Mary Richmond Design

A Look at Marketing Our Art or Craft

If you read my blog regularly you know I closed a shop a year or so ago and that I've been working at selling some things online at Etsy.

I never meant to have a shop. It was one of those things that just happened. My shop failed but I came away from the experience with a wealth of information.

For many years I've sold my art, especially custom tiles. I was represented my various designers and tile stores that specialized in fine tiles. I became adept at making and following up on contacts, dealing with architects and interior designers and customers that wanted to talk with and meet the artist.

What I didn't learn was how to package my work, something which is very important in the world of retail. After all, the stores that sold my work did it for me. I knew how to put a brochure together, how to put a portfolio and presentation together, but not how to sell an individual tile as a gift.

Once I had a shop I had to learn a lot of things very quickly. I had to learn that there are hot spots and dead spots in a physical shop. I had to learn that there's such a thing as a price point and that items dressed up in nice boxes with pretty tags and a story sold better than those just hanging out on a table or shelf.

This week I'm going to look at different ways artists and craftspeople present their work. Please feel free to leave your links in the comment section.

How do you package your work for sale? Do you package your work? Do you pay attention to presentation? Please share!

Shop Etsy to Benefit Breast Cancer Research

Sorry to take so long getting this post together but I'm sure you all know how life sometimes gets in the way of blogging....sheesh!

I am making 25 nice prints of this drawing and selling them in my Etsy Shop. They cost $15 each and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Silent Spring Institute which is working hard to discover what is causing so much breast cancer. You may order a print here.

There are many artists around the country and around the world who are also doing various things to raise money for breast cancer research and I'm listing a few here for you to check out. I will add some more over the next few days. Please try and support them or send their info to someone you think might like to know about their products.

Carla over at Haunted Palace is selling pink items such as the one shown here and donating all proceeds to the Susan K. Komen Foundation. If the item is sold, please see her whole shop here.

Kellirene is walking in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and is raising money in her shop to help her meet the mandatory $1800 she must raise to participate. She is hoping to make much more than that and other sellers on Etsy, such as Luscious Naturals are helping her out. Please check out these wonderful earrings by Kellirene here and the wonderful organic, vegan toner Luscious Naturals is selling here. You may see their shops here and here.

Sandy Simone has made a beautiful Hope for the Cure Sterling Silver Necklace which you can see here. All proceeds will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. You can see Sandy's shop here.

EnFleur from Portland, OR makes many beautiful things but wait until you see the beautiful cards she makes that she is donating the proceeds of toward breast cancer research. You can see her cards here and her shop here.

Looking for a great lap or baby quilt? Check out Kickstand Productions here to see this quilt. All proceeds will benefit breast cancer research.

If you know other artists who should be included, please let me know! Thanks everyone for checking out everyone's cool stuff and supporting a good cause.

Six Word Memoir

I was tagged over at Always Forever Young to write a six word memoir about 2 weeks ago so here it is.

Saw what was, dreamed what is.

If you'd like to write your own and share it with us please post your link in the comments.

I will be posting the names and links of Etsians who donate for breast cancer research tonight!

Remembering Jeanne

I met Jeanne in the spring of 1989 when she was the only one who showed up for an outdoor painting class I had advertised. I had called her that morning, pointing out that it was pouring rain out but we could paint a garden from a porch if that was all right. "Hell, ya!" she said.

She showed up in her bright yellow rain coat, red wellies and a pink and purple turban. It didn't take long to find out she was in the midst of chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer. "But I'm fine," she said with a big smile.

Over the summer she was in my painting classes twice a week. We painted all over Cape Cod in all sorts of weather and with all sorts of people. We talked about everything. She was old enough to be my mother but that didn't bother either one of us. We became fast friends and as the classes went on we added to our entourage. Our favorite companion was a 21 year old Irish girl named Aine who was studying to be a doctor but wanted to be an artist. She had one summer in the states before going back to Dublin and she was determined to do as much painting as she could.

The three of us laughed and painted and drank enough tea and coffee to float many boats. We knew where every public restroom on Cape Cod was by the time fall had rolled around. Aine returned to Ireland and other students wimped out when the weather turned cold but Jeanne and I painted from the car when we had to and found lots of protected places that allowed us to paint outdoors, even in January. It was January when Jeanne found out her cancer was back to stay.

By April we were painting daffodils in one of our favorite gardens and by May we were back at our favorite view at Fort Hill in Eastham. By mid May she was too tired to go out painting and by the end of June it was over.

I can't even begin to tell you the lessons I learned from this amazing brave, creative and inspiring woman. She was so smart and so funny that she could make you laugh about just about anything, including cancer. She was insightful and forgiving, honest and accepting. She lived her life fully right up to the last few days when she finally lay down and went to sleep surrounded by her loving family.

I never thought I'd get breast cancer when I was hanging around with Jeanne painting and laughing and eating lunch sitting on the hood of my car overlooking the ocean. It didn't run in my family like it did in hers. I listened to her concern for her daughters but neither of us really considered I would some day be at risk.

My cancer was caught early and I was able to escape with minimal treatment, for now anyway. One thing I've learned about breast cancer is that once you have it most doctors now consider it a chronic disease. Will it come back and get me? I can't worry about it too much. If I learned anything from my friend Jeanne it was to get out there and do what you want to do. Don't accept second best. Go for the best, in yourself, in your work, in your personal life, everywhere. Don't put off anything. Every day is new. Every day is the best we've got to work with right now.

Love you, Jeanne--and thanks for everything!

What's your story?

Breast Cancer Affects All of Us

Before I go too far in listing the links and the folks and organizations that donate or raise money for breast cancer research I would like to invite you to write about someone you know who has been touched by breast cancer. It can be you, it can be a friend or family member, anyone. You may write your story in a comment but I am thinking it would be awesome for all of us to write a story on our blogs and link to each others stories. Imagine this web, this network of stories going around the world in cyberspace. I would like to keep a positive spin and make hope our theme but tell your stories in whatever way feels most natural. Please leave a link to your post in the comment section. I will add my own story later today.

Eventually breast cancer will affect you whether it's through a friend, your mother, your sister, your neighbor, your child's teacher or yourself. This is a chance to tell about those people in your life who have been touched or how you have been touched.

What's your story? And thanks for taking the time to share.

Blogging to Benefit Breast Cancer Research

This week I'm going to blog about how we as artists and craftspeople can raise awareness and money for breast cancer research. Much of the money raised for breast cancer goes to looking for a cure, not the causes and I would like to raise money to be donated for more research on the causes of breast cancer.

Most women diagnosed with breast cancer today will not die from breast cancer. Some will have surprisingly little treatment and move on, others will have a lot of treatment but will also be able to move on with the rest of their lives. Some will do everything they can and will lose the battle. At the moment of diagnosis I think every woman wonders which she will be and worries that she will be in the group that doesn't make it.

As a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer about a year and half ago I am one of the lucky ones. I had a very beginning stage and a mastectomy was the only treatment I needed.

Today I finally went and got my prosthesis.

I've been thinking about this a lot this week. What took me so long? I can give you all sorts of answers but the truth is I was just ready now. I've had a temporary sort of thing ever since my surgery but it made me look sort of lopsided and I think I sort of thought, hey, this is what breast cancer and a mastectomy do.....they make you lopsided, they rip your body apart. And today I'm excited. I look normal again! And it took less than half an hour!

There are lots of people on Etsy donating money for breast cancer and in the next few days I will be linking to their sites as well as putting up some of my own drawings and prints to benefit breast cancer research so please stay tuned!

Have any of you run a benefit in your Etsy Shop or through your blog? I'd love to hear your stories.

How Much Time Do You Spend Blogging?

I thought a little bunny was a good choice for today. We're finally seeing some sun after all the wind and rain and coldness!

This past week I've been blogging and working on my Etsy Shop and posting things on Flickr and reading and commenting on other people's blogs and it occurs to me that some days I spend a bit too much time on the internet. It's fun but I really do have other things to do ;-)

How about you? How much time do you spend blogging each day or each week? Are you a disciplined blogger or are you sometimes a happy slacker like me?

When I'm Not Blogging I'm Doing This

All week I've been writing about blogging but in my real life this week I've been in classrooms talking to kids about nature, decorating Easter eggs and having an all day Alternative Energy Day. I've also been working on some ceramic tiles but that's a different post.

These young men are first graders looking for signs of life in pond water. Of course it was a freezing cold day with sleet and wind and I got soaking wet collecting the pond samples. The kids had a blast, though, and found lots of isopods, damselfly larvae, blood worms and more.

In my after school group we talked about eggs this week. We looked at bird eggs and nests, turtle and snake eggs and talked about frog and fish eggs. Their favorite is always the enormous ostrich egg that they can hold and examine. It's so big some of them don't believe it's real.

I showed them how to blow the insides out of an egg so they could keep it for as long as they like. Most had never done this before and I have to say teaching a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds how to do this is pretty funny. They thought it was the best trick ever and I'm not sure any eggs will be safe around them over the next week or so. After the eggs were rinsed out and dried we decorated them.

I bought a bunch of Sharpie markers for this project and if you're working with kids you might try this. They're clean, they're permanent and they're easy to manage. The kids absolutely loved working with them. Painting eggs is very messy for young children. They don't have a lot of control, the eggs are small and they end up being very unhappy with what they've done. Markers for kids are washable which means they smudge and make a mess, too, so even though the Sharpies are permanent they are actually easier to use. I just tell the kids not to get any on their clothes and they don't.

Yesterday two of us held an Alternative Energy Day field trip at the nature center. We had a group of 18 fifth graders and it was an awesome day. We made solar cookers from pizza boxes, had a scavenger hunt for the green aspects of our very green building and ended our day with a challenge to make an invention that used alternative energy sources.

The kids took on the last challenge of the day and blew us away. They made very cool inventions, told us how they worked and were able to explain the various processes very well. These young gentlemen were building a solar powered wind turbine and for their presentation they used the air from other balloons to turn their turbine. As they themselves said, wicked cool awesome.

Today I have classes on migration with second graders. Can't wait.

What did you do this week?

Do You Promote Your Blog?

When I first started my blog about a year and a half ago I was recovering from breast cancer and hoping to bring more business to a shop I had where I was selling my hand made tiles, watercolor paintings, small prints and sculptures and cards. I had never read a blog but it sounded fun and I jumped right in.

I've never looked back. If you have been a blogger for awhile you probably will agree that blogging takes on a life of its own after awhile. Though in the beginning I wrote about my cancer sometimes I mostly wrote about my business. I had no idea at that time that I would soon be closing my business and that my life would be heading in a very different direction. I floundered about with my blog for a bit, even wondering if I should just stop.

As you can see, I am still here. ;-)

The blogging community is awesome. I find my own readership is growing even as I read more and more blogs. I find comfort in knowing how many of us are out there, sorting through the days of our lives, looking at the work we are doing or want to do and this willingness of people worldwide to share a deep part of themselves. Blogs talk about all the issues of the day, large and small and people's thoughts on being green, being healthy, being good (fill in the blank here) mothers, sisters, daughters, artists, teachers, etc., politics, art, creativity, failure and success.....whatever!

There are many out there who believe the only reason to have a blog is to promote one's work and one's business and I have to admit having a blog has given me more exposure. But the real reason I blog today is more to be part of this larger community than anything else. Do I promote it? I let people know I have it. I comment on other blogs and have a link on my website. Other people find me through tags and internet word or image searches but I don't really do anything special.

How about you? Do you promote your blog as a way of doing more business? Do you do anything to promote your blog at all or does it just grow organically?

How Do You Choose Your Topics for a Post?

Thanks for all the fun and interesting comments about what you like in a blog yesterday. Like many of you I like blogs with lots of photos or drawings. I also like to see photos of process as people develop their work. I like a blog that makes me feel like I know this person and I return because I am interested in what they are going to say or do next. I don't mind occasional posts about pets or dinners, trips or special events. I'm not a big fan of blogs that tell me everything the kids or grandkids are doing and pictures of kids make me nervous because of the whole internet predator thing. 

So now I want to know how you decide what to blog about. Is it random? Do you have a plan? One blogger I read on a regular basis says she writes her posts in advance and always has two or three to choose from on any given day. Others seem to be very stream of conscious.

I find that I am definitely attracted to blogs where the blogger shows their personality and shares some of their personal thoughts. Having said that, posts that tell me too much about someone's daily schedule tend to be a bit TMI and sort of boring. There's an interesting line there that some seem to know how to walk and others waver around.

I love to see drawings, paintings, sculptures, weavings or other creations people are working on. I like to see what people are reading or watching or listening to. I also like a good essay. One blog I read regularly just had a wonderful post on Leonard Cohen. You can check it out yourself by clicking here.

Blogs are so personal and I think posting is as individual as the person posting. Some seem to want to stay professional and only post about business related things. I find these eventually turn me off. I get tired of the relentless self promotion. I also find myself a little annoyed at people writing about things as if they were experts when they are not.

How about you? How do you choose your subjects? I find myself thinking about all sorts of things during the day and since I've been blogging for a year now I find myself thinking about what might make an interesting post. For me it feels sort of random and spontaneous.

As an artist, writer, naturalist and teacher I find myself with many possible subjects. Today I included sketches of an osprey and a robin. The osprey is there because they have just returned to Cape Cod and I've been very excited to see the first ones arrive. We don't get much of a spring here so when these guys return it is a huge sign that yes, the winter blahs will eventually leave us! I just threw the robin in there because I see them all over the place and they make me smile.

What did you post today?