New Year, Refreshed Start

 Hi again everyone!  Welcome to the new year and hopefully to the turnaround of this whole pandemic.  This virus is still kicking the Earth's bum here but at least with vaccines now getting made and being distribute among the populace, things are starting to improve for the long run. Let's keep at being safe!

For me personally, I'm finally all done with projects to just use up extra crafting materials (it's taking WAY too long for them anyway while still working an essential job).  This year, THIS YEAR, I'm now all about my artwork and to freelance or at least to get work as an artist. Okay, I'll be making time for other things like my health & fitness (the Keto Diet has been doing well for me) and purge away what I don't need or compact down my storage for more space and less excess materials. One good lesson to learn with managing your stuff is to figure out what purposes each item has for you and to know what you really need from them.  It's really that you want it very badly or you need it essentially, otherwise don't buy or collect it. Unless you can trade it for what you want like money.

What I'm doing right now is brushing up my knowledge on the legal and accounting side of freelancing: GST/HST, T-Forms, Canada Revenue Guides, Business Essentials, any legal advice with freelancing.  After that, I can start working on building up my portfolio with new works. With freelancing, I'm NOT understanding about Canada's legal business obligations and how to file taxes as a freelancer and that is baffling me.  I was taught about it somewhat way back at my OCAD years but ultimately it wasn't possible to narrow it to only Canada's way of business start-ups and registration as it was an international university with students across the globe.  I've done some artwork jobs before but only as an individual, not as a registrant business owner.  I want to change that so I'm studying on the business part of freelancing so I won't be afraid about it anymore. One way to overcome a fear to learn more about it, that's my thinking behind it.

Lastly to talk about is that I'll be considering a new site to host my artwork soon.  While I've relied on Blogger for years due to being free to host on, it doesn't allow much design freedom for displaying your content online.  I've tried my old web comic on this site for a while but the navigation was terrible.  Unless there's been changes for available formats since then, I want to build a more professional website to not only showcase my artwork better but also allow me to do a webcomic again.  Maybe to restart my Crystalium series again but I'll need to dust off that project too, refresh my work and revise how to tell it eventually after I get the ball rolling again on my freelancing.

If not weekly, then bi-weekly or monthly updates are going to happen from now on.  I want to do this full-time eventually and not working still at a supermarket (as long as I can support myself by artwork alone).  Either with a tidbit of news or maybe a doodle sketch, I need to start talking on social media more to re-grab people's attention again as well as drawing. So that's it for now.  See ya next month.

My Future Planning for 2019

So it's the new year now.  Much like everybody else, I had thought about what I would like to accomplish for the months ahead.  I'd also thought about how the last year went.  Dad's passing was a huge transitional trigger for both Mom and I. There was a lot of purging that we are still doing between our work shifts. I'm still trying to use up or donate my old materials and clearing off my old project or DIY projects, on a weekly budget basis.  It's getting whittle down to less and less on the back burners but eventually this year, I should get all of it or almost cleared off.  I do have two goals that I would like to get underway among the purging.

The first goal is about my health. After spending about a decade nursing and living around Dad's health problems, I'll definitely want to avoid having my final years in sickness like that. I have some general idea of where to start: 1) work on my dietary intake, control better what foods and their portions that goes in me, 2) have an exercise regimen that's compatible with my job activities and 3) keep up with reading ways of improving myself with my health.

I have had the exercise equipment for doing the work, part of the problem was keeping my bedroom space clear for doing the work. As I'm getting rid of things, I'm also getting what helps to organize my remaining stuff better (under bed containers, vacuum bags, storage totes, etc.). It's getting better for having more space to stretch my limbs or just not knock/whack into anything. When the warmer weather comes back, I can do stationary workouts on the back porch area again. The other part is doing the work around my work schedule. The shifts are random so I could work late at night, then early the next morning on some weeks.  It's also an exhausting job if you don't pace yourself sustainably, like a long 8 or 4 hour rep session; it feels like a long workout sometimes on top of the mental stress from some customers so I might not do any exercising for that day because of work.  During the warmer weather, I would commute to work on my bike but only on half-days, 4-hour shifts because that's all what my body can handle for now.

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My second goal is about my employment.  While my current part-time cashier job is giving me money for savings, essentials and project funding, I've been reading or watching internet videos about how to improve my skills and to make a better living. Things like Alux.com, Jumpcut, Udemy Courses, whatever allows me a flexible pace with my random work shifts.  I won't make the same mistake again of quitting a job before you have another one to fall back on but I wouldn't want to do the cashier job for the next several decades of my life for all the muscle strains it gives me.

Mainly the one thing I want to do career-wise is get back into freelancing or just sell my artwork again.  Just not like it was with the online freelancing where you seem to get paid in peanuts (less than minimum pay) for work that I could be pay much more for at a 9 to 5 retail job. I would like to be make as equal or more as my art skills are worth (though I'll likely have to brush up on some of them).  My lack of confidence is on the legal/business side of freelancing.  I have some general idea for how a freelancer goes about their job, it's about getting a business number registered, collecting taxes and reporting the income properly among other matters.  The legal requirements are different on geographical areas (Like CRA in Canada and IRS in USA) so I need to learn what those are. My teachers back at OCADU did do their best to explain the whole process but they made a point of researching into the matter itself (rule updates, hands-on experience, etc.); internationally, they don't know how every country's set of rules for having a business are like.  With some dedicated time, I could finally get around to understanding the process in Ontario, Canada.  If I were have to suddenly to get by on my own, I would need to make better income than my current job allows right now.

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Well, those are my thoughts for the future for now.  I'll be posting up any artworks I make as I go though I might not do weekly as I tried in the last few months.  There are some things as I said that I want to clear away for good and that won't always be art-related stuff.  Basically, if I got something art-wise to talk/showcase about, I'll post them up here.  So, for whatever you guys aim to make of your year, I wish for you all the best success for it. Until next update!

Christmas Icons Art

For another profile's splash page (Linkedin), I spent the week rendering these christmas icons for the upcoming Christmas season.  LinkedIn is still a new site for me and apparently, I haven't had any artwork for my header.  It looks different here as the one in LinkedIn would look, like this:

Christmas Icons, formatted to LinkedIn's background section.

For each social media or job-hunting sites where you can customize your profile pages, they have different size formats requirements for posting up your splash image or banner. Along with file size limits.  It's a good idea to write down those requirements for when you want to update those profiles with fresh artwork, either from past jobs or custom-made works for them particularly.

I got about half of my customizable profiles done now.  I might for my Facebook and Twitter profiles use promo artwork for my splash images.  That's my next artistic goal, to update my portfolios with new and more diverse examples as I want to make them for job-hunting for new jobs.  While I'm getting some responses from my Fiverr account, I'm not getting a lot of replies back from clients after a few response exchanges.  Not much job security on that site or I'm not doing something right on there.

It's not like I'm very tight on cash yet, but I can't allow myself to keep working for peanuts or promise to do high-quality work on an impossible deadline; it's not feasible living for me nor make for a good rep on professionalism.  I could do work at a temp agency that actually pays the bills compare to how some people seem to think what work conditions I should do with my freelancing.  I illustrate because it's what I'm best at and I enjoy it; it's feels more of a hobby than a 9-5 job that most people do just for survival.

Anyways, there's more art to come as I continue to freshen up things.  And if my clients don't want to return my messages, hey more time to get this all done. Maybe before New Year's.  See ya later.

Mid-Summer News

Wow!  It's been a while since my last update!  Well, that's been mostly from me taking up some more illustration jobs online.  Some being more successful than others.  Making some income at least since I haven't been able to apply for any seasonal work this summer.  A lot of necessary professional house renovations with me needing to house-sit during the week.

But anyways, here are some of my work:

Oyster Company Logo Concept

Kel and Uda, ebook stamp illustration

Noir & Blanc Illustration Contest Entry

Treasure Chest App Icon (1 of 4)

Dragon's Lunch - Business Card Concept

So most likely, I'll be taking on other illustration jobs while renovations continue.   I might start getting enough work coming in soon to afford my monthly health coverage among other things.  So if anyone wants to see my profiles on Freelancer and Fiverr where I take on freelancing jobs, click on the links below:

Freelancer: https://www.freelancer.ca/u/Crystaliumjmc.html

Fiverr:  https://www.fiverr.com/crystaliumjmc

I'll be getting more works showcase here fairly soon.

How's a freelancer suppose to start legally!?

So you want to start doing a job that doesn't require commuting via a cram-packed rush hour (never mind twice) and working in an office, a retail store or a factory from perhaps 9 to 5 or late evenings.  As a freelancer, you can supposedly make your own hours, choose projects you like to take on and can just sit in front of a computer in your birthday suit while working from home or a private studio (just make sure your camera for social media isn't left on).  A lot what you might've heard about freelancing could more or less be true.  Best to ask those who done it for years.

However, I'm someone who struggling to figure out how you go about starting your freelancing service as a sole-proprietorship while operating legally with my government.  You know, registering for a business permit (good for 5 years as I heard) including its fees, a GST/HST number to pay those mandatory taxes from the income you make from that business and anything else that entails to starting up.  While I'm glad when the people I ask for advice on this matter are supportive and even greater when they like my portfolio samples, I DO need more than just pep talks; I'm looking for actual steps for how you properly set yourself up for making a living while not making a lot of goof-ups with government regulations.  I'd received titbits of helpful knowledge as I went to art shows and galleries to speak with artists and writers since graduating.

So here's what I've figured out from what I gather as far:

1.  Your Business Plan: Your blueprints to the workings of your services

• Before you even consider starting, work out what you're going to be freelancing about.  In my current case, to make illustrations for publishing media that usually do sequential works for young audiences.  So in a nutshell: Doing this trade, for these customers/companies that do these projects/products, for these targeted customers/demographs.  Whatever service you want to sell to others, make sure it's something you can do professionally and be self-motivated into doing for the long term.
• Next, work out how your business is going to do this.  I've found some good samples of dummy business plans and checklists from Google and business bureaus on what you usually have to include for it:  Description of Business, Operations, Resources, Permits, Marketing, Target Audience, Finances, etc.  Regardless of which country you're working from, these are most of the basics you need to touch base with, making a organized and precise plan that explains and informs others of what and how you're going to be doing it.
• Lastly, a 10,000 word essay for english class isn't necessary.  Maybe it might if you're planning to be a big corporation like Disney, wouldn't be the expert on it.  The point of the business plan is for two reasons: 1) To get your knowledge of what running a business is like on paper and 2) if you're going to need more money from others to cover start-up costs/overhead, they'll like to know that you had planned out how to use the money effective, especially it's all a loan that's expected to be repay later.  It can be just a few, like 2 to 10 pages and it won't be set in stone where you can't edit it later if you chose a different direction or including new details.  You mainly want to be able to show others what the service is about and keep it as a personal set of guidelines for you to follow by.   If you're not sure about how to write out this plan, you should look for any local business bureaus, employment centres, any place that specialize in helping business owners, emerging or veteran for consulting help.  You should be able to get help with your business plan, plus workshops on all related-matters on business operations and they're mostly not-for-profit organizations so their services are free.
• If you do need the extra money/loan from a third party, make sure that you understand the conditions of having that loaned money.  In the case of using credit cards or your local bank branch, you're required to pay back eventually the same amount you've borrowed.  If that takes a long time to pay back, you'll have to also pay interest as a percent rate fee for any period of time (e.g. monthly) for still having that money still on top.  Depending on much you can pay down the capital (borrowed money amount) between these periods, it's ideal that you pay down the most you can afford to avoid paying extra money on un-necessary monthly interest fees.  

2.  Registering your Business:  Making yourself known

• As I understand it for Canada, you are required to sign up for a permit to operate a business in the country.  Why?  You'll be making an income within the country for one and earning any money in that country via your business is all subject to being deductible for taxes (the government's pay wage to cover its own overhead of all its services and activities in a sense).  This permit would be good for up to 5 years as I'm told and this should make you eligible for government benefits too.  You would receive a business number that the Canada Revenue Agency can keep track of your tax payments, both for income and GST/HST.
• There are several places that you can get the paperwork done to get this initial permit.  Business bureaus do offer the service of registering your business on your behalf, taking care of the paperwork for you after you provide key details of your business plan I imagine.  There is also online registration with the CRA that take care of the country's taxes.  I personally find seeking out the right forms a bit confusing on their official site but the CRA is where these forms are sent to, so they can identify you as legitimate.  
• To get this permit isn't free; depending on who you get to fill/send the paperwork with, you're going to pay a fee for both the forms and labour of processing it.  At minimum for here in Toronto, Ontario for example, it costs $60 by electronic registration and $80 by paper registration.  Some places will charge extra on top of these fees for registering via them.  
• You may need additional permits that may come with their own fees, depending on how you'll sell your work (as products at a vendor stall on the streets for example).  In every area that your business is going to involve, be sure to check for any requirements that the government will have a hand in.  It's best that you and the government work together via the proper channels to help each other out as you both bring in benefits for the other and self.

3.  Running the business: Keeping Score on everything

• As you do your craft, you'll be making transactions on trade of goods with money and vice versa when you need some goods.  While it can get confusing to keep track on who owes what, it's essential that you make a record on everything.  Good bookkeeping or accounting skills will practically save you here when it comes to double-checking on what's been done for clients, who have yet to pay, but mostly for when it's time to do your tax reports (for some, this can be more than annually).  Whatever way you go about recording everything, be it by notebook, online banking or filing receipts in categories, keep a copy of every paycheque and expense that occur in each fiscal year (financial year concerning the government) of your business.  This is in case of any inaccurate calculations or need of "proof of purchases" on your tax reports and to avoid being audited hopefully.
• While you DO have to pay part of your income towards taxes, there's no fixed decimal percentages nor flat rates to what amount you'll need to pay each year.  The government won't ever charge you for taxes in greater amount than what you make (which means you should carefully not spend too much of your income).  Experimenting with an app called TurboTax Refund Calculator, it showed that the income tax rate slowly increase in decimals the higher the annual income gets.  In some provinces, you can make close to $10,000 without being taxed for it but you still need to report that to the CRA.  In addition, the government will actually refund to you some of your income if you haven't made enough to be taxed.  Whatever amount of income you make via your business, it's smart business sense to save part of it for taxes, like for health emergencies.  
• Other than for paying income tax, you'll eventually need to charge your clients GST/HST and/or PST (for products) along with your service bill.  You can only charge these taxes to clients residing within the same country as your workplace if you work globally.  In Canada, this is included with your business number, with its own number adjoining.  You can voluntarily register for your GST/HST number beforehand; the minimum amount of made income required to pay for these taxes are $30,000.  If you make this much within a year, you must get registered and begin charging the GST/HST rate with your service bill (.05% for GST, .07% for PST and .13% for HST (the GST and PST joined together)).  If you make the $30,000 within just a quarter of the year (that's a 3-month period), you're required to register soon afterwards (I think you may need to also report in your income on a quarterly basis if this happens repeatedly).  I think too if you were to sell your work as products, you'll have to register for your PST number beforehand (when in doubt, ask the experienced).  Again, it's a good idea to save part of your income for the sale taxes along with your income tax.
• Taxes aside, you may sell your work via reps, galleries or online print/novelty stores.  Since this is where you're using a service of another business to do business, the third party will likely charge you a commission rate or flat fee from the sale of your product via their service usage.  I think you might have to consider adding the sale taxes of the country that the third party's business resides in with the bill (need to research that further).  Much about estimating the cost of production, along with commission fees, sale taxes and shipping & handling (O.o) in your billing should be part of the research you did for your business plan. 
• Lastly, you're going to pay some of your income towards government services like Canadian Pension Plan and Employment Insurance (need to research this some more too).  If you're working with others like partners or employees, you'll need to register for a payroll number (one for each employee) along with your business number.  This means to also part some of your income toward your employee's salaries (not going to be looking further into that for now).
• Now for the good stuff.  When you made a low income for your fiscal quarter/year, the government will refund some or all of your income as you're likely going to need it for overhead cost and cost of living.  In Canada, you can also have your GST/HST refunded quarterly to you. In addition, it's possible to write-off (get refunded) on most of your business expenses come tax report time.  Some expenses can only be refunded in partial percentages and others 100%, depending on certain conditions.  If you don't know know which ones for how much, hiring an accountant or accounting service can help you get the most income back on your tax refunds.  Be sure to keep hold copies of your transaction records and organized into categories (e.g. food, workplace equipment, travel, etc.); your accountant will bless you for the effort and you can avoid better the risk of being audited for inaccuracies.

Well, that's about everything I know as far regarding my business research.  This might be enough to know to just start freelancing the way I am right now; I can't help but feel that I'm still missing some crucial information on this matter.  It might be just my nerves getting the better of me.

Anyways for those who are looking for information on starting a business or freelancing in Canada, I hope that this was helpful.  If you know more information about the topics or see anything incorrect, please feel free to comment or give me feedback for my continuing research.  There are more official sites that you can visit for the latest information regarding business registration:

The Canadian Revenue Agency:

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca 

Canadian Intellectual Property Office:

http://www.cipo.ic.gc.ca

Suggestion Sites

Enterprise Toronto:

http://www.enterprisetoronto.com

ServiceOntario:

https://www.services.gov.on.ca

City of Toronto - Doing Business:
http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=6cd032d0b6d1e310VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD&vgnextfmt=default