Crosses are Everywhere!

One of our Facebook friends recently asked "Why all the crosses?" She's not the first to ask either, so the answer was simple for Josh, "I think I began making crosses because subconsciously I was searching for comfort. Great know thy self question, thank you for asking."  So, we have crosses everywhere now and Josh is thinking that he might be ready to put down crosses for a bit. :) 

 Understandably. Look at how many we have around.  

And here are the ones that have sold already. So.... many.... crosses....

We're very proud of all the crosses that we've made/sold, but there's only one more getting made right now and then it will be time to move on to something new.... We have a couple of custom projects to work on, but is there anything you'd like to see from us? Why not tell us on our Facebook page? 

Until Next Time,

Jen Crandall, Wife/Manager
Brass Hammer Designs (Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy and Twitter!)

No System is Working

I'm stuck. Utterly stuck in a rut of procrastination, avoidance, and ignoring. Remember those house pics from a few weeks ago? Maybe a little longer? Nothing is better. We haven't slowed down long enough to do much besides do a quick bathroom cleaning and clean the kitchen a few times. That's it. All of the flat surfaces are still covered. I know that I am need of simplification of my life in all areas. I keep telling myself in 2013, I'm going to focus on simplifying our finances, but what about the rest of our shit? Seriously! It's out of control!

And my days are getting busier. I'm avoiding more and more and then looking around wondering how in the world am I going to get to the things that need to get done? I desperately need to slow down somehow. I'm debating joining The Fly Lady's email list. But to be honest, I'm overwhelmed with all of the information online and coming at me in that method as well. Maybe she addresses that, but what if she doesn't? Then I'm stuck with more clutter in the form of email. I can pretend that we're moving maybe - that seemed to work to keep our clutter down for a good 10 years - we moved every 2 years. It seems like when we moved from our house in Richmond, IN though, we brought everything with us instead of purging.

I'm overwhelmed really. I don't know what else to say. I keep saying I'm going to try something and I plan to do it, but for some reason, this is where my drive fails me. I set out with goals and accomplish them all the time, yet, I can't take a simple task like staying organized and getting it done. I don't feel we are hoarders or anything, but I just want to simplify my life in so many ways.

 Our clutter is in the way of so many things.... I once posted on my facebook page and purposely keep it in my quotes, "The state of your housekeeping a lot of times reflects the state of your mind." I agree still and my mind is a mess...... I feel completely out of control and desperate to control something. Organizing, cleaning and making lists are my natural way of trying to gain back control, but in this case, I don't think I can gain it the way I need.

Yet, a weekend of just relaxing seemed to help some. A few changes will have to be made and some evaluation will have to occur soon. But, I'm at peace.


Until Next Time,

Jen Crandall, Wife/Manager
Brass Hammer Designs (Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy and Twitter!)

Weekend Get-a-way

What a great weekend. Sometimes, all you need is a nice get-a-way to reconnect with yourself and your friends. Josh's birthday was June 8th and I bought him tickets to see Clutch at The Vogue in Broad Ripple area of Indianapolis on July 13th. Clutch is one of our FAVORITE bands and introduced to us by one of our best friends (Chad of Stella Kustoms) while we lived in Maryland. We probably have seen Clutch play every year since 2003 and as Josh says it, "they never disappoint."

Clutch kicked off our weekend and it kept getting better and better with each visit of our friends that we call our family. The only thing that would've made it better is if our friends that are Clutch fans would have been with us Friday. 

Since we didn't have a very productive Brass Hammer Designs weekend, we'll leave you with couple of our favorite Clutch songs: "The Regulator" and "The Ghost". I'm thrilled that they played both of these Friday.

Until Next Time,

Jen Crandall, Wife/Manager
Brass Hammer Designs (Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy and Twitter!)

Just when things seemed slow....

Everyone's topic of interest lately has been the weather. Yep, it has been hotter than Hades lately. Saturday, we hit 104 degrees, which was a record in this area from 1847. And, I'm not sure you've noticed but, when it's this miserable, it's hard to not let it get your mood as well. We were starting to feel that way and like Brass Hammer Designs was just kind of at a stand still. But this weekend was different because we SOLD another piece! You just never know when it's going to happen. And just when things seemed slow..... BOOM!

So how did it happen? One of our friends was talking with Josh on Facebook about wanting to buy one of our pieces and he asked her if she had checked out our etsy page. Turns out, she didn't even know what etsy was! *gasp!* Well, I'm honestly not that surprised. There's a plethora of websites and things out there for everyone to tap into. How can we get people to notice our product in such a vast array of online resources? I find that the best way is get our Facebook page noticed and liked, so it shows up in our fans newsfeeds. Then when we post things, they'll see how we're doing and hopefully hit up our etsy page as well. (By the way, if you didn't know either, etsy is a place where artists and vintage shop owners can set up an e-shop to sell their work. It's a great place to go find all kinds of artsy things including Brass Hammer Design products.) It's kind of cool too, etsy posts images on Google Images, so when you type in "Mexican Folk Art Crosses" on the Google Images page, many of our pieces show up! :) They change positions, but it's still really cool to see that.

The biggest problem seems to be to gain "likes" on Facebook. And even though, we try to get everyone to "like" our Facebook page, it seems that we're still not able to reach our audience fully.  It's all about social marketing and networking. We're taking a lot of advice from our friend, Joe Daniels, with Swing This. You should go check out his stuff about physical fitness. He is great at interacting online with his posts on his blog, facebook, instagram and twitter.  And of course, we've mentioned in previous blog posts that we talk a lot with our friends, Missy & Will Marlar at Rituals by Nature too. Both of these businesses are doing something right because as of Saturday, Swing This was up to 1413 likes and Rituals by Nature was up to 1372 likes on their Facebook pages. An observation though is that both of these businesses have been at this for over a year too, so again, we're back to patience.

So, we'll keep plugging away at making art and blogging and trying to win your likes on Facebook... And selling great pieces like Felina below.....

Until next time, stay cool and hydrated....

Jen Crandall, Wife/Manager
Brass Hammer Designs (Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy and Twitter!)

Score Check In

Our Score Counselor, Hugh, called us Tuesday night to check in and see where we are.

So, let's catch you up too.

1) How's the website coming?
Well, we have had one of our friends and Josh's former teachers, Susan Shapiro, of Indiana University East, look at it and give us some tips. She consulted to companies about their web pages during her sabbatical in 2009 (I believe). She gave us a lot of tips, but many of them were a lot for us to handle at this time. We're not web designers. Bottom line.

2) How'd our meeting with Bare Knuckle Marketing go?
Great! Allison and Rebecca are very talented and have a lot of potential to help us. They are hooking us up with their lunch 'n learn schedule and hopefully we can go to that when it comes up. The class will help with how to better handle social media and our interactions with our fans and potential customers. They also suggested to check out the Final Fridays at Pendleton Art Center. It's an art event for artists to sell their work at the event on the last Friday of every month. We attended that this past Friday and it has a lot of potential. We're eager to explore our options with that.

3) Have we looked into Peachtree or Quickbooks yet?
I think we've actually talked about Quicken's Office most, but not totally sure.  I want to be able to interact with the customers and keep a log about them, and I'm not sure that Quicken does this. We haven't had a ton of time to look into it all because we've been trying to just manage making pieces and keep our head above water with our bills.All three programs are close to $180-$200 and that how much we are selling one  some of our pieces. But, that's the rough part, we're not selling that much right now and we have too many other bills to pay.We just can't afford much right now.

4) Have we sold any more pieces?
We sold "Amen" for $200.

"Electrified Again" for $65

And this awesome 3'x5' sign with a price of $400.

5) Can Score do anything else?
At this point, I think that we just need time and money. If Score can give us that, then we're good. :) Most likely they will give us time, so the next best thing is probably finding our customers and displaying our work there. Pendleton Art Center has a lot of potential and we're researching that. This past Friday was interesting and we think that we have a cheap way to display our art through another store owner at that event, but we still have to negotiate and set things up with them.

So until then......

Jen Crandall, Wife/Manager
Brass Hammer Designs (Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy and Twitter!)