I’m finding it fascinating how liberating blogging can be for women in all manner of ways, financially, creatively, emotionally and socially. While I left my corporate IT job at the turn of the century and started my creative business, I took the approach of making my living from what I created. Blogging was around but not huge. As I’m a writer by trade and enjoy the process I decided to keep writing with my own online magazine and the Creatively Belle blog.

Like water, we each find our own paths in life, sometimes we wish the process was a bit easier or the course ahead clearer, but we need to make it our own.

Find your own path

Women Who Blog

Seeing how many women, all different ages, coming from a fascinating range of backgrounds and experiences are getting stuck into blogging and making a life for themselves with it is really inspiring to me.

It shows me that women are supporting women and  giving each other choices and opportunities. I already live this with my ceramic jewellery. Most of my customers at market are women and without them choosing to spend their money with an artisan at market (or online and etsy) then I wouldn’t be living this creative and independent life. So I know how amazing and deeply appreciated it is to have this support.

One of the things that fascinates me about this support is that it is from women who I don’t know, they aren’t my dearest friends who are there for the good and the bad, the laughter and the tears. They are regular women from across the country and over the waters who find me at market, love what I’m doing and give new homes to my designs. Without their support I simply wouldn’t have my own little creative business. And the same is true for bloggers and their readers. As bloggers we don’t personally know the bulk of our audience, the women who read and follow us online, who in effect, give us the viewers that let us create a business from our blog and ultimately the freedom of choice in our daily lives.

The Path to Blogging

The path into blogging is different for each of us but the process from starting it when doing something else full time and then once it is starting to bring in a healthy income making the transition via incremental steps to doing it full time seems to be a well practiced route.

Just look at the blog this n that with olivia with it’s delicious focus on indulgent recipes. It was started while Olivia was at university and has grown with her, morphing as her life and dreams have evolved. Olivia has a government job, busy family life and gets to share her passion for food, craft and family through her blog.

There’s Tania from Think Tasmania with her beautiful blog showing photos of the picture perfect Australia island state. Now it’s no secret that I love my adventures in Tasmania so looking through her images is always a delight for me. And just like so many women around the world, Tania started the blog part time and has progressively grown it into a full time business with an income that supports her vibrant family.

Stefani Tolson from Mommy Enterprises started her blog to keep track of her baby daughter’s development and it has grown into a blog that celebrates all manner of aspects of family life, from food to crafts to travel to celebrations and more.

Another corporate IT girl deciding to change things up and make her living from her creativity is Alli from Made with Happy. Alli has left the corporate job and is now making her blog all about crafts, creativity and colour and I love how more and more women are finding their own paths to deep personal satisfaction.

This is a great little group of bloggers making a living from what they love. It goes to show it is entirely possible to achieve your dreams and do more of what you love. Simply by following women like these ladies you’ll be able see how it’s done, and all the while with great content and a healthy sense of humour too!

Be loud and proud in your support of creative women

Finding the Balance by Giving It A Go

By all means, every path has it’s bumpy patches, especially when you’re heading around those blind curves on what turns out to be steep mountain tracks, but every job has it’s crappy bits. It’s the balance between crap and joy, satisfaction and frustration, the spring in your step and dragging yourself along that makes the real difference. You’ll only know if you give it a go.

This circle of women supporting women, creativity supporting creativity is so inspiring to me. All of us want our lives to have meaning, to have the opportunity to do more of what we love and less of what drains us. It is only by mutually supporting each other that this happens more easily.

And the support doesn’t have to be over the top. When I did a collaboration with Tania from Think Tasmania it was all kept very simple because both of us were feeling a bit overloaded with  things at the time, I was preparing for the Tasmanian Craft Fair and Tania was wrangling a busy family and a big new client all after getting back from holidays. But we both thoroughly enjoyed working with each other and shared it all with our various followers on our blogs.

It all came about because Tania and I met at the Tasmanian Craft Fair years ago and got on really well. She was starting out with her blog and still working and I was having an adventure in a place I’d fallen in love with.  So it is the simple things that make the difference. And being part of a supportive creative community is vitally important.

A wild river in the Tarkine on Tasmania’s North West coast

I think as independent makers, writers, crafters, artists and artisans we forget the support that makes the biggest difference is often in the small actions. We look at the big corporate boys and their big advertising budgets and feel daunted by it, thinking we have no chance with our tiny budgets (which, let’s be frank, are sometimes based more on trades than on cash). But the happy and inspiring news is that there are loads of women every day taking daily steps to making their creative dreams real and they are happening because other women, some they know, others they’ll never meet in person, are supporting them.

So have faith, take heart and be involved.

Sharing and Caring

Want to follow these inspiring women? Here are their pages:

this n that with olivia on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Think Tasmania on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Mommy Enterprises on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Made with Happy on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

and me, Creatively Belle on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and She Inspires Twitter and Facebook

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