All posts tagged business card case

Arts Festival Aftermath

TAAF Booth

This past weekend, I participated in the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival.  It was an experimental endeavor, for sure, and my friend and fellow artist, Beth Nentwig, agreed to participate in the experiment with me.  My mom also contributed some very cool bracelets that she’s been making for the last several months.  From a sales perspective, the event was an abject failure.  I sold nothing.  Not one thing.  Not even a single hand-printed linocut card.  Needless to say, it was disheartening.

In the 24 hours following the event, as I reflected on the festival, I figured I had a couple of ways to approach it.  I could take the defeatist approach:  “This is proof that the things I make have no value, and therefore I should just give up making them and trying to sell them.”  But that’s not really my style.  Plus, one data point hardly seems like enough to draw conclusions about the value of one’s work or whether exhibiting at future art festivals has value.  I could make excuses (some of which might even be valid):  “The festival goers were cheap.  The rain kept people from making last-minute purchases.  The audience wasn’t right.”  That might make me feel a little better about myself, but it really doesn’t prepare me for future sales endeavors.  And it’s not really my style, either.

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Sewing Sunday

curtains-cropped

Although Fall is my favorite season, I do love Winter because it makes me feel okay about taking some much-needed time to relax at home and do projects for myself.  The cold weather somehow gives me permission to stay inside, sip tea, read and make stuff.  I don’t feel the pull of yardwork or gardening or frisbee or summer festivals, and I find myself looking inward and reflecting on how I want to start out my new year.  I’ve almost always counted on this time to accomplish a few projects that have been on the back-burner, such as launching this very website last January.  I know that the Spring thaw will pull me back into the realm of outdoor activities, so for now it’s nice to have some quiet time in the house.

This weekend, my plan was to make curtains for my back bedroom/Ben’s office.  Okay, really my plan was to make a curtain for that room since I didn’t have enough material for two.  (But that’s okay, I’ll get more.  Please, twist my arm…do I have to go to Fabric Row again?)  I had a spare curtain rod in the basement, so I set to work on Saturday sewing the curtain. I finished it up and went to hang it only to discover that I had somehow misplaced the mounting brackets that accompanied the curtain rod.  This wasn’t totally shocking in that the last time the curtain rod was actually mounted was two houses ago in 2005, and I feel like this is pretty much the story of my life.  I finally get fired up to start a project, get most of the way done, and then discover that I’m missing some critical component that will prevent me from finishing the project that day.  In my life, it’s inevitable…and it’s infuriating.

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