So many little paintings...

I keep making these little doodle paintings. I love them. I made some for the semi annual craft sale that benefits the Craft Studio. I sold out of sock monkey paintings immediately. They were also only $3 each. I made a couple more tonight... And yes, I'll be raising the price slightly.

Mud Pie Photography

One more iron in the fire... I just started photographing people more... Potentially for pay. Right now I'm happy to just get things going and start photographing people again.

Mud Pie Photography. I want to capture people as they are in their real environments. I don't want to shoot in a studio with weird props... Like the carpet covered block that always seems to be at the Sears photo place. What's more real than a mud pie? Not much. If I photograph kids I want them to look like themselves... In their favorite outfit, not the one that matches everyone else's.

I hope there's an audience for this kind of thing. I guess we'll see. I've started small with a Facebook page and an offer to many of my friends to photograph them for free and if they like what they see, they can recommend me to their friends and so on.

Let's avoid this kind of set up... Shall we? That carpet wall is repulsive.

Little paintings

I'm working on leetle tiny paintings for a craft sale. I love them. I want to remake some of them and sell them in my soon to be etsy shop. It's a goal! But a goal without a firm date attached to it.

I feel like my summer project list keeps getting longer. And although summer is slower, is it really that much slower? There's less traffic here when the students are gone for the summer and you don't have to wait for a table at a restaurant. But those are some if the ways the summer is faster- I get to work on time and we don't lose time at restaurants. We don't have as many customers... So that's where things feel slow.....

But trying to get an etsy shop together with product in it to sell?! That seems like a year long plan... Or a three year plan.

So, if these leetle tiny paintings sell maybe I'll have time to make more?! And then hang onto them to sell when I get my shop together?

Fingers crossed.

To help stop the yelling and crying

My daughter is a very strong willed 4 year old and she often wants to do things her own way. This is a quality I want her I have... Eventually. I want her to be outspoken and passionate and change things for the better. But I also need her to listen to me, get dressed in under 20 minutes, and go to the bathroom without starting a giant debate about the 4 Year Old Fairness Act of 2013.

Bean is pokey. When she organizes her toys she sings to them and separates them into layers of how much she loves them. A quick toy clean up can take 15 minutes. When she eats her Cheerios in the morning, she eats them one by one and then slowly spoons the remaining milk into her mouth until she can't get anymore with her spoon. Breakfast can drag on for 20 min.

So getting up and dressed and downstairs has become a place of much strain for us lately. After many months of yelling, crying, and running late to school I decided to ask for her help with our time management. She suggested we make a list... Bean loves a list but can't yet read so we talked about what our morning to do list could look like in pictures. I illustrated the routine that she came up with. She decorated and helped color it in.

This morning was a success. She still moves a little slower than I'd like, but we can rely on the list to show us the next step instead of arguing the entire morning. Fingers crossed that the list keeps working for us...

Easter with mud

Let's be real... Easter isn't my holiday. I grew up without religion and Easter was only about chocolate and driving to the beach to see my grandparents to eat ham, asparagus and scalloped potatoes.

My kids get an Easter egg hunt & traditional ham dinner (that they don't eat). Joe takes Bean to church on Sundays while Boo and I roam around the house and make trouble. Today we dug in the dirt and drew with sidewalk chalk.

When Bean got back she wanted in on the fun...

So, happy whatever! It was a beautiful day and I'm glad I got to spend it outside.

Someone broke one of the cardinal rules of crafting

I run an art studio. A place for idea sharing; trying & failing; problem solving; friendship making; and, well, ALL THE THINGS!

Recently, I made a coffee cup cozie that had a little buzzing bee detail on it. It wasn't my best work but it was darned cute. And it served it's purpose as an example of what a cozie can look like...

So I was a little surprised and sad and mad when I found my example ... cut up... Someone decided the bee was just too cute to stay on my example cozie so they cut it off. (I can only hope they put it on some wonderful gift for a sick child who has always loved bees.)

Here's where the cardinal rule of crafting comes in...

You don't cut up someone else's work. You look at it and try to figure out how to make it yourself. Or you find the person who made it and ask them how they made it. Or you admire it and think, someday I'll make that!

But you don't cut it up. You. Don't. Cut. It. Up.

Craftcation inspired

Okay... Reality check.  No one reads this blog.  Why, you ask?  Because not many people know about it.

I just went to Ventura, Ca to a conference called Craftcation.  Which is just what the title suggests... Ventura was beautiful; the conference hotel was right on the beach and we ate tacos at every meal (practically).

If that doesn't sound like (va)cation, I don't know what does.  The Craft part is a little more complicated because the conference was about Making.  Crafting, making, being a maker ... and more. There were opportunities to learn how to craft and also how to succeed in the world of craft / DIY businesses.

Lego jewelry with Instructables

In short, it was completely inspirational and I'm having a little bit of a hard time re-entering my life in snowy Columbia, Missouri.  But as my brain is shifting and settling with all of my newfound knowledge, I am reminded about one of the main things I was told- no one will know about your blog unless... 1. YOU ACTUALLY POST and 2. YOU TELL PEOPLE TO READ WHAT YOU POST.

Oops.  That seems to be the thing I keep forgetting.  I'm not a great writer... I'm a good story teller... but I always need a good editor.  I tend to go on and on.   And I use a lot of... ellipses.

SO... with all of that said, I have a lot to post about Craftcation and all of the things I learned there... about myself and my future and why it's so important to find other people like yourself.  I hope to tell more people about this blog.  Soon.  I promise.

Makers Unite!