Inside The Studio: October In The Wind

I would like to first and foremost thank everyone that came out to Soulfest and the first weekend of the Pumpkin Patch! It was incredible to see everyone out there once again.

I have also decided that the last day I am taking orders for holiday shopping is going to be December 10ths.

The last day that USPS is providing for their recommended send-by date is mostly the 17th but since I'll need time to pack the orders and get them to the post office I am going with December 10th this year.

While I haven't been making a lot of new stuff since Soulfest I have been working on getting all of the new items available on my website and slowly working on a full inventory afterwards. Thankfully, everything has been gone through except the stickers. I did them before Soulfest but want to have an updated inventory not that it's done so I can get some of them restocked.

This inventory process was very much needed especially after discovering while setting up for Soulfest that I was either out or almost out of some of my art prints. I've also got a few sticker designs I know I'm running extremely low on so I'll have to restock them soon as well.

I came back from Soulfest and went to see one of my absolute favorite bands that I have been dying to see since I was like 14 and then went back to work and spent most of my free time there working on putting up Halloween decorations and making a Halloween garland for us to hang up around the desk and then was coming up to chores and passing out.

 I have finally started to make progress on the Fox painting I mentioned in my last blog and newsletter. I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to make some time to work on it some more soon but at the way this month is going I'll be lucky if I even get to make any progress on it this month. Granted at this point I am getting the final version of the blog and newsletter together during the last week of the month.

Thankfully, I was able to get some work done on it but I feel like it's taunting me at this point from it's safe spot begging for more of my time and attention. I'll then be playing the tricky game of trying to work on it while also working on at least two pet portraits for Christmas, possibly a third but the third family member hasn't answered me on that yet. I'm not sure how much of that I'll be able to share between now and Christmas mostly because they do follow my newsletter so I am going to have to decided how I want to handle that. Like they know which pet is being painted but they don't know what the pieces are going to look like.

I also have finished working redesigning the post it note design I had made to go with my Halloween pieces that I've done for this year. It took so much longer then I anticipated but I did finally get it figured out and mostly finished while I was out helping and hanging out with my mom and sister while they vended at Cottonwood Convergence on the 10th. I'll be getting them ordered soon. I will not have them available before Halloween so that part is going to be annoying but I rather get them done and ordered so I have them so I don't forget to get them made.

Oh, and I have also made an update to my website as well. I have now made a New Arrivals tab on the shop section so anytime I add a new item I can just add it there to make it easier to find. When I have larger collections go up like I do for this month I will still make a shop update blog that'll direct to each of the new items directly since that help keep me on top of things but this way especially if I am just adding one or two new pieces they'll be easier to find.

Depending on how things go with this new tab I may end up just retiring the Shop Update blog since I am not a person that really does larger collections all at once very often but I haven't fully decided yet. I like the idea of having the blog but it may become unneccesary with the New Arrivals tab. I've got a million and a half ideas going through my head and only so much time and I am only one person at the end of the day. As much as I joke around that my cats are my managers and supervisors they are some of the worst coworkers since they are only really good at sleeping on the job and being cute.

I am also very happy to say that I have been able to finally make it so my site will automatically give the same discounts that you can find at my booth! I have been doing 2 stickers for $5 and 2 laminated bookmarks for $15 for the last few years. I have wanted to have that as an option on my site but it hasn't allowed for it and recently noticed that they have changed it. It took some slight rearranging but at least I am now able to provide the same discounts that I can in person. The only one I still have to work out is my 5" x 7" prints but with the way I currently have them available I am unable to make the discount work so I'm playing around with a few methods to see what will work out best with what is made available to me. It may just end up being that I have to make individual listings for just the 5×7 sized prints and make them their own category but we'll see. When I am not so tired I might be able to figure something else out.

Well, I have rewritten this so many times because things have changed so many times that I am just going to go ahead and leave this here because I want to move on from this post. I don't really want to be combining October's and November's blog and newsletter.