Fall/Holiday Calendar

It's that time of year again!

There are gallery open houses, art crawls, and shows happening all over. I will have some of my Swirling Tree work at two events this fall.

I opted to limit my shows to just two so I can keep my etsy shop well stocked. I'm feeling good with my inventory levels and trying to finish up a few loose ends for my first show this coming weekend in Dassel, MN with Levandowski Pottery. Stop by if you can! It will be a good show, they are unveiling their new gallery and five guest artists (including moi) will be peddling their wares.

Next on the agenda is Peggy's at the Roseville Skating Center November 6-14. This is a fantastic show with loads of artwork. Come and fill a basket with wonderful creative goodness. I did a lot of my holiday shopping here last year...and some shopping for myself as well. It's a unique experience where all of the artwork is set up as one gallery, so you can pay once and not have to hop from booth to booth. The artisans volunteer throughout the week to help with bagging, greeting, arranging, etc. It's a fun time with live music and lots of food goodies as well.

It seems early, but with a little cold snap I think people will be able to think about Christmas shopping, really, there are only 69 days left to shop. Heck, FGH already has his Christmas outfit. Hanna has a sale going on so it was hard to resist. Thanks Gma Barb!

There are quite a few things I have not put into my shop that I will bring to the shows. I have yet to finish and photograph my latest creations, but one nice specimen is pictured at the top of this post. I have a whole line of what I'm calling "Artful Journals." This one has some unique beads made of coral, an interesting raised surface on the front cover, Nepalese Lokta papers, and coral-colored end sheets. I have high hopes, as usual, of getting all my books and cards made for this Holiday season, but it all comes down to what kind of work time I can fit into each busy day. Speaking of, I best get cutting and tearing and folding paper into rectangles.

New Shop

My etsy shop was getting a little messy with the prints and notecards intermixed with all of my various books, so I decided to create a second etsy shop for these very non-book items.

Introducing: Swirling Tree People!

Check it out! Here's the link.

In other news...Sundays are my designated work day around here. Peter and FGH have a solid day together while I putz in my studio. Today I did more than putz, I finished 5 books (almost 6). They are much more organic and daring, so I'm excited to get them in my shop in a couple of weeks after the next show is finished (unless they sell, of course).

Art shows. I guess you win some and you lose some. It seems pretty risky with the time and money that usually go into them. My first show went pretty well, especially for the ST People prints. The second was a dud, I only sold two things. Most vendors had a bad day, so I didn't feel like a total loser. A million excuses come out of my mouth when I talk about it; the recession, the wrong type of customer, the weather... but it doesn't really matter. I'm just going to look forward to the Roseville show that starts next weekend (at the Roseville Skating Center for you locals!) and continue building my etsy shop.

Stay posted for more book photos in the near future.

Carrot Boy

Here's my little guy proudly standing next to his carrot-kill. I should have more prints in my shop next week.

What should I name these characters? I'm leaning towards something Old Norse such as Groa for the girl (meaning gardener) and Osten (meaning happy) or Blyn (strong) for the boy. I'm taking suggestions so leave some in a comment if you dare.

I have one more day at the art show in Dassel. I've had some good sales so far so thanks to everyone that has supported my budding business! I've made some good connections, met some new kindred spirits, and maybe even landed a spot at an art show taking place next Friday at a large accounting firm. I've never heard of this, being a country-bumpkin and all, but some big companies have their own pre-holiday arts and crafts fairs featuring work from employees or friends of employees. Employees are the main customers. Great idea! I'm a little intimidated by galleries with large commissions at this point, so these casual sales sound just right.

Well, off to tend to a huge pot of cabbage potato soup, switch the laundry, and crash into bed- exhausted.

Art Shows Coming Up

I will be participating in some art/craft shows this fall/holiday season. I'm pretty excited about them. It's weird putting your stuff out there for people to judge, to love, to reject, to critique, etc. I'm excited, however, to see how the markets compare to the online community. For one thing, my prints/notecards will be able to speak for themselves. It's been hard getting the colors right for the web, and even if I get them close, they will be different on each person's monitor. There are select colors that are "web" colors, and my carefully chosen colors will be converted to the web color closest to it on the spectrum. I could have chosen web colors, but frankly, they were the greatest and the destination for my work is not on someone's computer desktop.

Back to the shows.

My first one will be in:

Dassel, MN at Levandowski Pottery

October 23-25

I will have my notecards and prints alongside my albums, journals, books, and my soon-to-be-finished accordion-style brag books. Jena and Aron are potters. There will be other artists as well including a stain-glass artist and a few others. I'll be at the sale on Friday 11-6, Saturday 10-6, and Sunday 11-3. Stop by!

The next is in:

Roseville, MN at Peggy's Holiday Boutique

November 6-15

I'm pretty pumped about this one. It's at the Roseville Skating Center. I won't have an official booth at this sale, but since it lasts so long, Peggy is going to use my stuff as "filler" as the sale goes on. It looks like fun, lots of traffic and lots of artists.

Thirdly:

St. Paul, Swirling Tree Headquarters

December TBA

I'm going to have a holiday openhouse here in December. I don't know if I'll have much left, but hey, it will be fun. A few of us are going to have some fun stuff to sell and some goodies and hot cocoa to sample.

In preparation for these events I ordered some real business cards and stickers. I'm pretty happy with them! I'm sticking a small logo/web sticker in each book's back cover and the business card is doubling as a hang tag. Officialness!

Cheers!

For no real event, just a general need for wine, we cracked open a bottle the other night and we introduced FGH to drinking from a wine glass. Even though I say it's wine in the movie, it's juice. Of course. I really know how to make a kid look cool with knee-high socks and no pants!

Peter's interviews have been going well. He has had one naysayer and one call back out of the deal thus far with six more to hear from. We're both trying to jump to some conclusions about what's going to happen but that's just not how it works. There are many hoops to jump through before than can happen. Hoops. Not fun. And so taking-up-of-time. To top it off he just got a subpoena to appear in court as a witness regarding our car wreck in July. What a pain. He has a respect for the legal system so he's not going to try to get out of it. He's such a romantic.

Speaking of romance, we actually look half decent for once AND posed for a picture. It was taken after a wedding we attended last weekend in Hutchinson. I made a guest book for the bride and groom:

I hope to get more in my shop soon. I'm awaiting the arrival of some generic wedding-colored book cloth in the mail from Paper Source. Yes, they have a store in Minneapolis, but my time is too valuable to sit in traffic for 1/2 hour each way to pick up book cloth. It's worth $7 to get it shipped. Really. Plus, toddler-man is not a fan of any store that does not sell food or toys.

Here's my work bench tonight:

5 new 5x7 albums, 4 books in the press, 2 more needing to be glued, 1 needing to be sewn. The books in the press are exciting to me. Eco-friendly casual case-bound journals with recycled blah blah blah paper of the brown variety and hemp and bead book marks. I can't wait to uncrank the press tomorrow morning and see if they look as good as I hope.

I applied for a show in Mpls-the No-Coast Craft-o-Rama (is that the title? too lazy to double check) for Dec. I HOPE to get in, it looks very etsy-ish. Hip crafts and the like. I'm also going to be at Jena's show in Dassel next month. Any other shows coming up that anyone knows about? I even applied for a tax number so I guess I'm really going to try to do this (oh, the confidence oozes out of my typed words).

Tonight I'm finishing a logo for Summit ECO, a green electrician company specializing in solar and energy efficiency. Cool company. I will share the logo when it is all said and done.

The elf girl prints still are not pleasing me. I've tried different photo papers, heavy sketch papers, and some linen paper. My next tries are canvas paper and textured card stock. Anyone know what the best printer setting to use? It seems like there should be some way to google this, but everything is dependent upon printer model, ink type, paper, and file format. There are too many variables. It seems this is the hard part of selling prints. Any who, if anyone has any tips please send them my way.

Mas Accordion Books

I just finished assembling a big stack of little accordion books.  They are very charming.  I have some of the collaged butterflies in the mix as well as some funny owls and a couple little mini books which I think would make nice place cards.  I'm gearing up for my first art show next weekend at Levandowski Pottery.  I don't have a ton of books to bring, but I should be able to set up a tantalizing little corner in their pottery gallery.  There are so many things I want to get done lately between bookmaking, drawing, portfolio work but the weather is so blasted nice that I end up sitting at the park or in the backyard with FGH for extended periods of time.  It's just so WARM all of a sudden and it makes all of us so much happier.