Next up....art crawl!!

I love the Saint Paul Art Crawl because I get to show off my cool space (the downside is I have to clean it....) and I get to sell my art without having to leave home. :)

I'm always trying to think of something fun to do especially for the folks that come out for the art crawl and this year I stumbled upon a great idea!

I was digging through one of my drawers and happened up on a little lime green gift bag about 4" high that someone had given to me. I thought it would be great to give out little gift bags at the art crawl but struggled with what to put inside of them as fun promotional/giveaway gift.

So I saw that you can get scratch off stickers to put on cards, so I've decided upon a scratch off giveaway of my artwork. I'm still working out the idea, but this is what I've come up with so far:

1 in 5 cards will be good for a collage card

1 in 20 will be good for a poster

1 in 50 will be good for an 11 x 14 matted print

and 1 in 100 will be good for an 16 x 20 matted print

You have to stop in to my studio to eligible!

I'm also considering printing the location collages on magnets!! I'm still in the hunt for a magnet printer, so it might be a little while before they're available.

Arts at the Oval was a good turn out! Excited for the upcoming art fair season!

Still here

Well, I knew it would happen. That art fair season would begin and iCal would beep at me 3 times a week, 3 times each of those days letting me know that I need to keep up on my promise to blog. And what happened? I ignored it. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm busy! I know I need to blog!"

But I didn't really have much to write about, didn't want to blab on and on about nothing except for "I'm busy, what else is new?". 

So, here I am, at the first art fair of the season (thank you wifi!) blogging about my lack of blogging.

I'm using my new invoicing system, USB Swiper, and so far it's pretty good. Me writing things out is a LITTLE easier, but this will catalog things much better. And, once I get the credit card swiper and don't have to nervously type card numbers out by hand, it'll be super slick. Working with new things is always slow at first, but I anticipate things will get faster as I get better.

So far, things are going pretty well sales wise, so my hope for the art fair season has grown! Excited for the upcoming year!

New Etsy site

I've been following Etsy on Twitter and have always had a love for the site. I really enjoy making things by hand but am more of an admirer than a participant. When I started my business, most of my products were handmade items, and because it was so time consuming, I slowly moved to doing digital collages. Still time consuming, but no mess to clean up and no products to buy other than paper and ink for my printer. But I've been missing adding that handmade touch to my artwork. So as I struggled for a way to mount the new collages I posted last week, I decided it was time to return to my love of making things by hand.

This the new artwork:

I mounted the collages to 4 x 4 canvases that have been painted with acrylic paint and then "antiqued" with walnut ink. Then I applied beeswax to the print and the canvas.

I will be selling these collages through Etsy and you can find them here. They are a limited edition of 100. Enjoy!

No, it's not "blog day", but I have new art!

So I usually make "blog days" Monday, Wednesday, Friday but I finished this and I wanted to put it up. Plus I don't know if I'll have anything to say tomorrow, so this kind of takes care of that problem!

Continuing on with the spinners, here's another piece to go with the first! I'm really enjoying this series stuff. Something about things matching, I guess! Enjoy!

Late night, new art

Sometimes I just can't let something go until it's finished, and this new piece of art was it on Tuesday night. I'm not really tired, and I just had to see how this was going to turn out. I kept working and working on the focus of this piece, the spinner, until I got it exactly how I wanted it. Rather, I got it until my brain said "STOP! THAT'S IT!" because I honestly didn't know how I wanted it when I started. I love playing in Photoshop and having happy accidents while creating. I just kept working the layers until I finally got what looked right to me. Love, LOVE Photoshop.

Once I got the focus looking how I wanted it, I dug into my fun vintage stuff drawer and looked for the perfect pieces to accompany what I had done so far. The fun part about creating for me is my brain becomes a divining rod of sorts. I just keep looking..."nope...nope....that's IT!" Do I know WHY that's it? Nope. I just do.

So...here's the finished piece:

It's a 4 x 4 since: a) I have a fondness for square things and b) I don't have a whole lot of small art. People have less and less wall space these days and I think it'll be nice to have some small affordable things. Like the other new pieces, these will also be a limited edition, but I'm not sure just yet how many prints I will limit them to. 

An unexpected good thing

I knew today I was going to get the notification for the Telluride Festival of the Arts in Colorado. I have been applying to out of state shows here and there and have so far been rejected from all of them. I expected another rejection and was preparing myself for it. I hadn't gotten the email all day and just thought I'd take a look at the Zapplication site to see if they had put the notice up on my applied shows page. I check the page and there it was. "Invited". I was laying down for a quick rest at the time and jumped up and shouted "NO WAY!!". I couldn't believe it. It had to be a mistake. But soon after I got the email giving me congratulations on my acceptance. I'm still a little surprised and wonder if this show is that good. I mean they accepted me, how great can it be?

Ok...gotta give myself a LITTLE credit. I'm good at what I do, but like most artists, I have doubt. I'd probably be annoying as all get out if I walked around patting myself on the back all day long, so I take my talent with a grain of salt.

Shortly after that email, I got another accepting me to the Edina Art Fair. 

I don't know if I mentioned, but I was also accepted into the Wayzata Art Experience, replacing the Rivertown Art Festival on my usual art fair schedule.

The art fair year is shaping up well!

Dog + flash drive = 8 hours of file re-creation

I'm technically 2 days late on my blog. Intending to do it yesterday, I got wrapped up in Quickbooks and movies with a friend. Today was spent re-creating a file destroyed by my dog. The technical equivalent of "my dog ate my homework", if kids still actually wrote their homework instead of typed it. I'll explain.

I have a Power Mac G5 tower that has one USB port in the front of it. I use it to plug in my iPhone for syncing and also use it to plug in my flash drives for working off of them. Seeing as it's a tower, the flash drive sticks straight out from the computer. Like a little flash drive flagpole. This makes it an easy target for my clumsiness, having kicked a flash drive before while getting up from my desk. Didn't break it, but made it pretty difficult to use as it had this weird rotating USB plug on it that didn't support the weight of the drive well and my kicking it dislodged the plug. I promptly backed it up and that was that. I still have it and it still works, I just don't use it much.

My dog likes to chew on things, as most dogs do. She recently found my flash drive an easy target and subsequently put teeth marks/dents in the end of it. It still worked, I just had to make sure she wouldn't chew on it again. Little did I know her face wasn't going to be the problem.

I was working on my computer and desperately trying to keep the dog away from my boxes of ink (she likes to bite them and carry them around) when she backed away from the shelf I have my ink on. I saw the error message come up on the computer warning me of a device removal. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. I kept working. Then I went to retrieve a file off the flash drive. I noticed it didn't show up as a drive on the desktop. I looked down at it and noticed the light indicating power wasn't on. I then noticed it was bent. A flagpole uprooted by a strong wind. A big furry clumsy strong wind.

I panicked. I pulled it out of the computer and plugged it back in. Nothing. I plugged it into my laptop. Nothing. I wiggled. I jiggled. I tried to make the plug straighten out. Nothing.

And then I cried. Because a client project I have been working on for a month was on it. And I had no back up. And I would have to start over. ALL. OVER. And the payment for this project is extremely important as I've been struggling lately. And a delay in project is a delay in payment. This is bad. Very, VERY bad.

So I bring my flash drive into the Apple Store and have one of my fellow co-workers take a look at it. They give me the verdict: Dead. And I come to the conclusion that perhaps that's what my dog should be also (not really...I love my dog...but MAN!). I mourn the loss of my drive and proceed to contact the client. I apologize profusely and explain that I will work through the weekend to re-create the file, luckily having a proof that I sent via email to work off of. The client was incredibly nice and assured me that things will go smoothly.

So today was spent re-creating the file and warding off the dog from being a gigantic pest. If she is not the center of attention at all times, she gets very pesty indeed. And that's why God made kennels. After 8 hours, I have the finished product and it is the spitting image of the original with only a few minor differences. I'm pretty proud of the work and thankful for my talent.

Lessons learned: BACK UP YOUR FILES AT ALL TIMES, purchase another USB hub so I can plug my flash drive in on my desk instead of in harm's (read: dog's) way, and finally, dogs and computers don't mix.

20 minutes late

So I posted my Monday blog on Sunday and I'm twenty minutes late for my Wednesday blog. What can I say? I had work to do and lists to make. But now here I am, still trying to figure out how best to capitalize on my stupid downtime. I hate downtime. I hate super busy time, too, but I would much rather have that than sitting here trying to figure out what next. Pouring over tons of marketing websites, trying to figure out how best to promote on the cheap. I'm spending more and more time on Twitter and I'm really starting to like it. Being connected to other artist/photographers/people with like interests is really fun.

I'm following Etsy on Twitter and have decided to create an Etsy account to sell some of my new collages. The audience here in MN really seems to enjoy the location collages, but I'm always curious if there's an audience out there for my other work as well. 

So I'm going to give that a go. I also might bring back some of my old work, like my handmade greetings cards. The work that got me started. I spent quite a while digging through old Zip disks (yes they still work!) and CDs trying to find the files so I can create more than what I already have if I want to, but as of yet I haven't been too successful. I'll keep digging, but for right now I might just focus on making new work. Making new work similar to the old work might even produce better results! I'm kind of excited. I really enjoy making handmade things.

One last plug....don't forget about Arts at the Oval coming up in a couple of weeks! 2 days after my birthday, in fact.

Until next time!

MORE NEW WORK!

I'm actually following through on things I say I'm going to do artwork-wise...it's amazing. I said I was going to make new pieces to compliment my other new artwork and here they are!!

What about my location collages? Well, funds are tight right now so I'm not sure if a trip to Chicago is in the works, as much as I'd like it to be. I might work on some new Minnesota pieces soon. I've been wanting to do another Minneapolis nightlife collage, but there's only one problem. Bunkers hasn't had their neon working for MONTHS! And that's a pretty essential part of my collage since it's a pretty well known bar. I'm guessing fixing neon is expensive since it's been out since around October. Also wanted to do a GLBT bar collage, and a West 7th Street collage. Just need to find the time to go out and take photos. And warmer weather helps, too. 

Twitplinkface....oh my.

Overwhelmed by social networking, take two. 

I started off today thinking I was going to get so much done, and sure enough, didn't get a whole lot of anything done thanks to my desire to sit and look at Twitter all day. I feel like I need a separate computer monitor just to keep up with everything! (Oddly enough, I do have two computers, I just seem to gravitate towards my desktop for all my web stuff.)

I follow quite a few designers and artists who tend to post fun and interesting links and of course, I click on them. Like a moth to flame, I click. And then what happens? I don't work on Quickbooks with as much focus as I should. And it takes me all afternoon to do it. Not to mention I have a very pesty dog who likes nonstop attention. This also keeps me from getting a lot accomplished. So what did I do today?

•Downloaded but didn't install this new software I'm going to try out to accept credit cards at art fairs

•Downloaded and installed *DING!*, software from Southwest Airlines that alerts me of fare deals.

•Tweeted.

•Got all caught up with Quickbooks (AMAZING!), except for some stuff I couldn't figure out that I'm going to get help with. 

•Paid a credit card bill. Put other bill due dates into iCal. Freaked out about lack of money.

•Tweeted some more.

•Printed some photos for photo cards.

•Played with the dog.

•Wrote this blog. 

For some reason, it just didn't feel like a very productive day. So much to learn and try, so very little time.

Twitfacespace

I am completely overwhelmed by social networking these days. There's SO much!! People blog, tweet, facebook, myspace....you could spend all day just talking about yourself! Or pointing people to things you found interesting. Or connecting with customers, friends, family, etc. It's amazing. An artist I'm following on Twitter, Shannon Grissom, pointed me to this article. It made my head spin. I could spend all day reading up on how to "properly" use these resources. 

Is that the best way to use my time? I have no idea. I hate to bring up the economy because people are probably so very sick of hearing it, but I think drumming up new business will be a struggle this year. Plus I'm trying to be cost effective in doing it. I can't afford to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on ads, be it print or web, so I'm going to take a shot at all of this social networking stuff. So...shameless plugs:

Follow me on Twitter!

Friend me on Facebook!

or, sign up for my email newsletter on my website!

Sorry, folks. If I don't have business, my dog goes hungry. ;)

Apply, apply, apply

Ah, the beginning of the year. Preparing, preparing, and more preparing. I've applied to 3 shows this past weekend: Stone Arch Festival of the Arts, Wayzata Art Experience and the Maple Grove Art Fair. I'll be applying to the Powderhorn Art Fair at the end of the week. I should see my schedule start to fall into place by the end of April. 

As always, my schedule will be continuously updated on my website!

Side note: I will not be applying to the Rivertown Art Festival nor the Highland Art Fest this year. Both shows have gone downhill in quality and sales the past few years. I am hoping to replace the Rivertown Art Festival with the Wayzata Art Experience. As far as Highland, there is not another art fair I have found at that same time (towards the end of July).