Embrace Quality. Be Inspired.

Judy Hesselberth, of West Chester, is a jack of many trades.  On her website, she talks about her quilts but also of her interest in weaving, sewing, knitting, basketry and felting.  In browsing through her online portfolio, I was suprised to see her take on quilting.  Her pieces are so contemporary and interesting.  She has taken a very traditional art form and modernized it in a very unique way.

This quilt is from a series of three called “St. Lucia Sunprints” where she cyanotyped the fabric herself. 

You can see some of her lovely work in person at our Guild Store, 252 N. Prince St.  Lancaster PA

Ken Mueller, the instructor of our upcoming Social Media class on March 10, had a post yesterday called ‘6 Social Media Lessons from a Snowy Day‘ and it got me in the winter spirit. 

I know, I know, many of you everyone is ready for spring but I think we should all take the forced opportunity to relax, reflect and plan for the future.  Here we go:

1. Catch up with customers - First of all, Valentine’s day is coming up next weekend.  What a great time to send out an email discussing what’s new and what’s to come in 2010. The snow has given you the time to send it and your customers the time to read it. If you have your show schedule or a new list of projects, share them.  What you still don’t have an email list organized yet? Then that’s your snow day project. Mail Chimp is an awesome way (and free up to 500 addresses) to organize and connect with your customers (plus its fun to say you use Mail Chimp).
2. Get Organized – Its a dreaded word in the studio: organize! You’d rather be creating than cleaning. Trust me so would I. But its necessary. Putting everything in its place, lets you find it faster when you need it. Plus you know the need to clean up hangs over you every day you work in there. Crank some tunes and tidy things up. You’ll be glad you did afterwards.  Here’s some tips for Getting Organized from ArtBizCoach.com (Alyson teaches with the Guild on May 11-12.
3. Find classes – We all should take a workshop now and then. Sure, you’ve mastered what you do. But have you thought about learning a new craft to inspire your existing craft? Or have you been interested in expanding your business skills or knowledge of social media for promoting yourself?  Take a beginner class can just open your eyes to a new process. It can be a welcome break from always quilting or always throwing pots. Teachstreet is a great site for finding classes in your area. Or look over the online catalogs of some of the many art centers in the state: Goggleworks, Wayne Art Center or Main Line Art Center to name a few.
4. Develop new ideas - Where do you want to go with your craft?  Is there a new direction you’d like to take?  This is an ideal time to do it. Its the first part of a new year. Artists who stay static in what they make eventually diminish on their returns. Plus it’ll do two things: 1) you’ll get inspired by the new line of work and 2) your collectors will have a new object to collect. Want inspiration? Take the Super ‘Bowl’ challenge this weekend with Hammermarks.  It’ll be a fun diversion that might lead to new inspiration.

What are you waiting for?  Get ready for the snow!

Where do you go to find handmade crafts? Is it local or do you go out of your way to get to your favorite gallery?

My favorite gallery is, of course, the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen Store, but my second favorite gallery is Red Raven gallery in Lancaster.  I was drawn to it initially because it was showing some work of Guild members I know. I’ve since gone back several times just to check on the new exhibits.

Share your favorites below and why.  Please include links whenever possible and the city.  I’m gonna assume they’re all from Pennsylvania unless you say otherwise.

Eric Weit, of Akron, is an award-winning rag rug weaver.  He’s recently set up a shop online on Etsy and its worth checking out.  Plus he just passed along a few rugs to show in our gallery shop until April.

Eric’s approach to weaving is “it is like a puzzle using recycled materials and trying to put them together using the colors of the material that I find and coming up with a new pattern for the warp.”

His Grandmother said something to him a long time ago which he uses as his inspiration and motto, “The secret to a happy life is to keep your hands busy”.

Here are a few tips for newcomers to the craft show world related to both customer relations and general best practices.

1. Keep your identity as a craftsperson. Be friendly. People are buying you as much as your work.
2. The customer isn’t always right, but keeping the illusion alive can be beneficial to everyone involved.
3. Say thank you when someone compliments your work. Compliments eventually turn into sales.
4. The answer to ‘How are you doing?’ is always positive.  People are attracted to success and people who aren’t miserable.
5. If you hear the same suggestion three times… do it.
6. Dress for weather and pack for alternative weather since the weatherman rarely gets in right. Pack extra socks
7. Never, never read or look bored while in your booth.
8. Always smile.

These tips come from Guild members at our October craft show.

Guest post from Tara Gentile, editor of Scoutie Girl blog and presenter of the Guild’s March 20th ‘Blogging Your Passion for Craft‘ seminar.

When I wrote my ebook, 52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion, I made sure to concentrate on two areas that I don’t think craft bloggers focus on nearly enough:

• Asking questions.
• Sharing your studio space.

Asking questions is for another day at another blog… but now, I’d like to talk about “sharing your studio space.” Do you regularly share pictures of the space you work in? How you (dis)organize your work and supplies? Do you blog about your work in progress?

Sure, it can be tricky… bad lighting, odd angles, piles of stuff you don’t know what to do with. But that is also comforting to readers and fellow craftspeople alike. The next time you go into your studio or office or craft table in the corner, try to look at it with new eyes. See the beauty in the patterns that a row of tools makes or the color that spilled glaze forms on the work station. Then, get out your camera and document it.

Do you have work waiting to go out to boutiques or shows? Consider that your readers are used to seeing the detail of a single piece – not the flow of 10 finished works grouped together.

Do you use any odd tools? Be sure to document those too. A toothbrush, an oddly shaped piece of plastic, a chunk of wood you’ve made “just so” to aid a particular job. These random bits of banality set you apart from other craftspeople and give your readers another way to identify with you.

All of the photos in this post are by Sara Selepouchin, from girlscantell. Sara is a printmaker whose whole craft is based around seeing the ordinary with an eye for the beautiful. She does so expertly in sharing images from her studio life. You can see more in her Flickr pool. Sara’s also teaching for the Guild during March 27th Etsy classes.

If you’d like to learn even more about blogging your passion for craft, you should register for my Guild workshop on March 20th! Participants will receive a free copy of my ebook. If you can’t make it, you can purchase my ebook here.

Here’s a few of the major online tools the Guild uses regularly.

Constant Contact – for anyone sending email newsletters to more than 100 people, you really need a third party email solution and the one the Guild uses is Constant Contact. You can upload your patrons’ emails easily and select from hundreds of templates to design your emails. It also makes it easy to schedule all of your month’s email blasts at once. And if you’re interested, just ask me for a $30 referral email. Once you have that email you get a 60 day free trial AND if you sign-up you’ll get $30 off your first year (and the Guild gets a $30 credit).

Google Docs – over the last couple years we’ve used Google docs for spreadsheets that can be shared among many people. I’ve mentioned this a couple times as a great way to build a mailing list amongst a group or Guild chapter. One person sets up the file and then shares it to many people. Each person can then access the file at anytime and enter names and addresses. Its a great way of splitting up a massive data entry job such as keying addresses of people who attend a craft show.

Flickr – I’m a huge fan of the ease of using Flickr. Uploading images is extremely simple and sorting and tagging images into sets is just as easy. There’s a giveaway going on right now at HandmadeinPa.net for a Flickr Pro account. The Pro account gives you unlimited uploads. Without the Pro account you can still upload 100 Mb of images in one month – not shabby for most people’s needs. A chapter or a group may need more than that, but Pro is only $25/year.

Hotcards – this is the company we get nearly all of our postcards printed with. The quality is excellent and for anything you need in bulk (2000 or more postcards) they also have the best price. Other printers you can choose from online: 48 Hour Print and VistaPrint.

I’ll try to make this is frequent post. This is really just the start of many more.

I’m so pleased to announce Alyson Stanfield, author of ‘I’d Rather be in the Studio‘ is presenting a seminar with the Pennsylvania Guild on May 11 & 12 at Millersville University.

If you wish you reached more customers and sold more of your crafts, this two-day inspiration-heavy workshop is perfect for you.  Plus if you have a part or full-time job, this gives you the perfect reason to take two days off work.  Members pay $144, everyone else pays $157.  Here’s the details…

You’ll learn:

Paul Grecian, of Quakertown, is a photographer and happens to have a great blog. I enjoy reading it often. He opens his process to everyone which makes his photography all the more accessible.

Obviously he’s not a blogger first, he’s a photographer. But I got to know Paul as an artist more through his blog than simply through his photography. Yes, his photography is expressive, but his thoughts on creativity, or why he chooses certain subject matter, tells his story. It removes the barrier between his photography and his photography’s viewer. Its no longer just a picture on a wall.

I think many craft-makers could learn a bit from reading through some of his blog posts and thinking about how they could blog about their own work. The key to selling artwork is not always in the end product but in the story in which it was created.

Join Ken Mueller for this three-hour seminar on social media on Wed, March 10 from 12:30 to 3:30 in Harrisburg.

Artists are by nature short on time.  Sometimes every waking moment needs to be spent in the studio to keep up with orders.  But time must be spent getting your name out to new customers or keeping in touch with longtime collectors.  Use of social media and social networking provides free and easy self-marketing of your craft business.

Social Media is opening up a whole new world for us as individuals and businesses. A host of “free” and inexpensive Social Media platforms give us new opportunities and avenues for marketing ourselves to larger, yet more focused audiences. In this class we explore the possibilities, particularly in relation to Facebook, Twitter, and blogging. Make your craft business visible and accessible without a huge strain on your time.