All About Bows and Dinosaurs
*Guest Post by Mary Tsangidou the owner and founder of Bows and Dinosaurs Printables, www.bowsanddinosaurs.com.
2020 was a tough year. For everyone, right? For me, the period of quarantine was the trigger to start my own online business.
But first, let me introduce myself. My name is Mary, I am 32 year old, SAHM and live in a small town named Edessa, in Greece. I have studied translation and got my Master's degree in teaching English. I've never officially worked as a teacher, as I realized that, teaching is not my thing.
At some point, I felt emotionally desperate to work. I felt that I wasn't a good mom, because I was 24/7, 365 with my kids, raising them, and looking for a way to balance my life, by doing something creative from home. Pinterest was a huge inspiration as I found an article about printables.
There was a phrase that said "if you need something, someone in the world may need it too" and that was my trigger.
I remembered all these planners I used to transform to make them cuter and all the projects I created for my children's birthday parties and christening. I started creating many projects. Some were a failure but with work, they started to be nice. I started graphic design lessons and something inside me told me that this is my thing! Without too much consideration, I decided to launch my Etsy shop and then website. I had nothing to lose anyway!
Financially, I wasn't able to hire a professional to create my website and tell me a few things about creating a business, so i started reading literally everything about it and hoped for the best. Of course, a professional would have saved me time and mistakes but I took the risk to do it alone. It's been half a month now and I have created some projects that I really love. For me, every single one is unique but trying to improve it further.
A project that I really love is my printable pregnancy planner:
As I really want to write everything down and keep memories of everything, especially when it comes to babies. I wish I had created it when my children were newborn. I have designed it in weeks, representing the size of the baby with a fruit! Every week has grids to be filled with pregnancy details, such as symptoms, doctor appointments, cravings, and more. Plus, there are lists with all these things I needed as a new mom for my baby and all the things I needed in my hospital bag.
Finally, I have created many things to accompany the pregnancy planner, such as my baby journal and cards to photograph the growing belly and the baby in the first year of their life. All these come gender-neutral.