Beautiful Day

It was another beautiful day in the City of Roses.

I had lunch with one of my favorite peeps, Ryan of Littleputbooks, and she gave me these sweet little photo blocks that she makes.

I popped into Crafty Wonderland and discovered the Winter show will be December 11th and 12th! Yes! Crossing my fingers I can get those dates off from work!

The date for the Spring show is also announced. May 7th! mark your calendars!

In other news, the sunset was amazing this evening.

Hope everyone had a great Thursday!

Pankcakes!

Wow!
I had such a great breakfast this morning with a group of crafty ladies!
Ryan of Littleputbooks, Soma of SomaVenus, Taryn of TalkingSquid (who is also practically my next door neighbor and who just moved here from Detroit) aly morgan, and Sister Diane of The Church of Craft.

We talked business ideas, craft fairs, Etsy, crafting, beach houses, dogs, cats, and Portland. It was so great. It was really motivating and it got some wheels turning in my head.

It is so hard for me to think of my work as a business most of the time. I really just like drawing and painting and I forget that I also have to be a business person too. It's not my strong point by any means. I think many artists and crafters are like this, or can relate to this. Ryan and Diane have this really great brain for the business side to it and I loved hearing their ideas and their input.

Taryn and I had a great conversation on the ride home about how so often our job requires so much more than just making something. How much work really goes into everything we have to do to be able to survive in the sea of art and craft. It's so much work, and so often it goes unnoticed...but it's just so much fun too! and that is what makes it all worth it.

On another note...it's another beautiful day here and I plan on riding my bike up to Alberta for Last Thursday later on. It's going to be crazy up there today!! I love Portland :)

The pancake picture is courtesy of Soma!! :D Thanks!!

Monday Monday...

They are off!

I sent this morning via FedEx insured to the max.

They should get there by Friday.
I have a good feeling now.

It's going to be a good show. I wish I could see it.
One of my favorite things about shows in popular coffee places is sitting for an hour or two, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and listening on on people's conversations. Sometimes it's about my work, sometimes it's about being rescued from three feet of snow on a snowshoe trail after being lost for two days. Yeah. No kidding. That was the best overheard conversation I think I have ever heard.

Oh!
Awesome stuff. So Ryan from Littleputbooks asked me if I could put together some tips for selling fine art on Etsy! I put together a list of 11 things that every fine artist should know about selling paintings and other artsy stuff and it will be posted on the Littleput blog!

It's mostly things that I have had to learn the hard way, unfortunately.

Hope everyone is having a great day, and recovering from their chocolate bunny induced sugar commas nicely.