Weekly update. . .making progress

I have been making progress on the photographing and listing of art project. I am nowhere near finished yet, but I do feel good about what I have gotten done. I have over 20 listings active so far, I have yesterday's photos processed and ready to make new listings today. I only have a handful of framed pieces left to photograph then I can move on the 100-ish unframed pieces. 😅  

I would be further along if I could get some decent sunny weather instead of this ridiculously cloudy rain almost daily. I did shoot some yesterday in between clouds but the snatches of sun didn't last long and then my camera batteries died mid-shoot. 😏 

I am pretty happy overall with the look on site with the photos being more consistent. I'll have to be careful to make sure the first photos are all from a similar distance, but for the most part I'm happy with how things are going. 

I am thinking I will need to add new categories under the "Original Paintings" for framed vs unframed. Currently the sub-cats are just by canvas size but for shopping purposes I think the framed vs unframed is a good idea too, since the frames do increase the prices quite a bit. I won't need to add that until I start re-listing the unframed pieces in a week or so. 😉

Weekly update. . .Art for Sale!

After months of moving and things being in storage, finally unpacking in the rental and battling bad lighting and blue walls I have art photos I am happy with, and I am working my way thru re-activating the art listings. 😎  I'd throw a party to celebrate but I'm too tired. 

My poor little Merlin does not like mom always being busy, he gets rather pouty when I'm not playing with him, but at least he has stopped walking thru my shots and attacking the tripod. 😅 Now he just pouts from a distance and gives me dirty looks. I am making real progress now on getting the art relisted for sale, it is the slow but steady kind. I've got almost a dozen listings up and I have photos ready for more, but those listings need to be created new, not just edited. 

There are so many paintings that have never been listed for sale online before, like this one. 😉 I have always liked this one, it was just impossible to photograph the true colors and textures. 

Or this neglected piece, painted in Indiana in 2020 it spent 3 years in Georgia on my office wall and had never been photographed at all. 😅 

I have only ever sold a few paintings online previously, but I think a large factor was the sub-par photos, so I am hopeful that with improved photos and increased selection (once I get them all listed) that I may actually sell a few more. 😇 I don't know, whenever I set up in person the art gets a lot of compliments, but with many paintings the human eye in natural light can pick up so much more than the camera ever could.  So, I get a lot of "wow, how did you do that?" or "hey great effect" or " those colors are amazing!" my personal favorite "I've never seen anything like that". 😅 I never know if that last one is good or bad, but I chose to think it's positive. 

Weekly update. . .July!

Not going to lie I am still pretty sad and randomly bursting into tears off and on, but I did manage to do some stuff this week.  

I am still working on the new photos for the art, but I think I've finally made real progress.  After weeks of trying different things, I have some shots I'm kind of happy with, they are far from perfect but a huge improvement. So, I think I'll continue to use this set-up and shoot all the art, that way I can have the consistency in the first photo for the website. Then I can adjust and try the next thing, but in the meantime, I will at least get the art relisted for sale. 😏 Which I have started, but it will take me a while yet, I think there are currently 3 paintings active (not counting the magnets). 

This is tricky project, it may not sound like it, but it really is. First not All of the art has ever been photographed or listed, so some of these are being photographed for the first time and will have to have new listings created. Second some of them that have been photographed before are being re-done because they are now framed which means it's not just a quick swap the photo style of edit, it's a full on change the description, change the price, change the photos kind of edit. 😉 Then there is the crazy-inducing time-consuming trying to search listings and match photos, while keeping track of which paintings I've already photographed, which photographs need new listings, and which listings need photos. I think my brain is scrambling. 😅

Weekly update. . .still sad

I have had to fight hard this week to do anything. 😞 

Monday evening, I was informed that a friend had died in a motorcycle accident, she was such a bright brilliant young woman it is heartbreaking that she is gone so young. 😢 Just thinking about it is making me cry now. 

Tuesday, I logged into fb and found a post from a cousin that her dad, my uncle had passed. I haven't seen him in years, but the loss was like a punch in the gut, the flood of childhood memories. 😭 

Honestly, I spent most of Wednesday crying and then fighting a headache from the crying. 😢 So. . . yeah, not a really productive week business wise or in general, I managed some cooking and housekeeping but not a lot else. My goal of getting the art relisted this month has been a spectacular failure. 😒  

Maybe next month will be better, I think I may have finally made progress on the photo studio look, hopefully it will lead to useable photos. 

Weekly update. . .Summer

Well, it is officially summer you can tell by the heat wave and heat advisories. 😏 I had another fairly unproductive week, still no usable art photos, I will keep trying. I am frustrated with the lack of good photos because I have said/posted for months that the art would return to the website in June and I am running out of June. 😐 So, fingers crossed that the newest backdrop and plan work this week.  

In other business news online sales are bad. . .for me anyway.  Not that my online orders have ever been steady or booming but I'm in a serious slump of no sales for months, several months actually but you can't count the months that everything was deactivated while we moved. 😅 I'm starting to miss doing events.

RainbowMaille is on 3 platforms, and I am getting views on all 3 just not sales. Ironically, my goimagine has the most views, although it can be hard to make exact or direct comparisons because MakerPlace's crappy analytics have very limited timeframe selections and nothing other than the "last 30 days" actually works. However, if I look at the last 30 days MP - 18 views, E - 21 views (and an abandoned cart) 😔 goimagine - 84 views (and an abandoned cart).  I'm honestly kind of shocked at the views on my goimagine, especially since I basically gave up posting regularly on social media.    

notice the "paid" and "campaign" I am not running ads anywhere; those are ads that goimagine has paid for and I kind of feel bad that I cost them the click and we didn't get the sale 😞

On the flip side the abandoned carts and goimagine ads give me hope that there may be sales just around the corner. 😇

Weekly update. . .weird week

This will be short. . . I didn't accomplish squat this week. 😅

Well not in a business sense, I spent Monday driving to and from the dentist and getting my teeth cleaned. The rest of the week I made some progress on resetting for photos, but I still need to iron the new backdrop before I start shooting photos again. 

I am almost finished re-stocking the house colors bracelet bar. 

So, I guess that's almost something. 😅 Twice I have sat down intending to finish this bracelet but both times I have been disrupted and distracted by cat neediness. Merlin is super cute but he's also a needy lil' momma's boy somedays, he jumps on my bench kicks the rings around and then crawls up on my shoulder, so I have to hold him instead of working. 😏  

Weekly update . . .I hate photography

It should surprise no one that I do not like photograph. Ok, let me re-phrase that, I appreciate good/great photography and recognize it as a skill/talent. . . I just don't have. 😒 I took a photography class way back in high school, ya' know old school film developing, print making, lab work, it was cool, but I was not good at it. I had fun but most of my photos sucked, like 1 in a 100 would be ok. 

So maybe I should find it comforting that nothing has changed. 😐 ~Newsflash~ I do not, I find it incredibly frustrating, I keep trying, better camera, hands not steady get a tripod, better lighting, adjust the settings, adjust the lighting, just keep trying. Now I am living in yet another "new" house with limited windows, weird lights, and to my horror . . . colored walls in every room. 

I have been trying all week to photograph the art. I have tried different sides of the room, shifting the lighting, draping the easel trying to get more white in the picture to balance out the blue-ness of the walls.

I am not really happy with any of the hundreds of shots over days of trying. The cloudy raining days the colors look off, other days the angles were off, and the varnish just reflects the lights and everything is fuzzy. 😣  

Yes, fuzzy as in my camera refuses to focus, a feeling we share. 😅 Now none of this failure or frustration changes the fact that I have a ton of canvases to photograph and list. Nothing changes the fact that I have to have photos to list them for sale on the website, so I have no choice but to keep trying different things until something works. Current thinking is I need to hang a large drop cloth/backdrop so I'm not shooting against the blue but it's a rental house, so I don't want to make a bunch of big holes in the walls. Also, the small side table I'm using isn't big enough, I want to set up the easel next a vase or something, ya' know, set a scene but there's not enough room. 

So, this week has been kind of a bust and I feel like I didn't really accomplish anything, except learning that getting good photos in this house is going to be harder than I thought. 😏