Empowered Me

Getting up this morning I had a plan: 

Let the dogs out, eat breakfast, boot up my computer and write about something that has been on my mind for a very long time. 

Before I got on Blogger I decided to check out Etsy and I noticed an article discussing "crafting". Before long I was clicking on every link they had which led me to an eye-opening article here. The article under the link I just gave is titled "Etsy.com Peddles a False Feminist Fantasy" written by Sara Mosle. It's a little dated but I think that it still holds rather true even in current times. 

What I like about this article is that the author takes a look at the data, percentages and numbers of existing members to form an opinion. Based off of her research, she maintains that married mother's (or soon to be mother's) who are at home with children are the likely candidates to be seller's on the site because they are holding "out the hope of successfully combining meaningful work with motherhood in a way that more high-powered careers in the law, business, or sciences seldom allow". What that means is that, in a way, Etsy is catering to that to increase flow onto the website and all-the-while falsely encouraging the idea that you CAN be a stay-at-home-mom and make lots of money. The author also states that it's a fantasy because only an extremely small percentage of people have claimed to do well enough on the site to sustain an actual lifestyle. Upon further inspection of the income of those seldom lucky ones you come to find out that they are not really making a living at all solely on the site and aren't the breadwinners for their family.

I'm not going to go into any further detail about it because I really want to encourage you to read the article. It's well articulated and I'm afraid of not doing the author justice by hacking up her words, but I did find that I was refreshed after reading it.

I've only ever made one sale on my shop, just one. Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled that at least one person was able to enjoy my product. To know that someone loved something that I made had me giddy.

Quick story: 

I was at work when it happened. I was sitting at my desk at school after a long day of teaching over 120 small children feeling.just.exasperated. I had a few minutes before my afternoon duty at the car-rider pick-up area so I decided to go through some emails to waste time. As I was perusing my inbox I noticed a letter from Etsy....could it be? I always recognized the emails that were asking me to pay my online bill for that month (come on, everyone knows what impending bills look like) but this one was totally different. I opened it and the next few moments when like this--

Audible squeal with hands slightly raised and fists clenched, dashing out the door, stampeding across campus to the gym, bursting through Coach Cooper's office door, jumping in the air and pronouncing loudly "I sold a painting!" to a very confused Coach Cooper who promptly gave me a high-five and congratulated me.

I love the satisfaction of knowing that someone appreciates my work enough to display it.

The reason I mention this is because I like my shop and I will continue to run it but today, after having read that article, I feel free-r. I had been reading Etsy's "Quit Your Day Job" series. I had been using Etsy as a platform to get me to a place where I didn't have to do any other job but to make art. Hell, I'm not even married and I don't even have kids but that was the long term goal and I wanted Etsy to help me get there.

I felt so frustrated that things didn't seem to be working out. It seemed like everyone else was doing well, so what was wrong with mine? I'm also a part of a group The Art Colony and they have forum's to discuss all facets of making art and in one discussion they agreed that hardly anyone makes serious money on Etsy. Me being me, I didn't want to listen.

I woke up this morning in a bit of a funk (I'll explain in subsequent blog posts I'm sure) and now I feel like I have more clarity. Isn't that so strange???? I feel like I want to create MORE! Maybe it was just me getting overzealous about everything, maybe it was me having unrealistic expectations, maybe it was just me fixating on how things "should be" rather than just appreciating "what is" but I just feel so.much.better.

It's really not just me. I'm not chained to some unsuccessful venture that everyone else obtained with ease. I didn't fail at this!

I had a rough night but I feel so great today (admittedly a bit tired, but great). I think I'm going to spend today continuing to knit my mom a scarf and maybe I'll break out some oil paint today. Who knows?? Things seem limitless today :)

Thrifty Me

Ok, so remember my blog post about my car "Jenny" and how I was super proud to have paid her off and legally owned a car for once in my life? Yup, selling her. I figure I'm leaving and I don't want to pay full price for car insurance and I don't want Andrew burdened by another car if the Army tells him he has to move while I'm gone, so, selling her. It's one of those things where Jenny always could have used a little more cleaning and time paid towards maintenance (like new tires) but I never got around to it. Well now I have to do it all at once. 

One thing that's needed taking care of is the back seat. This car was originally my ex-husband's and he used to throw all his junk and dirty bags for work in the back seat, therefore the seat and vinyl seat belts got filthy. FILTHY. The straps were a dark brown color when they should have been silver, and well as the seat (which was originally light gray so you could see all the nastiness). He told me he'd get the car professionally cleaned before the car swap we had but when I had gone to pick up my car at the dealership and he had already taken mine I realized that I had been had. I tried cleaning it myself but to no avail so I kind of let it go for awhile.

Fast forward to yesterday.

I went to the dealership to get a regularly scheduled maintenance as well as have them get their guy who details car's to come in as well as the paint guy who tried (and failed) to spot paint an area of my car that got hit by a shopping cart. The maintenance itself is like $330. With everything else he estimated it to be a total of $700. $700??? Nope. Nope. Nope. I'm trying to get rid of this thing, NOT invest in it some more. I Googled all morning how to get those stains out of the seat belts and what to do to clean the seats. $14 later my seat belts are relatively clean, my seats are freaking sparkling AND to avoid paying a paint guy who literally cannot match paint colors to save his life (I have an alabaster white car and he used a beige color to cover up the spot so it looks terrible) I found a company online who sells paint pens for any type of car so that I can just do it myself. Take that stupid Mercedes dealership.

I also re-opened my Etsy shop with some new items. When I did the Sketchbook Project I had never worked with color-pencils and I really wanted to give that a try so that was the medium I chose to explore and with that I incorporated animals. Before I sent the book out I scanned the images and I re-worked them a little in Photoshop as well as drew new ones in my spare time. I thought these were cute little drawings.

                                                                Bonnie and Clyde

                                                                           Larry

                                                                Ricardo and Maria

                                                                     Woodpecker

                                                                        Tree Frog

The last 2 don't have names because I just couldn't think of anything that seemed appropriate. They are really cute (to me, hah) and I hope they sell alright on Etsy. Lord knows I haven't had much luck there. 

I'm so sleepy so I'm going to relax and snuggle my dogs :)

 

In Life, There Are Lots of Hello's and Goodbye's

I have had quite an internet dry-spell recently. I feel like the technology age sometimes alienates us from doing other things. In the time that I have taken my little hiatus I have done more drawing, started running again, cut my hair (really short!), randomly brushed up on mathematics, read 2 books, and cleaned out some old boxes containing some emotionally confusing items. 

Oh, and one more thing, I sold a painting! Yay me! 

Here is a look at some drawings had done in colored pencil

I know they need rotating but I didn't have time. I'm doing more just for the hell-of-it. Those went to the Sketchbook Project 2012 but I didn't even get to finish the whole book before it got sent off so those were it. It was fun though! They have some neat projects over at that website so check it out!

New!

Ok! I'm back! I had some stuff to work through in December so I became a bit antisocial but things are set right now so I'm back to my usual craziness!

So my Etsy page isn't doing so well and I was feeling a bit down about it BUUUUT I decided to refocus and adapt. The paintings I had done that didn't turn out well in the past I decided to convert into new art through use of jewelry. I cut out parts of the painting, drew on them, and put them in resin on pendants. Check out the newness!

I have also been working on my Sketchbook Project 2012 images which I will post later. I decided to use the 50% off coupon for Michael's that they had during the holidays to purchase a set of 36 Prismacolor pencils. What a deal! I never really worked with color pencils much so I chose to use this setting as an experiment and I'm liking the results to far.

As for my Sunday activities: haircut, grocery shopping, laundry...OH MY!

Mindless Babble

Hello! Well, the good news is that it's Wednesday which means most of the work week is over. I called out today because I'm feeling a bit under the weather so I can relax a bit better now. Yesterday was my birthday and it wasn't a good one thanks to crazy drivers and school children so I'm going to pretend that it never happened.

I just LOVE LOVE LOVE Parking Wars on Netflix. I'm completely addicted. It's one of those shows where I become so animated that I start yelling at the TV. It trumps all "reality" TV based shows without even trying. I love to sit here and watch stupid people attempt to justify their wrong-doing and that "the system" targets them specifically and that their lives are being ruined because of it. Ooooooooooh how I would love to work there! Andrew claims he'd be fired after a day, but considering that you can yell at subordinates in the Army I don't think he would be able to make it long in the real world. Most of the episodes are located in Philadelphia and it makes me nostalgic since I'm from a suburb of South Philly so that's another reason I'm infatuated with the show. I think if I were to get a job at the parking authority I would want to be a booter. When I see them boot cars I can feel my adrenaline boost a little because of the anticipation of getting caught and having a confrontation. At least you could say you don't have a boring job!

Well there's one piece of good news with my shop and that is I made one persons Treasury List. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant but apparently someone liked one of my paintings enough to kind of showcase it on their listing of favorite artwork or something. Yay! It's been exactly a month since I opened shop and to date there have been no purchases but I'm crossing my fingers!

I did different colors of my previous print "Falling" so here are the other 3 colors of it.

I like them. There are skydiving places near my school so I wonder if they would be interested in possibly purchasing one? I should ask. Ugh, I'm not a good salesman. I worked at Old Navy for 3 years and I worked logistics so I helped unload the truck and put out the merchandise and I loved it but they would hound us to try and get people to get Old Navy credit cards and I just couldn't do it. Out of 3 years I managed to get 1 and even that one was on accident because the person ASKED for it.

I just realized that I should change my blog title from "RunRunRabbit" to "The Nervous Artist" haha.

A Holiday Smoosh

I thought I would start this entry off with some cuteness. You can't deny those faces. I just realized that I need to post a picture of my 5 year old bunny, Reese. My parents brought him down from PA where he's been for the past year due to me moving so much. Speaking of my parents here's a sneak peek of my Thanksgiving shindig

These are literally the only 2 photos I have from Thanksgiving dinner because I became too preoccupied with cooking and then once dinner was served I came to realize that my camera battery was dead :-( It really wasn't that bad considering that I was only cooking for 4 people, we didn't need that much food and the mess was easy to clean at the end. Ants invaded the apple pie while it was sitting on the counter overnight, so apparently that particular clan got to participate in Thanksgiving as well....

The day after Thanksgiving after my parents had left and we were back from a rather easy Black Friday trip we put up our tree!!!

I bought all of this 2 years ago when I was with my ex-husband and it was at his house last year in storage so I finally got to take all of this out again and be festive! It's really nice to be with someone who enjoys spending holidays with me. Andrew decorated it with me and hung ornaments and lights up and just about every night we have been putting the lights on and enjoying the view from our couches. Ahhhh, don't you just love the holidays?!?!

Here's some more internet whoring. I just put these up in my shop

 
Why does 9:30pm feel like I've been up til midnight? Tomorrow's my birthday and I'm going to be 28....I'm just getting too old.

A Little Blue

Things aren't going too well with Etsy right now. I know it's slow to start but diamonds form faster than my shop is selling. Or, I guess, NOT selling. I'm pretty much broke at this point and my mind keeps saying "Well go out and buy more stuff to make" but I can't. I'm stuck. No one likes what I have so I don't make money and I have no money to purchase things that I could make for people to like. Shit.

In the meantime Andrew asked me forever ago to make him something so I've been working on his oil painting

It's not finished but it's getting there. I need it to get some creativity out and not to concentrate on how depressing my 3 views on Etsy are....

I have more pictures to share, especially of our Christmas tree that he allowed me to put up! :) But Andrew wants to go on a run now so I'm going to go participate in that. Night!

Art Whoring

You'd understand the title better if you read my last blog entry :-)

In my new task to be more self-promoting here are the new paintings in my shop!

I was working on these today during Parent-Teacher Conferences because no one ever wants to visit a resource teacher so it's kind of like a free day.

I think my laptop is making me blind. I would normally just use that as a over-exaggerated joke, but no really, I think it's going to make me blind. The screen brightness was all the way up and for weeks after just 10 minutes of computer use I would have to rub my eyes and it was giving me headaches and I'm noticing that I can't read things at a distance that I would normally not have a problem reading. On top of that all the carving and small detail work I've been doing with my hands lately I'm afraid I'm getting arthritis....at 28....the mornings and evenings are the worst.

That's it. I'm falling apart ;-)

Dirty Business

I keep reading articles like "Quit Your Day Job" and "Bring In More Sales", blurbs about how to put myself "out there" and to socialize and network more. Up until this point I have been wholly uncomfortable with posting my stuff on my Facebook page or even telling many people about this blog. The idea of what appears to be gloating about myself or the artwork I'm doing feels foreign and icky. 

In 8th grade our homeroom needed a representative for the Student Body Council and me and another girl raised our hands as having interest in being that rep. Naturally a class vote ensued whereby I felt so uncomfortable in voting for myself because it felt wrong and elitist that I felt the morally right thing to do would be to vote for the other girl. I lost....by one vote. MY VOTE. I felt a smidgen of disappointment but I wouldn't have changed the way it played out because even knowing what the outcome would have been I still wouldn't have voted for myself.

So here I am, turning 28 next month ( a long way from being 14) reading these useful tips on how to turn my beloved hobby into a successful internet venture and I can't help but think one thing: I need to be an internet whore to do it. It's like prostitution without intercourse, I have to sell myself any way I can to make a buck. Weird? Yes. Cheesy? Yes, but it's exactly what it feels like! I would rather someone just stumble onto my Etsy page and say "Oh, I like that. Let me tell my friends..." rather than me announce it all over the place. I broke out of my shell to make this blog as sort of a creative journal of my artwork and I knew the moment would come that I would have to be like "Here's more stuff in my shop!" but no one really reads this blog so I didn't really feel that in danger of self-exposure. Now I do. Now that it has to be me showing my friends on Facebook what I'm doing and me trying to communicate what I'm doing to others in the community. 

I'm going to try these tips but I feel like I need to take a shower, like I've done something wrong and feel gross about it. It's like I'm forcing my art onto other people and that's not natural. Good artists, while smart to promote, shouldn't have to be like "HEY LOOK AT ME!" they are kind of just....found....

You know what I mean?

For Those Who Served...

From my Facebook page:

To all the men and women, past and present, serving in our armed forces: Thank you for the hard work and sacrifices that you have bestowed upon yourselves to serve our country. To the families of these individuals: You have the hardest jobs of all. Thank you for standing behind our servicemen/women and being the foundation for all that they do. Lastly, to the notoriously under-appreciated Vietnam Vets: I thank you for your service and the dedication you had to serving our country despite the scorn of unpatriotic hippies.

Happy Veterans Day and to those overseas, come home safely.

I was a military wife for 3 years with my ex-husband and am dating a military soldier who is also a veteran so I feel special pride in knowing that I have helped to serve my men to serve their country. I am glad that our country takes a day to remember our heroes.

Being in a military town, naturally schools have off for Veterans Day so the kids can go home and hang out with their parents. This is what Mia and Bailey are doing to celebrate my being home:

 Bailey is getting so big. Look at his cute, chubby wrinkles. I love the way Mia curls up into that little ball. My kids :)

Well it's chilly out and it's been rainy and I don't have much to do today but here are so pictures of my new work that I just put in my shop! 

The Dusk Jump

 The Dawn Jump

I did a lino cut of military jumpers falling in their little cluster with the plane circling around to go pick up more. Anyone that's ever lived near a military base can tell you that we see this all the time. It's like watching Wishies (or at least that's my name for the weed that you blow on to make wishes) flying through the air. I'm painting different skies for them to print on with ink. I have different pictures of the jumpers, including regular skydivers, that I'm going to do the same thing for. I think this subject is fun and something a lot of other people will like and can relate to :)

Now, to take some time to clean all the muddy paw prints off the wood floors! 

I'm Now Legit

It's official my shop is now set up. I was completely nervous doing it, plus my happy bubble is a little deflated because virtually no one has looked at my paintings (yep, there's a counter of how many people have viewed your stuff). I know it only went up yesterday but I needed that confidence boost of like several people already having purchased my stuff. Haha, unrealistic expectations...CHECK.

There are currently 12 pieces up so there's not much to look at but I was too afraid to put a whole bunch up at once. For starters it costs $0.20 for each listing so I'm up to $2.40 of debt already and was not looking to add more to a store that has no purchases, and then there's the self-esteem issue of "Why put up more stuff if no one ends up liking what I have up there in the first place?" I know, totally lame, but I'm kind of at the whim of the Etsy gods right now which is not a comfortable place to be.

In other news the old, ugly dining room table we have has been stripped, washed, sanded and now in phase 2 of staining. I'll post pictures when it's all done so you can see the progression all at once. It needs to get done quickly before my parents come down for Thanksgiving. Luckily it's a 4 day week this week, next week is a 4 day, and the week after we have to work only 2 days. SCORE. That should give me enough time to finish the table top and legs before the family comes.

Which leads me to: Oh-My-God-I-Never-Watched-My-Mom-Cook-Thanksgiving-Because-I-Was-Always-Too-Lazy. To make my life less complicated my parents are buying the turkey in Pennsylvania and letting it thaw on their 8 hour car ride down here. Haha. When they told me this plan I thought it was cute. I didn't even find it insulting that they already knew I would make it a fiasco so instead went and planned ahead. I come from a family of planners, what can I say? And for that I am grateful. I should make that my speech for what I give thanks for.

Eyes on the Sky

First, holy crap was I wrong about Halloween. Well, actually, let me explain.Two kids showed up in the first hour and half so naturally Andrew gave them fistfuls of candy in the hopes to deter us from eating it all. However, that thinking led to us running out of candy early because after the rain stopped a whole storm of kids came and we were scrapping together things to give them. I was about to start handing out bananas and Icee's (despite it being cold) to avoid a mob of angry kids.

While I'm inching towards Etsy Shop completion I decided to take on a new venture that I found at The little Cloud a few days ago. It's called The Sketchbook Project. They send you a 32 page sketchbook with a theme and you create art based on that theme, send it back to them, and it travels the world for people to view. I thought it was inspiring so I decided to give it a try. 

My theme came up as "Tree house". I'm a little perplexed on how to tackle this subject but I asked my kids at school for ideas and a 5th grader thought it might be cool to draw pictures of different houses and stores all built in a tree...like a community in trees. It made me think of the Jetson's, how all of the houses and buildings are on poles in the sky. I thought it was a neat concept. I also thought of maybe having it built and then watch it progress through years with kids playing in it and then getting to old for it it so it becomes abandoned. I like the aging process and the nostalgia of it. I'm not sold on any one idea yet, but I have plenty of time before it arrives and is due.

Newness:

                                                                           Dawn

                                                                            Fog

                                                                             Blur

Blur is my favorite. I decided to do sky-like washes and to add interest and contrast I decided to do grids on them. I like how they are turning out, it's different than what I normally do with bright colors but I felt they need for more muted colors.

Now to satisfy my need for more phone games....Hanging With Friends!

A Charlie Brown Sunday

AH-dorable. These 2 just melt my heart. Mia adores him but she's showing signs of being overly needy of my and Andrew. Like she's not sure we love her anymore or something and she pulls her ears back when we give her affection like she's afraid she did something bad and isn't deserving of it. It's been only 2 weeks so I'm sure she'll get over it. She's never really had to share me before.

Currently I'm chugging away at new work so display originals in my opened-yet-lack-of-artwork Etsy shop. It's close to El Dia de los Muertos and that has my inspiration at the moment. This is a little more involved than what I have been doing but it's a nice change of pace. I'm still doing rub cement resist for the shape of the skull, nose, eyes, and teeth but everything else is left alone. Here are some badly photographed pictures:

I have 3 more in the works that I'm sketching up to then paint. I'm being a little more intense with these paintings than my others. I have had some stuff on my mind recently and I think I unintentionally led myself to work that would cause me to focus solely on it rather than my personal issues. Like I said when I first started blogging, this gives me a kind of therapy that has been useful.

When I was married I felt empty for a really long time. I would draw and paint before my ex and I were married back when I still lived in PA. When I moved to be with him and got married I became consumed with him and his issues and trying to take care of all of it. I stopped being concerned with myself and what kind of emotional state I was in. All creativity stopped. Now that I have been painting continuously for over a year I wonder if it  would have helped me keep sane during my marriage. Probably not, but I still wonder. Those years of feeling inadequate were stifling and my return to artwork was almost immediate after we became separated. Funny how that works. I'm a lot better off and doing well but there are those occasional times where I become confused about the situation.

Anyway, that's where I am right now. Just going to keep moving along :)