Tending the Fruits of Labor
Happy Thursday friends! I’m so glad you’re here! 🙂 Last week’s post was a bit rushed and short, but I plan to take my time with this entry. So… buckle up, I’ve got a long winded spill coming your way.
I’ve had a pretty exciting week so far. Today marks one whole week since I went live with the online ArtShop I had been building. Much to my delight, I’ve had a number of items sell, and even had a specific collection of work, sell out completely! We’ll save that for later.
Around the 2nd week of September, I began to work out the concept of my site, still being in the very early learning stages, I had to lay out my entire plan. I was ready to put in the footwork (or keystrokes I guess haha) and ready to set a launch date. Giving myself a deadline would be the best way to force my actions toward this goal. My site builder became more familiar to me and I was starting to get the visual results I desired. The store had to be captivating, professional looking, and user friendly. I would need to cut a lot of corners along the way, but I managed to successfully “rig” what I had into an online store 😀
Opening day was October 1st, and it arrived in a serious hurry. In roughly a month’s time I had finalized, photographed, and created pages for each individual piece, this seemed a lot easier in theory. Time started to get down to the wire and on some of the items I was shy a few epoxy applications only nights before. Somehow I got insanely lucky, and in roughly 52 hours, 2 totally flawless applications just in time to be staged and photographed. I’ve never had more perfect pours 😀 Each day I worked fervently with little distraction, and felt really proud of the daily progress. I was able to see the efforts I had invested into studying the tools I had to build the store, it felt really rewarding to say the least. Everyday started with a list of priorities and ended with a fully checked off list, and new additions to the store! I wanted the 1st to get here immediately! But I knew I would need the time to make sure I could go over everything with a magnifying glass. It HAD to be perfect. This was partially why I had set my opening time to Midnight… just in case anything went too crazy. This way I would have time to fix any issues before most people would be seeing the site. Thankfully I had that weird little buffer I set up for myself. Literally the minute I launched the site, my builder glitched and my navigation menu up and disappeared!!!! I had a solid 5 min of utter and sheer panic, the site was live! Replacing it with a new navigation menu didn’t look right, I had to figure out where the problem was. And since I’m such an “expert” this will be fine *cry cry*. My 5 min eternity wound up being the worst of it, somehow the text from the menu got deleted… (I still don’t understand) after much freak out, all I had to do was edit the pages back into the menu. Aside from that hiccup, everything went much better than I had anticipated!
My moments of self doubt were saved for the hours just before opening, and honestly I had been waiting. It’s natural for me to critique the crap out of everything I do, and I had kept myself so busy that I hadn’t critiqued this new venture yet. There was no way this would be some sort of random exception. I was working with items I had made on a whim and couldn’t be too sure how successful they would be in the end, and just before launching my site seemed like a great time to worry about this.
My new projects were mostly made of recycled items. I made charms with handmade magazine beads, feathers,and shells I had personally collected, with a skull carved turquoise bead as the focal point. I also made heart shaped mini dishes using paper bags molded, decorated, and coated in epoxy. Personally I was pleased with what I had accomplished, but I worried they may not be of any interest to anyone else… (does anyone know why the brain produces this nonsense??) Luckily, last week really proved that voice wrong, and I have sold 3/7 Paperhearts, and I sold out completely of the Skull Charms 😀 I lacked confidence in the beginning of this mission, but I wanted to trust my gut the best I could. This process really paid off for me, and my live experiment of this web store has encouraged me to continue creating the various things my brain is obsessing over. I suppose I’ll take Andy Warhol’s advice deeper to heart- “Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art”.
There are a great deal of ideas swirling around in my head, and I want to manifest each and every one of them, but I’m learning how to avoid overwhelming myself. So as times goes, my aim is to delegate focus, but to allow my imagination to wonder where it must. It’s proving to be a path I may be able to carve my way through and still branch in the creative directions I find fruitful and stimulating. This new ArtShop is my gateway!
If you’ve had the chance to visit the online shop, I just really want to say THANK YOU!!! I hope you enjoyed all that you saw, and hope you found something you liked! If you have yet to stop by, please do so ASAP! Each and every item that is posted is original, handmade, and one-of-a-kind, so don’t miss your chance! I’m currently working on more/similar designs to add to the inventory soon, but that will be another week or so. So keep checking back!
I believe I have rambled enough to make up for the last couple of posts hehehe. Felt pretty nice to unload all of that, so thank you for taking the time. I will have more rambles for yous, same time next week. I hope you all enjoy your weekend, Stay well! <3
<3 Miki Len
