Getting Down To The Nitty Gritty

Why do I find pricing and packaging so stressful?  If it isn't for a specific commission then designing and making can be a personal voyage of discovery, an insular, joyful experience.  When it comes to pricing and packaging then the dreaded, yet longed for, third parties come in to play.  Third parties judge your work, and therefore you, will it be considered good enough?  Will they think it too pricey?  Will they think that you are completely misguided in hoping that anyone would ever find you worthy to even think of yourself as an artist?  In other words the self doubt and fear of judgement come creeping in whispering critical and derisory remarks in your ear.  However, we all have to earn a crust so we have to find a little courage.  Who knows, someone may even like what you do.

As I have been putting this off for a while I have at least two weeks of work ahead of ploughing through the business side of things. Its no use putting it off any longer but oh I do long to pick up a brush or a needle and get back to the work that I love where there is only me to decide whether my efforts are acceptable or even a little bit good.  How I wish that I could be given a big, non-painful, injection of confidence.

A Quiet Studio

Little work has been completed this week,  too sad to think or dream.  My mind has been numbed because our beautiful friend Hamish has left us. Goodbye sweet boy, you won't be forgotten you naughty, mischievous, adorable 'Tom Kitten'. I'm sure that you must have belonged to Beatrix Potter in a previous existence.  You had a long and happy life and you brought us much joy and laughter. I shall miss you always.

Just Get On With It!

I have just been procrastinating, whoops sorry RESEARCHING and I found this whilst blog wandering:

The first rule of doing work that matters

Go to work on a regular basis.
Art is hard. Selling is hard. Writing is hard. Making a difference is hard.
When you're doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out--this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it's time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break.
Zig taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don't allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, "hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap." If you do that, the lizard brain is quickly trained to use that escape hatch again and again.
Isaac Asimov wrote and published 400 (!) books using this technique.
The first five years of my solo business, when the struggle seemed neverending, I never missed a day, never took a nap. (I also committed to ending the day at a certain time and not working on the weekends. It cuts both ways.)
In short: show up.

Posted by Seth Godin on December 21, 2010 

Thank you Seth Godin, I hope that you don't mind me posting this but its a lesson that I need to stick to and others will probably find it a useful reminder too.

What Happens When The Muse Pays a Visit

This has been a week of thinking and getting inspired and more thinking, sketchy planning on backs of envelopes and getting so inspired that I think that I'm going to burst.  I think that I may have thunk far too much because my head is now so spinning with ideas that I'm not sure where to begin. 

So, my plan is to prepare everything that is finished by making nice boxes and labels.  Then if anyone asks if I can have a table at a craft fair I shall be all ready to go.  Usually I am reduced to a quivering heap on the floor trembling with panic and trepidation and cries of 'I am not worthy'.  

Organisation requires a tidy mind.  I can do it if I focus but I need plenty of time and no pressure.  I wish that I had another house next door so that I could put all the imagined prepared boxes once I have disciplined them into a state of order.  A van!  That's an idea.  Now, there's a thought.

Waiting for boxes

 Small Thomas and Evangeline

Fabric and Gemstone Corsage Brooch

Cultured Pearl Vintage Style Necklace

Needlefelted Creations

And lots and lots of jewellery

And then I'll filter all that whirling jumble of tangled ideas 

'Angela this is ridiculous!'

So said a friend who entered my studio/shop and looked around at my work, 'Have you done all of this? People won't know who you are!'  Jenny makes beautiful, tactile baskets from green willow. They feel like the countryside and smell of the hedgerow. There is no mistaking who she is by the things she makes. I must be an enigma then. I like all sorts of things. There is nothing crafty or artistic that I wouldn't like to try. I grasp at the new and throw myself into it. I see no separation between each process. It is all creativity and I live and breathe it.

Jenny knows what she is doing, she is a professional, she makes and she teaches.  Her workshops are not just instructive they are delightful. You enter a world of tradition and become one with Nature as you weave Her materials fresh from the Earth. It is so hard to return home to the real world but you take with you at least one beautiful basket that you can feel really proud of. So, I took notice of what she said and asked the opinion of others. They seemed to agree and thought that I confused the onlooker because there was no coherence to my displays, there was too great a variety of work.  The real me was hidden behind a cornucopia of techniques and materials. It must appear as if I haven't discovered who I am.

I gave this some thought, thought long and hard in fact about which discipline I should choose to concentrate upon.  Which would be the area that would most reflect me and who I was?  Why was it important and did I really need to make that connection?  It clearly needed a lot of soul searching.  Discipline was the thing that I lacked, discipline and focus.  So, I had to have a think about myself in order to project who I really am. Trouble is, do I really know? Do any of us?

What I have discovered is that I'm a mixed up butterfly brain who flits from mood to mood and obsession. I can change my purpose and activity several times an hour.  I live in a whirligig of doing and at the same time be in a dreamy, imaginative and reflective state. Some days I hardly seem to be able to function at all because I have exhausted myself with overactive thinking.  I probably have a 'syndrome' of some sort. I try to conform to social norms and feel terribly inadequate but, hey, I've decided that its OK to be me.  I'll keep on dancing through life doing a bit of this and a bit of that. Maybe people won't be able to see who I am from my miscellaneous and often unfinished body of work.  However, if they look a little deeper they may begin to glimpse the inner workings of a random transcendental butterfly who has no intention of being coralled within the confines of a disciplined and restricted method of working or living.  I shall remain a 'Jack of All Trades' but shall continue the pursuit of mastering a few of them.

So, this is to become my online notebook/journal/portfolio/record of some of the things that I feel comfortable in sharing, the goings on of Lady of The Greenwood Studio. I hope that it will be a personal reflection and an illustration of the work that I do. It may reveal a little more of who I am.  I may even find out myself!