SHARE 2016

Hello friends! It’s a new year. It’s a time for making goals, making plans, and for many of us, it’s time to choose that One Little Word® that we will try to incorporate into our lives in the coming year. In the past I’ve chosen really great words like DO and LOOK and LIGHT and I’ve been very unintentional with those words. 

Many of you know that last June, I quit my corporate job to work for myself and these past six months have taught me a lot. They’ve been good. But as I neared the end of 2015, I began a deep discussion with myself about how I should be spending my time. And in a way, that led to my word for 2016.

The word I’ve chosen to weave into my life is SHARE. And I’m excited about the implications that this might have. I thought about some of the ways that I might be able to apply this to both my work and personal life. 

I want to SHARE my truths.

I want to SHARE my time. This means creating specific times to be working and specific times where I have focused family time. Where I’m actually sharing the moments and not just on the sidelines of them.

I want to SHARE goodness on the internet. There is so much negativity out there. I want no part of that. I want to be a powerful influence for good in your daily scrolling.

I want to SHARE more of who I am. As a person. For me, this means blogging more. And not just blogging when I have a new project. It means sharing real moments about real life. I want that.

I want to SHARE more of my important stories. This year, I will be a part of four design teams. If you follow me on Instagram, you may already know some of them. I will be continuing on with Felicity Jane but in addition, I will be on the Elle’s Studio design team, the Therm-o-Web design team, and the Ali Edwards creative team. I was invited to be a part of most of these teams - and I am absolutely thrilled by that. I love these companies and wouldn’t have joined them if I didn’t. But I applied to be a part of the Ali Edwards creative team with intent. Ali has long been an influence in my scrapbooking and honestly in the way I approach my life. She is a storyteller and I connect with her philosophies on many levels. I applied to her team as a personal challenge to myself to getting back to telling my most important stories. I’m excited about making sure that these important stories are shared in my albums.

I want to continue to SHARE valuable content on my YouTube channel. I started this channel in October 2014 and since then have shared lots of scrapbooking videos. As time went on, I started creating different series on my channel including Old Meets New Stash Kits, Felicity Jane kit videos, my newer Script + Uplift series, and my most popular, my Saturday Series videos, which are more like a free 10 week class. I have loved creating these videos where I explore a single subject for several weeks. They have had a great response. THANK YOU for that. You have been amazing and encouraging and I’m glad you’ve found value in those videos. I have loved making them. I would love to continue to make them.

I also want to SHARE better and more valuable class content. Last year, I launched three classes on my website and I'm super proud of them. I have at least four small courses and one larger course, some collaborative and some on my own, that I would like to work on in the coming year. I want to make them better and I want to create classes that will help your storytelling experience.

So. In order to accommodate my goals, I have to cut back on my YouTube videos. By focusing more on my classes for now, it will allow me to shift my focus to providing more awesome free content when I’m finished. So, that means I’m going down to one weekly video on my channel, which will be my Saturday series, except I’m going to move it to Thursday. These videos have received the best response and I believe they provide the best content. Right now I’m in the middle of my Stamping in Scrapbooking series, and it will resume next week. And because I want to SHARE a little bit of goodness with you, my Sunday Script + Uplift series will continue, but instead of weekly, I’ll likely do this monthly.

As I previously mentioned, I’m going to be doing a lot of design team work this year. Some of those projects will have videos as well, but they will not have a specific schedule on my channel. If you want to keep up with me, be sure to subscribe to my channel. You can also keep up with my blog by subscribing. Just enter your email in the sidebar to get mail each time I post. You can also keep up with me on Instagram @craftyjenschow. 

Lastly, and maybe mostly I want to give a heart felt THANK YOU to all of you. Thanks for being my cheerleaders. Thanks for being so encouraging. Thanks for all of your kind words. Thank you for your support. Thank you for sharing your heart with me. I can’t wait to SHARE more of mine.

Here is a video if you want to see my face saying all of these things. :)