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Hello readers! How have you been? I’ve been a complete bridezilla for the past couple of weeks- I’m constantly going on Pinterest and looking up dresses! In between sorting out the caterers I was also prepping up for my two day workshop at Doncaster Central Learning Centre and yesterday I finished it with a feeling of happiness!

So what exactly did the workshop entail and who was it aimed at? The Etsy training workshop was aimed at those using DCLC’s services and wanted to learn a new skill; be it taking good photos or understanding the very basics of SEO. I kept the workshop very concise and started right from the beginning (i.e. what’s the story of your creativity/product), through to setting up an Etsy shop, writing up a listing to expansion and long term growth. Because my Cantonese was not as fluent as it should be, someone had to translate for me, which was cool and I didn’t worry too much what I was going to say. Only that I was more mindful about grading my language to an appropriate level. I skipped a couple of activities too and made it more of a group discussion rather than written tasks as I could sense that some part of it the group was starting to go into a lull mode (copious amounts of tea and biscuits will do that to anyone!)

I would totally recommend anyone who has the experience to run a workshop, you get to teach others what you’ve learnt and it made me think that I could do more in the future. Here are some tips from me and what I’ve learnt from it:

  1. PREP, PREP, PREP. I honestly can’t stress that enough. Have a teaching plan ready and break it down by time so that you know what you’re doing, even if it means cutting down the timings as you’re going. Plan out the breaks and know when you want to have lunch so that you can calculate roughly what time you need to finish.
  2. Plan our your activities plus stimuli. I knew what I wanted the participants to do and although I had some clue as to what they knew beforehand, I still differentiated as much as possible. Some of the tasks were group ones as I realised that it’d be easier to get group feedback and discuss. Listen and watch your participants as to how they are and go with the flow!
  3. Be positive, smile, have patience. You wouldn’t want someone teaching you to be grumpy, moody or looking uninterested so do think about your presentation. I’m not saying being a completely different person but being professional in a super friendly/laidback manner gets your participants to trust you.
  4. Set out the room how you want it. Once you know the numbers you need to think about the layout of the room. Can you easily walk around the room? Do you want the participants to be facing you whilst you’re using the whiteboard and screen? There are loads of factors to think about and of course, you want to make sure that the room is nice and warm so that people aren’t cold. There was tea and refreshments supplied by DCLC so I didn’t have to factor in any of my expenses.
  5. Budget. Plan out what you need to print out including your travel costs, I could have gone all out and used loads of fancy paper but at the end of the day you don’t want to end up spending loads of money if you don’t have it.

Depending on what your workshop is there are of course loads more points to factor in. Trust your instincts and plan out what you need to well in advance. I broke it down to step by steps so the participants were slowly eased into it. I’m still in the middle of reading Melanie Blaikie’s book called ‘Teach What You Do’- it’s a great book as it has loads of advise on how to run your own workshop, whatever it is you do I found it to be really helpful and I’d recommend giving it a read.

I really enjoyed myself and I look forward to what DCLC do in the future; whether it’s using Etsy for their shop or simply setting up a page on their website I can’t wait to see what happens! All the best DCLC!

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Etsy

I’m very pleased to announce that two of my illustrations are part of Ink+Paper‘s postcard art subscription package. My good friend Junesees is also part of it as well, which I’m absolutely delighted to be showcasing work alongside her.

Ink+Paper is run by Hannah Stewart: she recently go in touch with me asking me if I’d like to be part of Ink+Paper, I said yes of course! I submitted ‘Swans’ and ‘Wonderland’ as the two illustrations complimented one another. So how does it work? You simply subscribe to it and for £10 (every two months) you’ll receive 5 beautifully printed out A6 postcards including envelopes- all of which are printed on the highest quality of paper.

To find more about the causes Ink+Paper support please visit their page here for a more in-depth read.

What are you waiting for?

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Illustration

It’s been in the pipelines for quite sometime now, but I’ve finally updated my website with some more new work as well as categorising my tags so that they’re more consistent. I spent a couple of nights working at it and I’m pretty happy with the overall content. I was intending on getting a new website template installed, however, that might have to take a back seat until I can get the funds to do it 🙁

I’ve been listening to Lung Dart over on NTS so why not give it a listen and check out my website while you’re at it.

Laters folks!

 

By
Illustration

I’ve been keeping this under wraps for sometime now but I’m happy to announce that I’ll be running a two day Etsy training workshop in conjunction with Doncaster Central Learning Centre in November. The main aim of the workshop is to provide learners with no previous experience to have some basic understanding and skills: from promoting work online to writing simple and clear product descriptions. The ethos of the workshop is all about digital inclusion: promoting equal life chances and opportunities for all. I will be taking it right from the beginning as to how I started out to an easy step-by-step guide on listing products.

Where and When

The workshop will take place over two days, from Saturday 10th – Sunday 11th November from 10am – 3pm at DCLC.

37 Bennetthorpe, Doncaster DN2 6AA

Contact

Please get in touch with me if you’d like to book a place, or alternatively get in touch with Lai Lim who runs DCLC at [email protected].

Thanks and take care!

By
Illustration

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