Laura is a mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sional, graphic designer, writer and lover of all things cre­ative liv­ing her best life in Charleston, SC.  On most days, you will find Laura shar­ing her art­ful adven­tures at LauraCatherine.co, as well as help­ful online tuto­ri­als, app reviews and design bits of good­ness on her MarketingWithLaura.com blog.   Blog­ging about online mar­ket­ing has pro­vided Laura an out­let to share much of what she has learned through her years in the online tourism and tele­vi­sion markets.  Her online mar­ket­ing jour­ney began in 2005, when she was inter­net mar­ket­ing direc­tor for her local tourism bureau — when social media was emerg­ing. She also worked in inter­net sales/marketing for a top NBC sta­tion in South Car­olina, whose web­site drew more than 500,000 vis­i­tors a month.   In 2010, Laura signed up for Kelly Rae Roberts “Fly­ing Lessons” e-course.  She immersed her­self into artis­tic pur­suits away from the com­puter and shares her progress with her read­ers at LauraCatherine.co. Laura enjoys art jour­nal­ing, paint­ing, tweet­ing, mak­ing jew­elry, trav­el­ing and (of course) blogging. She has been known to hold a craft tweet-up and loves hand­made items.

At this moment, what one idea do you need to start exe­cut­ing for your business?

So dif­fi­cult to choose just one idea! It’s a tie between my need to start charg­ing what I’m worth and my desire to cre­ate more personal/artful time for myself to recharge.  Mak­ing time for art­ful adven­tures every day is some­thing I’ve started the sum­mer out with more intentionally…whether that means tak­ing a walk through the gar­den, snap­ping insta­gram pho­tos for inspi­ra­tion, play­ing in my art jour­nal, or putting a brush to canvas.  I had dreams of an art stu­dio space and they recently came to life, so I have more room to spread out my sup­plies and have fun.  I’ve been paint­ing on big­ger can­vases with new techniques.  Time over at Kelly’s stu­dio play­ing in paint and mixed media have also been a part of my sum­mer so far. Kelly and I met through Fly­ing Lessons, and hav­ing an artsy friend in the area has been such a blessing.  Charg­ing what I’m worth can be a tough one, but being more selec­tive about the projects I take on and quot­ing a more real­is­tic num­ber in terms of time invest­ment has helped me to make great progress in this area as well. When I feel tempted to under­charge, I think about my fam­ily and the fact that I am short­chang­ing all of us, not just myself.   Funny thing is, the more time I take for myself in terms of art and jour­nal­ing; the more con­fi­dent I am in business.  Knowing one’s worth is always the first step!

for more info on laura and the other fab ladies and their answer click on over here!

the {dk} fam­ily has grown a lot in the past year, in many many ways…in that grow­ing a notion was borne for my work, the idea of mile­stones and cel­e­brat­ing moments that are so sacred to each of us and how as an arti­san rep­re­sent­ing that day, moment or mem­ory is an honor and a challenge…

mod­ern engagement

inspired by my own ten year anniver­sary to my sweet david, the first of my mod­ern wed­ding band col­lec­tion began, the idea of mak­ing some­thing so sim­ple as a band con­tain all the emo­tion and love that this would rep­re­sent at first had my head spinning.…but then the sim­plic­ity of love and the hon­esty of two peo­ple that con­nect that love shone through.…

mod­ern wed­ding bands

we have also added nephews to the fam­ily, 2 to be exact and in their honor my ver­sion of moth­ers pen­dants was created…using the warmth of metal and the beauty of set stones these pen­dants are not the obvi­ous exam­ples of moth­er­hood, they are very mod­ern interpretation.

mod­ern fam­ily pendant

what started as indi­vid­ual projects have quickly become  a col­lec­tion that is both min­i­mal­ist and mod­ern and very {dk}

it began with the promise of love, good exam­ples set by our fam­i­lies so that we knew what love should be…and then there was a boy and a girl who knew when they met, their hap­pily ever after was about to begin…in the mid­dle there was romance, adven­ture, lots of mov­ing around and most of all there was love… after 10 years he is my best friend, my part­ner in every­thing, and the best time i have ever had, he is my hus­band, my david and i can’t wait to see what the next 10, 20, 50 years has in store

with all my heart and all that i am…i love you