It's nice to have an open house. You have an opportunity to show your work and meet people that frequently have your same interests. You have the chance to hopefully make some sales or make some connections that could lead to sales.
But you have to have a nice, snug, clean studio to start with. And you have to have lots of nice, new interesting pieces to show off. I have been working hard on my new Etsy shop, RavenMeetsCrow, so luckily this year the product side is not a huge concern. It's the studio itself that is the concern. Having to clean is really good, because otherwise you won't, like last year when I decided not to be on the studio tour because our back yard was ripped up.
Currently my studio is a mess. I mean a big mess, like a tornado tore through with no warning or chance to batten down the hatches sort of mess. And being an artist that likes to work with found objects, frequently I keep things for years--thinking that very soon I will have a grand idea of what to do with them--and then I have mountains of junk to move. Some of this stuff truly is junk. Not the kind of stuff I can donate to Goodwill and feel good about myself, but garbage, plain and simple. It's stuff I should have known better than to be hoarding: old automobile repair manuals (kept for the pictures), bags of half set concrete and grout, dozens of plastic plant pots, hundreds of old scratched record albums I thought I could use in a project (turn out vinyl is very brittle), and boxes of boring tile people have given to me since I make mosaic art, they assume I want their off-white cast offs!
Instead of showing you a god awful picture of my studio in full cleaning mode, I will show you a picture of my new print I am selling on RavenMeetsCrow.
I will save the studio pictures for when it is nice and clean!
This print makes me wish I had a child to buy for on my gift list this year! What a lovely unusual combination of balloon + bears.
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