A Diary of Becoming - Round Six - March 2010

Woweewow. What a busy month it's been. Have you seen all those super yum recipes and their paintings?
Enoki Soup
Vietnamese Style Stirfry
Eggplant Risotto
Tangy Tomato Soup
Chai Tea
Chilli Greens

And what about the super dooper Table of Contents page for the Art Filled Seasonal Vegetarian Cookbook project? I was well pleased to get that up and running.

So onto the monthly roundup:


The Not So Good Stuff
Starting the vege cookbook behind schedule and still being behind. Though I should be able to catch up by the end of the season, which is ok, except it leaves me scrabbling for time to do *mildly* important stuff such as promotion of the project. Not cool. But all my own fault.


The Good Stuff
Biz cards designed. Very pleased. See above. These will be eco-business cards which can be printed on practically anything. Perfect.

I've done the calculations and looked closely at the cornucopia of alternatives and the choice was clear. Bye bye Etsy. Hello ZenCart. Why? I needed a method for presenting and selling my artwork that involved the least maintenance possible. The cookbook project involves original art and limited edition prints of each piece. Etsy does not have an easy and automatic way to offer a prints for sale up to a certain number (it's called inventory control). Each time a print sells, it has to be manually restocked in the Etsy store. That's perfectly possible to do, but just one extra thing on the list that could be trimmed. And in between one print selling and the next number being listed, that print is not for sale. Not ideal. Or, all numbers of a print could be listed at once, but this becomes expensive. No, no, no. So after looking closely at all the possibilities (and being tempted by BigCartel who do what I want but limit inventory numbers), I chose to open my own store. No more fees. No more limits. A load of work upfront, but freedom everafter. It's a long term choice.

And quite a few paintings done. Which in itself is fabulous.

In addition, with so much regular activity, my studio has had another facelift and functions even better than before.


Git Done For April

• Test the chosen book printers. It's still a faceoff between Blurb, CreativeSpace and Lulu.
  

• Git zee ZenCart fully complete. It's already up and functional as my Official Art Store, but looking a bit skew-iff right now.
  

• Organise the Autumn exhibition. The grand plan is to have an exhibition at the end of every season. After taking a gander at the possibilities out there, a most noticeable logistic is how far ahead exhibitions are generally planned. Months upon months!