The next steps in your art and craft dream journey is to learn how to set and achieve your goals. You also need to know how to achieve them quickly and easily.
In the blogs ’12 steps to conduct an art and craft supplies audit’ and ‘How to use a process of elimination to find your art and craft niche’, you were shown how to sort through your art and craft supplies, and how to work through your emotional attachment to your supplies. You also considered which were practical considering your time, space and ability.
You are much closer to identifying your art and craft niche. The next step is to learn how to set and achieve your goals in your art and craft dream.
Fine-tuning your art and craft niche
So far on this journey, you have analysed your art and craft supplies audit list and considered your emotional attachments to your art and craft.
You have undertaken the emotional and practical audit of your supplies and interests. You know what to eliminate, and what to keep.
Through these audits, you know:
- what art and crafts were attractive and practical to you 30, 20, or 10 years ago, may no longer be so;
- what art and crafts you can pursue in your space, time, ability and interest;
- your emotional attachment to each art and craft supply in your stash; and
- which art and craft you will not pursue.
New uses for your lost loves
You can now be comfortable when you conduct your ‘death clean’. See step 10 of blog ’12 steps to conduct an arts and crafts supplies audit‘.
You can:
- toss, keep or gift those supplies knowing that you have no further use for them; and
- pass them to others knowing that they can pursue their art and craft dream using the supplies that you once loved but can no longer use.
You have reduced your art and craft supplies interests from something quite broad to something much smaller.
Now you can find your art niche in this smaller area of interest.
Achieve your goals in your art and craft dream journey
Now you have a smaller area of interests in which to refine your art and craft niche, you need to pursue your art and craft dream.
Essentially, you need to be organised and committed.
1. First up, you need to start
You already have your supplies organised. They are sitting in a shelf or desk where you have placed them. You have gifted, sold or tossed those art and craft supplies you know you can no longer pursue. Your emotional attachment to your supplies is clear.
You know what arts or crafts you will pursue and how much time you can devote to them. You need to now pursue that dream. Get to it!
You need to identify what you want to make – you need to identify your project and set the goal of making that project.
But how do you do that? Now you need to be organised. Now you need to schedule your time, plan your projects, choose your colour, finalise the project you are working on and market that product.
2. Schedule your time
In step 5 of ‘How to use a process of elimination to find your art and craft niche‘, you identified the time you have available to do your art and craft.
Now you need to schedule this.
3. Write the time in your calendar
Knowing how much time you have available to devote to your art and craft dream is one step closer to your pursuing your art and craft dream.
Write a calendar item of what you will do in your art and craft time. Some time may be delegated to planning your projects, organising colour, visualising the final item. Time should be scheduled for you to do the actual artwork.
Make an appointment for yourself. This is your art and craft time.
4. Plan your project and set your goals
Now plan to use the time you just scheduled. Your time is to be distraction free. Put your phone and devices away. Concentrate on using your art and craft time only for the purpose of pursing your dream. Do nothing else in that time.
Make a commitment to yourself that you will do your art and craft. This is your dream that you are achieving.
5. Complete an actionable step or achieve a goal
No matter how much time you’ve found and scheduled – ensure you complete an actionable step in your scheduled time.
A completed project will help you see results of your work and encourage you to continue your dream. For example, if you have an hour to spare, would you prefer to do a quick sketch? This could be with charcoal, conte, pencil – a quick medium. If sewing – this could be pinning and cutting fabric from a pattern. It could be anything – as long as it is something that satisfies you as being a step closer to the end of your project.
Essentially, you need to have achieved a task or goal in the time that you set for your art and craft.
6. Choose the colour of your project
Part of your art project plan includes choosing colour. While drawing and painting have perspective and other issues to consider, all projects need to have colour.
Colour theory is relevant to all projects that include colour. The colour relationships do not change because of different projects. You can find about colour harmony in our post.
You can find colour charts to help identify colour and how they relate to each other. The post ’19 steps to complete a colour wheel and find colour relationships’ shows you how to make your own colour wheel and understand colour relationships.
7. Finalise your project
You need to work on your project through to completion. During the art process, you will find stages of your art may look ugly and seem that no matter what you do – it keeps looking ugly. Persist. Don’t stop. Keep pursing the project.
If drawing or painting you should have a good underdrawing, and on all projects, a colour relationship selected.
While you may find that application of the medium difficult – e.g. perhaps your paper has been damaged because of an incorrect technique, but this can still be worked through. Errors and damage can be amended. Your artwork may not be suitable to sell, but they may be OK to photograph, digitally edit, and sell digital copies. The possibilities are endless. Rarely should you need to discard a project.
Do what you need to continue past mistakes and complete the project. Mistakes are one of the best avenues to learn these mediums. You know what to avoid, and how to alleviate that error next time.
Also, put your project away after completion. Get it out a few days later to see how you view it. If necessary, make some final adjustments.
8. Market your product
Now you have your product finalised. If you have a drawing or painting, you may want to sell the original (if done with archival products) and to sell digital images online.
There are a few ways to sell your product. You can sell physical products online, such as ebay.com, Etsy.com, or at physical markets.
Digital products can be sold online. The images can be uploaded to a print on demand service such as Redbubble.com, zazzle.com, society6.com or Fine Art America.com.
9. Make a promise to yourself
In pursuing your art and craft dream and finding your art niche, you need to make a promise to yourself. You need to analyse your diary, find your spare time, and schedule your art and craft in those spaces.
Promise yourself that you won’t get distracted by social media, and other avoidable things.
You have given much to others over your life and you need to give to yourself. It is not selfish, and you shouldn’t feel guilty that you’re making time for yourself.
10. Write up a project schedule of your art and craft projects
Brainstorm what you can do with the art and craft supplies that remain in your stash. Get creative! Make a list of forthcoming events (e.g. public holidays, festivals, Christmas, Mothers/Fathers Days, or seasons) and make a creative project plan.
11. Be consistent and set and achieve goals in every project
Of all things – be consistent. Turn up at your scheduled time and do what you need to do to pursue your dream. It will likely be hard work.
Every goal you set and achieve in your art and craft journey is a step closer to your dream. Your learning how to achieve goals is a sure way to get there.
Art niches are not static
While you have identified the arts and crafts that interest you now, this will likely change in time. You will find that after you have worked with these mediums, that you are being drawn into another area or skill. Your learning will encourage you to move in areas that are of interest to you. You are constantly changing – and so are your art interests.
You may find that fabric painting and sewing small items will take you to a millinary or homewares craft.
Future possibilities
But there are things you need to do now. You now need to get organised, schedule your diary, keep your promises to yourself, and use the art and craft supplies that interest you now.
After a while of doing this, you will find you have a collection of art and craft creations in your inventory. You will also see that you have increased your creative knowledge and know different ways to apply your mediums.
As you gain knowledge, you may find that you would like to create a website or promote your work on social media. Once again, set goals in these new skill sets and learn how to achieve them.
New skills to learn
In pursuing these digital avenues, you will likely need to learn new skills such as digital photography, photo editing, video editing, social media and web publishing. If you don’t want to do these tasks, you may need to outsource or delegate these steps – yes – managing is a new skill as well.
You may find that you may be able to make a business from your art and craft.
However, you may find you are happy doing your art and craft dream by selling your items by gifting them to family or friends.
Now you know how to achieve goals – it will be worth it
You need to keep at it. Do not stop. Find YOUR art niche and achieve YOUR dream.
You need to get organised. Now set yourself your art and craft goals and achieve them. Use your available time and achieve your dream!
I believe that you can do it. It will be hard work, but it will be worth it. You will stand tall and be proud of what you have achieved.
Do you like this post? Save it to your “art and craft goal setting” board on Pinterest.
This post was originally published on 5 June 2019. It was republished on 4 July 2022.