How I Paid it Forward in June & July

As many of you know, I've been making a concerted effort to Pay it Forward to sustain the blogs, businesses and artists that make my life better. Every month I try to ask myself two questions:

1) Who adds value to my creative life?
2) Knowing it takes work to produce creative inspiration, how can I pay it forward to sustain them?

In the past months, I had the pleasure of working with Evie S. Evie can make even paper towels (above) look luscious, and I really appreciate her thoughtful, honest blogging. She moonlights as a graphic designer and I shyly inquired about her rates to make me a new banner. Here are a couple of early versions.

I haven't tweaked the blog's look to incorporate her final design, but she did a beautiful job and I'm excited to show it off!

Next, I was excited to have an excuse to support my Common Thread Studio coworker Harry Diaz. (You may have seen some of his work on this gift.) My aunt and cousins recently hosted a lovely "baby dinner" for us (as a baby shower alternative), and thank yous were in order. When I realized we're headed into a season of thank-you writing, I got in touch with Harry to order some of his cards.

Harry kindly put together a custom order of mostly thank you cards and a few of the other designs. I already enjoy writing thank-yous, but this is just going to make it even more of a pleasure!

If you want to join me in this adventure, you can. Pay it forward to support someone whose work you enjoy and let us know how it goes!

Pay it Forward Idea #3: Creative Services
Is there a creative gift you wish you had, but don't? Pay it forward to hire someone's creative services. In this last round, I was relieved to hire out help with my blog banner because, frankly, I lacked the motivation and talent to make a new one! A quick search on Etsy shows tons of options at a range of price points for custom blog banners.

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{First photograph by Evie S.}