Dreamkeeper and Wishmaker

In July I was invited to participate in Raining Art Dolls, an art doll exhibit hosted by wonderful art doll artist Patricia Anders. The Raining Art Dolls exhibit is being held at Ten Women Gallery in Venice, CA, September 1 to September 30. Twenty-nine artists will have art dolls in this exhibit.
Three parameters [...]

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Tuesday’s Business-Assessing Sales Opportunities

As you put together your business plan, you need to consider where you’re going to sell your work. What venues or markets you’ll target. Heck, even without a business plan, I’m sure this is something you’ll consider as you decide to sell your work.
When determining where to show and sell your work, you [...]

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Two Glasses of Wine Theory

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 glasses of wine theory…
A professor stood before his philosophy class with some items on his desk in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up [...]

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Tuesday’s Business-Know Your Customers/Collectors

Thus far in our discussion on writing a business plan, we’ve talked about several components: writing goals, defining your art, and knowing who your competition is. This week the focus is on describing and knowing who your customers and collectors are.
As you put together your business plan, you need to think about who is [...]

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Tuesday’s Business: Know the Competition

Sometimes, when we enter into a small art business, we think “Hey, I’ve got this great idea.” We create our art, put together a dazzling display, take it to a show, and then, lo and behold, you find someone two booths down is doing the same thing as you!
Maybe the material is different or [...]

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Perceptions or “That wasn’t what I expected”

Have you ever noticed how you form an image in your mind on how something will look based solely on a description? And then when said “thing” appears, you say “That’s not what I expected.”
That has happened twice today.
I ordered the Tomato and Mozzarella salad for lunch at Panera. Here is the description: [...]

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Tuesday’s Business: Define Your Art

Last week we discussed writing goals as part of your business or dream into action plan. This week the focus is on defining your art.
As artists we often find ourselves working in many mediums; we like a little collage, we like wire, we like fabric and fiber, beads, paints, etc, etc. Bruce Baker [...]

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Twitter-bug

I’m not sure what motivated me to do it but I joined Twitter this weekend. Well, part of the motivation was to challenge myself to write short posts. Twitter limits you to 140 characters per post; that includes punctuation and spaces.
I’ve also been reading about using Twitter to promote your business, your web [...]

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Tuesday’s Business: Writing Goals

Last week I introduced what I intend to be a weekly post on different aspects of running a small business. Because I am currently in the process of writing a business plan, I thought that might be a natural place to start.
I am using the weekly topics presented in Alyson Stanfield’s Art Salon program [...]

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Tuesday’s Business

With a second year of blogging now underway, I decided to start a weekly post about business. Specifically, running a small business as a self-employed artist. Perhaps I’ll share some information that is new to you, perhaps I’ll put a different spin on information that may be familiar to you. Either way, [...]

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