Weekly update. . .holidays are coming

It is November and holidays are coming like a freight train, so it's a good thing I finally got around to noodling this week. 

And by "noodling" I mean making multiple batches of egg noodles for the season. I spent hours the other day on these 5 batches and one of them became beef and noodles for dinner last night. 😁 We'll just call that quality control testing.  

I did finally get some ok to good photos of the dragons and got them listed on rainbowmaille.com I am keeping them exclusive to #goimagine and have no plans to list them on etsy or michaels, even though there is not a single one listed on michaels makerplace. I feel like I may be missing out not listing them where they would be the only ones, but I don't want to cross-post them and take any chance of double-selling because they take so long to make. I may post future ones in different places but for now these 4 are only on my goimagine.

I made this cool graphic ad on adobe yesterday and I was really happy with it until I realized it only fits on pinterest. 😏 I wasn't paying attention to the template/sizing so that's what I get for being distracted. I did cut it in half and post it on fb and insta anyway. 😉 

On a slightly annoying note, etsy stats are always wrong, after nearly a decade you'd think I'd be over being disappointed and/or baffled by things that don't add up and seem to make no sense, but apparently it still bugs me. 😏 So, it says I got 3 favorites yesterday, but I didn't get any notifications of favorites, it says 7 listings were viewed but when I look at the listing stats it only shows 6 as viewed. Then there is this gem where it appears one of the items that was favorited wasn't actually viewed, so it was fav'd from a search page and the listing was never actually opened, maybe that's the "phantom" view. 😅

On a happy note, there are more dragons coming before Christmas, one of them is even Christmas themed 😎 and I think he's going to be gorgeous.

Weekly update. . .so done

It really is a good thing my next event is not for a month, I'm exhausted and disappointed, it may take me the whole month to recover. Although sleep, actual relaxation and "recovery" is not likely for me anyway I still have too much life stuff to deal with. 😔 I don't like to get too personal on the details, but like most people my life is complicated, I still need to get the water damage in my closet fixed, we are waiting to see if my father-in-law's cancer treatments worked, and I haven't made my usual tons of noodles for the season. I feel behind and mildly out of control in so many aspects of life right now. Like this morning my cats woke me up, not unusual, but cats don't know about the time change so it was 4 o'clock in the morning. 😒 

In more business-related related news, I got an etsy order while at the event yesterday, so as much as I want to nap all day, I really need to go make another rainbow boxchain. This week I need to get busy on re-photographing all the framed art and re-doing a ton of listings. I still have all 4 completed dragons, which will now need to get photographed and listed online.  

Weekly update. . .it was a beautiful day

It was a beautiful day with near perfect weather, although by the end of the day I admit I was hot and it's a good thing I always take a cooler of frozen water bottles and cooling cloth. 😎 The venue/location is great, the farm is lovely, there was a team of volunteers directing traffic and the whole thing was well organized. The owner is really nice and there were so many cool booths. I was pretty happy with my display, but 12 was definitely too many easels and I didn't end up using them all. 😅

It seemed like a good crowd, some friends came out to see the booth, which is always nice. 😇 The art got a lot of great compliments, to my surprise I still have all the chainmaille dragons, but several people took business cards and/or goimagine info. Also, I have another event next weekend so it's kind of ok that I still have all the dragons. 😉 I expect I'll see some familiar faces next weekend in Thomasville. 

Thomasville Winter Craft Festival 2024 

This week I need to double check inventory against online listings, I did deactivate the wire trees that sold, I need to shuffle the ones left in the book. I need to figure out how much of the art to take next weekend when I will be taking the full jewelry inventory and 3D printed stuff. Luckily the booth space is a little bigger and I can take all the tables and racks, plus it's indoors so I won't need the tent. 😇  

Weekly update. . .next week

Ok so the tick tock clock is about to run out on me, I only have 6 days left, technically only 5 because we set up the tent and tables the day before, so really only 4. 😟 In this final week of preparing and planning for the Elevate Artisan Market I still have to assemble 11 of the 12 tabletop easels, repack the show tote with the proper boxes, bags, packaging, price the art, figure out a booth layout, oh and actually pack inventory, etc. I still don't feel like I'll ever be ready, but I do have over 2 dozen paintings framed and 3 dragons I'm willing to sell. 😅 I've actually made 6 chainmaille dragons but I am keeping the first 2 and my husband claimed the blue one. 😎 

The purple one is shorter but because of the legs it's actually about the same number of rings as the green one, so they will all be priced the same. The red and black is the newest and I have begun a new version of blue. Although, I'm not sure I'll get a 4th finished before the event I guess it can be my work project in the booth. 😉  I've been considering making little cards for the dragons, description of materials and ring count type of info, but then I thought about "adoption certificates" with names and creation date. 😊 I think I may be overthinking. 😅 I also think my overthinking is just me thinking of ways to waste time I don't really have.  

I am really happy with certain paintings in their frames, they just coordinate beautifully, and the frames really finish the art. 

Weekly update. . .it's been a week

Well. . . it has been a week; it's been a week since I posted and what a week it has been. 😒 No I do not mean that in "good way" as I cannot say it has been a good week. 

First, the week started off with water leaking out of my closet 😯 discovered it was coming from the AC in the attic and has apparently been leaking off and on for a while (weeks possibly months). 😱

Seeping slowly thru the ceiling in the very back corner, completely unseen behind all the stuff because ya' know it's a closet full of . . . stuff 😟 it was finally noticed because it sogged so much that it made a puddle on the floor that came out into the hall 

so yeah, that is ceiling to floor ruination of the beautiful cedar lining in my closet 😧 in a corner so 2 walls and a ceiling to repair/replace 

I should note it wasn't as bad as it could have been because I'm "crazy" so the stuff on the upper shelf was wrapped in plastic for storage purposes anyway. 😅  

There were boxes on the floor that got wet but nothing inside was damaged, some of the stuff hanging got wet but my fancy dresses were stored in bags so fine. I have one thing that I need to take to a dry cleaner to see if it can be salvaged, but truly lucky because it could have been so much worse. However, that does not change the fact that the cleanup and getting the AC ripped out and completely reinstalled has taken a lot of my time this week and it's a small miracle that I have made any progress on show prep.  Seriously, that's not hyperbole I also had a dr. appointment this week where I got my flu shot which made my arm feel like it should just fall off. 😅

So yeah kind of miraculous that I accomplished anything this week. 😏  

Somehow, I have managed to continue to frame art and even added a few rings to the dragon on the bench. I have just under 2 weeks before Elevate I don't feel like I'm ever going to feel ready. 😶 I had so many ideas, wire trees to make, new things to try, more dragons. . . but there is no way the epoxy finish of certain paintings is getting done, it is not likely that there will be many more dragons maybe one. I do have some hope of new wire trees, but it's trying a new thing so not sure how I'm going to "finish" them as they will be free-standing and not my normal in the hoop hanging design. I've been considering various materials for "bases" from smooth river rocks, wood slabs (painted or not?) driftwood so many possibilities.  

Weekly update. . . AAaaaah

 Yeah, that's just me screaming. 😐 I am making progress on the art framing but booth layout and set up are making me mental. Oh, and there seems to be another hurricane in the works. 😕 

I've got 10 finished so far, but over 20 more to go. 😅 Plus the dozen tabletop easels to assemble.

I am ridiculously nervous about the upcoming event, as if I haven't done dozens of events for years. Part of it is because it's a new venue and "new" events always make me a little nervous, but a much larger part of it is being the first time I'm setting up with just art. I've been selling jewelry for a decade, but I am less confident about my art. I have sold some art at other shows but not usually a lot.  I think that is because it is not usually the focus and not much of it is actually displayed, most of it just lives in its' crates, even in the booth.  

I really liked the crates for storage and display when I bought them years ago, the idea of flipping thru paintings the way I used to look thru my parents' vinyl records was cool. . . But apparently, I'm old and most people don't feel that way. 😅 

It has not been a very effective display or actually led to a lot of sales of the art, so maybe a booth with nothing but art properly professionally displayed framed on easels it will be better. 😇 When I think back on it, most of the paintings that have sold at events have been framed and/or sold off of the front display not out of the crates, most people don't look in the crates and even those that do usually only flip thru the first few paintings not the whole crate.  I am allowed to take the wire trees and a limited amount of chainmaille in the form of ornaments and fidget balls, so hopefully I'll have good sales anyway. 

Weekly update. . .Hurricane Helene

Well, that happened, hurricane Helene blew all the way up to category 4.  I was really hoping it wouldn't, but it did, it also came right into the "Big Bend" again even though I was told when we moved here that it's very rare for hurricanes to landfall in the Big Bend. 😕 😐 I would accuse people of lying to us, but my research backed it up.

However, someone needs to update this because we have now had 3 in 13 months, Idalia, Debby, and now Helene. It went from 3 in 125 years to 3 in 13 months, I'm both annoyed and concerned about living here now. 

We have been lucky each time, but part of that is also about decision making, when I bought this house, I was looking for high ground that wouldn't flood, it had to be a minimum distance inland, I had a lot of criteria that had nothing to do with the closet space. 😅 When I settled on this brick monster our concern became the trees, because "large lot with beautiful mature trees" sounds great but in practice these Georgia pines are a mile high nightmare. So, we decided to get a tree service and have something done, a professional opinion, we ended up paying a small fortune to have several trees removed and a lot of trimming up done on many more, at the time I wasn't thrilled with the expense or the noise and I actually cried over one of the trees they took out, but now 3 storms later with NO damage I think we made the right choices. 😏

We didn't go crazy and denude the whole lot there are still a ton of large trees in my yard just not too close to the house, nothing hanging over the roof. 😇

There is still plenty to clean up. 

Truly, it was the easterly shift that spared us, we got a glancing blow instead of a direct hit. I feel bad for everyone who lost their homes on the coast, for those poor souls that lost their lives, for all the flooding and terrible damage done in other states. 😞

I now have less than a month before the big "Art show" which I am thinking will likely be a disaster for me. I don't have enough of the art framed. I don't know what I'm doing for display in my booth because I'm not used to just showing art. I had ideas and I thought I had a plan but the more I think about it the less I think it will work. 🫤 "Nervous" no longer covers my panicky desire to just move to another state instead of going through with this show. 😨  

I have spent hours agonizing over which pieces to frame and which color of frame for each, I think I have a plan finally, but now I have to find time to actually do all the framing. 😅 More than 30 pieces in less than 30 days does not seem likely especially when I factor in a doctor's appointment and a dental cleaning, oh and my AC is messed up again so service calls and workmen traipsing thru the middles of it all. 😟 I can feel the failure coming from here. I guess no one would be surprised if I said Progress has stalled. 

Yep, he's just lying there half done 😔 wings still not attached, no tail yet.