sketchy notions : farewell 2013, hello 2014

I mailed off my last giant commission on Friday so I'm officially on a mini and much needed Christmas break! In this downtime to clean and reorganize, it really hit me: the year is almost over! So much happened this year, and so much was made! That's the part I'm most excited about... If you follow along on Twitter, you already know I did the math a couple nights ago. My sales increased 324% this year! Insane! I started participating in small artist markets this year. This year I also officially filed my business name and for copyright of Sketchy Notions. I also opened up my second online shop, Sketchy Notions.

This year I had 13 big commissions! Including 1 custom brand logo, 6 custom photo albums (three of those are the New York Triplets I'll be sharing soon), 2 custom children's books, and 6 weddings albums. I can't wait to share that last wedding album, I'm really blown away by how sweet and considerate this client was. January will be full of sharing of all these secret projects!

Although not much progress was made on my 25 before 26 list, looking back at all the progress I made on my business is a very nice consolation. I'm already making lists for changes to make to the shops in January, as well as Valentine's Day designs and dreaded tax season in April. There's a lot of really great advice floating around the blogosphere for starting up and running a small business. Reading it all was a nice jump start to get motivated to make my lists for January and start preparing for what I want to accomplish next year. Here are some of my favorites: