The past three months

For all those new to my blog or just new to me in general, I'd like to just do a quick recap of the past three months or so, so we can catch up and get to know each other. It's the lightning rounds!

Commission Roundup!

AWA 2014 Roundup!

Chromatic Garden Roundup!

To see which dolls are still looking for a home click here!

Now hit reply and let me know what you've been up to!

Convention Madness & Mixed Feelings

Everytime I encounter an obstacle in my part time budding career, I can only throw more and more admiration for those who keep up extreme work ethics. I have been juggling the constant balance between my own life and two families. There's only so much of me to go around, but 2 more of me or even another clone might be helpful. I have quite a one track mind which works for thorough work, and an additional few clones would be lovely. After spending time with my mother and grandmother in August, I went into a mad dash to prepare for Anime Weekend in Atlanta. This regime involved an unhealthy diet, building my own display, cutting, sewing, and assembling 39 peas, corresponding pea pods, 25 bear pillows, 29 shooting stars in too many colors, 9 onigiri, and 6 steamed buns.

Beginning of convention prep

Final Display!

After a month of 12 hour work days for days straight with no break, I was quite happy with the overall look and portability of my product and display. It was a great improvement from my first attempt at conventions with dolls in cellophane bags.

This was the second time at an Anime convention, as I am still trying to find my sea legs in the offline crowd. I aimed for a different price range after seeing the price sensitivity at Otakon 2013. I went for a variety of handmade pieces from 11 to 45 USD and then the upper end of 355+ USD for the art dolls. I have yet to crack the code for Anime Conventions and probably will only attempt 1 or 2 more before trying a different crowd.

It is wonderful networking and you get your name out there to people that you would otherwise have not met and you get to spend the weekend with wonderful people and get to tell stories about waking up at 2 in the morning due to convention shenanigans.

Hotel Evacuated!

All said and done, even if you try to find the silver lining in the cloud, it can be quite disheartening to put in all those hours of work and only make 11 sales. I know there are challenges and many artists go their entire lives without making it. Even so, none of this helped to lessen the disappointment. For a while, it made me question if I should just scrap it all and start from scratch.

Something else that was not helping was people meaning well to give me advice. I know they meant well, but I had given my business a lot of thought. It was not an overnight spur of the moment thing. I had thought about how to reduce production cost, thought about manufacturing, balanced my books, thought about my resources and what I can and can't do. After the 10th time someone's told you, "now if only you could have this manufactured" you have to take a VERY deep breath and explain that this is OOAK work, not to be mass produced in China. While I have thought of other branches, I also decided to do research but that it would be a long time before I would have the capital to give it a real jump start.

I really admire those in the art/entertainment business because you only have to wonder how many no's they had to hear that yes. It is really about just sucking it up and picking yourself up by those bootstraps, but one thing is for sure, I cannot cut back on labor costs. This is as cheap as it'll get. If anything, I will be raising prices pretty soon because I am not a factory or a general worker, I am an artist with a specialized skill.

4 Projects at Once

In the past, I've never had more than one project open at a time. Sometime over July 4th weekend, I ended up running out of eyes and needing a couple other things to complete commissions, so naturally I put my current project (blue giraffe) on hold and my goose commission on hold to start more con prep and when I wanted a break from that, I started doing some sewing for my second commission.

 LO AND BEHOLD, the package with all the things I ordered came that day, so I was more than torn in a few directions. I didn't like having multiple unfinished things at once so I settled in and spent the good remaining of the day finishing what was closest to completion: 5 shoot star plushies to go with the original

Then I wet to approach my largest priority: the Canadian Goose

After working two full days of 10+ work hours, I had the head done right, ultrasuede beak on (nearly killed my wrists), neck made with skeleton, body sewn and stuffed, and the beginnings of a wing in progress. I'd have to recommend to those who use wire not to twist two pieces of 12 gauge wire together and then try to get your machine to hem it in. I broke 2 machine needles because the wire wasn't twisted 100% uniformly (and you can't see it under the minky). There were times when I was chugging along, that I would just hit that twisted wire and BAM off it snaps and usually I have to go in with tweezers to remove the broken portion out of sewing. This task actually can prove to be quite tough given the thickness of the minky+batting+wire. I thought about sewing it, but the wings themselves are quite large to begin with. If I were to annotate through my process,this post would get too long.

In the end I compiled a mental pros and cons list in cause I ever decide to have so many things going on at once:

Pros:

• There is variety, so you can keep your interest from waning by working on a few things at once
• Can increase efficiency (do all your cutting at once, sewing, assembling)

Cons

• Can feel overwhelming esp to people who require certain amount of control in their life to function
• Can lead to being distracted because you DO have the option to work on multiple things

All in all, I'm trying for less structure when it comes to myself and doing things more with my energy levels. Once I finish these I will probably go back to my original arrangement, but it was definitely interesting (and stressful).

Question for you: Do you typically work on one thing at a time or multiple projects? I'd love to hear your pros and cons list.

Until next time,

<3 Laine