Art Show!

*phew*

It has been a really, REALLY busy past few weeks. And it doesn't show signs of slowing down for at least another three or four. Last weekend and the week before I was preparing for the opening of my Cherry Berry Bunny Etsy shop. And this weekend, my roommate and I put on a show of my art at our apartment. This past week has been a whirlwind of stress and trying to prepare for that.

We threw things together kind of last minute. We decided to put it on less than a month ago. I am going to be showing my art and participating in a panel about Femme identity and creativity at the national Femme Conference in August. I was scrambling trying to figure out how I was going to pay for it all, so my roommate suggested we throw together an art show in hopes that a couple paintings might sell.

Here's some pics from the show:

One painting is cut out of this picture because I can't reveal it here yet. Soon!


A wall with my newest series of portraits.


The "Goddess Wall". Everyone wanted to buy the Five goddesses painting, but my best friend has already bought it!


Collages.


More collages.








Three portraits that were hung singly.


My sister, my mom, and me.


Mingling.

It was overall a really great night! I didn't sell as much as I was hoping, but really I am happy I sold anything at all. That can never be a bad thing, right? :) I sold three paintings and have two possible commissions in the works. I am reasonably certain they will both come through. So, that is good as well. And even just getting people here to see my art is a good thing. It was also really nice to visit with my friends and family. I was kind of too nervous to enjoy a lot of it properly, LOL.

I have been making art like mad trying to get ready for the Femme Conference and trying to have a couple new things for my art show. I will leave you with two new paintings I haven't shown here yet:





I will, of course, keep you posted about art and the conference as it gets closer.

Etsy Update! & some other stuff

I updated my Etsy shop this afternoon with more art. I will be getting my art back from the Springfield Cultural Council soon and I highly doubt anything is going to sell from their exhibit. And if by some weird coincidence someone makes an inquiry by email for something that has already sold--oh well. So, back into the shop it goes! Along with three new paintings that I am really proud of:





Another exciting thing is that I heard through the grapevine 1000 Artist Journal Pages in now available on Amazon.com! I cannot wait to see this book, seriously. I still haven't ordered a copy. They have been in the publisher's warehouse for like a month and I have had the forms to get my discounted copy for about that long. Ooops! I better do that this week. Or, at least go visit it in Barnes & Noble or something.

Lastly, I am pleased to say that I finally bought two domain names. I am still trying to figure out hosting and how to actually build a web site, but I needed to just go ahead and get my domain names now. Because one of the ones I originally wanted was taken! Boo! Couldn't let that happen again. For 20 bucks it was worth it.

I bought one for an art website which will just be my name (www.julieayotte.com) and another which will be a stationery web site, name to be revealed at a later date. I will be selling brand-name kawaii stationery as well as my own designs. I even registered myself as a business, if you can believe that. I now have an EIN number and a Massachusetts tax ID number which permits me to collect sales tax. I'm all official. I need to call this week and see what other permits I need to be selling things over the interent. Honestly, it will be such a small thing to start that I can't imagine anyone would give me trouble even if I didn't have a resale permit. But I figure better to get it now, right?

I've looked into a few ecommerce options that would get a web site up and running pretty easily and inexpensively. I need to learn more about web design at some point, but there are options for those of us with little knowledge about html and coding and all that other lovely stuff. The problem now is coming up with a little money to buy a few initial products. Oh, and I will need a scanner and printer. This crap about giving me 4 hours a week at my job just isn't going to cut it. I mean, are they really serious? Are they kidding? Are they waiting to see if I will notice and be like, ok I figured out your joke and this has gone far enough!

I'll keep you posted when all of this starts shaping up more. I have been playing around with a logo for my stationery shop already. ;)

Sneak Peek

I've started work on a new series of portraits. All told, it will be a series of 12. I'm not quite ready to say any more about it now, but wanted to share a picture anyways. I'm pretty happy with how things are coming along: