Being a Full-time Mother & Craft-Lover by Akhila

 
One of Akhila’s yummy bags.  See more of her designs here. 

Shop: here.

Blog: blog

Akhila says “Hi Lisa, Thanks for inviting me and others to - hopefully - share some inspiration to other craft lovers in similar situation as me. This is my contribution;

Having always loved to create things, I was thrilled when the inspiration and need to do so came back about a year ago. I say came back because since our first son was born in June -04 and our second son just 15 months later, I found myself in kind of a daze from sleepless nights and no – absolute NO time for myself.

But as the energy slowly started to come back so did also the need to create – and by “accident” I made my first handbag. I so loved it, so I started to browse the internet for bag-making material and stumbled over U-Handbag. What a dream to find that I could actually get what ever needed to make professionally looking bags.

From that I started to play with the idea that maybe I could combine my love for sewing and hopefully slowly starting to build some source of income around my family.

I decided to give it a try and set up my very own web-site which I launched just a few months ago. After shopping around I finally went ahead and signed up with MrSite, which gave me the opportunity to build my own web-site and give me control to change it, add products etc whenever and wherever I want. I don’t want to pretend I build my site on a lunch-break as the adverts say (maybe because I don’t have any lunch-breaks as a mum) but I have managed to set up my site by myself, and I feel quite pleased about that,

As I keep coming back to the lack of time I have as a full-time mum, I here want to share my “strategy” to get any work done:

• I try to get the necessary house work done before putting the kids to bed, so I don’t need to waste any of my valuable time with those boring tasks when the house is quiet.
• After having read the good-night story and tucked the boys in, I do give myself some time to sit down and collapse – sorry I mean re-charge my batteries (as I tend to be quite tired this time of the evening).
• And then set a time – for me normally 8pm to start “work”. This gives me at least 2 hours with my passion.

I also do give myself some evenings “off” as well without feeling guilty for not doing anything. (CraftBoom: very good idea too!)

Good luck all you crafty mothers and fathers out there.

Akhila”
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Thanks for that Akhila! What great tips! Mums are already wonderful at multi-tasking, but it’s great to have an insight as to how you (as a maker of really lovely bags) manages her time as a busy Mum.  Best of luck with your shop.

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