In the Doyenne of Dirt's Garden

A few years back Ketzel Levine purchased one of my stacking sculptures from Ceramic Showcase. (She of NPR Weekend Edition fame.) This isn't the exact piece but a similar one that was commissioned to have slightly different colors and decoration.

Well, this month that sculpture made the 'big time' in an article about Ketzel's garden in Portland. The article is in the February issue of SUNSET magazine....page 54! Thanks to M'liss Runyon for being the first to give me a heads up.

According to Ketzel the magazine has gotten a few inquiries about the piece so will be interesting if anyone actually gives me a ring about ordering one.

Now, gotta remember to pick one up from the store before it's too late.

Experiments

Time for some new work or at least work glazed and decorated differently. What better than a bunch of little cups to try out in various permutations of the many ideas I have.

The eye opener was that it was harder to make a symmetrical cone shape than it looks. Cut out shape after shape and they all had a short side.

Well, these are just glaze/decoration experiments so guess I shouldn't let their off-center shape bother me...even tho it does a little...

Piling on the Awards...

It's almost getting embarrassing... Another award was bestowed today via The Alchemist Weekly's Reader Poll. Best Potter/Sculptor this time. I'm not sure how I got nominated in either this or the Gazette-Time's poll, but it feels swell. Potters are seldom noticed at all, let alone win awards over other artists...

Now I gotta live up to all this hype!

Thanks everyone who voted.

Are Customers Always Right?

Have spent many years working to create a signature look for my pottery that relies on spiral embellishments and additions that add to the personality of each piece. More and more people ask for my work without the "fronds" or "arms" or "curly-cues" and in an effort to accommodate I've been trying to make the forms work without.

This version of my tulip vase reworked has a bit wider opening and slightly more feminine curves. She looks like she can stand on her own without my additions.

No matter what it takes, it's good to push ourselves a little bit outside our boxes now and then.

Small Tulip Vase - $36

First Etsy Sale

Something I've done since my first art fair is "prime the pump" with a purchase of my own as soon as I'm set up and ready to take sales.

Give a little to get a little.

So, finally after getting 14 items in my Etsy shop (which makes it look full at least on the front page of the shop), I thought it was time for me to make a purchase of my own.

While shopping I found a lovely silver crane necklace created to look like an origami crane. The perfect thing to gift the person who hand-folded almost 1000 cranes for our wedding. (People attending our party the night before the big day were able to whip up the balance.)
Then SURPRISE, this week my first sale came through after being on Etsy for less than a month. Three stars are on their way to Brooklyn. With the Etsy fee, the Paypal fee and mailing costs I'm just barely clearing 50%, which is my goal.
I hope to have time to read more of the Etsy blog posts about maximizing all the many tools there to generate sales. Coupons, specials, BOGO offers, etc. There is so much to learn. Some of it can be used in other areas of our art businesses, so it's well worth it to tune in.

If only there were more hours in the day...

Fun New Audience

Now that I know how to search for the "good stuff" on Etsy it just gets better and better. Looking up artist's favorites and seeing who has added them to their favorites, then to the favorites that have chosen them can eat up the better part of a day if you let it. There are fascinating finds everywhere.

On the flip side, when I post an item and someone adds it to their favorites it'll get seen by a whole new group of people I couldn't even imagine before. People from all over the world!

"Menopausal Mind" was a piece I did a few years ago that still makes me chuckle. Even tho there is slim chance it'll ever sell, for only 20 cents I'm giving it a whole new audience. The Edvard Munch decals were sitting around the house for a long time before this perfect use of them over the gold leaf. It's elicited some fun comments from people.

To see it at my shop and read my pithy description, head on over to my Etsy shop right this minute!

Going Etsy

Why have I succumbed?

Community! It's what Etsy is all about.

Heard a very inspiring talk by Mandy of ZillowPillows and how she's made Etsy work for her business. She talked about how it is quirky and offers different methods for shopping besides the old fashioned "category" method most of us are used to. It uses social media and connections with other people to get noticed and recommend what you like. It is indeed a true community of people helping each other be successful.

Different than having our work in galleries and other "catalog" websites, one can control how work gets seen in various photo poses we take and how it's presented and written about. Etsy's commerce site is a super-highway of web traffic and there Etsy and other artists help you negotiate ways to direct some of it to our work.

What was I waiting for?!?

Kept track of my time and it took about 4-5 hours to get a shop set up, create a shop header, anguish over the text, set-up shop info, get a premium PayPal account set up AND take photos of a few pieces to "list." The first item took an hour to list; by the fourth item it took only about 15 minutes.

The shipping piece is still a bit frightening and figure I'll "eat" some costs until I figure it all out.

TIP: even though I took all the photos at one setting, in the first piece I listed the background colors turned out a bit different in each shot after I changed the sizes to their recommended pixels, fixed contrast and SHARPENED them. When I manipulated the photos for the next few items I left all of them open in my Photoshop "project bin" so I could align their placements within the frame and make sure they all had same background tone.

Here's my new Etsy Shop: "NicePots" by Cynthia Spencer.

More to come...