6 posts tagged “crafty business”

Originally published at file under "Miscellanea". You can comment here or there.

Like an invisible zipline, sometimes fate drags you to where you need to be.

Last night, as we were considering a movie night on the couch, I recommended taking the dog for a walk.

As we concluded our walk, my husband suggested going out for a drink.

When we got downtown, I peeked into an art gallery, saw it was open, and said we should stop in.

If you can see where this is going, you are far wiser than I!

Once inside the Progress Energy Gallery, we were greeted by Michelle Astuto Collins and Sergio Vitorio Flores and informed a silent auction was ongoing and would end that night at 9:45pm. Much chatting and perusing followed, and we left having bid on two items. My husband and I went for drinks across the street, a conversation about football and a delicious crab cake later, we were back in the gallery and were going home with one of Sergio's masks and I had won a artist membership to the gallery.

Artist members get advance notice of shows, discounts on gallery fees and purchases, and a link from their site.

Obviously, I need to get in gear:  updating my arty site, uploading photos, and completing both the 3-D house piece I've been puttering on and the two canvases I've begun. I knew, of course, in the back of my head, I wanted to do these things, but I let them get piled under my regular job, paying taxes, washing the dog, feeding the kid, and dozens of other large and small tasks. Now, fate has given me a reason to put artmaking back on the front burner of my life, a subtle conspiring of events that has set me right, saying:  You need to put your energy here.

1.  New cat:  Friday before Christmas, a bundle of black and white mewing was at our door. Seeing as she was very good looking and declawed, we assumed she had made a run from her family. We put signs up in our neighborhood the next day, but have received zero calls to claim her. A couple of brief tests later, she's now trying to acclimate herself to life with the other pets and the preteen.

2.  New pantry:  As I type, my husband is busily and noisily screwing drywall up for those most massive and wonderful pantry I've ever had the privilege to cook out of. Since moving to Florida, we'd been making due with a little four-foot, thirty-dollar job from Target to hold dry goods. This one is at least six times that size, has lights, deep shelves and is making use of a previously unused area of the house. Brilliant.

3.  New hair color:  Egyptian Plum by Clairol. Because I'm worth it, dammit.

4.  New plans:  Motivating a friend to write a book or a dozen, getting my crafty biz going, learning new art techniques, and doing everything in my power to live a blissful, creative life.

I purchased my first domain name this evening and am unreasonably giddy and bubbly over this development. I'm still making choices about web hosting, but realized I could go ahead and get the name I wanted and fuss over hosting packages later.

Here I come Interwebs!

PS Any of you hosting personal or business sites with recommendations for services, I would be glad to hear your experiences.

More than three months ago, I shelved this blog in a fit of despair.* I needed to find some way to put my head down and make my life work, and I hope I am now arriving at that point.

To that end, I'm rebooting this Vox for the New Year and am giving it the following direction:

• My Vox is going to remain a personal blog, about the tribulations and festivities in the life of a near-30-year-old woman living in the Sunshine State, married, raising her brother, feeding the cats and overpriced terrier. When I burn a loaf of bread, celebrate a report card, or have a funny anecdote to share, it will go here. If I like a movie, read a book, or have to out my obsession with Project Runway, it will go here.
• I'm setting up another blog to chronicle my creative aspirations and my fledgling attempts to sell the goodies and oddities I create. If you want to see pictures of collages, messy journals, and stitchery, it will go there.

While, in general, I have a big o' fear of overlapping my personal and (ha!) professional personnas, I also plan to do a kind of monthly recap on my Vox of how things are going over in artsy land. Mainly for the purposes of hoping to shamelessly lure you to my Etsy storefront, obviously.

I'm also going to take the leap and start pointing people who actually know me (other than you, Donut Pusher) to this blog. If you went to school with me or know me from some other venue, gosh, I hope I didn't rant about you in this blog's earlier incarnation. I kid, I kid...

To those in my Voxy neighborhood:  Hey, thanks for keepin' me in your loop. If you had a baby, opened a business, got married, ditched the jerk, or otherwise made huge moves in your life since September, I hope they have worked out for you, and I'm sorry I didn't write. Special shout-out to the very creative Lorri, whose Vox I wandered into whilst investigating other arty-crafty blogs for inspiration for my new venture. There are so many very talented people out there doing amazing work, it is both inspiring and scary to me!

More soon, including 2007's "mayfly." (Don't know what that means? Looky here. Want to read 2006's? Looky here.)

* "a fit of despair":  This phrase makes it seem needlessly dramatic, but things were very low on that day in September, and I don't mean to diminish my emotions or feelings about life as I felt them then. We were unable to make mortgage payments on our house, my mother's life insurance policy had been denied, and, in a less than ten-hour window, both of our cars died. Life was not peachy keen, and I still own that feeling of damnation and don't mean to make light of it with these four words.

• miscellanea
• the reluctant artist
• artgeek unlimited
• ? ? ?

So, those are my nominees for my fledgling crafty business. I have pros/cons about them, but will wait to say more until I get some basic feedback on these options.

Business details: A variety for crafts for sale, many focusing on reuse/recycling and paper arts (greeting cards, collage, cigar box purses), but I want some wiggle room to include fabric arts or sewing projects, printmaking, and embroidery.

What I need to know:  What do you think of these names? What do they make you think of? Any suggestions or food for thought?

Thanks!

I <3 me some random motivation, so I have joined and committed to the Craft Challenge group. This month there are several "missions," but I've already been quite successful:

Spend at least 15 mins a day satisfying that craft urge in your belly. Lucky me, I usually get more like three hours to do this. But, because of the challenge, I'm making sure I do it every day. Thus far, I've worked on my handmade paper, a donation jar for my husband's Habitat for Humanity affiliate, and decorating the binders I use to store magazine articles and my ATCs. Bonus: My husband just interrupted this post to have me help him make a card for his parents.

Visit 1 craft show. This weekend, I volunteered at the Gasparilla Arts Festival for 5.5 hours and then visited Tampa's Crafting Out Loud, a regularly scheduled craft fair featuring indie/urban crafters. Saw some friendly faces, neat photo frames made out of hard cover books, some fun handpainted boxes and jewelery displays, enjoyed a cuppa chai and a cute green felt rattle by melimade for a friend's newborn. (Which nicely works into another craft challenge...

Purchase something from a fellow crafter. Thanks, melimade!

Open that Etsy shop you "keep meaning to open." I actually signed up for Etsy, but now am having second thoughts about a business name for myself. More on that in a follow-up post.

Finish a UFO (unfinished object). My likely candidates for this are three needlepoint works, all for female friends who've been so good to me during this stressful time.

So, I'm well on my way, and the first week of March is barely over. Me thinks I may have to ask teach for extra credit. ;)

PS - Photos to follow. My camera isn't around the house right now, but I should have photos up mid-week of some of my work, plus my craft area.