I just realized something: I've been offering online classes for 11 years. 11 years! I can hardly believe that but my first online class was created with my friend, Sharon Tomlinson, and it was called Of Towers and Turrets.
Bezel Bootcamp (formerly known as Of Towers and Turrets)
Some of you may remember it...may have taken it. It was a fantastic collaboration of Sharon's mixed media/painting talent, and my jewelry making skills. I loved every bit of it! Several years later, I updated it and converted it into an online class called Bezel Bootcamp. In any case, 11 years ago was a long time! At that time, no one was doing online jewelry making classes that were intensive like what I offered. It was quite an adventure and a really big learning curve as I did everything...photography, writing, filming, editing, uploading, registration, email, newsletter, social media site, blogging, posting and, oh yeah, the class projects!
Rings for Rookies
Looking back, my uncomfortable-ness in front of the camera is pretty evident. Now, I feel perfectly at home in front of the camera. NOT! haha! But, years do offer an advantage...experience. I still do everything myself, and enjoy it, but I also find myself starting to feel the beginnings of a bit of burnout. To ease things, a tiny bit, I've decided to move my online courses to a new platform. Not only is this going to work better for me, but it will work much better for you students! The tediousness of registration is now automated and taken care of by the new site. I'm so happy about that! Less confusion for both of us.
Eventually, all of my classes will be moved over. This means I'll be closing down my beloved blog. I'm pretty sad about it but I always told myself that, when it wasn't fun anymore, I'd stop. It's become more of a chore so I'm giving it up. For now, I have BoHo Bliss and A Minor Ornamentation: Earrings Hot + Cold moved over and ready for registration.
One of the best features of the new platform is that I can bundle classes together and offer a discount. The first bundle is earrings, Sublime Earring Bundle, and the next will be a wire bundle. The other thing students are really going to appreciate is a site for tools and supplies. With this site I can provide photos and links for super easy shopping for ya'll. So much easier.
Last thing I'm just over the moon about is a new branding scheme done for me by the uber talented Meg Harrop of Lemon & Birch. This lady is a visionary. She has an incredible ability to look into the soul of your work and create an amazingly accurate, and thoughtful, combination of images, fonts and colors that are...everything.
I was hesitant to invest in a re-branding (you know...that silly "I can do that myself" thing) but Meg has done such phenomenal and meaningful work for me. I've really been touched by the what she created and I'm SO GLAD she took me on. It's given me back some of the excitement that's been missing for this last year, or so. I'll be showing you all of it, in a later post, because there's so much to see and know about it.
In the meantime, check out the new digs!