Since Last Time

I took a bit of a break from updating here, the event was a big let down & I let it get to me. On top of that, school transition & adjusting to the new schedule was really hectic. There were 20 other vendors at the Art In The Park event I did on Sept 11th, with 2 other crocheters & multiple other painters. We got to pick our spots, & I arrived first so I picked the middle of the horse shoe shaped layout. I ended up being between two professional artists, whose work was phenomenal. One does amazing intentional poured paint & layered sea creature views, from what I could see. She had her teenager with her selling handmade jewellery too. The other lady did these really cool fine art sketches in colored pencil that she then transferred to wood panels, they were really incredible! They each did a respectable amount of sales, for the crowd. 

The crowd was apparently vastly down from last year even though the event was bigger. Some people did sign up for the newsletter (which drops today, so keep your eyes on your inbox if you're one of them!) which I appreciated. It's not that I had high expectations, I really didn't. I thought I'd sell maybe enough to cover my expenses. I ended up not selling a single thing. *lol!* Gave out 2 business cards & made some connections, so it wasn't a total loss. But it was definitely a learning experience, physically exhausting, & a major blow to my ego. I took a week just to recover! Pic is of my booth, I have one of the far away look so you can see the hoop display too but I can't find it right now & it's like 2 a.m so I'm just dropping this here & the hoop pic is the blog post pic, ta-da. I'll include the far away pic of the booth in my next post to see the upgrades I'm going to do for the Halloween one anyways.

My partner bought me a new Tarot deck to celebrate me doing my first event though, which I love, if you want to see it check my Tumblr @BlueRabbitTarot; I'll be doing spreads from it for the whole month of October! They also convinced me to try again after I got really discouraged & wasn't sure if the art scene here is something I even want to try breaking into. I eventually came around to the fact that there's good & bad experiences, & this one was a bad one but that doesn't mean every one will be. My Golden Retriever Boyfriend's eternal optimism. *lol* It's nice to have one steady person who believes in me when I'm tired. So on that note, after taking the week off I planned out my next few steps & have been working on making Halloween inventory! I was invited to join the Arts Council so I will be checking that out soon, stay tuned for whatever comes of that. I've never thought of teaching classes, but the event organizer said that they are always looking for people to do that so I'm thinking that might be a good step to take later on after the holidays, maybe. I also joined TikTok so look there for videos, I have a lot planned for that. Peep the pic of the hoop display here as promised: funny story it was SO windy the day of the event that the hanger straight busted, so I just tied the two big ones to the roof with some extra yarn I had brought to work on a project with & set the smaller ones on the table because it ended up being a much longer table than expected.

We had a crazy month of so much needing attention with the house maintenance too, it was entirely overwhelming. It's sorted now though, but it was a real stressful few weeks! I learned so much & I'm so grateful for my friend's Dad who popped by to help!!! 

Kids are finally both in full time school again and that has been another transition that I've been adjusting to. It's so different having a 4 hour block of time entirely to myself after literally years of not having that. I'm not  used to organizing my time just for me like that! I feel so relieved that they're both back, but also I'm super sad, which is really a wierd feeling. I loved homeschooling, although it was really hard to connect with anybody else. (That hasn't changed, it's still really hard to connect with anybody here.) 

So, that's pretty much the update. Check your inbox for the newsletter, comment if you want in on that; I only send ONE email a month & that's the newsletter! It has deals, if that helps you any to decide. I'm dropping the Halloween inventory soon too, it's literally in like 3 places in my house getting worked on! I'll update when I have a date available for it. 

À demain,

Izzy