This week has been very productive! I have worked from home for two days and got a lot of my "regular to-do list" done, while I worked a lot to develop the salon, staff and webshop, which feels like a really good combo!

Permanent makeup photos
I am the one who cuts and pastes together all the before and after pictures that are taken at the salon and published on our social media. But there will not be much of Annika's treatments, although she takes a lot of pictures as she has not been given a smooth routine of sending the pictures to me.

After many ifs and buts, she has finally got her dropbox to think and I have been bombarded with bliss in a folder which she named "before and after-chaos" which I have put my teeth into for a week and started cleaning up.

This is what it looks like in the folder and this is a fraction of all pictures, you just scroll down and down and it never ends like haha.

But soon there will be much more permanent makeup pictures in our channels in any case, so that's great!

Arrange among my beauty guides in the webshop
When I started with beauty guides in the webshop, I did not have much time to sit and do things, the best thing would have been to add one at a time and made each post well done and good right away. But it was enough work to just open the new website and move the webshop from creativemakeup.se to creativemakeup.se so this was done as quickly as possible. So there are copies of blog posts that are posted only, not so much structure simply.

Now I have to start tidying up there! I have already categorized all posts to 1. Products (swatch pictures etc.) 2. Get the look (step by step make-ups that are completely made with products in the web shop) and 3. Make-up tips (Eg make-up the eyes bigger, highlight cheekbones, cover acne, etc.).

But now I will go through everything thoroughly and make clearer headings, etc. so that it is easy to find the tips you are looking for quickly! And then produce new posts that I think are missing.

It is a time consuming job and I was already stuck with the first decision: what should the front page images of each post look like when browsing beauty guides? It should be clear, stylish but still enticing to want to go in and read more.

This option 1:

A headline over each image. I think this is nice because it makes the image look good without the text in the middle of the image, but I think it was nicer in photoshop when I saw one image at a time than on the website when there are just lots of headlines everywhere.

Here is option 2:

I like this because it is more stylish and that the eye reads the headline at the same time as you see the picture, so it becomes a little easier to see when you scroll. But for the text to be visible on all types of images, I have to darken the image, which I do not really like, it looks a bit dull.

I made a film on insta story where I showed both variants and asked which is the nicest + most click-friendly and got over 100 as respondents, but it was still not much help because here is the result:

Incredibly even haha! I did not check the result before it disappeared completely from insta story which disappears after 24 hours, but I think that the second suggestion, ie darker pictures and the title in the middle of the picture, was the one that won with a few more votes in the end :)

Right now, Miska and I are reviewing whether you can have a function that means that when you hold the arrow on the image, it becomes light (like the original image) and without a title. Then I would be completely happy with option 2!

What do you think? :)

Kissing meetings and areas of responsibility
What has taken up most of my time this week is the planning and completion of responsibilities and tasks at the salon that will be assigned to all staff. At present, Miska and I cannot be free at the same time without the entire webshop stopping, no orders are made and no one knows what to do when we receive inquiries about various special bookings, if the internet stops working etc.

It is one of our goals for June 2018, that the salon should be completely self-sufficient practically and financially even if the management (me, Miska and Annika) would not be in place.

So the kiss meetings (ppersonal udevelopmentssamtal) this month had the most focus on responsibilities and tasks. I have previously compiled a list of all areas that need to be taught and this has all been read through and provided feedback on which areas they would like to be responsible for.

Then I went through the list and decided who should do what and made a plan for how it should work, e.g. that you are always a reserve for a person if it is vacant or ill. For example. Ämma and Ida are a reserve for each other, so we will match their schedules so that there is always one of them on site and we can plan holidays so that they do not have a holiday at the same time. Then the salon is self-propelled even when people are sick, have babies, have holidays etc. Good huh? :)

It all takes time because we want to do it so heavenly carefully and thoroughly, but it will be worth it! Now we have come so far that everyone has approved their areas and I will start writing drift cats (our positive word for cribs haha) and educate all people!

This is what the folders look like in our kiss meeting folder, everyone has a folder that is locked so only me and the person have access to the info. In there we have the current situation picture, feedback, personal to-do list and everything that we go through at the meeting! Order and order :)

An employee who only works from home
Last Friday I worked from home and was over to my sister Malin and taught her how to make all the campaign photos every month. I do not know if I have written it in previous business week posts (?) But Malin is employed part time in my company and only works from home with everything possible for the webshop and marketing! She's been doing this for two years now so it's nothing new :)

Keeping all channels updated takes so much longer than you can imagine, making the actual blog post with step-by-step make-up with collages, links, tags, categories, etc. takes as long as doing the make-up itself. And the same with posting news in the webshop, changing shades, editing menus, price lists, etc., there are so many more steps than you can imagine!

That is why it is so good that we have hired Malin :) She does everything that is time consuming and requires an eye for what is nice but which I do not necessarily have to do myself. We have a common to do list in a program called Quip where I fill in with lots of points and she checks them every night she works when the children have gone to bed. Really good! :)

As you know, I make campaign pictures for Creative Makeup every month, there are 4 themes in 4 different formats = 16 pictures to be made for website, social media, TV in shop windows (landscape format) and TV in store (portrait format). It's a real puzzle and sometimes I have wondered if it's worth the time, how much customers draw these pictures in as marketing and is it financially defensible with the time spent? But at the same time, I think it is incredibly important with a live website and social media that this point is not something you should skimp on, you can not just look at the number of clicks but it is about creating a feeling and that people see how extremely serious we are. We are not a regular salon as well, we are the best!

So now Malin will help me with these pictures, I send material to her and then she completes and sends back to me. It will be SO heavenly nice! :)

Here we sat at Malin's kitchen island with each computer in front of us and worked with some foam elves and bubble water as gottis :)

Dreams and goals for 2018
Yesterday I started the day with two cats and a computer in my arms and a coffee cup in my hand (yes it worked haha) while I read the annual horoscope (Helena's horoscope blog is the best I think) and wrote my annual list of what will happen next year! "My year 2018" is the name of the document and I finished in about a quarter of an hour haha, last year I had a really hard time knowing what to write but this year my fingers ran like a duracell rabbit on the keyboard.

I've been doing this since 2014 and it's just as fun every New Year to read last year's text. Some things are frightening how similar it became and some things have taken a completely different turn and are not true at all.

The important thing is not that every point should hit, dreams and goals change along the way, but the important thing is to set them! If you write down your goals, you have a much greater chance of reaching them. In addition, it feels extra much in the soul when you have reached them, several things you write down feel so obvious the year after you have not even reflected on the fact that you are up several of your dreams.

At work we work a lot of goals but what I am talking about now is more personal and emotional and is also about the home, entertainment, health personal finances etc. And I mix concrete points such as "this balance I should have reached in my savings account" to more abstract points which is about well-being and relationships.

My New Year's texts are secret and I do not even allow myself to read them during the year after I wrote them, and next New Year I will never remember what I wrote so it is always just as exciting when I open the document haha. But after New Year's, maybe I can share what things were on last year's list that actually hit! :)

Now I will continue to work in the house, the last room was painted yesterday and now we can finally start taking in some things, decorate the Christmas tree and fix it nicely before Christmas!

We celebrate Christmas at home so it needs to be both practical and nice here at home then, not like now when we eat at Mia's old balcony furniture and make coffee in the living room because half the kitchen is wrapped in the worst dexter room because we spray painted walls and ceilings haha .

Then I will light a candle for mom too ♥ She turns one today and around Christmas her absence is noticeable extra much. No one could decorate for Christmas as a mother, the whole house flashed with colorful fiber optics and wherever they went, Christmas music and Merry Christmas wishes were started with gadgets with a motion sensor haha. I'll probably pull out some extra Christmas decorations today, I feel, more is more!

Wish you all a fantastic 3rd Advent today! ♥