The holiday period is one of the busy times of the year for a craft artist. I didn't do the usual traveling this year but did have four local shows, for which I was concentrating on making a good selection of "gifty" items as well as serving dishes that might be used at a get-together, like chip & dips. In addition, for a month or so, orders, mostly from my page on artfulhome.com, were coming in daily. Nice, also a little time-consuming, since those orders are shipped out by me from my studio. I like all parts of the craft business, so saying the holidays were a blur is not a complaint, just saying energy and attention are needfully focused.
Ware shelves with work ready to be fired.
But you know how when you're running errands and people ask, "Are you ready for Christmas?," often my first thought was, "Oh, right, Christmas is coming up." It's a mellow affair for us nowadays, so thankfully there's not the added stress of decorations and shopping. No more being over-extended physically & coming down with some biological warfare bug the day after Christmas.
Post-holidays, if I'm not traveling to do shows in warmer parts of the country, is great for working on new ideas, catching up on cleaning chores, and re-organizing. This year, I've been de-cluttering by working on pieces that were set aside during the year for one reason or another. I'd made a series of small jars but was stuck on how to decorate them, even though Plan A was to have them for the holiday shows. There were a half dozen oval dishes with lids that didn't fit, so the lids needed new bottoms and the bottoms need new lids. Finally, some pieces were set aside because I was unsure they would turn out well and didn't want to spend time decorating them when it was busy. (I often use those for experiments, the working out of new ideas.)
Also, my website is just updated with new work. To see it, go to ohappyclay.com, click on Current Work at the top, then on New Work in the left sidebar.
RSS Feed