Mixed Media Artist
August Art Journal Practice:
September 15, 2021:
August is one of the worst months. It's so hard to do anything. For me. I can't keep a real person schedule. Stay up late. Miserable hot uncomfortable on the couch. Sleep in until ten or noon. I don't like anything. Every August. Last year I decided to do a nightly art journal page in my altered book. It was rough going some of the time but afterwards, I loved that I did it. I loved what I did and what came out. So I did it again this year. And it was rough going some of the time. But not as often. I learned that I couldn't do the work late so would do it in the afternoon, early evening. And it went alright. I'd say maybe more easily than the summer before. I shared on the Instagram every day after my morning writing (that was really afternoon writing). It gave me a little bit of a routine and the comments and likes made me feel a little connected to the outside world. And I filled in more of the altered book and I love it. It won't close all the way and that's just how I wanted it. There are enough pages left for about two months of daily work. Will I save it for next summer? Or will I work in it more regularly the rest of the year?
Craft Paper Arts:
Update - September 15, 2021:
The new scanner sucked. Hot pink was showing up light peach instead. Apparently I use hot pink in everything. Who knew? So I bought another scanner, higher quality. Hey, that solved my problem! But now my printer is having issues. It's always something. But the couple of things it decided to print out were so good. Colors close to the originals. And the frames I bought, although not quite the dimensions advertised, work well enough for what I'm trying to do. (Confession: they're IKEA frames.) The next steps are to scan everything and see about solving the printer issues. I have ideas on where to try to take this, but I don't want to say anything yet.
February 1, 2021:
I wanted to see if I could make a bunch of smaller arts, like photo sized that would fit in a standard frame. I took the concept of my 100 Tiny Arts, made them a little bigger, on a larger canvas. Four by six. I have photo paper. What if I scanned them and could print them onto photo paper and could sell cheaper prints? Oh, my printer sucks. Well, guess I need a new printer. I bought a new printer. It actually prints the colors. And I need a scanner. So I bought a scanner too. The scanner needs some tweaking. It's not good enough yet. But I want to put these arts into frames and see how they look and sell them as ready-made, already framed items, arts. And cheap. So more people can afford them. I don't want just rich art snobs to be able to afford my art that I'm pretty sure wouldn't appeal to them. But I also don't want to sell myself short. So I guess this is an experiment to see if I can make smaller arts that most people could afford. Today I ordered a bunch of frames. Will they look good? Will I be able to sell prints of art and print on demand instead of having to have a pile of inventory taking up space? This is another Craft Adventure that I don't quite know all the places it will take me. This project is not completed.
RedBubble:
February 1, 2021:
I added a bunch of stuff to RedBubble, including my largest completed mixed media art Brilliant Girl. It turned out exactly how I dreamed. It makes me want to do more art and upload it to RedBubble. Although, I'm not happy with some of the items they offer. The quality is not good and sometimes the print quality is terrible and inconsistent. My son suggested I sell some things on there and others on another site. I didn't want to spread myself too thin, but the other site I considered now offers more of the fun little things I like. So maybe I will. More research is needed. I will look into it.
