Getting It Together
How do you feel about failing? If a piece doesn’t work out do you just shrug, set it aside, and try again? Or do get frustrated and just leave the studio for a while? Or maybe you just glean your lessons from it and move on to something completely different? Honestly, I think these are all valid responses, as long as you don’t let failure stop you from moving forward. And I hope you can refrain from telling yourself that you are a failure. Failing is a pothole in the road, not who you are. Once you’ve gone through a pothole, you will be better equipped to avoid them in the future.
I’ve had a number of failures this week. A lot of them involved the technical backend of the website so it wasn’t too hard to refrain from calling myself a dummy there because it’s not really my forte. But I’m one of those who usually shrugs and tries again. Even when I still don’t quite know what I’m doing. After this long week, I realized that’s not always a good thing!
So, yep, I spent the entire week working on website stuff and testing the upper limits of my not being frustrated by failure threshold. I have a lovely tech guy who finally got me all straightened out on Friday but then I still had a blog to write. I have written (or at least started) three blog posts so far. Two rambled on and didn’t go anywhere and the third, as it turned out, I did basically a year ago. My brain is tired and I’m going to do something I don’t normally do… I’m giving up! Sort of.
Especially as artists, we all need to know when to stop. When to stop working on a piece before it becomes overworked. When to stop working, When to stop putting stuff on your plate. Right now, I’m still mostly a one person and one-armed business, wearing so many hats I’ve been thinking of taking up millinery! But it’s not like I need another craft! But all joking aside, one of the things I am trying to do better at is knowing when to stop, particularly when it comes to work. That’s not my forte either but I’m working on it!
So, it’s literally the 11th hour and I would end up working into the wee hours to get something done in the format I usually give you these Sunday mornings, but I’m not going to do that to myself or to you. Instead, I’m going to leave you with the image above by Patricia Roberts-Thompson. I’m sure many of you can recognize that these are designs based on Helen Breil’s work. Specifically, they were made from Helen’s Mad about Bowls tutorial.
Patricia gives Helen full credit, proud of what she was able to accomplish from the tutorials. It’s not hard to feel well accomplished after going through any one of Helen tutorials. She is a fabulous teacher. What can be hard is knowing what to do with completed exercises from tutorials, but there’s no reason not to collect and display one’s well accomplished results and I think Patricia did a lovely job of doing just that.
You may remember from back in August this year, I did a post about collecting little things. I honestly think this is the perfect time of year to look at doing something like this for yourself. While you’re out doing your holiday shopping, keep an eye out for shadow boxes and wall display cases. When things slow down after the holidays, you can start cleaning up the studio and collecting little odds and ends and arranging them in the boxes. Check out the “Pretty Little Bits” post for more ideas. These can be great little stress-free, and practically failure free, projects to look forward to!
Go Check out the Nudge Sale! (We now have Christi Friesen books!)
One quick note of business … I started a “Nudge Sale” on the website. I’ve “nudged” down prices on nearly everything in the store, so most everything is 15%-40% off. We have freshly listed 8 classic books by Christi Friesen which make great gifts for polymer curious friends and family.
I’m going to keep the sale going till the first week of January so you can buy presents for your crafty friends or come back and use any gift money stock up on inspiring publications.
Sign Up for Early Notice on Virtual Art Box Discounts
I’ve also started a list for people who want to get in early on the Virtual Art Box subscription discounts I will be offering come January. If you want to be directly notified about that, you can sign up here. If you’re wondering what I’m talking now, you can find out more on this page.
Okay… off to bed with me! Considering how busy the next two weekends are for most of us, I will probably leave you with something short and sweet for the last Sundays of this month and then will get back into the groove in January. All the best to you and yours as we dive into this holiday season!
