Its been quite a journey since last November….

I know have a new website at  http://www.carymade.co.uk/

If you have been following my story, you will know its taken me quite some time to find my style and gain enough confidence in my work to start trying to sell.

My husband read a while ago a book called ‘The One Thing’  by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan – he would constantly quote it and nag me about reading it for myself.

Its an great book that I cannot recommend highly enough.  In Chapter two ‘The Domino Effect’ they say –

‘Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life.  Toppling dominos is pretty straightforward.  You line them up and tip over the first one.  In the real world, though, it’s a bit more complicated.  The challenge is that life doesn’t line everything up for us and say, “Heres where you should start”.  Highly successful people know this.  So every day they line up their priorities anew, find the lead domino, and whack away at it until it falls.  Why does this approach work?  Because extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous.  What starts out as linear becomes geometric.  You do the right thing and then you do the next right thing.  Over time it adds up, and the geometric potential of success is unleashed.  The domino effect applies to the big picture, like your work or your business, and it applies to the smallest moment in each day when you’re trying to decide what to do next.  Success builds on success, and this happens, over and over, you move toward the highest success possible.  When you see someone who has a lot of knowledge, they learned it over time.  When you see someone who has a lot of skills, they developed them over time.  When you see someone who has done a lot, they accomplished it over time.’

‘The key is over time.  Success is built sequentially.  Its one thing at a time’

What I took from this book was that if the small decisions I made each day were well chosen then slowly but surely I would start moving in the right direction.  Pieces of the jigsaw would start to fit together and these small dominos would start knocking over larger, previously impossible dominos.

Starting with a 12×12 ‘Music’ challenge at Midsomer Quilting back in November I found an outlet for my love of nature and particularly Birds.

The Blackbird was the first small domino.  From this starting point I started to experiment and discover new skills using new threads and fabrics.  Suddenly, through playing and learning I find myself with 9 pieces of work, all of which were in their own way challenging.

By taking the journey a piece (or bird) at a time but and setting myself small but manageable goals each week, I started to see the dominos fall, each slightly bigger than the previous.

This book and the time put into social media, particularly Twitter has paid off in so many ways.  I would have thought it impossible 6-7 months ago that I would be a member of two textile groups (where I meet amazingly inspiring textile artists), have an exhibition ahead, a workshop to teach in the new year and a feature in Be Creative with Workbox magazine –  All of these things have been built slowly thanks to the list of ‘things to achieve’ each week.  My youngest daughter bought me a lovely sewing notebook for Christmas in the hope of inspiring me.  At the top of each page I write the date and  what I would like to achieve that week.  Some weeks they are all crossed out, others they get carried over to the next.  I don’t worry if this happens because I’m not in any huge rush, it just keeps me focused and un-clutters all the information that is otherwise stored in my head

So, I am now finally at a point this week of having my own website.  Its been very exciting to see it build.  I shall continue to blog on this WordPress site.

I really hope you will continue to follow my story and that it helps you start or continue yours.  You could even read the book!