I listed this today in my Etsy Shop and it sold today! Â Now if we can only take Buddha’s teachings to heart and create peace - peace both within and without!! Â I played with this image to learn some techniques in Photoshop and am delighted that someone wants to take it home!!
I am sure it will not surprise some of my regular readers to learn that I know I need to create more peace in the way I am running my business. Â I think I have too many irons in the fire and I want to do them all. I did make more progress on 2 graphic design jobs the last 2 days. Â Well, 3, if you count the family job I am doing. Â So that is good. Â But marketing and networking are …. well, overwhelming!! Â And add to that, my posts have not been picked up by Feedblitz lately and they didn’t answer my email. Â I am not sure what to do! Â Take of yourself!!
First off, anyone who is willing, I would love if you would send thoughts of peace to Lebanon - I have friends with family at risk there. Â I know there are so many places that can use our kind thoughts and healing energy. Â Thank you! Lots of rainy weather here today … but I managed to get a walk in around the block before it started. Â Today (and the last few days) I was working on taking a client’s photo of her dog and getting the puppy - the gorgeous puppy! - into fields of butterflies and flowers. Â I don’t want to show you yet because she has not seen the images yet and that doesn’t seem right. Â At least today’s work was more successful than yesterdays!! Â That is, is will be successful assuming my client and friend likes at least one of them!
These birds are part of the series that I did awhile ago with a very pretty bird picture .. and then I made lots of transformations of it.  Have you ever been playing with images and created several images you love, knowing, of course, that you will remember how you did it (ha ha  famous last words!!) … Well, I wish I could remember how I did this.  (At least I remember which program).
This week I missed the Illustrator Friday challenge … the very first time since I started to participate. Â Shucks … I meant to get it done. Â I want to make sure I at least do the 2 Things Challenge this week. Â I also have 2 other jobs (besides the ones I mentioned above) that I need to get done. Â And then all the other responsibilities I have taken on. Â A little too much on overload - but I am delighted to get this puppy into his field!! Â Thanks for stopping by!
I am so thrilled that I have been featured on another blog!!! You have heard me speak of Chris O’Byrne who has a blog focused on online art marketing. Chris has decided to feature an artist every Friday on his blog. He decided to start with me!! I hope you will take the time to go over and check out his very interesting blog … thank you again, Chris!! You (my readers) are so so wonderful!!
One other thing I want to let you know about today … I have found out about a new resource for bloggers called rrsHugger.com. I think many of you know what rss feeds are … a way to be able to keep up with your favorite blogs by a feed reader instead of having to go visit the site to see if they have posted yet. The rss feed is the mechanism that gives you the info about their blog.
Each blogger chooses a blog name … mine is www.rssHugger.com/dianeclancy.com. They are providing this service free at the moment if you write a post about them. I am hoping you will go visit it.
This is great for bloggers because there is a lot of exposure. One exciting thing is that they have a random way of showing blogs so that everyone gets a chance to be seen. They also have the top 100 blogs and other ways of finding blogs.
For readers, it is an advantage because you can find lots of new (to you) exciting blogs to be able to read and follow very easily. I think this is a win/win all around!
I just read a very powerful post by Staci Rose on the Holocaust and powerful responses. There is a moving remembrance in London happening … this month. Harry Potter’s glasses are involved. Staci wrote an incredible post about the Holocaust, survivors, and several fantastic resources. I strongly recommend you check out this post!!! Thank you, Staci!
We will get back to marketing .. there are just so many exciting things to write about!
Happy New Year!! Let’s all have the best year we have ever had! It would be wonderful for each of us to move ahead with our goals, health and relationships and to have peace and justice everywhere on earth. This includes environmental justice - caring for the earth! Sounds good to me!! Marketing is going to wait a few days as I am inspired to write a few other posts first. Lisa Call inspired me to review the year in this post. Today I am going to look at 2007 and see what I have done and tomorrow focus on what I want to accomplish.
Actually I have accomplished quite a bit in 2007 and perhaps it will be useful to document some of it. Some of these were goals and some weren’t.
Opened my CafePress Shop which allowed people to buy my paintings on mugs, tiles, totes, journals and more. This has been a goal of mine since 1988 (to offer my paintings on merchandise) and CafePress has allowed me to!
Opened my Etsy Shop where I have been selling reproductions of my artwork from cards to larger matted prints. Opening this shop allowed me to reach more people who wanted to buy my artwork. I have been wanting to market more effectively for a long time.
Learned about Art Trading Cards (ATC or ACEO) this fall and started offering them for sale. These were my best sellers at Etsy.
Learned about blogs this spring and have posted a post every day since the end of March on this blog.
Had several clients for whom I created web sites and blogs. If you go to my site and look under links to clients links, you can see some of them.
Several clients wanted substantial graphic design work which I was delighted to do!
I exceeded my financial goals for the year.
Thanks to one of my readers on this blogs, I am doing better at keeping on top of my financial records … trying for every day to keep the details fresh in my mind as I put them into my databases.
I have maintained some local card sales.
Made fantastic connections with online friends!! Thank you!!!
This fall is when I think I first heard about social networking … I have been very hard at work doing this!! Sometime I will do a post with my connections so you can connect with me in these various ways.
Found out about and joined WWAO, Worldwide Women Artists Online, a great group of women artists who sell our work online. I have made lots of great connections there.
On Etsy found out about VAST, Visual Artists Street Team. I was in the group for about a month before I became a moderator … so this is a great opportunity to again connect with other visual artists who sell our artwork.
Had a very small amount of licensing of my artwork. This was something I wanted to pursue a lot … next year.
Several clients hired me to put their animal companions into fields of flowers or butterflies. This was a big success.
I sent out one email newsletter this year - and I didn’t get any “take me offs.” Several people wrote back thanking me for this holiday newsletter.
Finished “Reflections in Blue IV,” a pastel series I have been working on.
Been creating digital art like wild, supported greatly by your support and enjoyment of my bubblescapes.
I have cut a whole pile of blank ATCs that are all ready for me to fill up .. it should be a great way to get back into my traditional painting …. next year.
Our local Artists of Franklin County became much clearer about our goals, under my leadership. We put on 3 AWE (Artists Window Exhibits) since mid-summer.
I was invited (and accepted) to be on the Board of Directors of the Create Franklin County, the regional group working to build the Creative Economy.
I am sure there are more .. but this is exciting to see all the things I have done to move my business ahead as I wanted.
Two days ago I mentioned that day was the first day of Kwanzaa, December 26 to January 1, a 7 day celebration started in 1966. Kwanzaa is for the African American and Pan-African community to celebrate their heritage and reinforce positive community and human values: a celebration of family, community and culture. I find it a very moving, welcoming, uplifting observance from the ones I have attended.
(NGUZO SABA (The Seven Principles) taken from the site of Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of Kwanzaa, link above)
Umoja (Unity): To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.
Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
I like to enter the 2 Things Challenge each week. This week is Tidy and Ends. It was hard to come up with an idea, but at least the execution was easy for me this week! So thank you! I hope you like my entry.
Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, a 7 day celebration started in 1966. Kwanzaa is for the African American and Pan-African community to celebrate their heritage and reinforce positive community and human values. The 7 principles are wonderful - perhaps tomorrow I will list them .. I have been very moved when I have gone to Kwanzaa celebrations!!
Today is World Peace Day! Here is the link to learn more about this great day on the winter/summer solstice. This is to encourage each of us to spend some time today in prayer and meditation for world peace. A great idea to my mind!!!
In this journey of printing cards to get to licensing my artwork, I have now chosen Modern Postcard as my printer. If you want to see more of this odyssey, it is in the last several posts. The size of the cards was a decision I needed to make. They had a very reasonable price for cards that are 4.25 x 6.” Their prices (at that time anyway) were very high for 5 x 7″ cards. There are printing concerns regarding the initial paper size each printer uses. For Modern Postcard, they waste a lot of paper with the 5 x 7″ size card. So that made my decision about the size!
Given that I like control and input in how I do things, I wanted to make the file up myself and not use one of their templates. I bet you can guess that I spent some real time choosing the font that I used. A font (especially a decorative font) is another representation of oneself to the world. I eventually chose the Parisian font. It is delicate and elegant … and I love it and it makes my heart sing! And I think it looks great with my work. You can see this font on the images I created lately with words as part of the painting. That is Parisian.
Now for the images. Of course, printing each painting on a card is expensive (at least to me). “They” suggest printing cards in series. I had a buyer already who was kind enough to take a risk on my work and he had already agreed to buy some cards. I was not the first local artist he had done this for either. He outs his values into action!! Dick McLeester of VisionWorks is a great person and sells progressive and uplifting magnets, books, cards and bumper stickers. You may want to check him out.
I decided to choose 6 images that are some of my most distinctive and unusual paintings. You can see what I chose here … and these cards are still for sale. I prepped the images and got the sizes correct and make sure the dpi was right. And I put it all together into a file in a graphic design program for each painting. I used Quark then but now I would use InDesign. You can also do this by uploading your image into their templates …
So I took a deep breath and went to the next step. One can print (or at least back then) in steps of 500. I decided to take a leap of faith and print 1000 of each of the 6 images. So I put them all on a disk and sent them off. Nowadays one would just upload them. Now we will wait to get them back from the printer!
Illustrator Friday has a challenge every week. This week is Little Things. As usual, there are many ways to interpret the topic. I have chosen to create about the “little things” that can irritate us or bring us delight.
Diane Clancy creates vibrant paintings that feature color and vision to inspire and uplift people. Says Diane, "I feel very blessed to have this opportunity to express myself through painting. I love that people say my artwork enhances their lives."
Diane belongs to Worldwide Women Artists Online, an international collective of women artists showing and selling our work online. For more original art direct from the women who create it, search WWAO.
Diane Clancy creates vibrant paintings that feature color and vision to inspire and uplift people. Says Diane, "I feel very blessed to have this opportunity to express myself through painting. I love that people say my artwork enhances their lives."
