Getting ready for Snods Edge Exhibition

Much printing of cards and assembling into cello bags with envelopes - where are they?  Are there enough?  How many of each picture?  What has been most popular??  Finally done - taking 39, 11 pictures.

Last year there was a lot of interest, with a couple of people contacting us through our website after the show.  Hoping that this year will be successful. 

It's a bit of a pain having to drive up to Snods and back twice a day.  If we counted car mileage as well as entry fee and commission, I suspect we might just break even!  But it is surprising how many people come back either online or at the next show and actually buy something.  And Luke loves selling and talking to people, so it's all worthwhile. 

Fingers crossed.

Exhibiting at the Botanic Gardens in Durham

Pictures all put up before the main rush of customers arrived at 10.30am.  The large canvases look quite modest in this very spacious cafe, but even the small ones hold their own because of the colour and bold shapes. We decided to allow pictures to be sold off the wall in case anyone wanted one for a Christmas present. Don't know if we will sell any, but perhaps someone will visit the website and decide they like one enough to buy it.

Unfortunately, no sales, but hopefully there will be some visitors to the website.

Postmortem

Well, that wasn't the most profitable craft fair.  Only two canvases sold, one large and one medium.  Crowds of people came, but they were mostly looking rather than buying.  As the first day was 'Black Friday' and rather quiet, I can only assume that many people were at sales, and if they spent all the Christmas money there, they couldn't afford to spend much at the craft fair.

However, we have had an order for two large canvases of a customer's own photos.

Tomorrow, Lynn and Luke are going to set up an exhibition at the Botanic Gardens in Durham.  We don't expect to sell anything, but maybe someone will look online and buy something in the future. 

Getting ready for the Craft Fair this weekend

We have 6 new canvases ready for the craft fair - two small canvases from the cafe which haven't been shown here for at least a year, and four medium ones which I've just bought. But the main new attraction is Boat and pier, taken at Loch Ranza on the Isle of Arran.  I'm hoping this will be popular. It looks stunning at 30 x 20 inches.

Setting up is on Thursday, and the fair opens on Friday morning.  We usually do quite well at the November fair, though people seem to buy for themselves rather than as Christmas presents.

We tried out some A5 cards at the July fair and they went very well, so I've increased the number of designs and also the quantities available.  These are all printed out ready in their cello bags, but the numbers of each design needs to be checked as they have been plundered since I printed them!

So tomorrow I'll check everything ready for setting up on Thursday.  I'm always afraid I will have forgotten something vital, but so far that hasn't happened. Fingers crossed.

Hand held at one tenth of a second!

I went down to the church last night, because there was an event happening and the lights would be on.  The Boyen choir was to perform and were rehearsing.  The reason for going down, though, was not the choir, but to see what the new East window looked like from the outside when lit up.

It was rather disappointing.  There is so much almost clear glass that the lights inside are clearly visible.  Might try taking a photo with the closest lights are off, and rely on those in the nave.

I took quite a few photos trying to obscure the lights behind the stone parts of the window, but it wasn't very satisfactory.  That and the fact that is was getting progressively darker made me decide to leave it.  When I came home and put it on the computer, I feared that most of the photos would be subject to camera shake. I was wrong.  This photo was taken handheld at a tenth of a second and is very sharp.  All down to the Lumix's stablisation technology.

Amazing!

The website is up and running!

Still needs some tweaking and more interesting descriptions, but the website is at last online.  A big relief that it will be available for the November Craft Fair.

We've just had this picture of a boat and the pier at Loch Ranza, Arran, made into a canvas for the November Craft Fair.  It looks great at 30"x 20".

This is where the summer ferry connects with the Mull of Kintyre (pause for song) and it is where wild red deer, mainly hinds, make unsuspecting travellers offers they can't refuse.  They are very persistent (and big) and any kind of food is fair game.

Website rescued!

It looks as though Luke will have the website back online in a few days.  It has been absent for several months when the person who originally set it up and took payment for hosting it seemed to have disappeared, along with our website!

We have purchased a WordPress preset programme and Luke is in the process of uploading the images.  In the process, some of the less popular (and less interesting!) images are being left out and some new images added, one of which is shown below.

I took this photo at The James Muir Country Park, south of Edinburgh.  I was mainly interested in the bay and the view across the Forth estuary, so the children were of only secondary interest.  Altogether a fairly boring flat photo.

However, after I had cropped it, enhanced the colour and changed the children's positions, then finally the whole picture 'buzzed', I produced the picture below.  Which I'm quite pleased with!