Two months ago, Chris and I loaded all of our stuff and our four kids into a minivan and a big old rented truck and started the thousand mile drive from L.A. to our new home in Washington. We arrived on St Patrick's Day. As a family very proud of our Irish side, this was the perfect day to start our new life in our new home.
Once I had the older kids registered for their new schools and most of our boxes unpacked I began my quest to find my local bead and art supply shops. I was thrilled to find Bird Tail Beads just minutes from my house. Not only did this discovery totally cover me for all of the glass and stone beads I could possibly need but I also made my first Washington friend. The owner, Candy, is simply wonderful.
After visiting the shop a couple of times and showing Candy some of my work, she approached me regarding the possibility of me teaching some wire classes. Now.. teaching classes is something that I have thought about before and something that I have always wanted to work into. But I figured that would be down the road a little further. Well, Julie, think again! I told Candy that I would be thrilled at the opportunity and asked her to give me a week or two to come up with a class idea and a print out for the project.
It didn't take much thought before I decided that my first class would be a rosary. I had already been working on a cross that I liked and I have always wanted to make a rosary.. now I had a reason to. But the truly overwhelming part.. (well.. secondly overwhelming, right behind public speaking *gasp*) ...was how to get the ideas out of my head and into a PDF. I had never made a PDF before. I have only had experience with Gimp, Rhino, Maya and a tiny bit of Flash. So now it was time for a crash coarse in Adobe Illustrator. Which is far easier than I thought it would be!
So after 2 days of taking photographs, editing, putting it all together with written instruction, I had a 26 page PDF tutorial with 73 fully illustrated, easy to follow steps. Now.. I will admit, I am my own hardest most vicious critic but I am THRILLED with how my tutorial came out. Before my class, last Sunday I uploaded my tutorial to sale on Etsy. It felt pretty amazing.
Teaching the class went extremely well too! I only had three student, but how totally perfect it was. Not too many to completely overwhelm me but enough that I got to make a little pocket money. The owner of the shop, Candy was very pleased with how well the class went and has asked me to teach more. At least one a week!
So starts new opportunity. I am excited to rise up to meet it. Wish me luck! <3
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