hey groovy campers, it's another terrific tuesday!!! ...and i now have a business guru!!!!...kinda like a yogi but without the bear......my business guru is this little spitfire of a girl, well she's all grown up and married now and a mom...man she's gotten old quick........, but i've known her and her whole family for a billion years it seems.....fabulous people.................well katelyn ...yes, you're right, it's katelyn of capitalcakesnc.com (lot's of applause sound effects and cheering, hooting, etc...much hub bub!!!) by the way did yall notice i made a link???!!!....i'm so proud of myself just took 5 post-its and 3 hours....let's hope it works.........anyway.... she is an absolute culinary arts pastry queen along with being a non stop business dynamo too......so while she has been sending business advice my way, i don't think i was ready to so something with it.......as seen by the fact that i would promptly forget her advice....sorry katelyn.......but now...ta da....i'm ready to move this along.......
so saturday, i was in an overwhelmed state...similar to new york during the marathon....or delaware during tourist season ...or any season...very small state...had dinner in delaware at a crab place once....not sure of the name of the restaurant, but it was right on the water, beautiful.... they put brown paper on the table for a table cloth, i should have brought my paints...... and then they would dump the crabs on your table.....pretty groovy, very casual....just they way i like it, cept i'm a veggie, so i don't eat seafood....and as i found out, ordering live crabs is a no no...they kind of frowned when i threw them back in the water....or was that in maryland?.....small state.....anyway.....i had a "me and God" moment in which i was basically saying "hey God, need alot of help here"......which is kind of funny, cause, well He's always there........but i forget, or try to do it on my own cause that's how i am....ya know a wee bit controlling......who me????.......yeah right......but anyway....so later that day is when katelyn calls me...perfect person to help me with my struggle to figure this business stuff out.......God moment??!!....could be!!!.... so my business homework is looking into google business, facebook business, instagram, and i added nextdoor, cause i signed up but haven't gotten any farther....supposedly it's a local thing, and my "bg"...(business technical term for business guru....or more likely something i made up)....wants me to be more widespread.....i said i already was....my jeans just don't fit like they used too.....could be all those pastries.....be groovy yall
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good evening campers!!! did you ever wonder at the beauty that can appear in the most unlikely things.... i guess that's called smelling the roses....which can be intoxicating and painful...depending on whether or not there was a bee in the rose and you just inhaled a not very happy bee who is now trying to exit your nose with the most amount of damage it can muster inside your nose.........muster...a very unused word now a days.....well if you were that bee would you want to be sucked up into someones nose....not even sure i want a visual on that perspective, even though a young child will gladly share that info with you by digging around and proudly showing you their finger now encased in .....well.....you can use your imagination on that one............but anyway, i was coming through richmond in the early morning hours with a cloudless sky and the sun was just rising and just seeing the way the sun hits the buildings and the reflections that were made and the negative space......well anyway it was really beautiful........now i'm not an architectural artist....not really into hard lines...i'm more of a nature artist...fluid lines, blended colours, etc.....but sometimes you can take the architectural and blend it with nature......buildings can become a little warped, the way the sun hits the glass can be very colourful and flow down the building...or up....you might be standing on your head.............lets say i was inspired..."i was inspired!!" (major sound effects).....problem was i was driving and i needed to take pictures and well taking pictures while you are driving is probably worse than texting and driving.....so it's in my head right now...
and before there was texting.......i know alot of you right now have either passed out at the thought or are saying..."what?, no texting?...was this like in the dinosaur age???...has the world gone mad????" yeah...no it was probably about 10 years ago....or something like that......but there was that time when you talked back and forth to people....instant message....i was trying to remember what it was called...ha ha.....well my kids would write something to me, and by the time i read it and answered they had already asked me 2 more questions....then i was trying to back up on what i just wrote to answer the last question and then by that time 4 more questions had been asked and i'm trying to answer the 5th question cause it kind of pertained to the 3rd question if i remember right, then they would ask me 5 more questions and at this point i can't even remember who i was talking to in the first place........but i think they did it on purpose cause shortly after i was trying to respond to the 7th question, they would stroll through the house and ask if they could do this or that or buy this or that, or go here or there and i was so confused i would mumble, "sure whatever", while trying to answer these questions which didn't matter, cause they weren't even on the phone anymore............... so as you can imagine i do not text and drive...so definitely no photographing and driving...... i can't even text when i'm not driving.....yeah, my kids showed me how to use the voice thing on the text message thing....i wonder if this is another one of their little games....hmmm....those are technical terms for phone stuff by the way....but just in case you try it, make sure you read what you just said, cause what is texted is not what you say .....just saying.....found that out when my kids texted me back saying "mom that's not appropriate" anyway.... i have been researching artwork that has sold nearby.....i have been doing alot of math.......which has taken me a long time.......trying to figure out if my prices are around the middle of the road........and i believe i have come to a decision....yeah!!!....well at least at the moment ..............of course that doesn't even begin to put prices on prints.....that's a whole nother ball game of fun filled math......plus keep painting, cause i gotta have more artwork to finally put up for sale...and oh yeah, work the 30 hour a week part time job i have too...............i'm really not a huge slacker, in case you were wondering..."why is it taking her so long to figure this out?"............and then add in life in general..............eventually i will get this all figured out.................but hold up a minute.... it's not the finish line we are after, well it partially is....but it's the journey that's so amazing......the journey that lets you notice things on the way to the finish line........the journey that lets you inhale bees up your nose and see fantastic paintings from sunrises on buildings....which means, i still need some photographs of what i was seeing, which means, i guess i'll have to get up early and have someone drive me around so i can get the pictures i need.......which means, maybe my kids can do that.....wait, did they go somewhere? hello campers.......gary and i went camping....love camping!!!....and met some really fabulous people........in case you wondered...no i don't have any problem talking with anyone.....i can regurgitate my whole life story in a matter of minutes....sometimes people like to walk away while i'm talking, so i figure they just must be cold and need to get in the sun...well cause who doesn't?!.......so i follow them, sometimes we end having a good run instead of a walk.....by the way i can still talk when i run....pretty good skill to have........ so i met keith, linda and simba....very groovy boxer, simba...not keith or linda........and keith shared a great idea for marketing......seems he started his own business doing power washing (which would be helpful if i had his info to pass on to others...but i do not, unless they read this post) and is having a pretty good go at it ...he suggested i try "next door"....i said the tent next door...he said no the group...i said "what group of tents?"...you understand why people run when i show up........so along with my pricing research i'm checking next door out....has anyone else had any success (ha ha ...i always spell that like it's a cheer..ha ha...makes me laugh)...ok..... with next door? sounds like it could be a very helpful tool......like duct tape......by the way duct tape is one of those things that if you have it you should be able to get yourself out of a mess of fixes and fix alot of messes.... we went to japan once...one of our daughters lived over there for a bit, we brought a large majority of family with us too...because if you go to japan everyone must go too!......it's a family affair....wasn't that a great show??!!!...who doesn't want a mr. french in their house...and did that buffy become the vampire slayer? and if so was mrs. beasly her sidekick?...... anyway...back to japan.......if you ever get a chance to go, i would ...really call me i'll go again.... but i remember watching this Japanese tv show during some down time.....when i go places there is not alot of downtime....gotta see everything!!!..our daughter actually went back to work she was so tired of all the going......but anyway, i believe it was a qvc like program....everything over there is interesting ..."why" you ask....cause it's in japanese!!!!.....but they were showing (cause i don't speak japanese i couldn't understand them) how if you have these 10 things you can do pretty much anything......i don't remember all the things, but duct tape, wire clothes hangers, and newspaper were 3 of the 10.......good info for future use! did you know that most people pronounce duct tape as duck tape not duct tape....i believe if you actually pronounced it the way it's spelled people would think you have a speaking problem, maybe a lisp, you'd probably spit all over people...that's not very pleasant and they might use their "duck" tape to tape your mouth shut....interesting......well duck tape is whats holding up all my post-its that keep falling down......pick a direction ha ha.....i guess post-its are not made to stay attached to a vertical wall permanently.......and the one sticking to my foot says to research how to price my artwork.....which i have been doing!!! yeah me!!!........so like in the previous post, square inch is popular, along with linear inch (more confusing math terms), and hourly rate......there were some others but that seemed to be the big ones that i saw...........so square inch it is! tadah!...funny...considering that's how i charge for my murals...well square foot......but it took me that long to come to this big decision....nothing like a little procrastination to start your day, or end it, or start it tomorrow...........well, at least i have a start....now i have to figure out, how to figure out what my materials cost so i can add that in to the square inch price, or add that on as an add on...............this is altogether too much math......i need some duck tape...i wonder if anyone has some next door.....be groovy yall! good afternoon campers....well iv'e been researching how to price my artwork....seems by the square inch is popular....plus include all your expenses to create that piece of artwork....................what is a definite no no is "do not price by emotion" (yes that's right...sound effects with that one, probably an echo too).........so when you price something, it has to be a standard price all across the board (like by square inch) , cause if you are all over the place (pricing with emotion) potential buyers will just walk on by.......walk on by...da dat da dah....singing that song by....supremes?....oh well moving on up...to the east side...to a deluxe apartment...in the sky i i.......aaahhhhh...all my thoughts are going into songs.....squirrel............
so back to "the wonderful world of pricing!!!!" (sound effects like the wonderful world of disney.....very groovy).......................so if you price by emotion, your prices won't make sense...."why" you ask? ...... let me tell you....well for me, my artwork is a piece of me, my baby, very personal stuff, my emotional attachment to something i created might be worth to me a million dollars......by the way, if anyone wants to buy my artwork for a million dollars i will bring it to you right now!!!....i'm not that attached... so you have that side of it, then there is the compassionate side of it (i think that's the right word)....i would say to myself "self, how can anyone afford to pay a million dollars, they have to pay their bills, buy food, put gas in their car, feed their llama?" ....and then my serious self (ha ha ha ha...serious self....i think that's an oxymoron in my case) would say "previous self, don't people pay to have their car fixed, put in that new kitchen, buy those new llamas?"...and then my previously previous self would say "previously previous self, i know that but isn't this price too extreme, too high, who can afford this, maybe i should lower it by say, a million dollars?" and then my previously previously previous self would say......"oh my gosh".........................well you get the picture....and the reason for this blog......pricing is my nemesis.....but if i really want to do my art full time and making a living at it........kinda gotta figure this out and let it go.....yeah i'm singing again and yeah i've seen frozen numerous times....grandkids.... can i just say that that song "let it go" pertains to everything in life.......like "should i keep the 40 tops that are all the same , or should i donate 2 to the thrift store?" "let it go, let it go"... how bout "this pan is much hotter than i thought it was, and i'm still holding it ".... "let it go, let it go"....... or how bout a cute little jam faced child learning to be potty trained..."let it go, let it go"............ so back to pricing......buyers want to understand why you priced it the way you did....they want the pricing to make sense.............which makes sense......i just have to figure out how to make sense of how to price my artwork, and then, what?....that's right..sing it with me......"let it go, let it go!" .
so i sit here and bare my soul (should be sound effects with that...like talking into a hollow tube in a low voice)....normally i'm very upbeat and encouraging ...or i think i am....ya know how sometimes what we think we are is sooooo different from what people see...for example i thought i was standing up pretty straight, but hey look in one of those mirrors that show front , side, back, etc and no i am still slouching...rats....i guess all those times that my mom would poke me in the back and say stand up straight she was on to something....who knew?.....so reading psalm 31 (i'm not really a "read the psalms kind of person"....they're not quite as upbeat as i like...i'm sure God appreciates how i pick and choose my religion (sarcasm) )... and wow...that's my life in a nutshell.....have you ever felt like oh dear, i have really made a mess of decisions that have affected so many people.....i guess really nothing "super major", but then again to those people they might feel different.....ya know how many people can you upset until they all collectively say, that's enough.............it's like riding a bike through huge mud puddles at break neck speed....boy it's really fun at the moment riding through the puddles, mud flying everywhere ....until you stop and turn around and look at the back of your shirt and all the people you just passed.........let's just say mud is everywhere..."mud is everywhere" (definitely sound effects with that one) .......a mess of mud you see my dad died in may, and so grief has caught up with me and is giving me a run for my money....and i'm not a fast runner, and i don't have alot of money....so i gather it would have caught up way sooner than later......so not to blame grief, but i sure have been trying to blame something for my seriously skewed judgement (or ssj) .... i'm sure grief has been a big helping hand in my ssj ....and i don't just mean in clapping........ so let's talk about this ssj problem i have ...i seem to be "sharing" my opinions a bit too freely.....making decisions i thought were informed (wait a minute.... i just had to laugh on that one)...... but maybe a bit too hasty under the circumstances...ya know this whole grief thing......maybe i should take a vow of silence...be a monk??!!...(i had to laugh again)....back to my dad the funny thing about parents is you have this view of your parents as , well....your parents....they taught you, molded you, helped you, wondered why they had you... maybe they could have taken that night off, but all in all they love us..................as we age.........ooooo it's getting deep in here put your waders on........ roles shift, we become the caregivers...except for my mom who will continue to give us frozen blueberries forever (story for another post).....it's hard to understand this shift....cause it goes back and forth, one day they are your parents the next day you are the parents.....emotional tug-of-war....and i'm not that strong....really, you should see my arms.........near the end with my dad...he became fragile to me.... a little boy....i wondered what he thought, how he felt....it's like you are whatever age you are but we don't seem to think we are the age we are, we are a younger version in our head.....even though my dad was older than me...obviously...he seemed to me to be so young and how could anyone hurt this little boy...how could anyone make him cry.......and then i realized, well... i did..... so my mom and numerous friends have told me that one way to deal with grief is to write letters......well i am the queen of writing letters....and i'm really surprised that my mom thought this was a good idea for me .......they did add the "these are not for anyone's eyes but yourself" and "destroy them when you are done"......... you see i used to write letters to my nanny...we lived in different states....me crazy and her slightly irrational......the first and only scandalous letter (well scandalous for a 6 year old) i wrote to my nanny, had my aunt and uncle trying to revive my slightly incoherent nanny who was mumbling something about calling the police or fbi and needing to extract me from the awful home life i was in while my aunt was on the phone with my mom...(and let me tell you, when my mom got off the phone i believe she smacked my dad first, for the loving that went on to conceive "the fabulous middle child"...and then all kind of went blank for me) ....i guess the references to daily beatings, torture from the evil older sister, scrubbing toliets with toothbrushes and of course needing to run away this very minute, might have been over the top, and from then on my mail was censored....... alcatraz couldn't have been more thorough in censoring my mail....my letters were more redacted than all political scandals put together......so this is what one of my redacted letters would look like...they started with "dear nanny"....there might have been an "and" or a "the" in the letter....that was only if "the wardens" were feeling generous.... and then it was "love bobbi"......my nanny is still waiting for my high school graduation announcement so the thrill of grief....well that's an oxymoron....is not so much an emotional response as it is a life lesson for me....ok that's a lie my new name should be "hi, i'm bobbi cries-a-lot".....the new care bear....get em quick, they're selling like hot cakes..(more sarcasm)......but a huge life lesson is don't make any major decisions when grief is encircling you like a crazy disturbed merry-go-round.......and when your mind is in ssj mode and your'e freely sharing your opinions with others, just cause, you might wanna try the monk mode instead..... i should probably wrap this up cause now i'm just rambling.................................and .................................the.................................................................love bobbi good morning campers! back again and still working on this pricing thing....I guess I have to do a little more research..ha ha alot!!! of research on how to price things.....and pricing things becomes a catch 22, cause on one hand you want people to be able to afford your artwork and on the other hand people value something that's not dirt cheap....so for instance, say there are 2 paintings.."there are 2 paintings"...ha ha...I crack myself up...anyway...the paintings both have a similar medium and similar subject matter, one is priced at $250. and the other is priced at $780.....(random prices).....so when people look at these paintings they say " hey, this one that costs $780. must be worth more this other similar thing which is priced at $250 cause it costs more..hence.. it must be better" ...by the way...hence is such a weird word...I wonder if someone was just sitting around back in the day, and said "hey let's make up a word that rhymes with fence and means therefore"....okay back to the momentous story problem (sound effects with momentous story problem....also did you know that mon-u-men-tous is spelled momentous....I had to look that one up....I guess I've been saying it wrong all these years....but I do think the way I say it sounds more massive than the way it's really spelled)
anyway.........so the problem is how to price so people put value in your work, but also (ya know my fingers sometimes get ahead of my brain, not real hard, and words i'm typing come out backwards... alot........for instance the word " also" comes out as laso...or in my case lasso, then I'm thinking "was I talking about cowboys and horses? and then I'm thinking "horses are so great".....and then I'm thinking "I remember walking down the road when I was in middle school and coming over a hill I heard this crazy sound, which I automatically thought, there is an elephant coming over the hill"....sure sounded like it....mind you ohio is not africa or india.....so of course you would come to the assumption that an elephant is coming over the hill....a surge of terror kinda gripped me for a minute....I mean what do you do if an elephant is coming toward you....run away? climb a tree? play dead? wave a red cape at it.....well I didn't have a red cape and I believe that's to anger bulls, soooo that one was out....so while I was pondering...well not pondering but racing around with my crazy thoughts, my neighbor and her horse came over the hill.....................I'm telling ya , the world I live in is way crazier than people see......where was I?) oh yeah...also not bleed people dry....ick...well that's a gross description......how bout I don't want to take all the money someone has just so I can sell a painting....ok the other one was more to the point....ha ha point, bleed, still gross..............yeah I know I'm dragging my feet........ok back to my research......maybe I'll have an answer next week? ' money money money money....money.....the necessary evil......aaarrrrggghhhh......................
so ive been working on how to price originals and prints.....while normally i would think what could i afford?..but i guess if you are in business for yourself you have to think of other things besides what would i pay for a painting?!.....so that's where my fabulous husband who gets the finance part of business comes in....he can watch shark tank and immediately say what stuff is worth and why they priced it the price they priced it at, etc.................what i get when i watch shark tank is.....wow thats a really groovy colour........i really try to get money...well not "get" money ha ha, but get the concept of money....which i do not get.................my husband tries to help me understand it...shiny object....he gives me other ways of looking at things....squirrel....he would draw up charts and graphs if it would help....did a post it just fall......the tv is not on...i'm a tv zombie... i'm focused right on him....and beside him....and above him....and behind him.....but nothing......i feel that God made me with a funnel and slide in my brain.......some stuff funnels in...colours, creative-ness, shiny objects, imagination.....and other stuff slides right on out.....it's a really fast slide too....one that has super slick sliding ability (wow say that 3 x's fast)........so what goes sliding out is anything to do with numbers.....and letters imitating numbers when i was in high school i had an algebra teacher....i know , you're thinking "what, just say no"......if i could of i would of.......but anyway...for me to graduate i had to pass algebra 1, yeah back in the day you didn't need a billion different "ometries" to graduate....or i'd probably still be there.......well i don't know about you, but how do i even make algebra work in my real life???!!!....so anyway i badgered that poor teacher...who was sooooo smart he couldn't explain it down to my level which was below C level...(ha ha i made a funny)....anyway......about everything i didn't understand....which was everything in algebra 1..... why C = Z or why ABC <KLJ...and on and on and on, blah blah blah...............he seemed to lose hair as the year went on.... and he developed a very bad habit of biting his nails to the quick, and would incessantly bang his head against the desk when i came in the room..........i believe he gave me a D- and that was with a major curve just to get me out of his class.............i hear he lives on a deserted island in the arctic and rambles on about squirrels......curious man.... uuuggghhh we're back to money again.....yes i'm prostrate on the floor, typing with one hand.............................i'm gonna go paint....i'll be right back................and you can be left front....ha ha...that never gets old do you ever feel kinda overwhelmed and can't seem to do anything even though you have a billion things you could do which would mean you have things to do but the overwhelming-ness of what your not doing overwhelms you?
exactly...welcome to my moment in time... so for your viewing pleasure, and since school starts soon, i give you some of my pieces on buses, while i wrestle with overwhelming-ness.....be groovy! good morning campers and welcome to the 5th post....can you believe it!!! i have been consistent for 5 whole weeks....absolutely amazing....and refreshing! i have learned so much already...i'm pretty proud of myself....go self!!! yea!!! i'm kinda doing a pep rally for myself right now....well i used to be my high school's mascot ...."we are the vikings!".... so i have a little training in boosting spirit and cheering people on....let me tell you the training for being a mascot was so rigorous...i believe it consisted of putting on a costume my mom made for me and cheering people on....brutal i'm telling ya......i think i was mascot just 1 year, basketball season....instead of playing drums in the pep band....yeah i was a total band geek....i felt like we didn't have a mascot and needed one...who dosen't , right?!....i don't know who said "sure go ahead and be our mascot"....but either they were highly congratulated or they got fired shortly after that........but anyway i went out with the cheerleaders and did my viking thing....ya know ransack and pillage....or in my case cheer everyone on like crazy....same thing right?! so now my next big goal in learning how to market and remake myself.....well not really remake myself....maybe reinvent my way to do art....no...maybe....oh something like that.....soooo...i have to figure out how to sell my artwork online....could be interesting!!!
oh my gosh, i just figured out how to put a copyright symbol on my pictures......yeah!!!!! i was trying to put the symbol on my pictures but couldn't figure out how to get the circle around the c....sometimes it takes me a minute or a week to figure stuff out.....so if you go online and ask .."how do i make a copyright symbol on my computer"...you get the answer........yes and while "everything is true on the internet"....that was sarcasm......this actually did work!!!.....so you hold down the Alt key and then using the numeric key pad.. (the one to the right of the alt key...for dyslexic people that's the other right...there you go!) ...so you type in 0169.....what???!!! ....isn't that crazy...who knew.....well once again, probably alot of people....little conquests make me so happy! ....and yeah that's another post-it on my wall....and yeah i had to look up conquests as a synonym of accomplishments, it seemed to fit my journey better...ya know "conquering the computer" (in case you didn't realize that last quote came with sound effects, try it again and imagine a very deep voice with maybe an echo)...... (see what i mean) ya know if an english teacher is reading this right now, they are probably cringing at my fabulous grammar and punctuation the other thing i'm not sure of , is when i am saving anything i do, (talking computer on the weebly site)....my screen pops up " publishing", which kinda means its going live...which means yall can see it i believe..........so since i don't know how that's being received by the computer world, could be there are notices being sent out saying..."hey this site has just been published" and again and again....hopefully that's not happening....or maybe it's just another fabulous reminder to read or look at my latest update...again and again in a span of 5 min.........isn't this such an exciting journey we are taking together!!! another conquest is that my picture on the "egg tanks" post did stay where i wanted it to!!! yeah!!! and for this post i figured out how to add text boxes and image boxes instead of trying to force my text to stay where i wanted it to.... ok small background on that picture of egg tanks so i can get yall up to speed on where my brain is....it's in my head...ha ha....anyway, when i write this post i have this blank area in front of me.....no that's not my brain....well maybe sometimes.......anyway, i have to drag over a text box so i can write something....then i have to do the same for an image, i drag over the image box and then i can add an image....the problem is when you are adding an image or text box to your blank area and hovering over the area to place the box, the blank area goes kinda gray (could be my brain...gray matter..ha ha so funny, well to me anyway).......... so i wasn't sure if when i drag over a box, if it would mess up what i had already written...yes i know, i wrote first and tried to fit boxes in later......yeah i do things backwards all the time......why read directions when you can just struggle for hours trying to figure stuff out...right??!!...again "what is this box you speak of?"..... so last week i added an image box in the middle of my text box...and for the next hour or so tried to chase around the image to get it where i wanted it to go and stay......like i'd put it between 2 sentences and it would jump to another 2 sentences...or better yet and my personal favourite...in the middle of a sentence.....it was a mess.......so this time i played around with it before writing or adding pictures......who said i can't learn?! |
bobbi plentovichim bobbi from bobbis murals...muralist, artist, creative mess. writing a blog about the journey of a muralist/ artist and her quest for a place in the confetti coloured art world Archives
April 2021
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