On Creating a List of Wins: Gingerly Press 2025 Highlights
After the busy holiday season, January tends to be a time of rest, reflection and renewal, gearing up for my new year ahead. I love this time of year, moving slowly & intentionally as I get organized, reflect on the past year, and dream up new goals for the year ahead.
My tendency is to jump ahead to the list of new goals before spending any time reviewing those that I accomplished (or not!) during the past year. After taking an Annual Planning course from my friend & mentor, Sarah of Atwater Designs, over the last two winters, I’ve been practicing sitting in a period of reflection before diving into any new year goals. I find there are many not-so-hidden lessons to be learned from reflecting on what did and didn’t work the previous year, helping guide the goals moving forward.
I’m also a person who tends to overload my to-do lists out of excitement. The problem with this however, is that then I’m often left feeling defeated from not accomplishing all the items on my list. So to combat this sense of defeat, I first focus on all I did accomplish, listing wins big and small, before even looking at the goals not reached just yet. This is an exercise in celebration, realistic positivity, and gratitude for the opportunities & successes experienced. I feel like we could all use a little more of that energy to keep our chins up in this crazy world!
So below is a list of some of the top wins I’m celebrating for myself and for Gingerly Press from the 2025 year. Know that next to this list is an entire list of failures, missed opportunities and not yet accomplished goals, but for now we’re sticking with the wins. I hope this post inspires you to create a similar list for your own wins, whenever you need it! It's a great thing to look over on a rainy day when you could use a boost of confidence!
Some Wins Worth Celebrating:
(In no particular order)
After a great experience at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh in 2024, I applied to more fine art festivals and got into three new-to-me festivals: Broad Ripple Art Fair in Indianapolis, Bethesda Row Arts Festival in the DC area, and Mt. Lebanon Artist Market in Pittsburgh. I even won 2nd Best in Show at Broad Ripple Art Fair and Best in Category for Printmaking & Graphics at Bethesda Row Arts Festival!
I added five new cards to my product line, made by printing handset metal type & ornaments.
I was invited to display a solo gallery show at the Creative Arts Guild in Dalton, GA in June & July and I curated an 18-piece show highlighting letterpress prints from my collection that talk about climate change & push for climate action. I designed a new Climate Action Postcard (which will be available in the site shop soon!) and visitors could print their own postcard keepsakes to send to their representatives.
I re-taught myself Adobe InDesign, revamped my wholesale linesheet and expanded my wholesale reach, selling to new-to-me shops across the country.
I tightened up my one-of-a-kind print production process and created a ton of Petite Prints for two separate online launches and for all of my in-person markets. I also created my first larger one-of-a-kind framed landscape pieces for sale too!
I taught 10 workshops in my studio, with participants traveling all the way from DC, Indiana, Massachusetts and Philly!
I made some tasty lemonade with life’s lemons and taught myself how to digitize scans of my letterpress prints and build textured compositions in Photoshop when I was unexpectedly unable to work in my studio during September & October.
I designed & launched my first digitally printed wall calendar and sold over 100 of them! There are less than 10 still available if you want to grab one for yourself or a loved one!
Together, we planted 603 trees in U.S. National Forests, totaling to 4,291 trees planted total since starting the Sapling Program with the National Forest Foundation in 2020! Every full-priced Gingerly Press product plants a tree— you can learn more about this initiative here.
Together, we donated $375 to the Maijuna Indigenous Community of Peru for their continued fight to protect their Ancestral Title Lands from a proposed illegal highway corridor. These donations come from purchases of prints from my Lungs of the Earth Collection about my Artist Residency with the ACEER Foundation in Peru (see print descriptions for more information).
Last but not least, I took rest days when I needed rest, and I developed a morning routine centered around mindfulness, movement and growth for a better life balance. This was probably my biggest and most helpful accomplishment personally & professionally!
If you’re still reading along here, thank you! I hope this little 2025 recap inspires you to make a list of wins, big & small, for yourself as well, and I hope you let that list of wins lift you up when you need a boost in 2026!
Cheers to our next trip around the sun.
=) Lindsay