Craft Fair Booth

My mom is visiting. She helped me design and purchase the items for my craft fair booth. I need to make those hanging screen things for the sides of the booth. I will use them to hang up my original paintings. We also found sheer, textured curtains to use for the tablecloths in the booth.

Marketing

This morning I went to a marketing and branding workshop sponsored by Team EtsyRain. Very informative. I'm excited to implement the lessons learned.

Banner

I've been working on a new banner for my etsy site. I'm trying to use Gimp to create the banner. For some reason, it's fuzzy. Hmm... I will work on it more tomorrow. I'm also going to a workshop tomorrow given by the top etsy seller. I'm excited, it should a great learning experience.

Photos and Craft Booth

Today I went to vintage stores (aka goodwill and st.vincent depauls) and got metal "stuff" for my craft booth. I want to give a consistent look to my booth utilizing black and metal/concrete stuff. I'm going to put small black pebbles in the metal bowls and then use those to hold business cards. I also got a couple of large bowls/baskets to put my note cards in. I also ordered photographs of my paintings for my portfolio.

Wall Clock

I started posting the wall clocks to my etsy page today. I wanted a home accessories section, so I'm pretty excited. This is the first one posted. It's made from recycled magazine print and mdf. I hope people respond well. I love that it is different than what you typically see in a wall clock. I can see it hanging in a wall grouping with black and white family photos.

I Love Seattle Note Cards

Today I ordered new note cards from Vista Print. The image is from a painting I'm working on entitled I Love Seattle. I hope they go over well, I think people living in the Seattle area would be drawn to them. I'm thinking of also doing something similar with I Love Issaquah since I'm doing the Issaquah Farmer's Market and possibly Salmon Days.

DIMINUTION

Today I reposted Diminution, which is a painting a finished about a year ago to my etsy site. I also attempted to print note cards on my printer at home. Hmm....not looking great yet.

Labels and Mini Drawings

Today I made labels for the back of my paintings. I'm trying to get them all labeled before the Farmer's Market. I also am working on small items to sell. I love the idea of these mini sketches. They are on mdf. I'm coating them with polyurethane and will sell them as mini drawings or with magnets on the back.

CLOCKS

My clock mechanisms were finally delivered today. I installed them into the clocks and they look good. Tomorrow I will take photos and post them to etsy.

Internship

Today I started my first internship, which is part of the requirements of the degree I'm working towards. I am interning at a textile showroom. It was very interesting, I have so much to learn. It felt good to be back in the workplace!

Note Cards

Today I made black tulle bags to use in packaging my note cards. They are now posted to my etsy account under a new category I created entitled "small gifts". I can't wait to see the response.

Tags

Today I created tags to place on my product at craft fairs. They turned out pretty good but I want to look into ways to improve the printing quality.

Purple Texture Painting Continued

Tonight I'm working on the purple texture painting as well as a new one that is raw umber and yellow ochre.

Packaging

Today was all about packaging my product. I hadn't put much thought into it, but I can see the value, part of the whole branding thing. I'm debating making muslin bags with my logo on one corner for the smaller items. I probably need to come up with something for paintings. I also need to figure out price tags for the farmer's market.

Purple Texture Painting

I started a new painting today. It's the same concept with the geometric squares I've been using lately. I put tissue paper down first. I really like the texture that gives the paintings. Then I used a different color combination than I've used before. Dioxazine purple with payne's gray, mars black and titanium white. I love it. It would look great in my room!

Stretching Canvas

I stretched two canvases today. I think I'm going to work on paintings for children's rooms. I've been wanting to have a section devoted to original art for children.

I also emailed the Issaquah Farmer's Market coordinator to find out what they need to jury new vendors. They have a date set in March for a new vendor meeting on the upcoming season. I'm excited to move forward with this idea and see what develops.

Perpetual Birthday Calendars

Today I bought removable labels to try on the perpetual calendars. Originally I liked the idea of making the calendars out of mdf with decoupage and paint, ink, etc, something permanent, but with removable stickers for updating with the information personal to each client. Now I'm not sure if this is the best way to go. I'm going to look into having them printed. The reason is that I think people might need a different page for each month, they might need more room for names and dates.