How I Separate Hobby from Business

Today I thought I’d share a little bit about how I separate hobby from business. When you turn your hobby into a business you can quickly loose the joy that the hobby once brought you. Over the years I’ve discovered a few ways to keep that joy. I think that’s one of the reasons why I love my job so much.

One of the things that people are afraid of when turning something they love into a business is losing their love of that something. I’m here to tell you it can be done.

Here are a few things that I make a point of doing to keep my love of crafting and to separate my love for the hobby from my business. But I think many of these ideas, if not all of them, can also work for anyone who just wants to keep their love of crafting alive.

How to Keep your Love of Crafting

Make a point of crafting for you and schedule it into your calendar! Yes I craft for a living so I craft a lot. However, 80% of those projects are created for classes, blog posts, Facebook lives, demonstrations etc. I’ve gotten better over the years at making sure that I can also put many of those projects to use in my personal life but their purpose is still for my job. So making time to craft for me – using what I want, when I want, with no purpose in mind – is incredibly important.
Get crafty with friends. Schedule regular crafty time with a group of friends. Get together at someones house or at a local scrapbook store or even plan a weekend away. Getting together to craft with other people who love to do the same can fill your bucket like nothing else can.
Buy what you love. When you have a business, sometimes you buy things for the purpose of promoting them, not because you love them. Don’t get me wrong – I never buy things I don’t like. But some of my purchases aren’t purchases I’d make if I was a customer only. Buying what I love also means that if I see product that isn’t SU! and I love it or have a use for it, I will buy it. It’s so fun to mix my love of SU with other manufacturers products. Plus sometimes if feels like a different hobby using stickers, acrylic pieces and other things that I don’t normally use in my day to day crafting for work.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s important to take a break. To take some time where you don’t craft/work. It makes you appreciate it because you start to miss it. It also rejuvenates you and gives you the energy and motivation to get back to it.
Take classes. Learning and growing my love of crafting is important to me. So I like to take a few classes a year. These can be virtual or in person, paper crafting related or something completely different. Getting creative is so fun and there are so many different ways to get crafty (painting, knitting, making signs, cooking etc.). Often times I’m inspired to experiment with SU! products thanks to something I learned during a class unrelated to paper crafting.

I’m sure there are other things you can do to retain your love of your hobby if you want to turn it into a business. What are some of the things that you like to do?

Today’s Project

I can’t leave without sharing a quick project. Yesterday I had a few minutes of spare time and didn’t want to do anything for work so I pulled out my family album which is a Citrus Twist Life Crafted Album. This layout took me no time at all to put together, uses scraps from my scrap bin, leftover Paper Pumpkin pieces, some retired DSP and a couple non SU stamp sets.

If you’re interested in turning sharing your hobby with others, we’ve got a fabulous opportunity right now. You get to choose $206 in product (of your choice) and only pay $135 (no shipping & no GST). If you have any questions, just ask. We’d love to have you join our Canadian team!