Fame at last (kind of...)

Well, I have been in print before, featured in such legendary publications as the Sudbury Mercury, and the Leavenheath, Stoke-by-Nayland, Polstead and Nayland Community News. In fact the lady at the make up counter in boots even recognised me. And once the Bury Free Press even sent a reporter to my studio, complete with big camera that made those clicky noises you hear outside the old bailey as the van with the blacked out windows drives off. I held up a paintbrush and pretended to paint whilst smiling inanely. But I was of course, just following directions.

However, this is the first time I have been in a publication that is actually sold in WH Smith and Tesco. Yes that is me in Craftseller, March issue! Wow. It is surely only a matter of time before I am on the Jonathon Ross show wearing shoes so high that I can only walk 10 paces in before elegantly collapsing on the studio sofa. Watch this space, and never underestimate my talent for blatant self promotion...

Meantime, until the rewards of fame kick in, I am sadly forced to continue working...

So it's back to the print workshop for my latest get-rich-fairly-quick plan; linoprint cards with matching gift tags. Three designs on the same block to start with. "Look I made Barbie pink" I said to the workshop technician: "That's pink with balls!" she replied. I don't think I will be using that line in my publicity material, but she has a point. For those less keen on pink with balls, these will also be available in red and purple.

After a happy hour playing with ink, it was time to put them on the drying rack, alongside the other printmaker's work:

I already have some of the finished cards out in a local gallery and just need to edit the photos before I can offer them online too.

Here is a preview of the butterfly one, finished with glitter and sequins. More designs are planned, including some a little less girly and suitable for men and kids, because not everyone loves pink!

Animal Charity Auction!

Always looking for an excuse to put Gimlet on the blog of course... and as some of you know, Gimlet, my lovable and sometimes violent studio muse came from a local rescue centre. I am not the most selfless person, heaven knows, but adopting an animal felt like one of the best things I ever did. The rescue home does everything in its power to look after the animals and make them happy, but still it must be a miserable existence locked in a pen, compared to being with a doting family.

Here is Gimlet on his first evening with us, before he became the spoiled diva that he is now, back when he was actually grateful. (Time between abject gratitude and demanding expensive cat food... about 6 weeks).


Not everyone can adopt an animal, but in a recessions these centres get inundated with animals that people can no longer afford to look after, along with extra food and vets bills.

So when Louise, (a seller on Folksy) asked if anyone could donate a small item from their shops to her auction she was amazed how many responded. Louise is raising funds for her local animal rescue centre (RACR) in Nottingham.

Here is my donation, one of my bird monoprints:

Currently bid well under it's value, if you would like to bid on this, or take a look at the many other items available please click the links below. Up for auction are items ranging from animal art to hand-made jewellery, hand knitted gloves, soft toys and a huge amount of other stuff.

To bid you simply leave a comment on the image on Louise's facebook page, and pay by paypal if you win. It couldn't be easier, and you will help the furry friends as well as grab a bargain.

Racr Rescue Fundraising Facebook Page 

Direct Link to items up for auction! 
 

Ikea vs Ebay

I normally work Saturdays and take Wednesdays off, which means I rarely get a whole 2 days in a row to tackle anything major that is not work. So, the boxes labelled 'stuff to sell on ebay' had grown and were taking over my studio, so in a fit of madness I decided to be like a normal person and take a week off.


For an entire week I listed stuff on ebay: unused dress patterns, shoes I don't wear, wii games the teen no longer plays. By the end of the week I never wanted to see my ebay page again, my selling fees were eye watering and the post office were making a profit again, all due to me. I made some money of course, but couldn't help wondering if I should have dumped the stuff in a charity shop and painted something to sell instead...


Around this time boyfriend and I took a trip to Ikea to get the things we needed for our new laundry room. I was nervous, boyfriend hates shopping... But as it turns out he likes Ikea. He laughed at the Swedish names, ate meatballs in the cafe, tried the furniture, had a pillow fight on the moving walkway and tried various storage items on as headgear (see his facebook profile for evidence).

Best of all, in the place where all the ebay stuff was cluttering up my studio I now have a small 'Helgar':

My only hope is that we manage to buy everything we need for the house before Ikea issue us with a lifetime ban.


Back at work after my ebay fest and I finally finished this one:

Fields near Little Blakenham, Ipswich

 

My ambition to sell more art online got a couple of boosts this month too, with this commission for a mosaic for Sophie, who sent me little tiles from her bathroom, and fabric swatches so I could create an ivory mosaic with touches of gold for her bathroom:

Ivory and Gold commissioned Mosiac Panel

Finally, I was requested by Folksy seller 'Aunty Joan' to make this small garden painting available as a print, which she then purchased:

 Wall Flowers Limited Edition Print

Both buyers left me excellent feedback, which is what it is all about on the internet, because just like eBay, no one buys unless you have already sold, so those first sales are the hardest to gain. Thank you Sophie and AuntyJoan!

Doors open, doors close

Despite his laid back attitude, Gimlet has been causing trouble again. We have had problems in the past with him bringing in dead things. Well now he has stopped doing this, and decided it is far more fun to bring in live things. Mice to be specific. After all, its not much fun outdoors; he is as fast as lightening, they don't stand a chance. How much more pleasant to chase them around indoors where they can hide up under the tv or food cupboards, hours of fun, plus its warm. Bonus, as the teen would say!

Well after about 5 mice in 2 weeks (one on my birthday and he didn't even wrap it) we have all had enough. Well Gimlet hasn't had enough, but despite what he may think, the humans are in charge (mostly). The cat flap has been locked to 'out only'; no more 5am mouse chasing, at least not in the house.

The human doors are changing too. Out with the delightful doors that were here when we moved in:

And in with the new solid pine ones:

It's amazing the difference changing the doors can make to a house. Now just the rest of the decor to deal with.

As for the business of art, each year I tend to have a bit of a plan for moving my work forwards, last year of course it was 'build big studio in garden year'. This year I want to get internet sales. It is notoriously difficult to sell artwork online, but I am determined.

So the internet is the answer and this year it is what I am working on. There is much more to selling online than simply listing the stuff. Photographs must be immaculate, networking and cooperation with other artists and crafters is a must, as is promotion via social networks and image bucket sites. Then there is 'SEO', or search engine optimization for those who actually have a life.  So this week it was time to open a shop on Etsy, a US based site that is the worlds largest market place for handmade and vintage goods.

Here are two of my first listings on Etsy, recently finished mosaics:

Cream and Red Valentines Heart Mosaic

Yellow star with blue background Mosaic Panel

Many hours are being spent on the computer... time will tell if it pays off for me!

January Sales

Despite the recession, (which I keep hearing about on the news), myself and all the other people I know in business are very busy, which makes no sense perhaps, but there it is. I was putting off picking up my snow scene painting, due to high winds and rain on the day it was due to be collected, only to discover that it had sold! Of course galleries tend not to tell you when things sell, until you arrive to pick up, so I suspect this was actually a December sale.

A week later and a call from another gallery informs me that this one has sold in Bury St Edmunds. It is one of my absolute favorites, and I think it has quite a modern look, but I was unsure of how commercial it was.

The fact that it sold fairly quickly means my decision to have some giclee prints made was hopefully a good one. Since then I have sold a couple of other prints, proving that some people at least have a little spare money in January.

Those people would not include me, as after several months of saving my pennies I bought this in the January sales:

It is beautiful, lights up, plays cute tunes when your laundry is finished and is actually quite good at washing clothes. It has a steam function which 'freshens' clothes for 20 minutes, meaning that teenage jeans worn for half an hour and dumped on the floor no longer have to go through a full wash cycle. The drum is twice the size of the last machine (which regularly ate the teen's small trainer socks) and for the first time ever I am up to date with the laundry. Boyfriend is horrified at how much I paid for it, and I am shockingly unrepentant.

When not trying to talk me out of buying expensive white (er silver-grey) goods boyfriend finished the tiling of the kitchen floor, and also started hanging the new internal pine doors. 

He has done a fabulous job and it looks stunning, unlike the rest of the kitchen. It is lethal when wet however and when I inevitably slipped over the teen had some advice:
"Don't wish to offend," (She always says this just before saying something offensive) "But it's your age..." "someone young like me has an inbuilt sense of balance"
Fantastic. Now I just have to wait for her to fall over, and she will. Revenge shall be mine.

So, any art this month? Well yes, in between wrapping a ton of limited editions and driving them out to various venues I continued work on the mosaics, and the first one is finished:

Obviously I am hoping for a valentines sale, after all, that dishwasher I want isn't going to pay for itself!

Merry Floor Tiling and a Happy New Job

Too much sherry Gimlet?

Well, Christmas and New Year have passed here with little event, because we are mostly still caught up in the DIY maelstrom. We did, however, get the best present: boyfriend got a new job. It is super news that he has been offered a job about 15 minutes away in one of the local silk mills. Surprisingly it is similar work to his previous job in a paper mill, with no night shift. It is not fantastic money to start with, but we couldn’t be happier that it is so close to home, and the petrol savings will be significant, we may even share a car eventually.

Meantime he has been putting to good use all the construction training he did whilst off work, starting with tiling the entire kitchen and new extension floor. This is a huge task, the kitchen (which was previously two smaller rooms) is not level, and the entire area covers 24m square. Floor levelling:

The worst thing about this has been the loss of my cooker (and indeed kitchen) and a few days ago the TV was buried behind the second sofa, the dresser and a freestanding kitchen unit being in the lounge, the cooker and a large cupboard were in a hallway, the fridge and freezer were in the extension and numerous food items in boxes distributed between the teen’s room (some chocolate biscuits were never seen again) and the spare bedroom. The teen started every sentence with the words “Where is?” as I explained for the umpteenth time that I didn’t know where anything was and she would have to search like the rest of us. I am sure that most households mislay things, like the remote or the car keys but when you have to look for stuff like the fridge and the cat you do start to question reality. 

The new tiles go down:

 And the contents of the kitchen move around the house:

I have been known to complain in the most scathing manner about the cheap gas cooker we inherited with the house, and simply cooking dinner on this loathsome item is like going into battle. However after 5 days of microwave dinners I am so please to have it back. Being a strict vegetarian and wheat intolerant, the selection of food available for microwaving is rather limited. The teen was also horrified not to receive her usual home cooked food, and in particular voiced her disgust at having to eat ready-made cheese sauce on her pasta. I really hope she marries a millionaire, or life is going to come as a big shock.

One thing I did manage over Christmas was to spring clean and clear out the studio, the amount of clutter I had acquired in just under a year was amazing to behold.

So the big question is; did I manage any artwork? Surprisingly I am nearly finished a large Watercolour and several mosaics are in progress:

I was also delighted to discover I had sold this original watercolour in a local gallery!

It is back to ‘proper’ work this week with the resumption of my Saturday art classes, and lots of bookings for January for private students, including a couple of new people.

Happy New Year all, let’s hope it is an extraordinary one for all of us.

Things to do in the cold

One of the things you can do in the cold is to wear a hat: Here is the teen modelling her favourite battered used-to-be-black-before-it-faded trilby. Worn with hoody and turquoise braces, Yves Saint Laurent watch your back...

Gimlet has also been keeping warm. A few weeks ago boyfriend bought him a new soft basket; Gimlet treated it with the contempt he felt it deserved and ignored it. Then we had the idea of putting it under a radiator, and it became suddenly more desirable.

I myself was persuaded to do a craft fair for a day. I had reservations, having done a few of them years ago. My main problem with them is that the same people who will happily part with £300 in an art gallery don't want to be parted from a fiver at a craft fair. But I already sell prints at the craft barn where the fair was to be held, and the owner is lovely so I gave it a go:

Held in what was called a 'heated marqee', and which I absolutely knew would actually mean 'cold drafty tent', I enjoyed it more than I thought I might. The fair itself had problems, the marquee, although new, suffered from a build up of condensation in the middle of the roof, causing indoor rain as the wind ruffled the fabric. Several sellers abandoned ship, particularly badly affected were the girls next to me selling soap and bath bombs and a chap with unwrapped greetings cards. Most of my stuff was cellophane wrapped so I avoided any stock damage. The unpleasant weather meant few visitors and some people lost their table money. However, despite all this, and freezing feet, I sold 3 prints and several cards and tags, met some interesting contacts and made a reasonable profit. I may even do another (in warmer weather!)

Back at home work continued apace, with door frames, electrics and plumbing.

 After the usual extended bickering resulting from me wanting my own way and boyfriend not giving in quick enough, we finally ended up in B&Q looking at internal doors. Loading his estate car with two doors meant the seats were so far forwards and upright that boyfriend was unable to drive his own car. So with me driving (knees in sideways position above pedals, boyfriend's head rammed against roof/sun-visor) we set off. Changing gears was challenging and as we kangaroo jumped through Colchester boyfriend said 'Stop drawing attention to us!". Luckily the police were elsewhere and we made it home with the doors in better condition than our spines.

By now front of the house now looked splendid with a proper garage:

And it was left to us to remove the large pre-fab garage that takes up half the back garden, here it is in all its glory:

And here it is gone:

Apparently there is a market on eBay for it, obviously some people care more for sturdy storage than asthetics. The back garden seems huge now it has gone:

Although it is not perhaps the haven of vegetables, flowers and water features I imagine, it is at least a blank canvas, and one that no longer contains the worlds ugliest garage. I will see you at the garden centre in the spring!