Happy New Year! Calendar give-away

Well hello everyone! Another full year has passed and we're into 2011. I hope you all had a wonderful and restful Christmas season.

I don't know about you but I enjoy starting the new year as it always looks full of promise and big ideas. I've got so many ideas that I want to work on this coming year and to make sure that I stay on track I use several different calendars at the same time. I have my family day planner, my daily Etsy journal, my studio calendar, my iCal on the computer and our family photo calendar.

Being such a big calendar fan, I thought it would be nice to give-away one of my own art calendars to one of my readers. Leave a comment below for one entry and retweet this post for another entry. I will draw the winner on January 7th. Good luck and feel free to stay updated by "liking" me on Facebook.

How the show went

As we are now fully into the craft show season, I thought I'd tell you about my first craft show experience in more than twelve years. Last Saturday, Nov. 27, I participated in the Steveston Christmas Craft Show.  This juried show is a popular event in the community and I would attend whenever I could. This year I thought I'd try and make my art presence a little more known locally and snag a table. I'm an avid reader of the Etsy Storque, Handmadeology, and HandmadeSpark articles and I've gleaned a lot of tips from them about doing craft shows. I REALLY wanted this show to go well and I prepared for it as much as I could. I looked at other peoples set-ups like on Flickr's ShowMe Your Booth, I watched videos like this one by Linty Fresh, and I tried to mentally prepare myself for any slumps in the sale day. My attitude during the show was my biggest concern because I knew that the more upbeat I was the more sales I would attract. Because the work I do is important to me and is an expression of who I am, I tend to get upset when my work is passed over. I realize that everyone has their own taste but when someone says they don't really like my art it's like they're saying they don't like ME. Silly, I know, and something I'm getting better at dealing with, but it's still true.

So my tactic for staying positive was to bring a funny book and my sketchbook. My husband had bought me "Sh*t my Dad says" and I have to say that it made me laugh out loud so many times that I was looking a little crazy. Put a smile on my face though. For the other times I took a pencil to paper and did some drawing. I'm currently working on some rabbit images and I felt like I created a couple that I can work with. There's nothing better than creating to make me feel good.

All in all, this show was a fantastic learning experience for me and because it was such a success to me, I'm thinking about how else I can branch out locally. Have you got any tips about shows? Would love to hear them.

Some great give-aways

 
As many of you on-line can attest, there are many wonderful people in art and craft field to meet. I wish I could say that I meet as many generous and helpful people in my day to day life as I do through Etsy, and Twitter. The first person I would like to introduce you to is Jennifer of Just Jingle . I met Jennifer on Facebook and when she mentioned that she was always looking for artists to feature, I quickly rose my hand. Boy am I glad I did. Take a look at the nice feature Jennifer has done on me and then take note of the give-away we have put together for you. As a gift to our readers and fans, I'm giving away one of my "Speckled Mushrooms" pendants to one lucky winner. This is a world-wide draw and you'll notice that there are plenty of ways to gain additional entries. Good luck to all of you and I'm really looking forward to hearing your comments.

The next person I wanted to tell you about is Gilliauna who runs an Etsy shop called Bits and Beads. Gilliauna has consistently been retweeting my Twitter  posts for ages now and really has been an all-around supportive person to my on-line pursuits. Gilliauna has even been so kind as to have mentioned me as a favorite in interview on Audrey's Give-away Blog. Take a look at the blog and you'll notice a great give-away of a $20 gift certificate to Gilliauna's jewelry shop. Here too, note that there are many opportunities to earn extra entries. Start your window shopping now. 

By Gilliauna