The last minute breakthroughs

When it occurred to me today that I had offered to provide something for a raffle at my son's school, and it was due tomorrow, and I hadn't put the raffle item together yet, along came the very familiar scramble. My usual work style is a little rushed, and rarely well planned. But I find that during my rush, sometimes it fuels my creativity. The sense of deadline is almost a must for me to get motivated at all. I work best with a due date. Assigning me something with the instructions of "whenever you get around to it" is most certainly a guarantee that I will never get to it. So if there's one thing I've learned about my personal work style with my business is that I work best under deadline, and under a little bit of a rush. When I say rush I don't mean pulling an all-nighter pressing coasters and printing invitations. I mean, rushing over the course of a couple days.

One of the hardest parts of running your own business is being in control of your own work schedule. But like I mentioned above, sometimes the sense of deadline fuels my work. While sitting here staring out the window wondering which item of mine I was going to donate, I realized that I wanted to prepare something new and fresh. Again, these feelings of wanting something new and fresh always occur to me when I'm under the gun. While I do wish these ideas came to me with plenty of time ahead to actually work them out, I'm glad they come at all.

While this wasn't a ground-breaking idea considering I use the antique illustrations on my invitations and cards, I recycled the idea for use on the coasters I have been doing as of late. Here's how they came out:


And now, looking at the photo, I want a glass of wine. So that's what I think I'm going to do.

Are you a pressure person?