Bringing on the Fall at The Barn

I’m leaving this week to go back for a visit to CT for almost two weeks, helping my niece move to college, taking seaside day trips with my sister to Block Island and possibly an overnight to Martha’s Vineyard if we can work out the scheduling, enjoying lots of fresh seafood and seaside air and spending down time with family, making up all those missed family dinners over the year.  Oh, and lots of Dunkin Donuts coffee (have I mentioned we don’t have it here? *wink*).

Since I won’t be able to get to my booth at The Barn for a couple weeks, David and I made a trip today to spruce it up for fall; I’d rather be the early bird than late for the season.  Plus I’m hoping it’ll drive some interest to my space!

If you’re in the Denver/Colorado Springs area, be sure to check out The Barn (which is planning on having a fall decorating event in the next week, so it’ll be decked out soon!)

Fall?  BRING IT!

Read Full Post »

On finding my mojo

Man, my mojo is back, with a vengeance!

I suffered for MONTHS without inspiration or the drive to create.  “How can I be an artist if I don’t want to paint?” I’d wonder.  I even questioned if I should keep doing artwork since painting/creating was the last thing I felt like doing.  My self-confidence wavered, I hit a bit of depression and I’ve cried more in the last 12 months than I have in the past 10 years.  It’s been a really tough year on my psyche.

David told me to take the summer off and revisit in the fall.  If I felt inspired, by all means I should create, but if I didn’t, then I need not punish myself.  He was right, I needed time to step away (and lick my wounds) before I could move on.

Thing is, I had spent most of the fall of 2011 and early part of 2012 in mass-production mode for a licensing agent, producing the kind of generic artwork they wanted.  Things I submitted were always critiqued or sent back (which I totally understand is part of the business) and I felt as though I was being asked to change everything about what and how I created.  They thought I had potential but they weren’t ready to license my current work.  I was expected to crank out hundreds of “vanilla” stuff I couldn’t stand doing.  My style began to change (not for the better) and I began to hate what I was creating.  And how could they like what I was creating when even I didn’t like it?  It was constant pressure, constant pushback, no publicity, no reward.

As you can imagine, my sensitive soul cracked and in May, I made the very difficult decision to part ways with my agent and give up on licensing.  I felt ashamed.  I felt deflated.  And I stopped creating.

Luckily I had enough unpublished material that I needed to keep secret while under contract that I was able to share “newer” stuff on my blog and in my shop, but the reality is that I was rarely creating for about 4-5 months.  I have since repainted over a lot of things I’ve never shared because I just didn’t like the material.  What really bothered me is that I couldn’t remember how to create my girls the “old way” because I was forced to change it to a newer way and I had repressed a lot of my old techniques in order to fit the mold.  When I tried to create, I hated what I was making, so I stopped.

Now I’m not knocking licensing, licensing agents or even the agent I had.  They do incredible things for lots of artists.  But what I’ve mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg, it’s the nature of art licensing and I couldn’t hack it.  I love to create what I love to create (part of why I made the leap to work for myself) and trying to create something I never had and/or couldn’t stand doing and trying to create perfection like a digital artist was killing my spirit (which let’s face it, handmade mixed media is a MESSY art form, no perfect circle/repeating patterns here!).  It’s why I love mixed media – it’s painting outside of the lines, trashing boundaries and forgoing symmetry for imperfect yet unique beauty.

It’s also the reason I don’t do commissioned/custom artwork – it’s just too stressful trying to create someone else’s vision and part of the the joy of creating art is creating from the heart.

Now, with no external forces cramping my style and having had a few months to “shake the funk” I find that my ideas, inspiration and my actual work is blossoming in incredible ways.  Though I was creating during the “gray period” I find that the quality of my work and the flow of inspiration is so much better now and I am over the moon with happiness now – conjuring up ideas, sketching, collaging, painting.  It’s like the old days where I can’t be too far away from a journal as the ideas are constantly flowing.  Now my main issue is finding enough time to keep up with all the ideas (and after being dried up for so long, this is a wonderful problem to have!).

Once again I’m not against licensing; I just encourage artists who think they want to jump in to REALLY do their homework, examine if they can work under other’s directions/expectations without feeling like their wings have been clipped (and for collage artists, I can’t stress enough about researching the legal limits/ramifications of using pattered paper, book scraps, vintage photos, etc. which takes on a whole new legal dimension when mass producing; I spent many nights paralyzed with fear over possibly being sued for incorporating the smallest piece of legible text in a piece!).

So while I won’t be reaching a national platform quickly (so long Target!) I’m happy to be sticking with my lil’ Etsy shop and meeting people who have found my work there, or in a small, family-run boutique, or on Facebook, Pinterest, this blog or with my partnership with FORCE.  That is much more validating in the long run; I just missed that notion on the sprint to notoriety.  Now it’s about slow, steady and at peace.

So what’s on the horizon?  More girls, lots of fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Holiday themed pieces, and tea!

Stay tuned!  And thanks for hanging on during my roller coaster year.  Feel like I’m out of the gray and back in full color. xo

Read Full Post »

New Halloween Girls

As I’ve been alluding to on my Facebook page and mentioning here, I’m in a serious mood for fall and Halloween.  My friend is not having her Halloween party this year, we get no trick-or-treaters out in our rural parts and we are too introverted (and also know no one in Denver) to attend a Halloween Ball “down the hill”.

For these reasons, I have to get my Halloween mojo through the creation of art, which I am happy to do.  Actually, I’m having trouble stopping.  I’ve created 6 pieces, have 2 more sketched up and a bunch of more ideas on the brain.  Part of me says that not everyone appreciates Halloween like I do, but the other part of me is trying to not get so focused on what sells, but also what I like to create.  Plus Halloween art fits perfectly into my quirky, whimsical style.

Here are the 6 pieces I’ve created this past week…

Bat Girl, Halloween Bee, Halloween Dracula, Halloween Ladybug, Owl Girl, Pumpkin Girl

And here are two from last year that I never shared because of my (then) licensing agreement:

Halloween Good Witch / Halloween Kitty

I’ll be making merchandise with all these images, but I’ve started to list some of these originals in my shop.

Bring on the candy corn, fake spider webs and cooler weather!!

 

Read Full Post »

Miscellany

So I don’t have anything major to discuss, share or ponder, so I thought it good time to have a miscellany post!

The weather this summer has been quite peculiar…yes, it’s been very hot (for us at least, I know it doesn’t compare to those of you in broiling and soupy humid climates).  For comparison, we’ve been at our house at 8,300 feet in the Rockies for 5+ years; it’s never been hotter than 92 degrees (we love it cold!).  As such, no one up here has air-conditioning…there really is not a need for a couple hot days.  This summer, however, we’ve hit over 100 degrees at the house on more than one occasion.  And because we are on a mountainside facing west, we have no trees to offer shade or relief.  Luckily, we have a sunken-in/walk-out basement which stays about 20 degrees cooler than upstairs (not so great when I’ve shivering in the winter, but awesome in the summer).

courtesy of David’s phone

But what’s more peculiar is all the rain we’ve been having.  Most years, I can usually count rainy days on one hand…for the WHOLE year, it’s that dry.   For the past 3 weeks, it’s been raining almost every day, most often in the afternoon when a brooding storm passes by.  Sometimes it’ll rain hard for 10 minutes then stop, but many days it continues to rain…it’s lovely!  It’s so green up here and the fire bans have finally been cancelled and we can go back to grilling – celebration!

Now many of these storms bring hail…we’re so used to it that we pay no attention, but this past week it got loud real quick and I knew this was a bigger hailstorm than usual.  Pea-sized turned to marble sized turned to these:

It was slamming the house so hard I swore a window would break and surely our car would be all busted up, but to our surprise, no damage!

Then last Sunday, a tornado was seen at Mt. Evans (which has the highest paved road in North America and about 15 miles from us – as the crow flies).  And it was only 40 degrees at the summit!

Photo credit Michelle Ingle via Examiner.com

Just two weeks prior, my youngest niece and I made the trek to the summit…

About 4 years ago, when my parents were visiting, we took the trek up and it was so stormy that when we got to the very top of the summit to take pictures, everyone’s hair stood on end (meaning we were all sending a charge up to the sky for an imminent lightning strike if we didn’t get down fast!).  My crazy father, insistent on getting a photo on the highest rock at the top raised his hands up for a grand photo and said he could feel a static charge in his armpits!  All the other visitors at the top thought it was so “neat” – I was insistent on getting the hell out of there!

It’s a great place to visit (have more photos to share in a later post) but talk about crazy weather!

*****

I still struggle with whether my booth at The Barn is a good business decision as I’m still struggling with sales ; I’m just trying to hold out until the holiday season in an effort to make some money (or rather, make my money back!) so I still visit every other week to spruce it up and last week I re-merchandised everything and added in the items I whitewashed last weekend.

Can’t say I didn’t try!

*****

It’s been a couple of weeks since I painted artwork because I’ve been focused on stocking up my booth at the Barn, so today I sat down and started to build some backgrounds for Halloween.  I’m craving fall big time and now is also the time to get ahead of the next season (and because I LOVE Halloween, it’s easy to get motivated).  Here’s a sneak peek on some backgrounds I started building up and some girls I started working on today:

Hope to share some finished pieces with you later this week.

Fall, in my opinion, is the most

…wonderful time

…of the year!

Hope all is well on your end

 

Read Full Post »

White washing, more refinishing, and finding the “upside”

I spent the morning “white-washing” a bunch of thrift store finds; tomorrow I need to distress them.  These types of items seem to be the primary things moving in my booth right now, so adapting my plan accordingly.  Gotta pay the bills!

I know, I should wear gloves…the upside is that this is non-toxic paint

I have a bunch of posts written in my head that I promise to get to.  Just trying to get my act together and last week we had a scare with our oldest pup and had to do the long-drawn (as in all several day), tear-filled conversations of pain management vs. quality of life.

The upside: after a 2nd opinion with our primary vet, after a visit with the ER vet and an orthopedic specialist, we learned that things weren’t so dire and we had more options.  Now we get to have our girl around for a little longer and she’s resting comfortably (and this mama is especially relieved)

Last weekend I was planning on working on some orders on Saturday, then catching up with my girlies on Sunday for our monthly brunch.  Then I got a call from The Barn saying I had a customer put a hold on two of my pieces of furniture.  She was going to come back the following day to purchase and pick up.  The customer was interested in my coffee table and french provincial desk – my first two pieces of furniture I refinished.  GREAT news I thought – this means people like my furniture and I get to make some much needed cash (booth sales have been awful terribly slow again, as in not even covering my costs this past month unfortunately)!!  CRAP I also thought – I only had one other piece of furniture, so unless I worked on new pieces, most of my stuff would be moved to the floor when she came to pick up those 2 pieces; I never imagined someone would purchase two pieces of furniture at once!

So I rearranged my schedule, started painting/staining/distressing two pieces that I had been meaning to get to (nothing like a TIGHT deadline to get you motivated!).  I worked all afternoon and right up to dark…putting the finishing touches on the french provincial dresser that I picked up along with the desk and a small table I also purchased at a goodwill.

Of course I forgot to take a “before” pic, but the dresser was the same style/color as the desk I did earlier

Here’s the after!

I had to cancel my plans with my girlfriends and the next morning, loaded the furniture into the car, made the hour+ drive and got to my booth before the customer came and cleared me out of fixtures.  The thought of my artwork and goods on the floor horrified me so I was glad I beat her there.

But then came the challenging task of trying to merchandise 5 pieces of furniture into a 6′x12′ booth.  Not easy.  I called the customer to tell her I was clearing off her pieces of furniture and leaving at the outskirts of booth for easy pick-up.  Unfortunately, she had a change of heart and wasn’t going to buy the furniture after all.  Appears her husband wasn’t into the style of furniture as much as she was.

Here I was in a 100+ year old, non-airconditioned barn, lugging furniture up the stairs, completely re-merchandising my space and dripping sweat in the 90+ degree heat.  And having to scramble the previous 24 hours and cancel my brunch.  All. for. naught.  Man, selling retail can really bite.  To say I was cranky is to put it mildly.

The upside:  Well my space is busting at the seams fully furnished and now I have more chances of selling higher cost goods in my booth *fingers crossed*

I had to stuff the coffee table under the small dining table I just refinished in order to get it to all fit!

Oh and did I mention that in my rush to get two pieces completed before the sun set, I dropped the can of very expensive chalk paint…all over our deck?

Top deck

And that it also splattered to the deck below and onto the side of our stained/log home?

Bottom deck

The upside:  Both decks needed to be sanded/restained this summer and the paint (CeCeCaldwell Chalk Paint) is eco-friendly, non-toxic and if not sealed in wax or poly, can be washed off (and most of it has come up after some soap and hard scrubbing).  I guess it could be worse!

Life is feeling a little “lemony” lately…but hey, at least the weather has been nice!

Read Full Post »

New girls

Earlier this week I mentioned that I sat down last Sunday and spent the day making a bunch of girls; they follow two themes so I’m grouping them as two sets of four.

Here’s the first set:

Clockwise from top left: receiving girl, faithful girl, worry girl, perceptive girl

Prints available in my shop now; I’ll share my other girls next week once I get my act together and get them listed for my shop.

Hope you all had a nice 4th of July; enjoy the upcoming weekend!

Read Full Post »

Typography art

So check it out…after a several month hiatus (and a mini existential crisis some soul searching), I’m painting again (yay!).  I started with some sketches, did a few backgrounds and next thing I knew, I was spending an entire day creating a bunch of girls.  Feels so good to get over the mental slump I was in and get my mojo back!

I’ll share some of my new material later this week, but meantime I wanted to share with you some alphabets I did a while back but didn’t get around to sharing…one’s more grungy, one’s more pastel/shabby-chic.

I am purposefully missing the Z here because I couldn’t get it to fit in my collage, but it’s there!

Notice anything missing in the second picture?  Yeah, I’m missing my “h” – I know I made it, but it somehow got lost in a sea of canvases…now to find it!  I thought to wait to post this until I found it, but I actually think it funnier to post with it missing!

I’ve started to list these in my shop and will also be offering wood blocks with the letters to spell out words or initials for home decor.  I also added a bunch of previously “new” prints to my shop, some artwork of which I shared here, some images completely new.

Including, my abstract trees:

Click image to see individually

And the digital botanical collages I made:

Click image to see individually

The Oprah quotes:

Click image to see individually

Striped hearts:

Click image to see individually

Vintage birthday cupcakes:

Click image to see individually

And all the rest of my “lollipop” trees and flowers:

Click image to see individually

I still have quite a bit more to add, like my digital Eiffel tower collages, whimsical birds, Italy collages, and seasonal/holiday pieces that I kept under wraps while involved in licensing so I’ll let you know when those are up!

Feels good to be back in the game

Read Full Post »

Waiting for a sign…

I know, I’ve been absent.  And while I could say that I’ve been super busy with orders or on vacation, that hasn’t been the case at all.  In fact, I’ve stepped away for a while because I was feeling like I needed to unplug and do some thinking, some evaluating and make some decisions.  And I’ve been melancholy and when I’m sad, I just don’t feel like blogging.

Truth is, I’ve really been struggling.  Things in the early part of the year were booming, opportunities were flowing, things were abundant.  Then it all came to a screeching halt.  My $2K in monthly sales dried up to $200 (that’s sales not even profit, so I was feeling like I’ll never make a living on this path).  As mentioned before, my art licensing fell through (still feels too raw to talk about it, but the whole experience has really messed with my head), I haven’t painted a piece in over 2 months and have little interest in creating art; I even stopped taking my art journaling workshops.  Then sales at my booth at The Barn are really slow and barely covering my expenses; a lot of work for no profit.

I was feeling so awful as it was, my self-esteem falling off a cliff and it seemed that every time I went on Facebook, I would read of other artist’s booming success, everyone’s beaming happiness and every blog I followed had great news of all these great opportunities landed.  To be honest, I was feeling awfully envious (and awful about feeling envy – I wanted to be happy for everyone else, but it’s hard when you are personally struggling).  So I decided to take a summer long sabbatical from Facebook and I stopped reading others blogs until I could mend my wounded ego and rebuild my self-confidence (and I must say, while I miss some aspects, it is quite refreshing to be away from it all).

So with all that’s been going on, I’d been wondering if my artwork has run its course…if I made the right decision to leave my job back in 2009 to pursue my own business (which while sounds like a lucky break, has been grueling work, LONG hours and very little financial reward).  And often you get by with the emotional rewards – the lovely emails, the connection to meaningful work that helps and inspires people, the connection to the people – those things really carry you when the financial incentives aren’t there.  But when those things dry up, it’s really tough on the psyche.

David suggested I take a break from art, perhaps until the Fall which is my favorite season and naturally an inspiring time of year for me.  I still have my supplies shop which keeps me busy with daily orders; I sell eco-friendly paper and brides will always be needing supplies for their DIY invites.  Not entirely gratifying work, but I’m grateful to have it and it helps to keep my mind off of what feels like all my “failures” and helps me to pay off purchases and business expenses.  I’ve been refinishing furniture and other odds and ends because transforming something from thrift store find to something new and exciting is thrilling.  And I’ve been trying to grasp onto anything exciting as I’ve been feeling so low.

Making art is so vulnerable; you put your work out there and when no one bites, it’s really difficult not to take it personal.  Artwork is personal.  And though my logical brain knows it’s a tough time with the economy, it’s the time of year when people travel and that my items are gift-y and high season is in the fall, my irrational/emotional brain was interpreting it as no one really likes my work anymore and that it’s time to hang up the brushes.

And so last week, when I was feeling really gloomy, I decided not to make my weekly visit to my booth nor go to the monthly meeting for vendors (not required but something I was planning on so I could meet the other vendors and get involved).  I thought, “what’s the point?” and started thinking about my exit plan (I have to sell more than $500 per month just to break even with rent/commission/fees/cost of goods/gas for the 120 mile weekly round trip).  And I’m shy of that.  I was feeling hopeless.

But I kept working on things for my booth…I visited antique fairs and thrift stores, painted/distressed more items and made more stickers (the top selling item in my booth as of late); I felt I needed to keep busy to not let my mind go crazy.  And today, we made the trek down with a car full of furniture and goods that I had been working on.

Within the first 30 minutes of creating chaos in my booth (it’s a tight space and we were swapping out a piece of furniture) two women came by and started studying my booth hard.  One had barely any hair and I suspected she might be dealing with cancer.  They poured over my goods, engaged me about my work with FORCE and the one woman confirmed my suspicions and began telling me her story.  She once was a COO of a corporation but then learned of her cancer, left work and began treatment.  She had been through chemo but is now doing exceedingly well.  The other woman, her best friend, who also worked a high level corporate position was now unemployed.  The best friend went to every doctor’s visit with her and was so impacted by the experience that she decided to turn her unemployed status into an opportunity to start nursing school in the fall to pursue the field of oncology.

Wow.  Talk about taking a step back and getting out of my own head.  They were so complimentary of my work, told me how much my pieces spoke to them, we arranged for a large bulk order including original artwork, and they commended me for leaving the corporate world to pursue my passion while still young and healthy.  We talked for over a half hour.  We ended with an embrace.  I told them how much it meant to me to talk with them as I’ve been struggling and wondering if I should keep working on my art.  They emphatically encouraged me to keep plugging along and reminded me that everything happens for a reason and it was a sign that I need to keep at it.

They left my booth and I breathed a heavy sigh (in a good way) and held my hand over my heart.  They kept saying how happy they were to discover my work; I’ve been telling myself all day how lucky I was to discover them.  Funny how angels appear in all different forms and so lovely that chance meetings can change everything.  But I know in my heart that there are no coincidences.

I need to stop questioning and just start believing in the path I’ve chosen.

I was waiting for a sign…and now I got it.  The universe never ceases to amaze me.   ♥

Read Full Post »

Creating and upcycling

Sorry I’ve been MIA…I have a post I’ve been meaning to publish about the simple pleasures enjoyed on my trip back to CT, but you know how it is when you return back from a week long trip: you hit the ground running once you return and this last week was no exception.

In addition to catching up on orders, I knew I needed to beef up my display at The Barn, so I spent some time this weekend making more magnets (strangely my most popular item there the past two weeks), creating new items and upcycling thrift store finds and painting/embellishing old goods to make them new again.  (Full disclosure, my photos are pretty awful, but I was either in a hurry, forgetting to take photos along the way or trying to dodge customers on a busy holiday, so please bear with my pitiful photos!).

So I painted over a bunch of thrift store frames with chalk paint (a great all-in-one, meaning no stripping/priming needed, paint that is great for distressing; and I painted inside because the huge wildfire in New Mexico made for a very smoky day that would have killed my lungs and eyes and this paint is non-toxic and doesn’t smell one bit)…

And for the large frame, I added strings of wire…

Which I then hung some vintage inspired magnets in my booth:

I made two new paper cone wreaths, including this star-shaped one (which I’m now not sure should be considered a wreath?)

Embellished simple ho-hum buckets with some paint, distressing and vintage hardware…

Painted some chicken wire baskets and whitewashed/embellished a birdhouse that was originally painted in hideous colors…and even painted and distressed this awful looking thrift store find:

Into this (wish I took more photos of the top but just got so busy and forgot…but the curves/lines and legs on this baby looked great painted over):

(Note I forgot to add the hardware knob prior to taking this picture!  Ay, it was a bad weekend for photos; will try to remember to take more before, during and after photos next time!)  This is my first piece of painted/distressed furniture (after spending a year reading/learning/following blogs and practicing on frames and smaller objects).  That’s it.  I’m addicted and can’t stop looking at furniture in thrift stores and imagining how I can turn pieces into something new!

After we reset my booth and added new items, we spent the rest of the day antique shopping and hitting up all the thrift stores on our path as many of them had 50% storewide sales because of the holiday.  Even ran into Mondo, the winner of Project Runway All Stars in a Denver thrift store!  Found a lot of great things and will share later in the week.

If you follow my artwork and are wondering why I haven’t posted anything recently, it’s because I haven’t painted in several weeks.  If you’ve followed me for a while you know that I’m not a paint-every-day kind of girl.  I have ebbs and flows…weeks of massive creation followed by sometimes long breaks.  I’m a creative girl and painting/collaging is just one of the many things I do to feed my creative inclinations (as evidenced above).  Sometimes I just feel like focusing on papercrafting, sometimes its painting things (rather than painting art), sometimes it’s cooking/baking; I try to follow my muse and wherever it takes me.  So my artwork will probably come back to me in a wave in the near future.  For now, I’m having fun going back to my roots and upcycling/making new uses out of old things.

Hope you all had a nice long weekend!

Read Full Post »

What I’ve been up to…

I’ll give a more thorough explanation later this week as I’m flying tomorrow morning to CT and have yet to pack, do laundry, etc.  But let’s just say that this girl just can’t sit on her hands and live a quiet life, no matter how much she tries to convince herself that’s what she wants!

More to come!

Read Full Post »