Adventures in Selling, Part Three: Dreams and Shadows

Last week was Halloween - a time to bring the skeletons out of the closet and wear them on your skin. For a few brief hours, I became a tiger. It feels good to look and act differently than normal. It's fun to see the beautiful, horrible, and fantastic out on the sidewalks - dancing, collecting treats, and reveling in the night.

Me and Dozer. He wasn't fooled by my cattish-ness.

Which brings me to the subject of dreams and shadows..

It's easy to have a dream and feel longing for it because you "just didn't try" or "life got in the way." The dream can remain glow-y and beautiful in the distance, something that "could have been" but just wasn't. Sometimes it's great to have certain dreams stay in the distance, because maybe they really are more beautiful that way. But some dreams are worth the challenge.

The real question for the unfulfilled dreams is, "What keeps you from trying?"

One thing I've been learning these days is that grasping onto a dream and shaping it into an achievable goal will open a can of worms that may be difficult to face. Achieving your dreams can alter important relationships in your life (for good or ill), make you face personal demons, and reveal parts of yourself and your life that, once inspected, MUST change. Deep down, I think that most people are unconsciously aware that this can happen.

Change is scary. But Change can also be very good.

A Halloween-y display at my friend Sarah Hand's house

In my last posting about how I made a breakthrough with my own attitudes toward money, I mentioned that there were other issues holding me back from being able to make a living. While the dough hasn't been flowing in like a raging river (it's more like a trickling creek, hopefully gathering strength!) I feel relatively more calm and trusting these days that it'll keep growing bit by bit. But my feelings have run the gamut from spazz-y to peaceful.

By the beginning of October, I had contacted over 100 stores asking if they'd like to carry my cards. I added 13 new stores through my efforts (22 total stores so far!) which I am proud of. But after the small slew of orders, there was a dry spell, and I decided to take a break from contacting stores so I could work on other projects. I was frankly sick of thinking about my notecard business.

I have mixed attitudes towards freedom and responsibility. I will never be a 9-5 kind of person - it's just not in my nature. Throughout my life, I have always wanted to be free with my art, to do only what I enjoy. But running my card business is showing me that no one is totally "free." In fact, running my own business is harder in some ways because I face full responsibility for every decision I make. There isn't a boss to manage me. I am still not sure how this business will grow, and sometimes I wonder if I should quit because it can be overwhelming and too hard at times. On the other hand, going back to what I was used to would be frustrating and unsatisfying.

What is freedom? Was I really free when I was barely making enough money and worried about it all the time? Was I free when I was doing what was familiar to me, and my dreams were beautiful and distant? Can I always just do what I want to do, and will that make me happy?

The answer for me is "No." I've got to compromise if I want to be happy. That means bending my brain into different shapes and looking at the long-term. Rather than striving to have all the answers now, I can grow to be the capable person I want to be. This means learning the legalities of running my business (that alone is nerve-wracking!), being adaptable to change, and getting help when I need it.

Hot cider and treats from a Fire Ceremony party that I attended in October.

In the last couple of months, I took a creative writing class called "Writing the Shadow," taught by Douglas Jones at The Visual Arts Center of Richmond. In Jungian terms, the Shadow is the part of ourselves that we find unacceptable, the part that haunts us or that we try to hide from others. Through writing and thinking consciously about how to see and integrate the shadow side of myself, I realized that there is someone in my life who I greatly admire but who haunts me in many ways both positive and negative - my dad. Throughout my life, my dad has demonstrated, through words and actions, a trust in life and in his abilities that I have never fully embodied. Even when he's told me about his struggles, I still see my dad as being magical. But by striving to be like him, I have lived in his shadow.

I can see now that trying to conduct life like my dad doesn't allow me to be the self that I am. I want to free the part of me that never feels good enough for my own standards. I want to accept that I will always be a bit doubtful and fearful, and that's okay. It hasn't kept me from doing things that are brave, if my heart says they're worth doing. I don't have to feel declarative and confident about everything. Sometimes just muddling through is good enough - and I suspect that's how many seemingly-confident people do it, too!

After taking my shadow writing class, I learned that the parts of ourselves that we are afraid to look at are the parts that make us human. And these things are beautiful in their own way. They make us complex, layered, imperfect. We cannot have strengths without weaknesses, and we cannot have weaknesses without strengths.

True change occurs within. True change comes from looking at yourself more clearly through a process of heartbreaks and triumphs, and what follows - whether that takes days, months, or years - is a "symptom" of change, not the change itself. It's the fruit that grows from the seed. I look at all that I've done in the past as building towards my dreams and informing what I decide to do each step of the way. Looking at my life as an accumulation of thoughts, actions, and creations is much more healthy than judging whether I have succeeded or failed at any given moment - as if I or anyone else has the right to decide that!

A couple of weeks ago I attended a wonderful "Fire Ceremony" hosted by my artist friends Sarah Hand and Suzanne Vinson. Sarah makes dreamy paper-mache dolls, sculptures and whimsical paper collages. Her work just makes you feel happy.

Shadow box by Sarah Hand

Suzanne is a minister and artist who makes art and hosts art & spiritual retreats and creativity circles. She makes fantastically colorful paintings, mixed media art, and wonderful wisdom cards. During our ceremony, I picked out her "Soar" card to focus my intentions for the night because I am ready for my art, business, and life to truly soar and thrive.

Wisdom card by Suzanne Vinson

For the ceremony, Suzanne helped us focus on the aspects that fire brings to us - it's focus, warmth, and also destructive power. I won't share all of the ceremony here because it just seems more powerful to keep some of it to myself, but it involved thinking about things we wanted to let go of in our lives and other parts that we wanted to bring in. One of my intentions was to make peace with my shadows and to integrate them into my life, among other things. There was percussion, a bonfire, and sparklers involved - such fun! 

Dear Readers, I'm sure you have felt conflicted about your dreams and have faced plenty of shadows mixed in with your sunny days. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Adventures in Selling, Part One: Hitting the Pavement

A few weeks ago, while visiting my boyfriend's family in Kentucky, I took my notecards around to some shops. It's been a bit more difficult than I imagined to get in touch with store owners to purchase my cards. I'll write e-mails, and sometimes I'm lucky enough to hear back that they're interested, or maybe my cards aren't a good fit for their store or it's not good timing. But often, especially when I'm using one of those fill-in-the-blank e-mail forms, I won't hear back at all and I won't know why. So I decided to "take it to the streets" and just drop in on store owners. Which I've heard you're not really supposed to do - it's better to make an appointment. But I did it anyway.

Zum Kartoffellager by Michael Sowa

One of the store owners wasn't in town, but I talked to her employees who showed interest in the cards and told me to e-mail her. One store buyer showed a lot of interest and took some samples and an order form. One owner immediately took six of my card designs on consignment! And one owner (who I'd actually e-mailed several months before but hadn't heard back from) anticipated my request before I even asked and told me she was too busy to look at anything (which she was, since there were lots of customers in there), but gave me her direct e-mail.

Kranker Hund by Michael Sowa

The day after my boyfriend and I returned to Richmond, I e-mailed the store owners from Kentucky to follow up. Then my boyfriend and I went to a grocery store to eat lunch and I griped about how, even with the luck I'd had with that one store taking my cards on consignment and a handful of other stores currently selling them, I didn't think it was possible for me to make much money. I felt completely pessimistic. I was tired out from the long drive back and depressed to come back to regular life after having such a fun vacation. I also didn't have enough income to cover the rest of the month and didn't know how I would generate it.

Later that day, I checked my e-mail. One of the store buyers from Kentucky had just placed a huge order! I grabbed a calculator to tally the order - 360 of my cards! I yelped with joy. It was my biggest order from any store so far. Financially, my month was covered.

For awhile, I was so excited. Then I wondered how I would make enough money the next month. Not every buyer was going to order so many of my cards. And then I remembered that I was running out of envelopes and I would have to order more before I could send out the order! I didn't want her to think I was unprofessional and couldn't ship my orders quickly, especially not such a big, important order. That night I slept fitfully and had dream-like worries about envelopes.

But, once I received my envelopes the next week, I packed up the order and felt this new and wonderful energy flow through me. I felt excited, confident, hopeful. It was fun to prepare the order, to neatly stack and wrap up the cards and organize them in the cardboard box. I went to FedEx and opened an account. I told the FedEx employee how I excited I was about it. She kept smiling. I'm sure not too many people come into FedEx excited about sending out packages. I tried to savor it, because one day I may not be excited about packaging and shipping out orders. But at that moment, I was doing exactly what I wanted. One big order had given me the hope I needed.

Mann mit Elefant by Michael Sowa

I now confirm my suspicion that not only do I have to get over my fear of failure, I also have to grapple with my fear of SUCCESS. Ever since I got more serious about selling my art five years ago, I've had this weird feeling that everything that happens to me is only because I want it or truly need it to. Every time I despaired that I couldn't make enough money from my art or just really needed an emotional pick-me-up, lo and behold I would make another sale or someone would offer me an unexpected opportunity. It was never a lot, but always just enough. Throughout my life, my parents instilled a sense in me that I was always supported by the Universe no matter what. But I wondered why it was never a bit more to take the edge off my worries.

Getting more than I expected with that notecard order gave me hope, but also terrified me. I think I've never received more than "just enough" because until now, I didn't feel that I could handle it. This wasn't always a conscious sentiment, but as I now approach the reality of going full-time with my various art businesses, I can see that I was always afraid of the responsibility it would bring. Running my own business takes risk, bravery, a whole lot of accountability, and a pretty steep learning curve. And that is SCARY to me. I guess it was usually easier to feel slightly in the dark, to not ride that crazy beast even though I was already half-gripping the horns and being dragged by it. I've been working through these fears, though, by learning more about business from reading books and online articles, having a meeting with a business mentor from SCORE (a business counseling service in Richmond), and contemplating taking some classes to learn more. At each step, I experienced the initial fear of having to face something new, then the ease of actually feeling like I can deal with potential problems that may arise.

Suppenschwein by Michael Sowa

One thing I've learned thus far is that since I'm running my business, I have to be happy with the way I'm doing things - even if in a parallel universe another me would be working faster, harder, and smarter. I have to deal with my own weaknesses and champion my own strengths. I have to decide when I need to take breaks and when I need to push myself more. I also have to decide whether what I'm doing is worth my own time and energy, and learn to say no to people and activities that sap the energy out of the goals that really matter to me. This last thing, learning to say "no," has been difficult because I hate to disappoint people, but ultimately I was hurting myself by doing things that caused me resentment because they were not really how I wanted to use my energy anymore. I also have to battle with my own rigid thinking and old habits, and re-think decisions in a fresh way that makes more sense in the moment.

After I gained self-confidence with the big card order, I started to visualize how I would direct my card business - what I really wanted from it. I pondered what it would feel like to be someone else stumbling upon my cards for the first time. I suddenly had ideas for new illustrations and different card lines I wanted to experiment with in the future. I thought of it as a long-term venture where I would have fun trying lots of different things and seeing what worked.

The paintings I've been showing throughout this post are by a German artist named Michael Sowa. His work is cute but unusual, absurd and artfully created, and each painting contains an entire world.

Painting by Michael Sowa

I discovered his art at a store in Rochester, NY (my hometown) called Poster Art. Every time I went in, I would find myself attracted to a postcard and then I'd turn the card over and see his name. This is what I want with my cards - to be that thing you discover unexpectedly, that charms you and inspires you to imagine. To be a little peek into a larger world. I hadn't thought of selling my cards in this way before. I thought of them as another outlet for the art I already make, as well as an approach to affordably get my work into the hands of many people while making some revenue. But thinking of the cards in this other way made them magical - elevated them to something that could truly impact people, even in a small way.

Tigerhasse by Michael Sowa

It's wonderful to feel excited about life after a period where you didn't even know you felt a bit numb. I want to follow that excitement and see where it leads. Even if it gets scary sometimes.

Join me for more notecard shenanigans in "Adventures in Selling, Part Two," coming soon!

The Notecards are Here! And there's a Holiday Sale - 15% OFF!

The last couple months have been a whirlwind, and I totally neglected to post pictures of the brand new notecards I had printed last month! Thanks to some of you kind readers who voted, I gathered the images with the most votes and had them offset-printed by the very amazing James River Press, in Richmond, VA. Brooke was my contact for this project, and she was wonderful to work with! I also want to give a shout-out to my aunt who helped me a LOT through the process of deciding to print my notecards. She has always wanted me to create notecards of my artwork because it's an affordable way for people to own my art, as well as a great way for me to sustain a living income while having time to create more artwork (let's hope she's right about that!) She gave me so much encouragement and practical advice for embarking on this notecards business. Thank you!

Here's the enormous offset lithography press:

And my cards all packed up in cardboard boxes - 20,000 cards total! That's the largest quantity of my artwork ready to be put out into the world!

Here are the cards displayed at my first craft show of the season, Handmade Market in Raleigh, NC:

I'm very happy with them...

I have a SALE going on in my shop through Sunday, December 15th, so you can get some cards for yourself with a 15% DISCOUNT! Please use coupon code YAY2013 upon checkout in my shop Sprout Head. You must use the coupon code, otherwise you won't receive the discount! I'm selling the cards individually, as well as in discounted packs. 

The image on each card is printed on a matte recycled paper which gives the artwork a beautiful, soft finish. The back of the card lists the title and medium of the original artwork. These cards are suitable to write your own greetings inside to give away, or you can choose to frame them as prints. The 5 x 7" card is a standard size for a ready-made frame.

You can currently find my cards in these stores:

Lemon Tree in Portland, OR

Harmony Society in Carlisle, PA (actually, I'll be shipping the order tomorrow but they'll get there soon)

Archimage in Rochester, NY (this also just *happens* to be the amazing shop my parents, aunt, and uncle opened up 30 years ago)

I also have prints and/or zines available at the following shops:

Pinky's Boutique in Janesville, WI

BuyOlympia in Portland, OR

Little Paper Planes in San Francisco, CA

If any of you dear readers know of a shop where my cards might make a good fit, please leave a comment with the shop name and their website if they have one. I'd like to get my cards into many shops around the country.

And I promised a giveaway of 12 notecards to one randomly-selected person who left a comment and their e-mail address in the Notecard Vote from last post. The lucky winner is:

 Joy Chu!

Yay! I swear I didn't peek when I picked the slip of paper with her name on it, but I felt very pleased to have picked my teacher from the online Children's Book Illustration class at UCSD Extension I took earlier this year. You can also read her blog Got Story Countdown, a great blog with advice for illustrators. Joy, I'll be e-mailing you very soon to ask for your notecard selections!

***

One Last Note:

I'm not sure if I'll have time to write another blog post before the end of this year, so if I don't I'd like to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! 

Personally, this year has been challenging for me in both positive and negative ways. I've done a lot of evaluating of how I have been living/working/art-ing and how I would like things to grow or change. I realized that it's too difficult for me to keep up with all the different kinds of things I'm doing and I need to focus better and cut back on some activities while making more time to rest and rejuvenate. It's important for artists (and everyone) to have periods where not much happens, so they can be open to ideas and have the energy to embark on new projects. 

Some of the changes I want to see happen won't go into effect until several months into the new year because I've already made prior commitments. And some things are hard for me to change because I have trouble saying no to requests people ask of me, or putting on hiatus activities I'm already involved in. I'm trying to be more conscious of these tendencies and learn ways to be kind to myself so I can sustain the artistic life I want, while also being able to support myself materially. It's a difficult balance and a continual process. Maybe some of you are also going through a similar struggle. I wish everyone a bit more *peace* in their hearts so you can truly shine as the person you are.

LOVE,

aijung

Vote on Notecard Images - Get a Shop Discount & Enter into the Giveaway!

Hi Everyone!

I am in the process of launching my next business venture: the creation of greeting cards using my artwork. I've compiled a bunch of possibilities, but I need your help in deciding which make the cut. Here are 48 images to choose from. I know that's a lot to look at, but I wanted to include a diverse array of images. I will ultimately choose from 20 - 30 designs. Please let me know which images YOU would choose if you were picking out a notecard. Keep in mind who you might be shopping for and for what occasion. Some occasions might be very specific, such as holiday cards or for graduation, birthday, etc. Some might just be to say hello to a friend, or maybe you would buy the card for yourself just because you like it! Please write your choices in the comments section, 10 - 30 images would be helpful. You may write just the number of the image and/or the title I've given each image.

As a Thank-You, for anyone who leaves a comment I'm offering 15% off your total purchase in my Etsy shop, Sprout Head. Please leave your e-mail address if you're interested, or you can e-mail me directly with your e-mail address: good_old_fashioned_smell@hotmail.com so that I can send you the 15% Coupon Code. If you don't leave your e-mail, I'll assume you're just being helpful and don't want to take advantage of this offer. Also, everyone who leaves their e-mail address will automatically be entered into a Giveaway for a set of 12 of their favorite notecards. This won't happen until I get the notecards printed, which hopefully will be by the end of October. I'll probably make my decisions on notecard designs once I get at least 20 comments.

Thanks so much for your input!

Golden Moth Assembly Party and Notecard Illustrations

This past Sunday I held a Golden Moth Assembly Party for people to come and help assemble the card decks. It was a lot of fun! Everyone was so helpful, encouraging, enthusiastic, and full of ideas. It was great to share the deck with other people. So much of this project has been created in near-solitude, and in the past month or so I've come to realize that I need to establish and maintain stronger friendships with others for my own happiness and mental health. My default mode tends to be hermitude, so it's a push for me to reach out to others. I'm glad I did :)

Since all the counter space was taken up with cards, I had to set food on top of the washing machine and stove. I have lots of leftovers to eat this week.

The energy of a group of people with different ideas and perspectives can be so uplifting. Their help and good company allowed me get over the near-paralyzing magnitude of this project for me into something much more manageable. Thank you Cate, Leila, Betsy, Nina, Jacob, Emily, and Greg!

***

Lately, I have been working in watercolor. I took an Intro to Watercolor class with Susan Quinnild at The Visual Arts Center of Richmond last month and I loved it! Although I've used watercolor for most of my life, I've never been formally trained in how to use it. Turns out there is a lot to be learned! I'll be posting some of my work and process in a future post.

One of the rewards for The Golden Moth Illumination Deck are notecards. I finally finished the designs for those today. I don't know what took me so long, since when i actually sat down to paint it took only about 8 hours combined to complete them. I think what holds me back is not feeling clear about my ideas for the finished product and feeling overly ambitious about what sort of image to create. I find that if I sit back and allow myself to simplify, I usually arrive at a happy result.

Here are the two illustrations. They are based on images in the card deck.

Getting Domestic

Upon returning from New York City a couple of weeks ago, I was pretty tired out. I had been working intensely on finishing up the artwork for The Golden Moth Illumination Deck (see the Kickstarter campaign for the project here) in order to get the artwork files to the printer right before I left for NYC, and didn't realize what an effect it would have on me. It was hard to fully enjoy New York - it just felt fast and full of too many people. Not to say I didn't enjoy elements of being in the city, but it made me realize for the first time that maybe I'm getting too old for it! Years ago I used to live in New York City while attending Pratt Institute and for a couple years post-graduation, and I do love Brooklyn - the brownstones, wrought-iron fences, and local character.

But I was happy to return home to Richmond. I've been taking a bit of a break from working on the Moth Deck project in order to get myself recharged. There is still more artwork that I need to complete, but the bulk of it is finished and the cards are printed! There's some finishing work to be done before I receive the cards and other products, and then I need to do some further finishing before they're ready to be packaged and shipped off.

In the meantime, I've been getting domestic - cleaning and decorating the house and working on the garden. It feels nice to put some energy into my home - a place I spend probably 80% or more of my time in. I've been framing artwork, some that I've kept stashed for a long time, and have finally started decorating the apartment more. The apartment is by no means perfect, but it's got its own charm. And it looks much more homey with artwork hanging on the walls. Here is one of my favorites called "Strawberry Kids," a linocut print by Amanda Kindregan.

Her work has a retro feel to it like old children's book illustrations and I love her colors. Next to the print is the curtain I sewed for the door window. It's not perfect, but looks much better than the oversized sheer purple curtain that was tacked onto the door before. And it was the first chance I had to use my old table-top White sewing machine.

I also decided to make a French Memory Board. I've seen them around before, and the idea appealed to me because I have a lot of postcards and little bitty art that I'd like to display, but I don't like to damage the artwork by taping them to the wall, pushing tacks through, or squeezing them with clips. The beauty of the memory board is that tightly-stretched ribbons are the only things holding the artwork to it, so there is no damage and artwork is easily interchangeable.

I decided to make my memory board different than other ones I had seen by using translucent ribbon. In some memory boards I looked at, the diamond pattern of the ribbon was jarring as it cut across a picture, and obviously you lose some of the image behind the ribbon. 

There are many online tutorials on how to make your own Memory Board. Here's a simple one. I used a pre-stretched 22" x 28" canvas. For mine, I also added 2 layers of cotton batting behind the cloth as I'd seen in other tutorials. This allows you to get the ribbon nice and tight against the cloth so it holds pictures better. I sewed my buttons right onto the board instead of using brads, which took longer than I'd anticipated, but definitely helps the ribbon tension so that the pictures stay put underneath.

 The drawing of the two creatures (foxes?) on the telephone was given to me by my sweet friend Katy O'Brien who I used to live with in Portland, Oregon. Visit her blog to see comic-versions of her adventures in Sweden last summer. She also sent me the postcard of a Moomin character in a flower field to the right of it. To the right of that postcard and underneath it are some pretty collaged cards that my sister Linjung made for me. She makes the best cards and writes amazing messages and poetry to go with them. And on the bottom left is a postcard of artwork by Irene Olivieri.

 Here is a "Happy Animal" doodle and an artist trading card by my friend Rina Drescher. I love the spontaneity and lively colors in her art and paintings.

 

 The March calendar page is by Chris Milk Hulbert and is from the 2010 Art 180 Calendar. The quote comes from 12 3/4 year-old Shaiheim Durham: "Art makes me feel regular" - a sentiment that speaks to me only too well. Art 180 is an organization in Richmond that provides at-risk youth with free art programs. I led a writing and illustration program last year, I keep meaning to post about it. I'll just say for now that it was tough in many ways, but it changed my life - no lie! The sweet fairy is by my friend (and fellow teacher at The Visual Arts Center of Richmond) Sarah Hand. Sarah illustrated the 2012 Art 180 Calendar for this year. Last year I illustrated the calendar, also using quotes from kids in the art programs. I just got a package in the mail last week from Art 180 - the calendar images I illustrated were made into notecard sets!

True that.