Autumn Harvest

What a busy year it has been! I had a great session of dyeing, with traditional tied shibori and ice techniques giving great results, Months of metal too, with a big batch of etched copper and brass as well as flat patinas on both. Then came the cutting and finishing, and now the photos.

Which  is very timely, as I am redoing my websites! I have closed my Polyclay site and am consolidating the parts that I want to keep into this site, updating and freshening as I go. I’ll be posting here, and I’ll be putting items for sale into my shop.

Lots to do, but now that my outdoor gardening is done for the year, I can grow my website…and work on some new projects too!

PODs and Pixels

I have been researching different POD companies this year. Pixels is one of many I’ve tried, and it is one of three that I’ve chosen to keep up. I like many things about Pixels, including the ability to edit all items with a single design on that at once, the ability to put an interface through an ipage right onto my website storefront, the ability to create printable catalog pages…I’m still exploring all the options. The shop that you put together on their site is very attractive, easy to work with, and so is the product design setup. The are the company that does all the printing for Fine Art America, used by many galleries and artists.

One of the few things not in its favor is that It does not play with woocommerce, a popular marketing platform used with websites, particularly wordpress based websites. It interfaces beautifully with Shopify using one of the free apps available with an account–but Shopify comes with a monthly price tag over $25, and that is money I’d rather spend on art supplies. WordPress, Woocommerce and Pixels are free to use. Pixels has a store aspect for me right on their site, and I can import it to my store front. Pixels supplies code for widgets that can be placed to have small or large slideshows of designs available. Shoppers are taken to the Pixels site and can purchase and checkout there. They do not check out using my woocommerce interface, so there could be times that items are found through both platforms, and they would need to be purchased in separate transactions. That’s not so hard!

Here’s a link to the breakdown on ecommerce platforms from the Printful site.

I never could start small with a project, so I put together 24 ink on metal designs and applied them to the products here. Pixels offers Mugs, Weekender Totes, Pouches, Portable Battery Chargers, Fleece Blankets, Spiral Notebooks, Yoga Mats, Round Beach Towels, T-Shirts, Phone Cases, Tote Bags, Shower Curtains, Duvet Covers, Throw Pillows, Greeting Cards, and Prints. With each design on each product, that is already a lot of options. In the spirit of investigation, I am also using two other POD companies called Art To Where and Printful  and these both integrate with woocommerce. For them, I have built a storefront page right here. They feature and additional 16 kinds of clothing and accessories with the printed artwork.  I’m still working on applying the designs to the items, but it is coming right along!!

Read more about the POD companies I am researching and ways that I am selling  here.

I like them all quite a bit, and have several more collections of digitized photos, drawings, and shibori fabrics. Then I look forward to playing with the designs in Adobe Illustrator and coming up with even more.

 

Summer Renewal

Creative Connections-signup.qr.2The long sunny days and warm weather makes it easy to get a lot of things to grow. Creative Connections is having a BIG growth-spurt–this year, we have blossomed into a Non Profit Corporation!

Having filed the paperwork in Colorado to become a 501(c)(3) educational non  profit corporation and trade marked the name, there is now much more to be done, and I’m gathering the people to help me do it. There are still more forms to be filed, meetings to be held, and money to raise, but now we can work together to make arts more accessible for everyone and develop funded programs. We’re currently seeking a low cost or grant-subsidized location for classes and a gallery gift shop where artists can sell their work.

I’ve given this website a total makeover, and it has gone from representing my own personal art to showcasing a much bigger collective effort. It’s just getting started, and has lots of room to grow.

Sign up for our newsletter and hear the latest on classes, events, and how it is all coming together! Scan the QR code shown here if you want to be fancy, or join through the sidebar signup form.

Growing Pains

bjd-2015-cover-webSome months there is just too much to do–too many projects and not enough time or energy to do them all. Still, that’s a far better problem than being bored, and I can thankfully say that I am never bored. During May of 2015, lots of projects moved along tremendously.

I worked on websites for clients using new templates and sliders, and branched out with a new website of my own that features my dolls and miniatures titled “Its the Little Things.”

I put a new cover on the Ball Joint Doll  print tutorial .pdf showing all three sizes of the bjd’s made so far. I am also editing the 11 part video tutorial of the same and will be finished with that next week.  I am promoting the Polymer Clay Adventure wherein these two tutorials are exclusively available, along with how-to projects from more than 20 other polymer clay artist instructors.

I’m also continuing to find the occasional odd hour or two (often on the bus) to do some knitting. I’ve learned to add beads to the yarn and to reduce and increase stitches. I’ve tried knitting with 4 needles, and made a scarf and hat for my doll Aurora Rose, along with a little beaded purse.. I’m working on a tunic for myself, with beads on the sleeves and front section, and it is about half done, and will likely be just in time for fall, if I keep at it!

beaded-bagsAlso coming along is the work to make Creative Connections a Non Profit Organization that will allow me to expand the reach of what I do, bringing classes and mentoring to emerging artists in schools, community groups, and organizations. Stay tuned for more about that this summer!

AR-hat-scarf-purse

colorsamples-2012What a hot, busy summer it has been already, and its only halfway through July! We’ve set records here in Colorado for the heat, my computer stopped working and had to be completely rebuilt and we’ve been back and forth across the country several times for family and business. Lots of movement, lots of work, lots of change…including changes to websites! I’ve moved my website hosting and am totally rebuilding this Creative Connections site and my Polyclay Gallery Site. There are lots of updates, re-arrangements, and new pics to show and tell about.

Seems like a LOOOOONG time since the Annual Dyeing Days at the start of the summer fun back at the end of May, but it wasn’t really that long ago.  Traditionally the start of a season of color and creativity, our chromatic marathon this year was 14 days of exciting and exhausting work/play that resulted in beautiful clothing, yards of fabrics, lace, ribbons, and more. Read all about it at the Annual Dyeing Days link, and view the Tie Dye Gallery with pics from past years.  

The fabric swatches shown at left are of Kona cotton, and making a sample swatch of each color used is a great idea–if only I had actually done each one (there’s at least a dozen I didn’t get, and that includes most of the orange/red/pink swatches; how did that happen?) and I also forgot to label the 45+ plastic sandwich bags of swatches, doll bodies, lace and ribbons as I was adding some of the liquid dye, so I have to guess which color is which now! That’s because I do the little bags at the end of the session, after all the yardage and clothing, to use up the ends of the dyes., and by day 12 or so I’m usually very spattered and tired.  Oh well, next time…there’s always something to learn for next time!

Every Little Bit Helps

Polyclay Gallery favicon In this instance, the little bit I’m referring to is called a “favicon” and its the itty bitty picture that shows up on a browser bar or bookmark along with the URL or the title of the page.  VERY little–sixteen pixels by sixteen pixels. These little images with a .ico file extension help identify the site and serve as a visual reminder. Pages that don’t have them show a blank page with one corner turned down. At the start of this post you can see the images that show for Creative Connections and for Aunt Acid. One should be showing up in your browser bar too–bookmark this site or keep it as a favorite and it should show there! If you don’t already have one for your website, I bet you’d like one too!

You can reduce the size of  a photo  to create a favicon, or create one pixel by pixel. An easy and free site to visit called favicon.ico Generator makes it fun. You can download the finished favicon.ico file and then upload it to the root directory of your site along with your other files. I just love scale models and miniatures. And that’s something so easy to do with computer art–play with size and scale things up or down.

More Creative Connections

beaded spirit doll by Laura HumenikI’m busy busy busy getting ready for an incredibly creative summer season. We’re gearing up for our annual Dyeing Days that will be occurring from Memorial Day through the first week of June, and then I’ll be at the Lyons Outdoor Market Saturday June 5th and the following Saturdays in June! I’m making lots of new merchandise and packing things up using the new brand “Creative Connections” just like here at the blog. I like it much better than using my own personal name, which has never totally satisfied me when I looked at the cards and tags. So, I designed new ones and had them printed up at VistaPrint.com and designed bigger bag header tags and price cards and so on using InDesign and PhotoShop. Then I spent a couple of days making sure I remembered the things I learned in DreamWeaver class last semester and built some new webpages. My PolyClay Gallery site is massive–too big for its britches in some ways–and this gives me a set of pages that I can point people to just for business of all sorts. And so I introduce to you now–Creative Connections!

June 5, 12, 19, 26   2010
Saturdays 10AM-4PM
Lyons Outdoor Market 446 Main St Lyons, Colorado

Laura Humenik  LandS Glory Artisan Jewelry and Sarajane Helm  Creative Connections will be at the Lyons Colorado Outdoor Market on the Saturdays in June. Art, music, food and fun in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains! Bring your friends, and come see us there. We’ll have hand dyed clothing and accessories, ceramic, polymer clay, metal clay and glass components and finished jewelry, and more!

Designing Woman

In addition to writing for books and magazines, and creating artwork with polymer clay and textiles, I spend a lot of time working with graphic and web design. I love what can be done with a digital camera and Adobe Photoshop..and several hundred fonts! (I have about 950 installed now, having had to delete about as many….it made things slow to load. Imagine!!) I have a special fondness for dingbats.

As a web designer, I enjoy working closely with my clients to create a site that reflects their work and their personal style. Click any of the graphics here to see the site I’ve built with each client–energy workers, artists, massage therapists, musicians and more.

If you are interested in having a website built or improved, please contact me at sarajane@polyclay.com and view my website page for more information.


Lightworkers Alliance Logo
by AG Creative Design, Inc
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