign off for now and leave you all in suspense until next week. :)

Thanks for reading!

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