Tuesday, December 15, 2020

art in process. . .

Creating art is a process, there are many steps, so even when I post photos on facebook, instagram or pinterest the art is often not really "Finished". 😏  

Someone asked the other day about the painting I was posting photos of and if it was available for sale. 😶  While I was thrilled and flattered that they were interested in my art, I told them it will eventually be listed for sale, but it will be several weeks if not a couple of months.  

The new pouring acrylic, fluid art techniques I am experimenting with take several days to "dry" and actually take weeks to "cure" the paint.  The cool "cells" and special effects are created by using silicone oil which needs to be cleaned off after but cannot be cleaned until the paint is cured, then depending on the cleaning method it needs to re-dry for days to a week before it can be sealed. ~sigh~ Then depending on the sealant, be it spray, varnish, resin/epoxy that takes days to weeks to dry and/or cure itself.  😏


These spent a week sitting level on my bench "drying" they are now hanging on my shop wall to finish "curing" so I can have my bench back.  However, they still need cleaned and will need sealed so they are not really finished, if I were to sell them at this point trust me you would be disappointed. 😉  Actually it's likely if I tried to package and ship them in their current state that the bubble wrap and tissue paper would be stuck to the surface and ruin the canvas by the time it arrived. 😕

I have also realized that these cannot be priced by size the same as my previous works, the differences in process and materials is significant even before I consider sealants. The resin/epoxy I want to use is actually quite expensive.  I have looked at several different  kinds/brands and there are some cheaper options but the art specific non-yellowing non-toxic stuff is not cheap.  So while I still have some math to do to figure the pricing exactly my current guess-timates are almost double my other art. 😐


Friday, December 11, 2020

A weird ending. . . .

This month is turning out to be a weird ending to what has been a pretty weird year.  Honestly, I think we are creeping past "Twilight Zone" levels of weirdness in many aspects. 😞  

Looking back, in 2019 I had so many big plans for 2020 for summer vacation, for my birthday, our wedding anniversary, not to mention the dozen events I was going to vend at.  Now sitting here so close to the end of 2020 none of that stuff I had planned happened.  I got one vending event in early February the whole rest of the year has been a washout.

The pandemic has been hard on everyone, many small businesses have struggled or gone under this year. I know my business has been less than half of previous years online sales and with no in person events that is another huge loss.  Lucky for me my household income is not reliant on my craft business or we'd be homeless and bankrupt for sure. 😕 

The last order I shipped is in some sort of weird postal limbo. ~sigh~  I know with increased package volume, holiday shopping and the pandemic it's like a trifecta of postal delays and disruption. My buyer is being very understanding but I am starting to get frustrated. I shipped the package on the 1st it was only 600-ish miles I could have driven it there myself in 8.5 hours and it's been 11 days now and the tracking has no updates since the 5th and that entry had no location. 😒  So literally only God knows where that package is and I pray that it gets where it's supposed to soon because I cannot re-make the one of a kind trees.  I could try to re-make similar replacements but it would take me a week+ and they would not be the same.  It is very rare for me to have packages not get where they are going in a few days, I ship everything with tracking for a reason.  So early this week when I went to check on this order and got a message on USPS.com that the whole bloody tracking system was down. . .😨


Seriously!?!? you can't get anymore "2020" than that ~sigh~

Let's all send up a collective prayer that 2021 starts to get normalize and move away from the "Twilight Zone" like extremes of 2020. 🙏