Up, up and away!

 Well, today is the day we head back to Scotland. It feels like an age since we have been there, and nine months really is quite a while!

We knew we would not be able to get back sooner because we had the BIG job when we returned last June, of sorting out and closing down the studio.

Whilst I am glad we gave ourselves the time to do that steadily, I am also glad that it is done and we can be free to head back to the cottage and our friends and our life over there.

With any luck, it won't be quite this cold when we get there... photos taken by a friend in January this year.

But whichever way things go, we will be happy to be there.

This trip is a trip of painting and patching - we are thinking about it as a maintenance trip rather than a trip to relax into art and visits and wandering, so there may be fewer blog posts of interest!

We have closed the online shops whilst we are away as it is too hard to manage postage and deliveries in our absence. But we will be back on track as soon as we return to Maleny.

Next steps for a book & pebbles!

 I am pushing a couple of things forward at the same time - the wee book for Narratives, and the second Book of Silences. Both are in fact pretty big projects; but the deadlines for both are only a few weeks away for me (given we have plans to return to Scotland. I say plans, because as we have all observed, the planet is a risky place right now).

So the stitching is happening on the pages of the Nest book. I am varying the placement and length of lines of stitching, but have decided on three lines of stitching for each. 

One thing I am missing from the larger public studio space is the light for photographing things. I used to put things on the concrete floor, in an area without direct light and the colours were always pretty true. I am yet to find my happy place for photographs here at home, but over time I hope I will. I think this last photo is the truest to the colour of the pages.

So that work continues, and I have also added some of my calligraphic pebbles to the shop. I was trying hard to work out a way for people to select their own word and I had a few tricks up my sleeve; but without adding 26 letters of the alphabet as items and have people choose 1 x P + 2 x E + 1 x A = 1 x C to create PEACE I couldn't make it work. I thought having 26 items on top of other things in there (like jewellery and book-ets) would just make it look way too messy and be a bit too fussy for folk. So I selected a few phrases and words and priced them; and offer folk the opportunity to email me with requests.

I did work out how to let folk choose if they wanted upper case or lower case so that felt like a win!

The pebbles are $2.00 each; and if any locals want to buy them, there is no postage.  Well depending on how I go manipulating the website, there might be postage, but it will be swiftly refunded!

So many things...

Re-imagining the shop

Once again, my art life is jumping this way and that at the moment. I am trying to stick with the book to be made for the Narratives exhibition; as well as get the second book of Silences printed; and do an unexpected calligraphic commission; and of course update the websites and shops, keeping them stocked and looking nice and friendly. And packing and posting as things get sold.

Oh, and designing and printing some new business cards! I have never had business cards that reflect my jewellery, so these ones now do this; and I have two more designs to consider and get printed then I should be able to include the right card with the right sort of item...

As ever, life is full and varied.

I did want to record and spend a bit time taking stock of the steps for the new shops in a way. The time we spent thinking through what we would and could keep doing after we left the big space was a fascinating time for me. It truly was a time of re-imagining. I had to re-imagine working in such a reduced space; I had to re-imagine what I might teach into the future; we  had to re-imagine how we would sell things if we couldn't display them in our physical shop; and we had to re-imagine what sort of work we continued to make.

It was a time of selection and farewell. Of commitment and release. Of reflecting on the past; but looking to the future. 

One of the jobs with the websites was deciding what categories I would use to put new items in (we deleted our entire inventory - gulp - and started from scratch). In thinking through 'how do the things I make group together', I went looking for through lines.

Previously my shop categories had been pretty descriptive - cards, artists books, posters and so on. Very descriptive of the item - the 'what it is'. What I felt was missing was the 'what it is about bit'. My sense is that people know me for my cards and my artists' books; a relatively frequent refrain when we had the shop space was " Are you the grief card lady???". And yes, indeed, I am. 

But they also know me for my women's work; and my grief work for example.

How best to reflect those sorts of things became a task I dipped into and out of. I would scratch down some thoughts and return to them. I would list things that might cover things;  and would then have to check if some items I wanted to keep making could still find a home. 

So this is where I landed (and may I say the logistics of getting that drop down menu to appear, and then get it in the right order was a Herculean effort for somebody who doesn't do website stuff for a living!).

I ended up with eight categories. Four of which are item categories; four of which are more thematic categories. 

Items: Artists' Books, Jewellery, Cards and Booklets

Thematic: Pebbles, Women, Grief and Pausing.

What I hope I have achieved (and the shops are still not fully stocked, because you know... life) is that when somebody clicks on Grief - they will find Grief cards and booklets (just not yet). If they click on pebbles, they will find jewellery an artists book and some calligraphic pebbles (again, not just yet). With Pausing they will find an artists' book and daily rainbow words... and I think this is where any peace work I do will land as well.

I think this offers options for folk; and also helps me see the interrelatedness of say my jewellery, and my grief is a stone book-ets. And also that I have enjoyed writing on pebbles for decades now... pebbles are a thing for me so I might as well own it!

To support these categories and the shops in general; we have re-imagined the entire shop and display into plastic tubs in a cupboard. What a hoot - so here is the behind the scenes look at our 'shop' these days!

Although I promise we are not selling the pandemic at all - that relates to work-work we did nearly two decades ago which proved rather prescient in 2020...

I expect that as my art continues and grows that I might re-assess these categories or groupings. New loves may appear and require their own name and place. It will evolve.

What started out as a task about "the categories for the shop" became a real investigation of myself as an artist; and a clarifying of what it is I do; what I love; and how I present myself. Fascinating.

Renewed Online Shops are open!!!

 Oh my goodness, the stress of it all.

Part of our move to home-based studios has seen the need for us to think about other avenues for sales. We hope to continue to have a couple of small Pop Up type showings or exhibitions each year; but on a regular basis we thought refreshing and renewing our online presence would make most sense.

And so the work began to delete the old inventory; seriously consider what groupings of work we have; working out what work we could sensibly sell online (and put in the post!!!) and the like.

Having decided those things it was then necessary to translate that into shops, categories, photograph them, describe them, price them and get them in the right order.

And having done that, it was necessary to promote it, which also meant refreshing and renewing our newsletter. So quite a bit of tech updating.

Our newsletter takes on a new role in all of this and we have been pondering what to say; how often to say it and so on.  We are evolving shall we say.

Anyhow, the stress of it all is that we had drafted the newsletter; we had set up our shops. We had started to populate the shops. We had learned how to apply discounts for time limited periods. We had managed to work out how to apply tariffs to the US so that our pricing covered those. And so on.

We were ready.

Together we sat and hit send on the newsletter at about 10.15am on Sunday morning. Very exciting! The whole thing looked good, the links worked and we thought phew we've done it.

Four hours later I rose from my chair in a panic. Oh my goodness, I had forgotten to make the shops go 'live'!!!  I had had them in dormant mode whilst were setting them up and getting organised so that no one could inadvertently purchase something that we no longer had. It was a risk management approach. Until we discovered the real risk was that we would promote something only for folk to find they couldn't buy anything!

Fixed it, sent a quick update email, and thought job done. 

But then I went and looked at the websites and it wasn't job done; the sites were still dormant. I fell down some serious rabbit holes trying to work out what went wrong; what I had to do; how could I save the changes? Would I have to send a third or maybe fourth email newsletter explaining it didn't work? Maybe it did work? It was awful. But after 15-20 minutes of frenzy, it worked and people could find our shops, as well as be able to buy something. So many lessons.

As a thank you to our newsletter subscribers we gave them an early bird type option. We decided my new jewellery and Barry's new watercolours would be 15% off regular price for a week. And that we would let other folk know after a day or two. And here we are.

I managed to learn how to do online discounts - yay - and I'm a bit chuffed to see here that the shop sort of re-sorts itself so that the pieces that have sold end up at the bottom as out of stock. Fascinating.

So that's part of what has been going on behind the scenes as we re-imagine our art lives!

It is all a pretty big adventure, but my what a ride. 

We hope to send newsletters more regularly this year depending on where we are and what we are doing, and will always try to offer our newsletter subscribers a little bit of something. So, if you would like to sign up you can do so on the right hand side of the blog here, or on any page of my website.

My new look shop is here if you'd like to see how it's going. Not every category has been filled yet - my main focus was on my cards and on my jewellery. Gradually, it will grow. If I keep breathing in, and breathing out...

Markets and Magnificence

 Barry and I were fortunate to be able to take part in the Watten Easter Market. Watten is about an hour’s drive away and full of lovely friendly people.

We had some of Barry’s work and some of mine and tried to make our table look interesting, without being as professional as many others. We had a really great day, sold stuff and bought stuff, and came home smiling.

Hand written price tags…

We went for a drive to Lairg (well, let’s be honest, the object of the venture was The Pier Cafe and it’s astonishing and dazzling array of cakes) and along the way, the light and the clouds were breathtaking. I was driving, so most of these are courtesy of Barry. Altho I did take the first one when we had stopped.

Amazing. As were the cakes!

Peace and old words

 As you know International Day of Peace is 21 September, which means it is rolling around soon!  Given we now have a platform that makes selling easy, I thought I would get a couple of sets of peace pebbles up there for folk if they wanted their own little messages of peace around the place.

This photo of the pebble grid before writing just melted my heart. So calm. So serene. So gentle.

And then I wrote on them (a couple had to be replaced due to over enthusiastic ink-filling of my nib).

 

And as ever, I just love their simplicity.

You can find them here if you feel like you'd like a set for yourself or to share.

And then some lovely other shop news - one of my Library of Lost Words has been purchased and will be winging its way to its new owner soon.

Which meant I had to photograph the only other one left and here it is in all its old and rusty glory.

I love this word 'jobler'!

And 'stiricide' means icicles falling from a a roof! Or at least it did in 1656.

The original stories can be found here and here.

This actual Library can be found here.

I do love these wee works - and thank you to the reader who bought the most recent one. Another reader has bought one previously as well! We must like words and stuff.

Teamwork and the non-making work of art

 Some days you do the work that helps you make; rather than spend the time making.

The week was pretty much like that - following on from the big clean up; there were one or two jobs left on the list which got done today (filing and sorting bookshelves).

If you follow Barry's blog, you will know he has been busy making what he terms 'product' - some fabulous ladles are done; as are some butter/pate spreaders, and I know leaf tea caddy spoons and leaf teaspoons are on the way.  What that means for me is where the teamwork bit comes in - I write the swing tags for his work.  

Today I set about writing 50 swing tags. I cut the paper to size; punched the holes and then wrote. 

Here's the first part done.

Then the second part.

This is halfway through the third part which happens on the back.

And to finish where I got to today, I cut 50 lengths of thread to be tied onto each tag. Then the price is written on each one and the tag attached to the item. Barry pretty much takes it from here now (altho I often write the price).

We have emerged safely from our 3 day lockdown.  Brisbane had to stay another day, but they are out now too.  In terms of work you do for art that isn't really art... I organised for the studio to get its own QR code.

I am not sure how many other places are doing this; but here we do it a lot.  You scan the code into your phone to check in, and this allows contact tracers to firm up where you have been and if indeed people who were at the same place are at risk. Hence our short and sharp lockdowns - rather than really long ones.

In other news, I have been updating our websites. A long way to go still, but if you head to DEP you can see that I have put my 6 feminist posters online for sale.

This was prompted in part, because a while ago I sent a number of our female journalists posters to say thank you for the amazing work they are doing holding this country to account.  As best they can. Seriously we are in bad shape in so many ways, but I digress. 

Included in these was a "nevertheless, she persisted" poster to Annabel Crabb.  Who, during the week popped this little thank you on her instagram page.

Which got almost 3,500 likes and then I got quite a few enquiries!  I never expected her or any of the others to promote the work; so of course, was behind the 8 ball when she did...

Sadly, we had to postpone our Celebrating Books Maleny event "Sunday Morning Talking Crime" which was due to happen this morning.  Given the uncertainties about travel, lockdowns and numbers of people allowed to gather in one spot it was the only option.

Our organising group decided early in the year that rather than have our full festival on one weekend and risk losing it all if we locked down; we would split events over several weekends.  We have had some great successes so far this year and it has been exciting to gather again and share our love of books.  Had we gone with the one-weekend-only it would have been this weekend; so we feel very fortunate that we made that strategic decision to help manage our risks - and we did!  Hopefully we will be back with another Sunday Morning Talking Crime event before the year is out.

Shopkeeping, marketing and promotion

As we edge closer to our soft opening this Saturday (6 June), and to our Open Studio day (next Saturday 13 June), the reality of having a Gallery-Shop is becoming clearer, and is quite exciting.

As I am trying hard not to get so far ahead of myself that I stress myself out, I am pretty much taking a day at a time and finding that works quite well.

Today, hooray, we go the reverse cycle air conditioner installed and the heating worked wonderfully well. Deliciously so in fact, so it is grand to be able to have people visit and know they will be warm as toast.

We approached our local Visitor Information Centre today with our DL cards and they were happy to to have us!  They will promote us to visitors and also do a  special promotion around the Open Studio as well, so that feels great.

We have been fortunate to get our banner designed and printed. The plan is it will be out whenever we are in - so people can glance down the driveway and know whether we are there or not. Barry is currently down the coast buying sandbags to keep it in place when the wind blows!

Our DL cards were designed by a local printmaking friend Kim Herrings and look great.  We are planning to share them far and wide.

We have managed to do a very detailed inventory which kind of amazes us.  We have even managed to enter most of it into our sales device (square) with quantities etc so we know how many we have left - most exciting even more amazing .

And we have pretty well priced everything too and I have been making up small price cards.

And popping them on display.

We ordered a stamp and have been merrily stamping brown paper bags for wrapping and packing.

Signs have been printed for the doors about the impact of the virus on how many folk we can accommodate at one time and things like that.

Our B-I-G sign for the building on the main street is still happening - just waiting to confirm the size and we should be good to go. Some things take more time it seems.

We have just ordered the parking signs for our parking bays and they should arrive soon.  We are doing things little by little, but there are lots of little!

I have done some small single sheet price lists for the current wall works

And so it goes...there is a lot to being a shopkeeper, promoter and marketer of one's work.  And in our spare moments we are making plenty of product.

But still, its great fun and we are excited to begin...