{"id":16775,"date":"2019-12-15T02:30:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-15T10:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/?p=16775"},"modified":"2019-12-15T00:15:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-15T08:15:31","slug":"getting-it-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/getting-it-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting It Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>How do you feel about failing? If a piece doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019ve gone through a pothole, you will be better equipped to avoid them in the future.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a number of failures this week. A lot of them involved the technical backend of the website so it wasn\u2019t too hard to refrain from calling myself a dummy there because it\u2019s not really my forte. But I\u2019m one of those who usually shrugs and tries again. Even when I still don\u2019t quite know what I\u2019m doing. After this long week, I realized that\u2019s not always a good thing!<\/p>\n

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\u2019t go anywhere and the third, as it turned out, I did basically a year ago. My brain is tired and I\u2019m going to do something I don\u2019t normally do\u2026 I\u2019m giving up! Sort of.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m still mostly a one person and one-armed business, wearing so many hats I\u2019ve been thinking of taking up millinery! But it\u2019s 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\u2019s not my forte either but I\u2019m working on it!<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s literally the 11th<\/sup> 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\u2019m not going to do that to myself or to you. Instead, I\u2019m going to leave you with the image above by Patricia Roberts-Thompson<\/a>. I\u2019m sure many of you can recognize that these are designs based on Helen Breil<\/a>\u2019s work. Specifically, they were made from Helen\u2019s Mad about Bowls tutorial<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Patricia gives Helen full credit, proud of what she was able to accomplish from the tutorials. It\u2019s 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\u2019s no reason not to collect and display one\u2019s well accomplished results and I think Patricia did a lovely job of doing just that.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re 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 \u201cPretty Little Bits\u201d post<\/a> for more ideas. These can be great little stress-free, and practically failure free, projects to look forward to!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Go Check out the Nudge Sale<\/a>! (We now have Christi Friesen books!)<\/strong><\/p>\n

One quick note of business \u2026 I started a \u201cNudge Sale<\/a>\u201d on the website. I\u2019ve \u201cnudged\u201d 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<\/a> which make great gifts for polymer curious friends and family.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Sign Up for Early Notice on Virtual Art Box Discounts<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve 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.<\/a> If you\u2019re wondering what I\u2019m talking now, you can find out more on this page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Okay\u2026 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!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you feel about failing? If a piece doesn\u2019t 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational-art","category-polymer-community-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2O0Lm-4mz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16775"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16782,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16775\/revisions\/16782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}