Make It Yourself Monday: Paper Doily Wreath

Do I have time this craft? Hell no. Do I think it's cool and wish I had time for it? Hell yes.

From the queen of impossible crafts, Martha Stewart, this is a pretty sweet project. I have to say once in a while she impresses me. And by impresses me I mean not only does it look awesome, it's something I think I could achieve without investing in a boatload of crafting tools and having a small crowd of people to assist. Craft on.

How to Make a Paper Doily Wreath

image courtesy of marthastewart.com

Fan Friday: Coleo Photography

Today's Fan Friday is dedicated to my good friend Nicole and her business Coleo Photography. She is one incredibly talented portrait photographer. Though still new at the business, she's got talent. I'm in complete admiration of her ability to take awesome concert photos and wedding shots. If you're in the Mpls/St. Paul area and you're looking to support a new photographer, please consider hiring her for your next event. She's incredibly easy to work with (I know, I've assisted her on a wedding shoot) and is very reasonably priced.

View her Facebook fan page

View her website portfolio

View her Flickr page

Start, stop, start, stop

Workflows, plans, to-do lists. All those things constantly allude me. Oh, I make them. I even follow them on occasion. But do I do it consistently?

Well, let's see.

How many times have I said I'm going to regularly blog? (Please don't count. It's more of a rhetorical question.) I even came up with a schedule. It's on a little post-it note attached to my monitor.

I was really proud when I came up with that. In my head I thought, "this is it! I have a plan! No more excuses. All I have to do is sit down, do a little research, and 3 days a week I have a blog topic practically written for me. 2 days a week, if I so choose, I can write about what I'm up to with my business. Done. Finally. I'm awesome. And look. I even put it in a place where I can easily see it."

But what do I do?

I sit down at the computer after I get home from the part-time job, look at TweetDeck, look at email, surf the links that have been tweeted that interest me, chat with my friends or mom on iChat while doing bits and pieces of work that I've extracted from the scribbles of to-dos and look at that post-it note and say "yeah, yeah, yeah, in a minute". I go back to making lists, making plans, and trying to clear the clutter in my brain so when I sit down at the computer I don't just stare into 2560 x 1600 worth of pixelated space. (I have the 30" Apple Cinema Display. It's a lot of space at which to stare.)

The moral of the story?

I'm getting in my own way. I've always gotten in my own way. Sure there are actual obstacles that present themselves from time to time that can't be avoided, but most of the time, probably more than half of the time, the excuses lie on me. If something doesn't get done, it's because I chose to ignore it or to put it off.

Is it a crime? No. I'm human. I get tired, cranky, hungry, or whatever dwarf you wanna name because I'm not infallible. I need a break from time to time. I meet client deadlines because I want repeat business and would rather avoid the reputation of being a flaky artist, but as far as my own personal deadlines? Like that deadly "where do you want to be in 5 years?" question? Those don't exist. And that's a problem. So is thinking that taking workshops and reading blogs and buying books on marketing and business are going to magically solve the problem. Are those things worth it? Absolutely. Are they worth it if you don't implement what you learned? Absolutely not. Are they worth it if you implement what you learned for about 3 months and then fall back into old habits? Nope.

The other problem is I always seem to want to come up with a solution to the problem in the midst of the busiest times. Such as: "I've got 3 art fairs to prepare for but my business needs some seriously examining! I should do it RIGHT NOW!" Or currently: "I have 5 custom collages that I'm working on, 2 art fairs coming up and I'm moving head first into the holidays! Let's write a business plan!" Either my brain is addicted to ADD or it's just excited to be busy and wants to pile on more. I wish I knew.

But what I do know for sure is, despite as much as I want to beat myself up for all the things I haven't done, there is so much that I have. I've plowed through when a lot of people have found it easier to throw in the towel. I've been in business 7 years and though it's not enough to pay all the bills just yet, it's half of my income. I often get remarks about how much work I do, wearing the hats of the accountant, marketer, errand runner and artist. The other day I went to buy some card stock and when I told the clerk I had a tax ID under Inkblots she remarked on how I had been in business for awhile and how great that is. In the midst of berating myself for my faults, I often forget to praise myself for my successes.

And as much as I've stopped, I've also started, which is not always an easy thing.

I know a lot of you can say the same thing. Be proud of that.

Make it Yourself Monday: DIY Holiday Luminaries

Balloon Luminaries

I LOVE candles. I tend to buy pretty much every holiday candle that smells like apple or cinnamon or baked goods of some sort. I light them all at once and my place smells wonderful. While the large jar lights last a really long time, they're not very pretty and leave something to be desired in the decorative department. I'd much rather by votives and put them in something pretty but candleholders can be pretty expensive if you're buying multiples.

So for today's make it yourself I hunted around for luminaries that would be easy to make and something that you would feel comfortable leaving out beyond the holidays.

This is one really cool tutorial. I know not everyone has a double boiler so it does require some extra equipment, but I think the beauty of these holders is worth it and the possibilities of customizing them (glitter, carving, stamping, etc.) is almost endless!

Enjoy!

Reality....where is it?

I had made a schedule of topics so I could take a shot at blogging every day or at the very least, every other day. So on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I could have very easy blog topics that I could just quickly research and write.

And then life got in the way. Which is generally what happens.

Today as I got up from a day after an absolute bomb of an art fair (didn't even cover gas or the booth fee) I sat down at my computer and started clicking around.

Here's how my brain pattern went:

A display rack for a local retailer needs ordering. Twitter needs checking. Ooh, someone tweeted about Google Adwords, I better check that. My Google Adwords ad has been very badly neglected but luckily custom work keeps coming in. Would more come in if I paid more attention to it? Nope, don't have time to delve into that. Keep going. Write list of what needs to be done today. Look at clock. Click on tweet about ideal design working space. Looks like nobody works in that designing space. Oh man, the apartment needs cleaning. And picking up. I should buy more boxes to store stuff in so it's out of the way. I should really start working, I need to start scanning photos for these collages. The dog needs to go out. Oh man, I need to do as much as I can today because I have to go to work tomorrow.....and pick up that frame on my lunch for that custom piece that needs to be picked up on Tuesday....look at clock....ugh....day is moving too fast!

Hard to read? Yeah. It's hard to keep in my brain, too. If I could get up, sit at my computer and start working in a linear order, that would be great. I need to work harder on that. I'm too ADD. And (prepare for a run-on sentence) if my weekend could be my weekend instead of the time to cram in all the work that doesn't fit into a normal week because 21 hours of it is spent at a job where I spend my lunches trying to catch up with customer emails and run errands and do things so when I get home maybe I can workout and eat dinner instead of just continue to work MAYBE I wouldn't get panic attacks when someone contacts me for more work and instead would welcome it in.

I know these are all excuses. I know I am the one in charge of making a linear work pattern and I ultimately control my cases of the "ooh something shinies" that lead me to bounce around from project to project so instead of completing one item on my list I partially complete several items.

And this is the life of the single female artist trying to make ends meet. No husband, no support, just me. If I fail, I could lose my apartment, or eat less, or get calls from creditors. Luckily it hasn't gotten to that point, except the eating less part.

This is why I hit my forehead on my desk when I hear about the successful female artist who (insert awesome opportunity here) and she would've never been able to do it without the support of her husband and family.

What about those who don't have that? What do they do? Or are they just never "successful"? (Define success as making a comfortable living by the sales of their art with no outside support/job).

If anyone can point me to a book/article/story about a single female artist who eventually made their way to being a self-sufficient artist without any magic I would really appreciate it. (read: stories like once they were living out of their car and then time passed and they persevered and now they're a successful artist are annoying. What did they do? Get an agent? Get "discovered"? Diversify their art? Details!) I feel like I'm heading in the right direction but am missing something and could use a inspiring story.

And less excuses.

Make it yourself Monday: Snow Globes

When researching fun DIY craft projects on the interwebs I seem to come across three categories of DIY crafts:

1- Stuff you made between kindergarten and 3rd grade

2- Stuff you would actually consider making now and setting out for other people to see

3- Martha Stewart level crafts that consider a trust fund to purchase all of the supplies and infinite amounts of time and perhaps a staff of craft assistants

I'm mostly interested in the 2nd kind, though the 1st kind is fun to look at and chuckle (but you probably won't see them featured here).

What I found today is a nice holiday-ish themed craft that has been given a non-holiday twist: Snow Globes.

Looks pretty fun and is something you could make with what you have around the house.

Enjoy!

Make your own Snow Globes by the cool folks at PhotoJoJo

Fan Friday: Cowbell

Seeing as I've been running errands all day and it's 9:40pm and I have yet to write my blog post, today's Fan Friday is going to be nice and simple.

I've got a fever....

and the only cure....

is cowbell.

Enjoy.

Become a fan of Cowbell

If anyone out there has decided to go as Will Ferrel as the Blue Oyster Cult cowbell player for Halloween, please post a link to your pics. I'd love to see it.

Wonderful Wordless Wednesday

I know I'm kind of breaking the title of this blog by typing something, but I just wanted to write a little intro about my other new theme (besides DIY Monday and Fan Friday), Wonderful Wordless Wednesday. On these days I'm going to put up either something new that I'm working on or just a photo that I took that day that was particularly interesting, enjoyable, exciting, etc.

DIY Monday: 3-D Snowflakes

A new part of my blog is going to be DIY Mondays where I highlight a particularly cool craft for you to try at home!

This tutorial is pretty awesome, though I'm not entirely certain I could get it down on the first try. However, it would be super fun to make a bunch of these and hang them as party decorations, or, make them part of the party! Get some friends together, grab some cool paper, and get crafting!

How to make a 3D paper snowflake

Fan Friday: Mannyapolis

Every Friday I'm going to be spotlighting something (person, place or thing) that I'm a fan of on Facebook. Not only to get me more into the mood of regular blogging, (if you've been reading my blogs up to this point you probably know that I'm trying to make it a habit) but also to hopefully introduce my readers to some new stuff!

Today I picked my good friend Manny Castro who updates the lands of Facebook and Twitter on the daily weather situation in the Twin Cities.

He is:

Mannyapolis

His mission: Providing the most accurate misinformation and detailed reports of misestimation to the public in general.

Short and sweet posts yet more entertaining than any weatherman I know. Heck, Manny tweets everyday. I don't see Paul Douglas doing that and he's a professional, yet retired, weatherman.

Even if you don't live in Minnesota, you should be Manny's fan. Maybe he'll branch out if he gets enough out of state fans.

Become a fan of Mannyapolis on Facebook here

Follow @mannyapolis on Twitter

How many times??

How many times am I going to keep writing "I really should stop neglecting my blog"?? It's even making me annoyed; I can't imagine what it's like for all 5 of you that actually read this from time to time.

So in my annoyance and cluelessness about keeping this blog afloat as an integral part of my business, I reached out for help on the trusty interwebs. Alyson Stanfield had retweeted an offer by @problogger (Darren Rowse) on Twitter. 50% off his e-book "31 Days to a Better Blog" for a total of $10.

$10 to get a clue? Sign me up!

The problem was I got stuck on step one:

Create a tagline for my blog so I can easily describe to others what the aim of my blog is and hopefully guide my topics.

And as has been made CRYSTAL CLEAR by now this year: I have no blogging aim. This is why I struggle. My aim has been to wish for blog ideas to just randomly appear in my brain while I juggle a part-time job, social life (sort of) and my business. I thought I could take the MySpace approach to blogging and just write about my dog or this funny thing that happened to me on the way to work or whatever and magically EVERYONE will want to read it and then buy my art.

Yep. That sounds like a good plan. (insert eye roll here)

Then I looked at the top of my blog. The completely undesigned, boring and neglected blog. I made a cute little recipe. I thought it was funny at the time, but when I look at it now, it serves as a guide. I can write about THOSE things! WOW! I knew what I was doing after all, it was just buried back in the part of my brain that attempts to be witty. Now I just need to form that into some sort of catchy tagline like....

Sharing my recipe of life as a digital artist

Eh? I probably should work harder at this. Get out the ol' pen and paper. Suggestions are welcome!

It's getting close....

Pretty soon we will be officially in holiday season. It usually starts sometime in October and runs, of course, all the way through January. My focus turns from art fair prep to retail prep and I feel like a full-time chicken without a head. It's okay, though, I get my head back after New Year's. :)

I think it might already be time for starting to think of New Year's resolutions. Last year, my resolution was to start becoming more focused on organizing my finances. I've done a pretty good job so far, but it's gotten a little lax. I need to start knuckling down and getting all those receipts and paid invoices entered. Regardless, because I've taken the time here and there to enter things in, it won't be that same nearly month long process of entering in everything into a spreadsheet. This year will be much more streamlined. I'm thankful that at the end of the year I will have a lot less work to get my taxes done (and especially thankful for the assistance of my accountant friend!!).

My other resolution this year was to get out of my comfort zone and do an out of state art fair. Luckily I was accepted into one and I was able to produce enough work that was outside of my normal body of work (the location collages) to fill an entire booth. I put the time and effort into doing something that I've never done before. It was scary, exciting and in the end, disappointing. However it was an experience that helped me realize what my real goals are and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

This next year, as I tend to say every year, will be the year that I finally start really working hard and trying to separate myself from the reliability of the part-time job. I know that I don't work as hard as I could because in the end I have that regular paycheck that will be coming. While it's nice, it also takes away from the work that I really love doing and it makes me a cranky artist. And just ask my friends and family...nobody likes a cranky artist. :)

Lying gets you everywhere?

A follow up on the blog post: Never really occurred to me...

I decided to empty out my savings account and file the small claims court paperwork. I felt strongly enough about getting taken advantage of that I knew it was the right thing to do. I went down to the courthouse, paid my $60, filed the paperwork and waited for them to issue me a court date.

About a month later I got a court date in June. I got all of my stuff together, printed out all of the emails, examples of the work I had done, the works. I got a phone call 3 days before the date from the court telling me that the defendant had tried to file for a continuance due to medical reasons, but that since it wasn't 5 business days before the date it was inadmissible. They wanted his contact information so they could call him and told me to come to court as planned.

I figured as much that something like that was going to happen since he wasn't an upstanding guy in the first place, so I just planned on him not showing up, having the judgment default in my favor and being done with the whole thing. I contacted the other designer who had been involved with this whole garbage and told him what was going on just to give him a heads up.

I appeared in court that day among all the other small claims cases. I checked in with the clerk. When they were calling the default cases, I told the referee (since they are not judges) that I was the plaintiff. He said, you're the defendant? I said no, I'm Giesla, I'm the defendant. You're (the name of the business the claim was against)? I said, NO, I'm THE PLAINTIFF. This concerned me, but it wasn't the first time people had problems with my name so I shrugged it off. He called the other cases and then got to me. Once again I had to emphasize that my name was Giesla, I was an independent graphic designer who was filing a claim against a company that used my work and didn't pay me. He asked me if I was surprised that the other party didn't show and I said no, not really. He said the case was dismissed and I went on my way.

As I walked out the door it played back in my head. Dismissed? Doesn't that mean it's over? As in no judgment? I've watched enough Judge Judy and Peoples' Court to know that dismissed means it's over. I figured TV court isn't really indicative of real life so I let it go. I got an email later that day from the designer I had contacted who told me that the defendant had had hernia surgery that past Friday and so his medical excuse was legit.

A couple weeks later while I was in Colorado for an art fair, my mom called me and said that the judgment came in the mail. She said the plaintiff's case was dismissed with prejudice. I was completely confused about what that meant and decided to just look at the paperwork when I got home. When I finally arrived home, I saw that the paperwork had marked the plaintiff (me) as not appearing and the defendant as appearing. My case had been dismissed because according to the court, I hadn't shown up.

The next business day I called the court and spoke with the clerk. I told her that I had indeed been there and there was a mistake. She told me that she was the clerk who had checked me in and remembered me and told me she would speak to her manager to see what they could do. She called me back and told me that they would nullify the judgment, issue me a new court date and waive the appeal fee of $50. So a new court date in August was set.

I got all of my documentation together and headed to court. It was a full court room so I was hoping that I wouldn't be there all day as I wanted to get this over with since at that point, this had been going on 8 months. This time he did show up, as I feared, and knew he was going to come in weaving a tall tale. Luckily as the plaintiff I had the first and last word.

I explained the situation, that he owed me money for work that I had done, and showed the email documentation from the first email that I had sent outlining my design fees to the emails with the invoices attached. I explained how we had met and everything that I detailed in the previous blog.

Then it was his turn. He lied and said that he brought me on for my photography skills, not my design work and that I offered to do mockups for free. He said that I told him the retailer I work for part-time was cutting my hours and so I wanted to make up for that by working for him for the same wages as the retailer pays me (which is about 1/3 of what my design fee is). When presented with examples of the work that I had done and asked if it was my work, he said no. He explained that this other designer that was interning for him was doing all the work and that I was just assisting. When asked if he opposed my rates so vehemently why didn't he respond to the email that outlined my fees and tell me that there was no way he was going to pay me what I was asking, he said that his business was getting "thousands of emails" at that time from vendors for their gift baskets in addition to resumes from applicants for intern graphic design positions so he never saw the email.

To me, that seemed pretty transparent. That and he couldn't complete a few sentences without using the phrase "and stuff". He came off to me as unprofessional and stuttered and stammered his way through most of his statements.

I left the courtroom shaking mad but confident. Surely it was obvious that he was a liar. I had stacks of evidence that he was trying to dodge me. I had proof of work that I had done. In my own mind, I had put forward a good case.

And then I got the judgment today. In favor of the defendant. Because the evidence strongly suggested that the work I did was for marketing purposes to negotiate a contract.

21 hours of work.

That was used.

On top of that there was a sharp conflict as to what, if any, work I did at all.

Despite me bringing in examples of the work that was done. Which, as I said, he denied me doing.

For the record:

This is one of the catalog pages I designed:

And this is what is on their website as of today (with a tiny "version 3" notation in the bottom):

Needless to say I will be contacting an attorney to see what my avenues are because I'll be damned if I'm letting this go any time soon.

In addition, I strongly urge you to not buy gift baskets from target.com (an outlet for this company's products) in support of boycotting companies that steal work from designers.

Need to get back in the habit

And there it stares me in the face upon login: "last published July 19". Yes, yes, I know Blogger. I've been horrible at updating my blog. I tried to update it from my phone but apparently got too wordy and while it was keeping track of what I was typing, it wasn't scrolling down to show me, so it was almost impossible to write, unless I didn't care about misspellings or typos. It was in regards to my trip to Chicago and finally finishing one of the Chicago collages I have been planning on working on since 2007. A good post, too. I guess I could've written it when I got home, but it's always been that I have to be in the mood to write something in order for it to be worth reading. I'm kind of in the mood right now, but not completely as you can tell. I'm babbling incoherently.

I'm in the process of coming up with a lesson plan for teaching classes in Photoshop Elements. I realized that while there are a lot of local resources for people to learn about the full version of Photoshop, there are not many actual classes (3 dimensional room classes versus online) in Mpls/St. Paul. I have the room to teach (people would have to bring their own computers, though) and the time, so I would like to throw it out there and see if I get any interest. If you're in the Twin Cities, leave me a comment or shoot me an email at info@inkblotsart.com if you're interested!

The thing about limited editions

I've always been on the fence about limited edition works. I've seen people have limited editions of 1000, or 2500 and I wonder is that REALLY limited edition? I mean, I suppose if you're a wildly popular artist, perhaps 2500 prints would sell very quickly. But usually limited editions fetch a higher price, so depending on what the price was, perhaps it would take years to sell 2500 prints. 

When I started my business I was making things by hand. Greeting cards and other small gift things, mostly, and here and there I did some photography. When I started doing the collages, I didn't think anything of having them limited. To me, I wanted my artwork to be accessible by as many people as possible, and while not cheap, I wanted it to be fairly affordable. So all my location collages are open edition. Now that I've decided to start pursuing art fairs outside of the state, this is a problem.

A lot of the prestigious art fairs require that most of your booth be originals, and if not originals, limited editions. Now, I've seen people take open edition work and make it limited edition by treating it in a particular manner, like a special type or size of print. This is what I'd like to do with my artwork but I have NO idea what to do.

I was considering having it mounted to acrylic block. This, I found, is not only incredibly expensive, it's only done in the UK, or so it seems by my research. Somewhat silly to spend tons of money just to have displays in a booth because truly, that's all they'd be. I have a feeling people would still purchase the matted prints over any big fancy limited edition piece I had. My next thought was to have them framed in lightboxes. The neon light collages would glow awesomely in a lit-up frame. However, that's also expensive and I'd have to have electricity in my booth. Then there's the other option: ignore the art fair directions. Well, I just don't want to push my luck.

So, I'm still stuck and I'm open to any ideas anyone has. The applications for next year for a few out of state shows will be coming up in a few months and I'd like to have a better idea of what the heck I'm doing if I'm going to be applying!

The realization and the moving on

I haven't blogged since I got to CO. I kept getting the iCal reminders and just put them aside. I didn't want to think about composing my thoughts and I REALLY didn't want to think about what happened in Vail. I've decided to just dump out everything into this one blog so it might get a little long.

I was really excited for Vail. I was nervous as all get out because it was a brand new thing for me. I've never exhibited just my "fine art" collages and it was scary. Will it be accepted? Will it be well received? I had no idea. My boyfriend was very comforting and assured me that the nerves are supposed to be there because I'm growing. It didn't make me less nervous, but it made me feel better.

Once we got there things went really well as far as setup. Got in, got unloaded, but had to wait for the end exhibitors to set up and get their vehicles out before I could set up. So we walked around, had lunch, enjoyed the day. It was great. Booth went up without a hitch and we headed back to the hotel to relax.

The next morning, art went up just fine. Everything looked great, I was very pleased. And then it started to rain. And rain. And rain. And I went my first day in 7 years without a sale and had more comments about how interesting and creative my art was in years. Now, these may have been compliments. However, with my experience in interior design, I quickly learned that when someone says something is "interesting", it usually means it's not to their taste or they don't understand or like it but feel the need to say something. I would rather hear nothing than hear an empty compliment. After day one, I went back to the room and promptly fell apart at the disaster that I knew this show was now going to be and the very expensive learning experience I was about to have.

Day two was better. The rain had stopped and I was back to manning the ship by myself as my boyfriend went back to Denver to go to work. I'm used to occupying myself during the day so it was no big deal, though I really appreciate when I have someone there who can grab me lunch. :) I had a better grasp of things and decided to put out some of my location art as I had brought some 11 x 14 matted prints with me. I hung up Las Vegas, Minnesota and UW-Madison. And I got some reaction and I knew then that people like recognizing places they've been no matter where they're from.

Day three started out ok. Got up and packed up and checked out and moved the van out of the hotel lot. Opened up the booth after grabbing some Starbucks (not bad having a booth about 25 yards from one) and was prepared for a slightly shorter day and the possibility that there was about a 95% chance that I would walk away from this fair having made no sales. I had more custom collage inquiries that day, which was pleasing and decided that I was going to be happy about the possibility of work from that area of my business regardless if I didn't make any artwork sales.

And then....a sale. The UW-Madison collage. Purchased by a woman from Wisconsin. I half wanted to cheer and half wanted to scream. I DROVE 900 MILES FOR A SALE I COULD'VE MADE AT HOME?!?!?! I felt better that I wasn't going to be completely without a sale, but was annoyed and confused. And the realized that that was it. I will do the location collages. I will put in the effort to travel and I will do the research and I will get them done. I won't abandon the work that I've done and my love for doing mixed media collage, I'll just put it on hold. And that'll be okay. I love all my art and am willing to focus on one aspect a little more clearly in order to achieve success.

Later that day a cute younger couple bought one of my retro ad collages and signed my mailing list. That made me a little happier. I know the retro ad collages appeal to a younger crowd and that just isn't Vail demographics. So at the end of the show, 2 sales. Covered about 2 tanks of gas. Not exactly what I had pictured even in all my nervousness. But at the end, I came out with a better focus of the direction my business needs to take, which is something. Not what was I was hoping for, but something.

So, Telluride. I'm supposed to the Telluride Arts Festival in August and have decided to cancel. One expensive learning experience in a year is enough. I haven't made the cancellation yet because it hasn't fully sunk in and I still kind of feel like I'm giving up, but financially it's just not a good idea.

In more positive news, the Maple Grove Art Fair is this weekend and I'm very excited to get back on track and make some sales. If you're in MN, come on out and say hi!

In CO

Just arrived in CO and am preparing myself for the Vail Arts Festival this weekend. The drive was ridiculously long and boring, which is what I have been told numerous times from other people. Not much time to decompress! I leave tomorrow morning to set up, then the art fair is Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Wish me luck!

-- Post From My iPhone

Testing out mobile

So, I bought the Blogpress app to give mobile blogging a shot. I'm at the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts today. It's a gorgeous day and there are lots of folks here. Sales could pick up a bit, but all in all not too bad. I've been MIA from blogging due to my increased pressure to get ready for the Vail Arts Festival next weekend. With this app I hope to be able to keep up with things better!!


-- Post From My iPhone

New adventures

"I'd love to sell out completely. It's just that no one has been willing to buy." —John Waters

I love what I do. I very much would love to rely on nothing else but selling my art. When I started 7 years ago, I would have never have expected such a warm receipt of what I do by others. At the Edina Art Fair this weekend, I got so many comments like "This is so cool!" and "I really like what you do!". It warms my heart and solidifies my decision to try to carve a life for myself out of what I do. 

However, it concerns me that I have carved myself a nice little niche that I can't expand upon. Again, I love doing the location collages. It's fun to capture a whole place in one piece of artwork and doubly fun to see people's reaction to it. But when I start getting requests for every little small town, suburb and very small college, it takes a little of the fun away. When I tell people "no" when they ask if I have a certain location, I sometimes get stern looks like I hurt their feelings or I get a quick "Well are you GOING to do it?". There are only so many hours in a day and a lot of time goes in to photographing for those collages. If I'm not sure that location will be well received, that time is better spent doing other things.

I've put a lot of effort into creating new collages to display at the Vail Arts Festival. It'll be the first art fair that I won't have any location collages at. It'll be the first art fair where I am judged solely by my other artwork. And I'm terrified. Because here in MN, that artwork may as well be invisible. It hangs in my booth and gets almost completely ignored. It used to take up half of my booth. Half location, half fine art. I got so many comments about how it was "interesting" or "unusual" (some actually came right out and called it weird) that I finally just stopped bringing it. It never sold and I didn't want it to get damaged by hauling it around.

My Facebook and Twitter friends mostly see my new artwork and have given me a lot of positive feedback. This is REALLY encouraging and I'm thankful for it. I feel like I've been divided in two and it's really odd. I'm starting on a new journey of exploring the half of me that really loves getting my hands into my artwork and expressing the things I love, yet the photographer in me still wants to get out and document all of those cities and states in a way that only a local can see it.

I'll probably never merge those two sides, but I'd like them both to come along with me equally rather than having one move forward and the other stay in one place.

Four Five Six

In preparation for the Vail Arts Festival at the end of June, in order to have a more complete collection in my booth I thought I would expand my number collages to include four, five and six!

Don't forget about the Edina Art Fair on 50th and France this Friday, Saturday and Sunday! Hours are Friday 10-7, Saturday 10-7 and Sunday 10-5. My booth number is 169, just about a block south of 50th Street near Salut restaurant. To see a PDF map of the Edina Art Fair booth locations, click here.

Number art complete

I finally made a decision about how I wanted to treat the number collages from my last post and I couldn't be more pleased with the outcome (except the part about it taking FOREVER to dry).

I chose canvas versus the wood blocks because I liked the treatment I gave the bird spinner collages. I had initially thought that I was going to use wood blocks with vintage fabric or wallpaper adhered to the side, but thought that the grunginess of the collages deserved a more rough treatment.

The canvas is coated in 3 colors of walnut ink, spattered with black paint and then stamped. The stamps are actually stencils that I stamped with ink and then pressed into the canvas. The print is adhered to the canvas with Mod Podge. I'm considering spraying the print with a gloss acrylic to give it a glass-like appearance but it's not something I want to play with and then not like. I like it so far and don't want to ruin what I've done. I may spray it with a UV protectant to protect the print, however.

When I finish the set I will have them available for sale up on Etsy. They will be a limited edition of 50 and will sell for $85.

New art!!

Since I won't be bringing my location artwork to the Vail Arts Festival at the end of June, I'm really pushing myself to make new artwork so I have a fairly full booth. I don't think I've ever created this much new artwork in a year and it's really exciting. I've created a lot of retro inspired pieces, which I love, but I also am finally getting around to creating collages that I've had rolling around in my head for awhile, like the collage I posted a few days ago: "Room to Breathe".

The titles are fairly simple for these collages: "One for the Money", "Two for the Show" and "Three to Get Ready". They're 12 x 12 and I'm undecided if I will mount them to canvas like I did the bird spinners or mount them to museum blocks and edge them with vintage wallpaper. I'll post photos of the final product, whatever I decide!

After the scan: Getting started on (and finishing) a collage

After I finish the scanning process, it's time to get started! As I scan the photos I make note of all of them and try to figure out placement and size of the images. If it's a wedding collage and I have individual photos of the bride and groom, I try to put those in the corners as anchors. If it's an anniversary, I try to find photos of the couple together throughout the years and use those as corner photos. Unlike a puzzle, I start from the edges and work in rather than from the center and work out. There really isn't a formula to how I work, but there are things that I find I do repeatedly, like using certain photos as corner anchors. Again, it really all depends on what I'm given by the client.

Above you can see how I began the 70th birthday collage. There were several images that I liked of her alone, but decided on the portrait type image to anchor the lower left corner. It had nice cool colors and blended well in with the background. Most of the photos of her were in black and white, so I thought a color photo would balance out the background nicely. I then kind of worked around, placing other images of her by herself in somewhat of a timeline, then decided to use the family image to anchor the upper right corner. 

I had initially started to fill in small photos of her extended family, then found this photo of all of the family together and decided to place that one and remove the smaller pictures so it wouldn't be too crowded. The more photos I'm given, the more I have to shrink things to get them all to fit and more times than not it ends up looking more messy than a unified whole. The elimination process is a difficult one if I'm not given a whole lot of direction about the importance of the pictures by the client.

This was the first draft that I submitted to the client for approval. (Actually I added one more photo after I took this screen shot, but this is pretty close to the first draft.) It turned out that my decision to try to consolidate by eliminating family wasn't the best choice and that she would've rather have had less photos of her mom and dad together and more photos of the family because the family was very important to her mom. So I shrunk some of the photos and removed two to make room for the individual photos. She also requested that I add the word "Candy" to the collage because that is her mom's nickname. Words are always easy to add after the fact because they can be blended so as not to interfere with the photos. Adding more photos (or taking away photos that I've used in key places) is more difficult because I have to shift things around so as not to leave holes.

So...after making the changes, this was the final collage: 

Not too drastically different from the first proof that I showed the client, but tweaked enough that she was extremely pleased with the result. I told her to let me know what her mother's reaction is to it because I always like to hear feedback. On several occasions I've heard that the gift has moved people to tears, and that's probably the highest compliment I could ever receive. I enjoy what I do immensely and that I can bring joy to others makes it very worthwhile. I think it's so great to be able to take photos that otherwise would rarely see the light of day and give them life again.

If you're interested in having a custom collage done, please visit my website for more information!

Thanks to Kat Christopherson for allowing me the pleasure of working with her on this collage for her mother's birthday.