michele maule art: May 2017

boston terrier picnic

Crafty Wonderland was this last Saturday and it was another great success for me. I was really worried because the weather called for 70 degrees and sunny, and I didn't think anyone would want to be inside at all. We haven't had any nice weather up until this weekend and I was sure people would be spending the day outdoors playing in the sunshine.

I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout. It was a busy day and I did very well. I'm so lucky to live in a city where people are so supportive of local artists and crafters. I'm also really lucky to live in a city where Crafty exists. Cathy and Torie, the two forces behind it, do such a great job every year, twice a year!

The rest of the weekend was spent at the Oregon Human Society Pug Crawl and hiking in the Columbia River Gorge. Every year there is a themed Pug Crawl that benefits the OHS. This year the theme was Pugs on Broadway. Dream Girls was my favorite costume. There was, at one time, three pugs on the cart. The owners put peanut butter on the mics, so it looked like the dogs were singing. It won best in show, of course.

We ended up doing two hikes yesterday. The first hike we were going to do turned out to be mostly closed due to a wash out. The Gorge had a really tough winter and a lot of trails are full of debris and landslides. So, after the section we could do ended up being really short, we headed down the road a ways and did a second leg.

It was really hot and we were both thankful for the waterfalls and cooler sections of the hike. There were quite a bit of people out and we ended up seeing some kind of unusual things... Here they are, in order of weirdness:

1. A cat on someones shoulders.

2. A mom reading to her son, not back off the trail, but literally on the trail.

3. Someone listening to rap rather loudly on their phone. No headphones.

4. A stroller - note this is a very, very rocky trail in most places. She didn't look like she was having much fun...

Anyway, it was entertaining to say the least and we felt like we had one some sort of hiking Bingo.

2018 calendar

Hello Hi Allo

4:24 PM

The Crafty Wonderland Spring show is this Saturday so I've been really busy getting ready for it. The spring show isn't as intense as the winter show, so I've been working on a few other things as well.

We had to go to Ikea on Monday for a couple of things for the up coming show and while we were there I talked Nate into this book shelf system. I've been wanting to line that whole wall with book shelves since we moved in 6 years ago. It was really hard to find an affordable solution while also keeping a low profile in mind. Our house it really small and I didn't want to be running into them all the time. We put them up on Monday and I haven't had any run ins!

I'm really happy with this system. It's called the Svalnas. The furthest the widest shelf is just over 9" and this combination cost $250. There are a multitude of combinations that you can buy as well as desks and cupboards you can add.

I can also add a couple of shelves here and there if I need to. So long as Ikea doesn't discontinue it any time soon.

It looks so much nicer than just a large blank wall and now I have a place for my books! Win win.

I've also been working on a calendar! For the past few years people have asked me about making a calendar, but I never really had any great ideas on a theme. I thought of one in December last year, but it was way too late to make it at that point. So I started making it for 2018. It's almost done and I'm really excited to share it soon!

I also broke out some old etching plates and my etching press. I've been missing old Portland quite a bit lately so I thought I'd print some of these plates I made from 2006 - 2007. I'm not going to list them on Etsy but I might have a few on hand at Crafty Wonderland this Saturday.

If you're interested in purchasing one, and can't make it to Crafty, you can e-mail me at michelemaule@gmail.com

On top of all this I've been working on wholesale orders. I've had a really slow couple of months, so I am really, really grateful for those wholesale orders. That's one of the scary parts of working for yourself, the slow month. It's even scarier when it turns to two slow months. Hopefully, it continues to stay a bit steady for awhile.

Okay, back to work!

advice from mom

Mother's Day

2:29 PM

columbia river gorge

Hamilton Mountian

10:57 AM

artist using twitter

Twitter

11:16 AM

I kinda quit Twitter after the inauguration. I still have an account and I still tweet about blog updates, but for the most part I stopped using it.

After the inauguration I found it harder and harder to be using. I felt like a lot of the things that I usually use Twitter for were totally irrelevant. I wasn't really sure why I was there and I felt silly about the things that I was tweeting about.

Everyone has these introspective, smart and hilarious tweets about the state of our country and here I was tweeting about a new painting, my dog or how I didn't like such-and-such about Etsy. You know, things that people used to tweet about before our country was taken over by a fascist, racist, sexist, asshole.

I tried to engage politically, but I felt like what I was saying was just what everyone else was saying only not as funny, smart or introspective. They were "yeah everything sucks" tweets and I just felt like I wasn't really contributing anything worthwhile. Also, most of the time, I felt like I was talking to myself and I got really self conscious about it. It was kind of depressing.

I also was entirely against a platform in which Trump freely used to accuse people of things that weren't true, to scare people and to call legitimate news organizations as fake. It made me so angry, I didn't want to support something that he loved to use. Not to mention the amount of hate, lies and misunderstanding that came from both parties. I found it all very upsetting.

I just didn't want to be a part of any of that.

I've been giving Twitter a lot of thought again. I'm understanding that as an independent artist, social media is a big part of networking and promotion. For me, Twitter was a good way to get my work seen. Since leaving Twitter my sales have gone way down and traffic to my Etsy shop has been only trickling in.

I'm also part of a small group of artists/illustrators who meet once a month to discuss the ins and outs of our work. We all want to start promoting our group, as well as each other individually. Part of that promoting is using Twitter and other various platforms. I want to fully participate in this, which in turn also means using twitter.

I think maybe I take social media too seriously. I need to let a lot of my hangups about it go. It used to be a fun way to communicate with people. I felt, in a way, like the people on Twitter were my co-workers. If I was having a bad day, or something weird happened to me, I would Tweet about it and people would chime in with their thoughts. It was fun. I didn't feel like I really worked alone.

So, that's how I'm going to approach it from now on. Yes, most of the time it feels like the world is going to implode on Twitter, and the way things are going, it might not be wrong. But, there are a lot of positive things about it too. Funny stories, fellow artists and of course cute animal pictures.

I'm still going to be blogging more than tweeting, but if you'd like to be one of my co-workers you can also find me here:

https://twitter.com/michelemaule