Okay, it’s time to push myself out there again. I’ve booked some gallery space and sent out the invitations. We’re gonna have a party!
Here is the invitation. It’s a bit hard to read here, so click on it to view a bigger version. You can also download the PDF version.
The invitation
I’m only just getting around to reading it, but a couple of weeks ago there was an interesting Special Report (series of related articles) in the Economist about the deluge of data that is being produced and the neat things that can be done with that data.
There are about 10 articles in total. In particular check out the “Sources and acknowledgements” which has links to some pretty cool diagrams.
A friend emailed me recently, commenting that she enjoyed reading my post from August about the Procrastination Hack. I’ve just re-read the post and figure it must be time for an update.
Where am I?
Well, I’m a lot further along than I thought I could be. My stuff, er, I mean, my Artistic Output, can now be seen in four shops here in Amsterdam. I’m pleased to note that three of the shops actually bought my A.O. instead of taking it in on consignment. I earn a fraction less but it’s so much easier than consignment, where you haven’t actually sold it, but you also don’t have it as part of your inventory. You have to keep meticulous records. And, you also have to remember to go and check up on it periodically, which I’m really bad at.
Anyway, to continue. I have also sold several boxes of my Designer Drawing Pins. I’ve even had a couple of international sales with my drawing pins, which makes me very happy.
My Etsy shop is not so empty. There’s not a lot of variety yet—there’s a lot of drawing pins—but it’s a work-in-progress, so I’m not too worried.
Photos. Grr. Photos. I’m getting there, but …
I suppose the best part is that I’m happy. No, I’m better than happy, I feel content. Now when someone asks me, “How are you?”, I spontaneously reply, “Good!” There’s no longer a big internal discussion along the lines of, “Well, I feel okay, but, well, not really. Actually, I feel quite depressed. But do I really want to explain this, and, anyway, are you even remotely interested?”
Answering “Good!”, is so much simpler :-)
And maybe I’ve found a way of dealing with the oh-no-one-will-want-to-buy-my-stuff blues. I woke up last Friday feeling somewhat down. And instead of wallowing in it, as I would have done a few months ago, I decided that I would approach a couple more shops. Which I did. I didn’t sell anything, but I have the email addresses of a couple of purchasers. But, that’s not the point, I’m just so pleased that I did something active: feel depressed? then it must be time to go and find a new outlet.
And guess what? Later on that same day I sold a box of drawing pins to a friendly person in America who discovered my Etsy shop. Is that what they call Karma?
Several weeks ago there was an article in The Economist about how falling fertility is going to affect the world, for the better. It was an interesting article and it had an especially interesting chart showing fertility versus GDP on a global scale. The chart came from gapminder.org which of course I looked up.
Gapminder has developed this really neat piece of software, called Trendalyzer, that can show statistics in a meaningful and interesting way. The data that they use comes from organisations such as the UN, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank. (In the meantime Trendalyzer has been bought by Google. Surprise, surprise.)
Go and check it out. Have a play with the Gapminder World software. I recommend watching the video tutorial as there are lots of buttons to play with. It’s also worth your while to go and watch some of the videos by Hans Rosling, the brain behind Gapminder, who is a very entertaining public speaker. He has just recently given a TED talk predicting when Asia will overtake America in terms of average income per person. Fascinating stuff.
Oooh. I’ve been in a very weird space lately. Not wanting to create. Blaming everyone else (except of course myself) for my uncreativity. Coming up with a unique (yes, really!) idea. Not knowing how to market it. Suddenly wanting to be, and obsessing about being, creative.
I read a really discouraging thought several years ago: Once you want to start really selling yourself then you have to devote probably at least 30% of your creative time to promoting yourself.
What?! A third of my precious creative time?! Just devoted to promoting me, myself and I??!
Don’t be silly.
Okay, hang on. What does that mean? “Promoting myself”?
Well….
Oh yeah. And this is outside of the thing that you are trying to sell.
It’s a pretty weird world.
Okay here we are another 2 months down the track, and we have another spasmodic post.
I don’t seem to be very good at this blogging thing.
But, I gotta say, that I do have some (reasonable?) excuses. I had several orders after the Big Opening (November 8). I don’t seem to be quite at that stage where I can just splat out the order and only what was asked for. No, I gotta try out several different versions, and then another several more. Efficient I’m not.
Anyway, I digress.
After The Opening, there were, in quick succession, the celebrations of: Sint/Saint Maarten (November 11), my oldest son’s birthday (end of October), Sinterklaas (aka Sint/Saint Nikolaas/Nicholas, the forerunner to Santa Claus, on December 5), and then Christmas (Dec 25).
November/December is a busy month here in Holland. And those varied (mostly Catholic) saints seem to demand their own form of mayhem in the guise of worship/celebration (and I haven’t really understood the reason why *I* have to celebrate these mostly pagan-originated celebrations).
After Christmas comes the New Year’s celebrations, with its own special rituals to see the passing of one year to the next. (Why is that so important, I often wonder?)
Then there was January.
In retrospect January was a very weird month. I started off the month feeling very motivated. I thought, “I’ve got a website, I’ve more or less got my online shop (etsy) organised, I’ve got business cards, postcards, a business manager. I got it all. It’s a start of a Brand New Year. So let’s go Out There!”
And probably around about the same time, the Whole World decided to collapse (bank lending crises [banks don't want to lend to each other], credit crisis [no one wants to lend you money, and I mean No One], Icelandic banks default crises [ huh? a country can go bankrupt?]).
A few weeks later we seem to be sitting at the beginnings of the worse financial crises since the Great Depression (just BTW I NEVER, EVER, wanted to take part in a depression. Recessions we can cope with. Depression? Dunno know.)
Coincidentally (really), about a week later I felt the cold wet fingers of a Big Blue Funk (BBF).
A BBF seems to manifest itself (in my glassy makeover) as feelings of, “Oh no. I don’t want to melt glass. Oh dear. What does that mean? If I don’t want to melt glass then what am I doing?? Panic! No, no don’t Panic. But, if I don’t want to melt glass then who am I. Shit! If I don’t want to melt glass then, shit, what am I?? Okay, then you cant panic a bit. No don’t. Don’t panic. There’s no need to panic. Well, maybe you’re allowed to panic just a tiny bit. Ohhhhh, woe is me.”
But this time around, I’m “experienced” enough (in the BBFs) to realise that it will fix itself up. I know that it will blow over. Well, better said, maybe I am learning to trust that it will. But I gotta admit that this little version of the BBFs (3-4 weeks in total) got me a little worried.
About a week ago I finally had some time to go and play with melting glass. Sure I could make some excuses but I was actually totally and utterly free.
I had thoughts like, “What will I do there? Sitting in front of a torch, with lots of rods of glass waiting to be melted. What will I do?? What colours should I combine? What should I try? Can I think of anything to try???”
Then, thank god, I thought, “Well, there are several techniques that I’m sorta okay at, but well, let’s face it, I’m still a little scared of. Yeah, yeah. Like encasing. Encasing? Yeah, you know those crappy encased stripes. Encased stripes? Yeah, you’re right, you’re pretty crappy at them.”
And suddenly I had A Goal.
Big sigh of relief. I have A Goal!
I even became more ambitious than the encased stripes, and discovered the addiction of “pleated beads” (a la Tomba Dama).
I will take photos. I promise. But I’d just like to spill out some words right now. I’m just *so* happy to feel happy/motivated/enthused about melting glass again.
It’s been a bit busy around here. I had a few orders to fulfill after the party. Then our modem died which meant that the website, blog and email address were offline. And of course I wasted a couple of precious days installing the modem, updating the (internal) IP addresses, getting my mail server running, checking that all the websites work again, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
(We won’t talk about the two days where I got side-tracked obsessing about the idea of automating my workflow … it was only a teeny-eeny little bit of programming after all. Not something that we need to talk about.)
And recently I’ve been wrestling, yet again, with the camera. Taking photos. Blech. Taking photos of glass objects. Double blech.
Anyway, here is a bead pic to show how far I’ve got. Photographing light coloured beads on a white background has been a bit tricky up to now—the edges tend to wash out. But I think my camera skills are improving. What do you think?
Oh. I’m quite pleased with how the bead turned out too ;-)
I’ve been crazy-busy getting a couple of orders ready since the opening. Finally taking some time out. It was a fine party. Lots of people came, stayed, and drank bubbles. Good fun. The gallery was the perfect location. Gerdur, the owner, has many interesting gadgets and items to look at in her shop/gallery, so it wasn’t just a case of looking at the beads and ho-hum, what do we do now?
Sold a few items, but on reflection, I realise that my pricing scheme was all over the place. Some people picked up good bargains! Anyway, I learnt lots of things for “next time”.
Okay! I did it. The gallery has been booked. The date has been set. The invitations have been mailed out. It’s a Launch Party!
Here is the invitation:
My close-up vision has been deteriorating of late (sigh), which is a real hassle if you make glass beads. A beadmaker should wear special safety glasses, made from a material called didymium. Didymium glasses have a dual function: to protect the eyes from flying bits of hot glass, and to reduce the sodium flare from the melting glass. Sodium flare is a bright yellow flame which obscures the details of the bead; the special mauve-coloured didymium glasses cancel out the yellow flare so that you can see what you’re doing.
Anyway, didymium glasses are not cheap, even the ugly pair that I have was not cheap. Prescription didymium glasses are even more expensive. So for a while I resorted to wearing reading glasses under my safety glasses. My not-suitable-for-glasses nose was slowly dying under the weight. And every time a rod of glass exploded I would jump, and then my glasses would fall off their glasses. All in all, very irritating.
I finally came across this wonderful invention by Neoptx: stick-on bifocal lenses. Made from a special plastic which is pliable when wet but as hard and as clear as glass when dry. The lenses come in different strengths, and are removeable and reusable. Using them you can convert a pair of safety glasses, or a favourite pair of sunglasses, or a set of prescription glasses into a set of bifocals. I found a place here in the Amsterdam that could order them in, but the quoted price was a somewhat mind-boggling €35 for one pair of lenses.
In the meantime, via Lampworketc, a glass forum, I was led to this great little American company, StickonBifocals, which sells Neoptx lenses for a fraction of the price. International customers may order up to 2 pairs, so I ordered two different strengths. They arrived within 5 days, and cost $US 34, including shipping. In these rather weird financial times, where banks seem to be crashing about our ears, that works out to €25 for *two* pairs of lenses.
The lenses work as advertised. I now have pure 20/20 vision through my expensive, ugly didymium glasses. And, even better, there is no added weight. My nose is grateful.
