The reason? The Furniture Bank, an organization that turns houses into homes for less-fortunate families in and around Houston, is sponsoring a silent auction of OOAK art chairs created by Houston’s artists and designers. As part of the project, artists are  to document the transformation.

100% of the proceeds of the sale of these OOAK Art chairs will be auction will support the Furniture Bank and its associate agencies.

The Furniture & Art Expo

August 28-29, 2010
George R. Brown Convention Center
EXHIBIT HALL A

Expo Schedule:

Friday, August 27, 2010
COMING OF AGE: The 18th Anniversary of The Furniture Bank and Expo Preview – August 27th at Gremillion Gallery

Saturday, August 28
Expo Hours: 10am-8pm
ART AUCTION: 5:30pm

Sunday, August 29
Expo Hours: 10-am-5pm

By the looks of it, I have a lot of prep work to do…

Now that FineArtPets.com is a somewhat complete website, I started considering how to advertise the new website. (Funny, I think that’s where this whole process started.) Despite risking very low Google, Alexa, And Compete rankings, I didn’t want to depend on Entrecard, Adgitize or CMFads to send me “faux” traffic. These sites increase your bounce rate and create a fake feeling of accomplishment that will, in reality just set you back.

Personally, I would rather support other artists, crafters, and bloggers. I even tried by joining Project Wonderful and buying ads from ads from artist friendly blogs. I got nothing.

Experimenting with Art Marketing

Promoting your own stuff is hard. If you are like me, you feel arrogant and full of yourself. It’s a headspace I find uncomfortable. I need your help in promoting my work. And instead of investing money in advertising, I decided to invest in you.

I created an affiliate program.

I hate that name.

Let’s call it a recruitment drive for an Art Marketing Army. I like that better.

The Art Marketing Army will get a 10% commission for any sales from Fineartpets.com, myPhotodada.com (coming soon) and Artforbeers.com (coming soon after myPhotodada.com) and then the re-vamped Shindigdada.com. You may wonder how I plan to track all that. Well,  I joined E-junkie.

And how much am I sharing? 10%.

Interested? Wander over to The FineArtPets.com Recruitment page for details, instructions and my undying gratitude.

Spread the word.

And I’ll report back how I did it, how successful I am, and how you can do it too.

I stole the title. Well, part of the title- the part that says “To Hell With Marketing”. Though I suspect Havi would feel empowered to know that many others( Fitforpaper.com among them)  have embraced one of her many battle cries. Though she would probably think of it more like “working through the stucknesses that get in the way of doing your thing”…. (she’s sweet that way)

Now, why would I want to dispense with market research? I don’t really but I have to NOT listen to those voices, those confidence-stumping, mind-stomping, ego-chomping voices, those voices (especially) from those well-meaning “Find Success On Etsy” emails that say that constantly repeating harangue “Have a Unique & Quality Product” (see that repeated here )

The problem with that is I am an artist who went to art school. I spent 2 1/2 years studying art history. Nothing is new or unique. Not at this level, the trying-to-make-a-living  Etsy level.

New & Unique for me equals something thought-provoking and engaging beyond the narrow scope of my daily existence. For example, the Brazilian conceptual artist Rivane Neuenschwander created an installation “I Wish Your Wish” which invites active involvement on the part of the art-lover: “take a ribbon, wrap it around their wrists and replace a wish of their own”.

Custom Artwork for Everyone.

Honestly. That’s my complete idea. I want to embrace the individual experience of each of my clients and create something memorable for them to remember that.

Take FineArtPets.com. The thing is, because everything derives from ideas that came before me, and because there are many others doing sort of the  same thing ( here, here , and, my favorite, here ), I have held on to the belief that my idea and work wasn’t valid. Even though I enjoy doing it and my clients love the end result. This isn’t a statement about “follow your bliss” so much as most buyers are looking for something they are already familiar with, a version of the familiar that speaks to them personally.

What this isn’t.

I am not encouraging anyone to steal ideas from anyone. I am encouraging any working artist to produce work that your potential client is comfortable with. I don’t think you will find anyone shopping Etsy who would want to buy a glass container of what was purported to be the artist’s own urine.

And yet “Piss Christ” sold for $277,000

What I’m trying to say

As you build your business, slowly over time , you will refine an understanding of who your client is, and how to appeal to them, and your work will get better because you will get better. And you will find yourself in the company of people who like/want/buy your stuff.

Oh, yeah, the catch.

The catch is, oh, by the way, this success? It doesn’t come overnight.

I realized, while considering my options, that the real question was “what am I advertising?”. Was I advertising what I wanted to advertise? (Mouthful, yes, but say it slowly and it will begin to make sense) What exactly are we doing here? What am I doing here?

Blurry. Everything was blurry.

Turns out I was confused about a few things. I thought visibility would be akin to taping a bull’s eye on my forehead and inviting mean strangers to hurl insults and rants at me. I thought my mistakes and failures were things to be ashamed of.

Then I read  this and decided it really was me.

And I read  this and decided I was sneaking around the whole vulnerability thing.

After rooting around a few posts at The Fluent Self, I decided that I have been really disingenuous with myself. I believe in affordable custom artwork for everyone. It makes absolutely no sense that anyone would go to Ikea and buy a generic $40 dollar print when for not much more, that somebody could have something personal and custom on their wall.

I also realized that if i was going to personalize beer and wine bottles I wanted to do it right. Not like an afterthought.

And I want to create a DIY party graphics site. Buy what you need. Pay a little extra for custom work. Print what you need. Need printing, I can do that too.

Does Shindigdada reflect that mission?

No.

Not yet anyway.

Step 1: Spin-off FineArtPets.com.

Check.

Stay Tuned. More changes coming soon.

I have to have these two oil paintings. I have to, have to, have to.

(i must keep reminding myself we are on an austerity budget)

These two oil paintings are being auctioned today – auction estimate is $75-$100 for the pair. (we are on an austerity budget ) The paintings themselves are 3×4 inches, the frames are so elaborate you would almost miss these regal chimps.

The problem is the new car. Less than a week ago,we bought a brand new 2010 VW Sportwagen TDI. We have been living in Houston for 5 years without a car, mindful of our carbon footprint and trying to save a down payment for a house. The decision to buy to brand new car for the first time in our lives was a difficult one. Hurricane season had a lot to do with it. Truth is, I would happily keep this car until the end of my life. Still.. it wasn’t cheap.

So we made a pact to hunker down starting today and live on in austerity in hopes of having enough socked away to take advantage of what I foresee as the great real estate buying opportunity of 2011.

But

I have to have these
We’ll start tomorrow
I have jobs booked starting monday
I’ll eat less

Looking at them, even in this post, fills me with giggles and glee
(and they are cheaper than getting a script for xanax or prozac).

Advertising

All my Adgitize ads have come up for renewals. These bring my blog a lot of traffic but not a lot of sales. Yes, I want traffic. I want the occasional encouraging comment.

Still, I started to wonder just how much should I be spending on advertising? And what kind of advertising should I be doing?

And, again, The Law of Happy Accidents came to my rescue. While meandering across the internet , armed with my morning cuppa and 30 minutes to really wake up before getting dressed to start my day, I landed on Jessica Van Den’s Epherielldesigns.com, specifically on the most “appro-post” Crafty Biz – Calculating an Advertising Budget.

Epheriell Designs discusses in depth the development of an advertising strategy for a micro-business. The short version is

10% of Projected  Gross Sales
x      The Average Markup Percentage
YOUR ANNUAL AD BUDGET

The problem for me is trying to figuring out whether to include my freelance web design income  & my freelance print clients, or just focus on projected income from Etsy. I don’t have an answer to that yet.

Don’t miss Jessica Van Den’s Free E-book “From Nothing… to an Average of a Sale a Day Online in One Month!”

It has some interesting ideas and strategies to get your Etsy store off the ground.

The cappuccinos were always good , served in that iconic NYC coffee cup that came to be known as the Anthora Cup or Sherri Cup. It was so common to see me walking around with my blue and white cup, my roommates gave me a Sherri Cup t-shirt.  It turned out to be a limited edition as The Sherri Company jumped on protecting their trademark and the t-shirts disappeared pretty quickly.

This disposable cup will always symbolize my years in NYC.

I imagine that the Anthora Cup was just the kind of culturally-laden icon that Warhol would have embraced.

SO, in honor of Lesli Buck, I offer my version of that iconic cup, ready for printing (8.5×11in, 150dpi) for download. Please read the license agreement- in essence its free for non-commercial; I would appreciate a backlink and credit though.

Sherri Cup by Shindigdada.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

She hired a fellow Etsy designer to create the avatars for 3Girls.  I decided to go a different route to create a more original and accurate avatar of myself.

The basic avatar is free and for an additional $3 (approximately- the price in 1.50 Euros) you get an version of your avatar that is large enough to print.

Website: FaceYourManga.com

For more ideas of where tog et your avatar, LoonDesign has put together a great list.

My avatar from Doppelme:

So I will share a bit of my Sunday morning … maybe it will get back into the swing of things.