Focus

Posted: January 30, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: All's Well That Ends Well | 8 Comments

I’ve noticed that my interest in any given activity comes in waves. A lot of the time, I just want to read. I devour books. But I gradually get bored with what I’m reading, or lose momentum after finishing a great book. Then I complain of boredom for a few days (or a week . . . or two).

On to a new interest! When I haven’t sketched for a while, I have to force myself to do it. But suddenly it becomes my favorite thing to do and I stay up much later than I ought to perfecting ideas and coming up with new ones. Every once in a while, cleaning is the thing that I want to do most (I can’t emphasize how infrequent this is), and I get really involved in it. Usually I stay up all night getting the kitchen spotless and the living room lovingly tidied. Then, of course, I’m completely burned out on cleaning, which is just one reason why that urge comes so rarely.

Do you have a steady hobby, or do you find your focus changes, like mine does?

Honestly

Posted: January 28, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Bridge to Terabithia | 8 Comments

I’m trying not to talk TOO much about various art-ish projects on the blog, because I am hoping to make money off of them eventually . . . and I don’t want to sound like I’m begging you to buy stuff.

Good disclaimer?

Guys, I’ve been working hard lately on figuring out what I want to do with my shop, and it’s unbelievably fun and exciting. I spent a while thinking about birthday and shower invitations – what originally got me started with this whole thing – and had trouble deciding what sort of designs would be likable (and easy to sell). Then I decided, I’m doing this for me – so that I have something I enjoy doing. If I make money, even just enough to keep my supplies stocked, hooray! But I lost interest in the idea of pandering to customers. So I sat down one night last week and designed a baby shower invitation. The next day, I designed a birthday party invitation for Jarom. (I’m going to try screen printing it and IT WILL BE AMAZING.) The next night, I completely designed and finished an invitation for Evan’s birthday party.

Most of the designs I came up with don’t actually involve any watercolor. They’re more . . . hand-lettered, and less painterly. I think I’m fine with this because I still have a lot of ideas for watercolor text and watercolor name art in particular. But I love the lettering aspect. Doing our graduation announcements last year was stressful but gloriously fun. (And stressful. Very stressful.) I think my stuff looks pretty awesome.

Here’s where I sort of want your mostly-honest opinions. Like I said at the beginning, I’m not trying to get you to buy stuff. I just want validation that these are legitimately interesting things that other people might buy. (Of course, I’m happy to do work for you guys, too.) The more time I spend looking for similar invitations and art on Etsy, the more I feel like there isn’t anything quite like this – and then I wonder if it’s because no one is interested. (Although, given the hideous nature of 80% of the stuff on Etsy, maybe that’s a good sign.)

Right, so, these are the things I’ve been coming up with lately. If you were having a party or bridal/baby shower, would you like these? I know I have a lot of polishing to do, so maybe you could base your opinion off the potential awesomeness here.

Bad scan of the sketch for Jarom's birthday invitations. Needs a little work.

Bad scan of the sketch for Jarom’s birthday invitations. Needs a little work still.

Sketch of baby shower idea. I always mess up on vertical spacing.

Sketch of baby shower idea. I always mess up on vertical spacing.

Watercolor of baby shower idea. The only waterproof pen I had on hand was a Sharpie, which didn't work well. I think I'd leave the "It's a boy!" in white and redo the registration note.

Watercolor of baby shower idea. The only waterproof pen I had on hand was a Sharpie, which didn’t work well. I think I’d leave the “It’s a boy!” in white and redo the registration note. I was trying to tie in with the other cursive, unsuccessfully.

Evan's birthday invitation. Since it's going to 3- and 4-year-olds, I don't care much about fixing any [minor] flaws.

Evan’s birthday invitation. Since it’s going to 3- and 4-year-olds, I don’t care much about fixing any [minor] flaws.

P.S. Over the weekend I got in touch with a giclee printer in Orem who is willing to do my printing at a VERY reasonable price. This is what I’ve been looking for! Maybe actual progress and actual things-for-sale happening soon??

Grid

Posted: January 25, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Bartleby the Scrivener | 5 Comments

I was so behind on holiday preparations in December that I forgot to ever buy a 2013 calendar. About a week into the year, I finally got one, but for whatever reason, I didn’t look at the back first. When I put the calendar up in the kitchen, I was horrified to see that the calendar grid was tiny! At least a quarter of the page was just a white border around the actual squares, which were way too small to write more than one item a day in.

Last night I had a meeting to go to, and afterwards went to the store to buy more ZzzQuil. (I meant to get it a few days ago – but I missed it on my list, and ended up just grinding some of the Walgreens pills and drinking the powder in apple juice. It was disgusting.) And it occurred to me that there might still be some 2013 calendars hiding in a clearance rack somewhere. I didn’t want to ask for help, because who waits until late January to buy a calendar, and I also was enjoying shopping without kids. So I spent about 40 minutes wandering around before I found the calendars.

Then it was a matter of finding the right combination of tolerable pictures and decent-sized calendar squares. I ignored the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit calendar, the Marilyn Monroe calendar, and the Tim Tebow calendar. I had to consider the various animal themed-calendars and inspirational calendars, though, because there weren’t a lot of choices left. Eventually I settled on a Majestic Mountains one. Interestingly, I hated the “large grid” calendar – it had no pictures, so each month took up 2 pages and the days were very tall rectangles.

One of these days (I mean, years), I’ll look ahead of time for a calendar that I actually like, instead of just grabbing whatever cheap calendar I can tolerate.

By the way, I keep my wall calendars. I have them going back to 2000.

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