Long-Term Haitus

I have neglected to post here for well over a year about my plans or where-abouts, which is in it of itself, mildly depressing. My circumstances have changed a good deal, making keeping up with new pottery production impossible, so I've been on an indefinite hiatus and out of a studio for a while now, trying to focus on the more academic aspects of my studies. I am hoping to get back into clay in a few months after I finish up classes for this semester, so here's to hoping!

In the meantime, I am still able to work on my photography instead, and so there are, for what it's worth, some updates over at flickr!

More and More About Prints!!

Alright... For now, I've concluded that I don't quite have the means to produce prints on my own. But, for those who would like, I am making them available through Deviantart. If you go to http://rhiahna.deviantart.com/prints/?utm_source=deviantart&utm_medium=userpage&utm_campaign=printstab, you can find the photos I've made available to buy. I do get a small portion of the cost of the prints, but please don't feel obligated or anything, I'm mostly curious to see if it generates any interest.

Prior Planning Predicts Pitiful Results

Some things really just don't turn out like you plan.

I settled in last night after I got home from work, with the idea that I would try to update some of the photos of my pieces listed on Etsy, after reading a couple of articles the previous night on how to photograph crafts for sale. With this in mind, did I tear apart my mother's dining room, removing everything from the table and pushing it up against the wall, removing the mirror that stood in my way so I would have a nice, flat and smooth, unassuming neutral background.

Upon inspection of the sheet I had laid across the table, I decided that the wrinkles might be too distracting, so chose to iron it. Everything looked pretty nice once I was done, the lighting wasn't great but it seemed like it would do.... Only I found it took me about an hour and a half to settle on the right camera settings.

And that's when the fun started.
I managed to spill a glass of red wine across my nice clean white sheet-turned-tablecloth, followed by knocking off-balance the large collection of wine bottles on the bottle stand, which bounced off the glass table top and shattered it. My mom graciously helped me clean up the mess of glass (after observing the at-wits-end look on my face, I'd wager.) I gave up on the ironing the second time around, abandoned the first piece I was trying to photograph (it wasn't cooperating anyway--something about not being in the mood, and I could find it in it's trailer, I'm not sure.) Instead I made a nice little collection of four tea bowls of relatively similar size and coloring... when, I got about 2 shots in, and my battery promptly died.

I have, in fact, concluded at this point, that all the days in which I set out with a predetermined plan to take photographs, are instantly doomed to failure. Unlike my spontaneous grabbing of the camera for some perfect shots, the days or hours I set aside specifically for this purpose, seem to consistently yield few, if any, usable photographs. I have to say it's very annoying.

You see, this morning when I managed to get up a little earlier than necessary for work, and went back to the previous night's project, I managed to find some wonderful inspiration over a cup of coffee and some biscuits. I guess it's just funny like that. Ha ha ha.

(I actually prefer mine with cream and sugar. But shhh.)

Printing Green

Well... I'm sort of bummed. I was really hoping I could print my own business cards and things for ETH, and was looking for some more Eco-friendly ways of doing so. I was even thinking how great it would be if all of my packing slips and shipping papers could be on recycled paper, and if they made inks & paper suitable for Prints (as mentioned in my previous post), and was getting really excited about this whole idea... But after searching around all over the net for the past hour and a half, I have discovered.....

They don't make soy-based ink cartridges for home-use yet. Bah. I could probably find a printer to do my business cards on recycled paper with soy-ink, but it would cost me a lot more.

I hope the industry catches up soon, because I want to be able to use it! Petroleum-based ink sucks, not to mention the fact that soy-based has much brighter colors!

In other news... I now have a Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/photos/earthtreesandheather/

I took a whole bunch of pictures yesterday in a huge flurry of inspiration, and decided I should probably set up a separate account specifically for things connected to ETH. I'm thinking of taking a small sampling and testing how they look as Prints (even in despite my disappointment about printing in general). They'll probably need a little retouching, I'd like at least a couple in black & white, and we'll see how it goes!

Prints

Now, this is just a random, stray thought I've been toying with... but I'm considering offering up some of my amateur photography as prints for sale on Etsy. I have been obsessed for the past few weeks with photographing the barren, winter trees that I see on my drives to and from work everyday, and I think that the subjects would definitely fit in with my "Earth, Trees, and Heather" image. I guess I'll have to play around with printing methods first to see whether it's a viable option.

Thoughts?

Pitfalls and Shortcomings, Part 3: Brand-Image

On Brand-Image:
I've known for a long time the value of a Brand-Image and fitting a 'niche', as they say... but in looking through my work, it mostly looks disorganized. One of the biggest things I want to work on this year, is creating a cohesive presentation, both in the studio and online, so that all of my work... more or less looks like it all goes together.

I currently have a signature stamp using the emblem of a wolf on the bottom of some of my stuff, my initials on others, and a star on still others. I really like my wolf... but it doesn't go with the store name/image. (On a side note, apparently nobody recognizes it as a wolf anyway. Bahumbug.) If I ditch the wolf, I could switch to a tree, and/or the actual store name... Or, a branch of Heather. That could work. Using my own name sort of causes problems, what with the last name thing (which is why I don't much like using my initials, plus they're sort of ambiguous. "Who is this HB person?")

I also really want to move away from using class-glazes, and producing my own instead, so that I have a uniform palette to choose from, which will help with things looking like my work, specifically, rather than just anybody's. I know that it does to some extent, but there's room for a lot of improvement. When I look through my store at what's for sale, it's kind of all over the place, and I don't really like that. I want it to all tie in together and be mine. Part of that includes hunting down what glazes my high school pottery teacher had, because I really liked some of them. I did work on some loosely-associated 'themes' during the second half of the semester, with the two bowls and plate that have leaves pressed into them... And I would like to continue with that direction, as well as others.

And... I'm not sure I like the way some (a lot) of my pieces are photographed. Sadly, my camera is out of commission at the moment, but when it's fixed, there are some I need to re-take because they came out a little blurry, and also I find the use of mom's couch (yes, that's what it is, cheap scenery) a bit distracting.. The ones with the all-black backgrounds look much crisper. I think I need to find some sort of backdrop to put behind them, just a black or a gray sheet, and then do that for EVERYTHING, so it looks more professional. I've browsed around other shops on etsy, and noticed a lot of them have used a gradient black-to-white background, which I think is a photography backdrop. It seems to work pretty well, so that's also something to think about.

Pitfalls and Shortcomings, Part 2: Finances

On Finances:
It seems I either misplaced, or forgot to order, a debit card for the separate checking account... Whoops! Made paying for shipping rather inconvenient! I have to remedy that. I also need to look at a unified way of examining cash flow, and including extraneous costs, since the transaction fees from both Etsy & Paypal, though small, are not something I had previously figured into my prices. Etsy does have a downloadable something-or-other, I think, or I could buy some software... But I also need to sit down and make a list of all my real expenses, line by line, both in production, and in distribution... and of course, I need to start allocating for some advertising.

Speaking of which, I really need a more accurate assessment of appropriate cost to manufacture a piece, including actual time spent on production and materials. My clay comes in 25 lb. bags (I think), and it only really costs me about $12-$13 per bag, so 2 - 3 lbs of clay doesn't cost all that much... but time and studio space cost money.

I can be in class for about 4 hours, and produce maybe 6 - 8 pieces. (More like 12 if they are smaller.) It takes another 2 - 3 hours to trim them all, and after bisque another 1 1/2 to glaze everything. Which comes out to 8 1/2 cumulative hours for about 8 pieces, or 1.0625 hours per piece. Since not everything that comes out of the last step, the glaze firing, is actually sellable, my success rate is more like 60-70%. Which means I just spent $8 on clay, and $127.50 on time consumed (if I assume I cost about $15/hour when I could be doing other things with my time), to produce ~5 sellable pieces. Which gives me around $27.10 per item, of pure cost to produce. And that's not including the cost of access to the studio itself, and the fact that I only used class-glazes, which are free.

...A bit of an eye-opener, when I have things for sale at $8-12.