Only 63 days to Christmas

These days, it doesn't take much to make me feel under pressure. I have just got the West Bristol Art Trail out of the way, and was psyching myself up to make stuff for the Vintage and Handmade Fair, when I got an email to say that my work has been accepted for a large group exhibition called Art Presence at the Centrespace Gallery in Bristol. This is great, but I have to submit work by the 6th November. The idea of the show is to provide alternative Christmas presents (average spend is £30, apparently), so I'm not sure that the work I have to hand will be suitable. Hmm... I better get going.

I told myself earlier in the year that I must make lots of opportunities to sell my work in the run-up to Christmas. Now that I'm faced with just a few opportunities, I'm panicking slightly. As ever, I am hopelessly under-prepared. I think I got a bit side-tracked by making more 'arty' pieces for the Trail, which are necessarily more time-consuming and experimental. I have quite a few unfinished pieces, which are interesting, but not particularly saleable, and will just take too much time right now.

So I didn't even get as much done for the Trail as I hoped. This is my table in the pic below. The nice thing about my stuff is that people generally stop to look. Mostly in a 'What the hell IS that?' kind of way, but at least they look! It was a nice day, but not busy. I only sold one piece (not counting cards and badges, that is.) Oh well.

Art Trail This Weekend

This post is a shameless plug for the West Bristol Art Trail this weekend. Bristol appears to be a city of artists, and there are now at least four different art trails each year. Each one covers a different area of the city, and artists in that area open their homes to exhibit and sell their work. I'm not exhibiting in my home, but in the Hope Community Church. We have a preview evening on Friday (tomorrow) 6 to 9pm, and then we're open 10am to 5pm on Saturday (17th October). The trail as a whole is well worth a visit, if you're in the area. You get to see all kinds of art, AND you get to have a nose in other people's houses!

I haven't got as much work finished as I hoped, but I'm quite pleased with my new technique using beads and pins. I've pushed in a lot of pins now, and boy, are my fingers sore!

Pretty crazy

Goodness me, I've been a very poor blogger lately. But it's been deliberate, really. I've been trying to focus on getting some projects finished, and so I have to stop myself from spending too much time on the interweb. It's rather like not being allowed to watch TV until you've done your homework. Rather a sad state of affairs for a woman my age, but there you go.

However, I thought I'd do a quick 'show and tell' of the wonderful junk (or tat, if you will) I got from the charity shops in Weston-super-Mare on Saturday.

I was in sunny Weston to do another tour of duty at The Mythical Beast Sweet Shoppe (art exhibition plus sweets). In fact, I left Mr Kitsch doing the shopkeeping with Camilla, while I went went off round the charity shops. I haven't been shopping much lately, so I think I went a bit crazy. I would have bought more, but I just couldn't carry it. And, yes, obviously I need this many china animals...(rolls eyes and sighs impatiently). Well, duh!