Archive for the ‘Monday Marketing’ Category

I’ve never read The Art of War by Sun Tzu. I suppose as a history major I should have, along with my reading of Machiavelli…but my college history department at the time didn’t have much related to Asian studies, let alone economics. So when I stumbled on this from Dumb Little Man, I was interested.

Hmmmm…..Five Factors for Life-Hacking Domination. Whoa – kinda strong when you think about marketing…but maybe not. Let’s explore this further. Something that has been around since the 6th century BC probably has something to teach us.

Life-Hacking – getting to the essence of life and making it work for you. Most of us struggle with this until we realize life is short and we need to get the most out of it before it’s too late. On a marketing level, most of us don’t know how to market our art, and we need to before we are left behind.

Teaching 1: The Moral Law

Sun Tzu said: “The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.”
Whoever is our ruler, spirit, creator, God – we must live in harmony with that. For me all my decisions have been predicated on the “do no harm” and “do unto others” principles. The same has to be true for me to be successful with my art and my business. What is the best possible product that is true to who I am, that is environmentally responsible, and that will bring me and an art buyer happiness? This can only be a great morality to live by.

“Every eye forms its own fancy.” from Mrs. O’Malley, Irish proverb, from “Native Wisdom for White Minds.” We all see what we want to see, or what we’ve been trained to see, and hence we miss whatever else we’ve not been taught to understand. Our reality isn’t the only reality…can we be open to other possibilities in our art and in our life that will serve us well?

Teaching 2: Heaven
Sun Tzu said: “Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.”
To Sun Tzu, Heaven is a consistency and a variable, all at the same time, and not necessarily religious. We know where we are going, we have a plan laid out, but we need to be aware of possible changes, pitfalls, opportunities. In this current economy, how are we reacting to sales and the health of our art business? What are our contingency plans till people start buying art again? Are we still making art, planning, creating product, connecting with others, teaching ourselves new skills? Above all, we need to be flexible: study the environment and decide how we can make it work (great advice from Tim Gunn…).
Teaching 3: Earth
Sun Tzu said: “Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.”
I’m quoting Dumb Little Man here: “Those entrenched in the status quo make the obvious and socially-acceptable choices – regardless of how ineffective and/or inefficient those choices are. They don’t take the time to observe the ground beneath their feet. Hence, they are incapable of seeing and feeling the optimal way forward. The life hacker thinks and acts unconventionally. She looks for the paths of least resistance, the 80/20 shortcuts, and the hidden passageways through life.”

That’s a huge mouthful, and one most of us will not consider. Having always been accused of “unconditional optimism,” I think I am quite prepared for this one. Everything has a solution; it may be one we haven’t thought of, one that is uncomfortable for us, or one that forces us to seriously change our paths. A sluggish economy is a huge problem, one that will take extreme  courage and innovation to survive. Are we ready?

Teaching 4: The Commander

Sun Tzu said: “The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness.”
This ties in to all morality. We must all take the higher path, and I editorialize here that in this economy – and our lives in general – I don’t see this. There is so much incivility the ugliness among us that I think we’ve lost our courage and sincerity. Living by a moral code can only help us be better individuals, more productive citizens, and better artists. We do art not for the short-term gain but because it feeds our soul and hopefully those around us. We do art because we must, not because we have found the secret to making great riches. We can’t sacrifice our virtue and integrity.
Teaching 5: Method and Discipline
Sun Tzu said: “By Method and Discipline are to be understood the marshalling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.”

This is marketing. How are we building our business? How are we preparing for sales? A personal story here: we did a number of demos of our marbling in the past, to some critical success. People loved what we showed them. But we missed a CRUCIAL piece – we had no product with us to sell. We had plenty of examples of what to do with marbling but nothing for people to buy. No sample fabrics, no remnant bags, no cards, no digital work. We totally missed the “buying” piece. Needless to say, we don’t make that mistake any more.

Think about everything you need to do to build your business. Do you have a plan? This is “method and discipline.” I need to take my own advice and be sure that I continue with the blogging; this is discipline, and this is focus.

Well…..I didn’t expect this to turn into an essay, but I guess it did. I had read the piece initially and felt it would be good for a post on marketing, but with the writing came analysis and lots to think about. Ultimately I feel validated, in that the moral life and the decisions and turmoil that come with it are the way to go. I am interested in your comments….what resonates with you? What method do you most follow? Leave me a comment below.

Native Wisdom for White Minds

It has been an interesting activity, pulling together your social media efforts. Between Facebook and Twitter, a lot of time is involved in getting your brand and business out to the public. and I haven’t even started with LinkedIn and any other social outlets.

Then factor in an Etsy store, Cafe Press, and Zazzle…and then there’s Artwire and several other outlets. In fact, the Sunday NY Times had an article about artists using social media and online outlets to get their work before the public. Lots more places out there to explore.

Also you have your newsletter development and subscription list. You need to develop a customer base. Readers of this blog know we had some difficulties for two years with our marbling. During that time we let go of all the things we had been doing on line to market our fabric. It took us a while to realize that everything the marketing experts are saying you should be doing – well, we were doing that, and now we’ve gone back to it.

All of this takes time, and it takes a concentrated strategy. If you are planning to go in this direction, you will have a lot of work to do initially…and then you have to plan for all your follow-up.

Case in point: I have my personal Facebook page, as well as a Fan page for Marble-T Design. I carefully read and respond on my Facebook page each day as I see interesting things. That’s not a problem. To keep a concentrated message on the Fan page takes more time. I’m listing what I want to have for each day, so I’ve already thought through the week.

Twitter takes a lot of time. I’m still trying to read a portion of messages every day, but with being in school, that’s going to be very difficult. Thanks to TweetDeck I can schedule business messages for the week, but that takes away from the “conversation” that is Twitter. However, that’s what I will need to do while I’m still teaching. And it is driving traffic: last week I scheduled tweets about various items for sale in Ebay and Etsy. I certainly had more traffic to both of those sites, and I can see the difference in visitors to the items I tweeted…but nothing is converting to sales yet, so i need to process that.

Then there are blog posts…you want to stay timely. While I can schedule my blog posts ahead of time, I enjoy writing, and since I have a schedule of topics, I want to be able to write each day when I geet home from school. And I love reading and responding to comments. My problem with the blogs is going to be staying up with Google Reader and the blogs I follow. I always find great articles and amazing eye candy…but you have to find the time. Staying up with your blog reading I think is critical; I enjoy the people I follow, they are helpful, and I learn a lot – well worth the time for your business.

I had started a business class last January, and there was some gret information there. But to do everything that was suggested made me realize within a couple of weeks that I couldn’t do it all and still maintain my teaching responsibilities. That is what has been so wonderful about the concentrated time this summer: time to do all the set up and learning. Some of these things are not easy to do…like my first newsletter with Constant Contact. There was a steeper learning curve than I would have liked, but I mastered it, and now my newsletters won’t take nearly as long to do.

And don’t forget – we still need to create our art.

Speaking of newsletters, you should subscribe to ours (upper right corner). We do a drawing for a free sampler pack of marbled fabrics, but you can’t win if you don’t subscribe!

Copyright Notice

How did it get to be August? We returned from vacation on June 21st, and I started working on the business on June 23. A lot happened, I can tell that from my sheets of lists, but part of me is thinking, Oh my, so much left to do before schools tarts again.

One of the marketing things I did over the weekend is to make a list of what has to happen with social media for each day, once school starts. I have gotten so many things in place that I was swimming with all the details. Once I took the time to think about how I could work with these pieces each day, in a 30-minute time block, I could feel the stress start to diminish. This looks to be very do-able, and I have this week to make refinements.

As you can see from the graphic on the left, I was busy getting this symbol ready to attach to artwork on line, which means going back and protecting a lot of my earlier images. I did some reading about the legalese that should be on our blogs and websites, and I know now what I need to take care of – pronto. The logo is transparent, done in Photoshop, so I can just add the layer to my images. The problem will be actually getting to the images from earlier posts.

Another thing I did was to start a master list of the “long-range” projects for the next five-six months. Anything on the list this week is a priority – like a new newsletter – before I go back next week. This list will go above the sewing table with reminders of what is coming next. I find it is very helpful to do this type of exercise, primarily because now I won’t have to spend the mental energy trying to remember everything. Items on the list:

* Affiliate information and applications

* Licensing information, pattern repeats and developing a collection

* Spoonflower.com for printing fabrics

* Zazzle.com artwork and potential items

* Cafe Press items in preparation for the holiday season

* An Etsy store

* A tutorial on quilting marbled fabrics

* Feedback pages

* Updating links (and collecting new ones, so send yours along) on the website

* Linked In

* Update the Polyquilt pattern

* Confer with an attorney to vet all the legalese (copyright notice, disclaimers, FTC guidelines for affiliates, privacy policies, just to name a few)

* And…foremost with all of this – to continue making art.

What’s on your long-range list?

DON’T FORGET – sign up for our newsletter to get entered into a drawing for a Sampler 1 package of marbled fabrics! See the sign-up at the top of the page.

I have been very interested in licensing my art images for quite a while. I’m doing a LOT of reading, as it is a complex issue. The first source I found that got me started in the right direction was Tara Reed’s Art Licensing Blog.* I confess at this point I am still in the reading stage, but slowly moving in the direction of working on patterns, repeats, and mock-ups. Funny how full-time teaching gets in the way….

However, I am a firm believer in doing my homework. One of the things the “big boys” in internet marketing talk about is the actual format of your blog, and that the recommended format is Word Press. I was wondering about why the need to move from Blogger, and I was disconcerted when I learned I would have more difficulty protecting my images on Blogger. So when I had this opportunity for a guest post from Tara – and David – I thought this would be appropriate. Plus, as Tara mentions below, I wanted something classy for my blog.

Tara writes: David Darrow has been in my online life from the very beginning of this (Art Licensing) blog… he was one of the first subscribers to my Art Licensing Info eNewsletter and I remember him sending one back to me with a note: “Do you realize this is what this looks like?” That was when I was “following directions” and keeping it all text, never more than 70 characters per line, like I was told to do.

David wasn’t the only artist to think this was a BAD IDEA so I realized artists want something a little more visually pleasing. David helped me figure out how to do it. A talented artist and techie – he’s passed on more good information that I can “Share with the group”. When he was listening to the replay of last week’s Ask About WordPress for Artists call (do you have your copy yet?) he sent me the following information that I thought would be helpful.

He knows of what he speaks since he has a blog – on blogspot – called “Where art meets technology”…

I believe there is a misconception about Blogger vs. Blogspot.

Even that phrase is misleading, because they are the same thing.

The best way I understand it is that

1. Blogger is the on-line tool which allows one to create new
2. posts, which are individual, chronologically ordered in reverse “entries” or “posts” in your
3. “blog,” which is your journal, diary, log or web-log, from which we get the word [we]blog.

Blogspot is actually blogspot.com, a domain where all the Blogger-created blogs are stored or hosted.

You cannot use Blogger to create a blog and store that data ANYWHERE else but on blogspot.com — Both are owned by Google. Additionally (corollary) you cannot create/edit a blog with any other tool but Blogger and have it stored or hosted by Blogspot.com .

***Every Blogger-created blog is stored as a unique “subdomain” of blogspot.com , which is why every Blogger blog address has in common “blogspot.com.” A subdomain is the unique “areacode” that comes before the phone number, and the phone number is always 2 items: domain name and venue, “terareeddesigns” and “com” — you could have a separate site at store.terareeddesigns.com ; it would be a “subdomain”

Like Kim said, one issue to consider is that all Blogger.com blogs cease to exist the moment Google decides to stop supporting them. WordPress blogs will only disappear if you delete them or stop paying your domain-hosting bill. You control that. If WordPress.org disappears, you will still have all your data and your most recent installation of the version of the code that runs it.

Wordress.org is a group of programmers worldwide that work together on standards for an Open Source blogging service. WordPress.com is a Blogger-style tool that allows a simpler blogging method and can raise money (through more premium blogs) for WordPress.org costs.

One other thing; people with Blogger.com blogs VERY often misaddress their blogs, adding a “www” ahead of their blog address. Both will work, but one is wrong.

http://www.EverydayPaintings.blogspot.com is wrong
http://EverydayPaintings.com is right

Learn more about David Darrow at www.DaveThePaintingGuy.com

Be sure to check out his painting classes too – I’m told they are amazing!

Here’s to your creative success!

– Tara Reed

P.S. To learn more about how to earn an income licensing your art, visit www.ArtLicensingInfo.com* for a wide array of free and for-fee information from experts in the industry.

* FTC disclosure: any links with an * is an affiliate link and if you make a purchase, I will earn a commission for the referral. This helps me keep buying art supplies – thank you for your clicks!

I haven’t done Monday Marketing since sometime this spring, as I have been so busy with school. Now I feel like I can get back to my Monday schedule and plan my marketing for the week. These suggestions are from Art Marketing 101, in an email a while back.

1. Continually contact people
Make it an aim to call four people a day—whether they be new prospects or current clients. It’s guaranteed that not only will you become quite good and efficient on the phone, but your business will flourish. Clients are the mainstay of any business. To call four people a day could take 15 minutes. Don’t make them long conversations; in fact, they should be short, with a specific aim in mind. You could ask for referrals, invite the person to visit a future opening or exhibit, invite him to your studio to see your new series of work, thank her for a recent purchase. Be creative!
Add to this list four post cards and you have eight contacts a day to get a total of 40 contacts a week! If you try this for two months, you will be amazed at how your sales increase.

So I have a four-year-old mailing list from our website, and we have decided to reactivate the site and sales off the site when we get back to business the end of June. In the meantime, I had marketing postcards made so that as we visit galleries on our trip, we can leave information. The business cards will get added to our mailing list.
2. Follow-up
Not only do successful artists follow up after they send out a portfolio, but they follow up even if they receive a rejection. This means that they send out a postcard with one of their images on it, photo print, announcement of an exhibition, whatever it is—at least every 6-12 months to all prospective clients and galleries and to former purchasers. The rule in direct marketing is: you must contact people three times before they respond! As an artist you won’t have a huge mailing list; it will be quite intimate, perhaps 100-400, so the cost to do a mailing is not overwhelming.

And…we re taking our portfolio with us, along with fabric, something we have not done in the past. In this way, we can also get business cards, as well as make some potential contacts.
3. Use innovative marketing
Successful artists are always thinking of innovative ways to market. They are willing to take a risk if they feel a new idea might work. For instance, new places to exhibit—an orchid show, an interior designer show, a real estate show, a music conference, a sci-fi convention—whatever they think might work for them! Presentation is always consistent and top-notch, of course.

One of the reasons we go gallery-hopping it to get ideas for display, innovative approaches, unique ideas, as well as talk to other working artists, especially now about the economy. And I am amazed at how many times I see something that I could apply to the marbling.
4. Press coverage
Successful artists consistently receive press coverage. Although she might not get direct sales from this press coverage, a successful artist knows that in the long run it means many people see her name, artwork and progression over the years. This means a lot to potential buyers. It also means that the newspaper/magazine approves of you. Name recognition is of the greatest importance in any business.

I need to look at this in July and send some press releases. I have a couple of ideas I need to pursue. so we’ll see…
5. Long-term goals
All the successful artists I know have had long-term goals. This means they did not make it overnight. They planned and strategized and suffered to get where they are today in the marketplace. They never gave up. They knew their aim, and they knew there would be down periods, as in all businesses. Aims and goals are the mainstay of any business. You are in business, and you must have a business attitude to win at marketing!

I do have several pages of goals, and even with full-time teaching, I have been able to chip away at them. I’ve been saying if I could have a couple of weeks and spend four-five hours a day, I could see some good success with the business. This is happening.

I’m interested in your feedback. What are you doing to increase your marketing lists and contacts? What risks are you taking? How are you managing your goals?

Art Marketing 101

So all day today I have been thinking about working on a plan for the coming year – well, I was thinking in between lessons. I am hereby making a public commitment to my art – one year from now I will be making $500 a month from my art endeavors. As I accomplish this, I will make up the income lost by taking a regular contract next year.

It’s very do-able, no question – just have to plan and do….to that end, Brenda and I got together again tonight to talk over what we have accomplished on our ideas of a small mixed media arts group. Lots of ideas – first thing I discovered is I have to be more organized at keeping track of what I decide to do. Three-ring notebook coming home with me tomorrow, as well as some tabs for sections.

Section 1 – calendar and events – we have tentatively agreed to go in on a non-juried art show in March, and we will get together December 28 to put together a “sample” booth for pictures, as well as to determine layout with potentially four artists participating. A list will no doubt be derived from what we discover then. Brenda will call to check out registration guidelines. Tucson Museum of Art show possibly next November. Fish Follies deadlines beginning of April – need to work on that.

Need a section on licensing – have loads of ideas here, and I need to make a start – what images will I put together as a package to present for licensing.

Need a section on vision and mission – I’m not usually one to participate in these “corporate” things, but I want to clarify where I want to be in a year, in 5 years, so I need to be very specific in goals. I can see the need to write these out – much like in the blogging class last spring, where we worked on our tag lines for our websites. Mine is Marbling – An Ancient Art Made Modern.” I want to work with that within everything else I do.

Section on To-Do’s – both immediate and longer-range. First thing is to update members of the group as to what we are planning and see who is really interested in coming along the journey. We decided that this first step is important enough to front the money just divided two ways (unless others want to join) so we can get our feet wet.

Section on trainings, etc – need to put in my School of Threadology sign-up, some web readings on marketing.

Online outlets need their own section.

As does “product.” Just what exactly am I focusing on? What needs lots of intensive work and what can be done more easily and can bring in a steady stream of income.

I have already outgrown my small journal-style notebook, so there is a definite need to expand to stay organized.

Thinking and doing, thinking and doing……

PS – a thoughtful article from the Fine Art Views Art Blog on joining groups….

I had a couple of questions about one of the denim pieces posted yesterday. This is a piece of white denim, about 9 x 12 inches, marbled in a stone pattern and quilted heavily. It’s a very organic design, and I wanted the quilting to reflect that. The piece is available on the website – and, hey – I’m willing to bargain….

Just got home from our monthly art group – we had a great time! I didn’t want to go, as I was having problems with lesson plans for tomorrow (like the computer ate the finished copy and I had to redo everything), but since I’m the organizer, I felt I should be there….

We had a really good time! Lots of new show-and-tell. I brought a piece that has had me stumped with no Wow factor. Showed it, got feedback – everyone loved the marbled fabric – very serene – the suggestion was to change the color of the border and then the blues within the piece would pop. Perfect!

We have decided to do our first show together. One of the high-end shopping centers has their annual art fair in November, and with the 5 of us, we can split the fees and make it very do-able for all of us. Next month we are meeting at the home of our clay artist to talk about how we need to price our work. So this week I have a lot of planning to do to get the paperwork in and get everyone with a list of things to do prior to October.

We also had our jewelry artist, who is also an accountant by day, talk about some of the nitty-gritty of setting up your business. For the time being, we will be working under her business license until our other artists make some decisions about the directions they want to go in marketing. This way we can all see just how “happy” we are doing this type of show.

I feel like the momentum is back – but I know, since Thursday is a half day, that I will be spending all afternoon at school getting caught up for this week, so I can have the weekend free for ART!

This is a piece that sold on Ebay a number of months ago. As I recall it was a silk, and it reminded me of clouds. I do need to pull the photo out and try doing some manipulating with it. There are some intriguing lines in this piece.

As for marketing, probably not going to happen this week, except for putting some of the digital quilt designs up on Cafe Press. We had a great marketing group meeting last week, and I thought I’d include some of the work from our group of artists.

Brenda is a really wonderful weaver. She is working on what she calls saddle rugs, but I don’t have any pics. Her scarves are so soft, and they use some antique lace patterns as the design.

Yvonna continues to explore texture and form with her clay. She just comes up with the most amazing shapes.

School is back – great first day with the kids. I am trying to eke out time each day to at least sew, and save whatever marketing I can do for the weekends. I do want to explore Tara Reed’s site on art licensing…looks very interesting!

I really love this piece. It was marbled on a white polysatin, and it so reminds me of a sunrise. I am working to try and do some more quilting on this piece, but I need a focal point – I’m open to suggestions for how to embellish this.

Our arts support group meets for the first time tonight. This is mainly getting to know each other, with a healthy dose of show and tell. Every time one of us gets together with another, we always feel so good talking about a art. It just makes sense to have a way to stay in touch regularly, and expand our group a little bit. We need a way to keep each other motivated and share information. I know that once the school year starts, I will need to have some deadlines, and bring something new each month will be good for me. I’m looking forward to this, since last month I spent the evening in the ER.

I’m on a waiting list for a “Craft show” in November. We attended this last November and were impressed with the organization, and we felt some of our marbled products would go well. The waiting list is evidently long, but the organizers are trying to not duplicate vendors, so if someone drops out, we may move to the top faster. Either way, we need to start planning for the show.

I marbled more paper this weekend – went well, and I am working on trying to get the moire pattern down – cool pattern with lots of movement – can’t be done on fabric because of the fast absorption rate of the fabric and liquid. Hubby is at work making new combs to try out, and we had visitors at our marbling session a week ago – we should probably pull together class information again.

I went through our drawer of “we will never sell these pieces, they are too gorgeous” to find I actually have couple of new ideas for some of them. One piece is a full three-quarter yard of waves – and it deserves to be framed by itself – this would make a great restul, peaceful piece in a therapist’s office!

For some reason, I can’t get the Vista Print emails any longer, despite three phone calls to them. I need to look for another source for quality, reasonable, online printing. Anyone have any suggestions? Anyone used Moo? Thanks for any help!

PS – TOMORROW – special guest post from Darya at Summer Tomato!!!

For being out of commission for a good chunk of last week, I am pleased to say the momentum is continuing. The quilt is done and I hope to post pics soon. I’ve rescheduled our artist group for August, set up the Etsy store, and did some new marbling. The pic to the left is a traditional stone pattern that FINALLY looks like a piece of marble. We have tried for years to do this, and now with the new paints from Galen Berry, we are having success. This design is on a piece of black cotton, so all the colors are subdued. In good like it looks like an expensive piece of marble countertop. I’ve already tried experimenting with Photoshop, and this should make a good background piece for other work.

The Etsy store took time, but I am hoping it will begin to move a few things. I have started a list of new things to marble and put just in the Etsy store. I want to continue my Geode series, and I think this might be a good outlet for small pieces as gifts.

Nothing new on Cafe Press this week – I will be making new changes for next week – have some new designs to start with.

I am going to attempt to dye fabric this week, and then marble it and see what happens. I also want to marble some more paper for people who like collage. And – ta-da – after watching numerous videos of Turkish masters marbling, I have attempted with some success to create marbled flowers right in the tray. As I do more, I will post the results. There’s still a LOONNGGGG way to go to be good, but I want to practice them for some other commissioned work.

Goals for this week:

* maintain the blog
* get pics up for Brenda (weaver) and Yvonna (clay artist)
* check on December show
* update Cafe Press
* get started on Operculum store for CafePress

I hope everyone has a great art-filled week!

Yards of binding today, one side panel is completed, binding on it, reading to be added to the body of the quilt. I can actually see the end in sight. Love how the side panels are working. Pictures hopefully on Wednesday.

Met with Brenda on Friday. She’s a weaver, and oh my goodness, her scarves are amazing – so soft, like lacework. We stopped by and saw her loom – huge! One of the things we decided, since we always seem to get so inspired when we get together for coffee, is to start a support group for ourselves. So next Monday we will meet at Beyond Bread – Alison, who is a jewelry designer; Brenda the weaver/dyer; Yvonna the potter (who doesn’t know it yet); Suzan the quilter and digital artist; Dean the marbler, Linda the quilter and digital artist; and Richard, a silk artist.

Mostly we want show and tell, info on marketing, possible shows, and lots of good thoughts to keep us motivated. We’ll stay very informal to start with and we’ll see where things go.

In terms of overall marketing, the second week of Saturday Specials is up for Cafe Press. I’ll change items and designs before leaving for Colorado. I am trying to set up a Cafe Press store for a friend, with her amazing photography of tide pools. I hope to work on that this week. And – ordered Procion dyes from Dharma that should arrive this week, so I can start trying to dye fabric – using Color by Accident by Ann Johnson. Hoping to dye and then marble and see what happens. Mostly I think I’ll just have fun!

Some vacation pics from San Diego…

Even with being sick for three weeks, I still feel like I am accomplishing more this summer – in fact since March – than in a very long time. Two shows entered, accepted, sent out, and I’m going to attend the opening reception for Fabric of Legacies in Ft. Collins, Colorado on July 10. This will be the first time for attending a reception for my work, so I am excited. IF you know of something to see from Denver north, especially if fiber-related (like who’s at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum), please let me know.

For this week, I am concentrating on San Diego and art galleries in the area. This has really become an enjoyable “artist date” with hubby – finding new galleries and just enjoying the art. I love seeing unusual art, especially if it involves fiber and embellishment.

I did get the Cafe Press store started as part of Saturday Specials, with the first entry over the weekend. I am slowly exploring options for selling digital work, and perhaps fiber on down the road, as I get more done with revamping the website. In fact, that should probably be a goal for the next two weeks – website needs.

* slide show for the opening page of selected works

* garden fantasy page set up with options for ordering

* digital marbling [age set up with options for ordering

* check all existing links and respond to requests for new links (I am very late on that!)

I do have a lot of new work to get up on the site, so there’s the big goal for the next two weeks. Pics of San Diego to follow!