whoa nelly...

my co-worker is out on maternity leave for the next six to eight weeks so the number of folks i assist has gone from two to four and a half (someone doesn't need much assisting...they're not 1/2 a person). so my work week has gone from a relatively laid back 40 hours to a whopping 55-60 hours. cuts way down on crafting time...not to mention, cooking, cleaning, sleeping, spending time with family and friends time.

but this weekend i did manage to make it into two of the stores where i sell my wares on consignment. i dropped off a dozen tissue holders and two junk bracelets (think cracker jack prize meets vintage sparkle meets jingle jangle bling) to recycled rose in kirkwood. and then i dropped off ten sets of my fabric cards to subterranean books in university city.

it's an odd feeling turning over your goods to semi-strangers and asking them to care for them and sell them. it's a feeling i can get used to though, as i'm not so good at self-promotion. both of these consignment opportunities came to me through friends who gave me an in and to both of them i'm mighty grateful.

it made me think about a lot of the cliches attached to success...

1) success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration....

2) it's not what you know, it's who you know...

3) you need to be in the right place at the right time...

4) the squeaky wheel gets the grease...

i've worked hard, on and off, at making a go of selling my art, and when it comes right down to it, i like the act of creating a whole helluva lot more than i do selling. i'm pretty much a hermit at heart. although to the outsider, i seem at ease with myself and can speak relatively calmly to most people i meet without sounding like a total moron, inside, i am a blubbering mess. so the interactive part of selling can get me in a real tizzy. i think there are a lot of art patrons that enjoy the interaction with the artist almost as much as they enjoy the art itself. so i don't have the chance to make a connection with those buyers. i do tend to sell more to people who know me or who are at least acquainted with me; i suppose i am missing that boat in a consignment setting, but it's a trade-off i'm willing to make for my mental health.

i ran into a fellow artist at a bead store last week and she asked me if i sold a lot of stuff from my blog. the answer was simple, "nope, never, not once." i've posted pics here and not ever had a nibble. i even made a sister blog that was just about the selling of the stuff and didn't sell one thing. i don't know why. i don't even have a guess. i suppose i could try one of the on-line artist shops for selling. it all seems like a tremendous amount of work (the pictures, the posting, the e-mails with the potential buyers, working out the payments, the packing, the shipping, the waiting to see if the item arrived safely and meets the buyers every expectation, dealing with the returns if the item is not what they expected...on and on..and on). ugh...it could give the queen an ulcer already.

i mean, it all seems entirely overwhelming and i think it would even if i didn't also have a semi-stressful full-time day job.

so i continue to create and make and give and ponder what it all means (i do that quite often, in case you haven't noticed). perhaps all it means is that i have to embrace my own limitations. maybe it means that i am meant to create in obscurity until my death when my son will unearth my trove and unleash them on the world to great acclaim. but most likely what it means is that i will keep on putting time into making treasured items one precious stitch, bead, tiny glued piece of paper at a time and share them with the people i love the most.