I have been immersed in designing the summer line for the past week…I was so insanely, unexpectedly busy with holiday orders that I took longer than I thought I would bouncing back from it. My Vegas trip was much needed and finally gave me a recharge to catch up to speed…which means I am now only a week or so behind schedule and still going full speed to the finish. I have all 72 new pieces of the new line designed and only 7 of them are still waiting on materials to arrive to be completed!

Now don’t get all excited yet…this was the fun part…the gathering of inspiration and materials and getting to work…now is the hard part…

Tomorrow I will order the rest of the materials to make multiples and photo everything, which takes a loong time and then I will spend a looonger time editing the photos (because even though I suck at photography, I am an expert with photoshop so we’ll keep the suck part between us) I save two copies…a 300 dpi version for press and a web copy. I then have one of my favorite jobs…naming them…there is a system…almost every piece is named after a song…and their first names are usually meaningful ie Bling Rings are named after the women in history with the best jewelry collections, Button Rings are Super Vilenesses and the Sweetest Thing Earrings are all Gypsy names.

Next is the website updates and the fun descriptions (which can be daunting…all that pressure to be witty, eek!), and the physical descriptions and prices…which is actually the easiest part as I use a formula for prices and the description is what it is.

The next step is when I send the newsletter out to alert of the new items (if you want to be on the list for the absolute first in the know…even before the blog, that the new stuff is up…sign up on the right –>)

Then comes the tedious task of new line sheets for press and wholesale accounts which I really want to put off because they take soooo much work, but I promise I won’t.

Next I send a dvd of 300 dpi version of all the images and pdf’s of the line sheets along with samples of every single piece (except one of a kind ones) to my publicist (who rocks btw).

I then Blog, Twitter, Facebook Group and MySpace about the new stuff. Listing stuff in my Etsy, Dwanda, Mintd, Smashing Darling & Lovli shops. I at this point I also send emails to the fantastic Blog editors who love Manic Trout that there are new goodies and update images in ads I have on blogs.

Then…I start on the Fall line! (which is actually currently being conjured up in my head…)

I’ll let you know when I update the website!