The End of an Era...

...Albeit a short, quiet, and uneventful era.

Some of you know that I opened up my own website a couple of years ago (I mentioned it briefly in a post here, but anyway). The website features the clay figurines that I make, most notably the cake toppers. This is something I've been doing for years. It actually had it's start from the cake topper I made for our wedding. Then a friend requested one for her wedding... then an aquaintence... then a few people from an on-line community I was a part of during our engagement (anyone who has been married in the last six-to-eight years knows it well, http://www.theknot.com/)... even a bride who contacted me from Boston! It just kept blossoming from there. Soon, I was to the point where I almost couldn't handle the amount of business I was getting - all by referral, mind you. I knew I wasn't getting paid enough for the time I put in, especially since I had really perfected my technique and had come a long way since the first few. But, having recently been married, I knew what a racket the wedding undustry was, so I wasn't comfortable charging people more than I was. So I stopped. I made a rule: Only for friends and family... OR ... if I just felt like making a few extra bucks.

And that's how it was for a year or so. It was nice not having to spend 16 hour days and marathon weekend sessions cranking out these things, and resenting the time I could have been spending with Dustin, or outside on those beautiful Spring days when wedding season is at it's peak. But I did miss that little extra ching.

Then Dustin & I were discussing ways we could jump-start our finances. Nothing that we HAD to do to make ends meet or spend tons of time apart. Just something we could do together when we felt like it to enhance our bottom line. Around that time, he was approached by a previous coworker to see if he wanted to take on some simple drafting sidework, which would be an on-going supply to be done at his liesure. It really just fell in his lap. So he accepted. It was pretty obvious what I was able to do in my spare time, so we decided to go for it. He would accept the sidework and I would start marketing my cake toppers. As a result, we would set up the office to accommodate both our practices, and spend a portion of our free time working together. I decided as part of my marketing, I would set up a website in order to reach more people and have a more professional way for potential clients to view my work.

Two-hundred dollars and a website later... his sidework fell through. The company made a bunch of layoffs, including his friend that gave him the work, and he lost all connection with the company. Why they would hire a new freelance in a time like that is beyond me. Anyway... we tried to think of something else he could do, but just couldn't come up with anything that would really work. And so ended the idea to work from home in our free time. I have kept the website up and running for two years now. I never fully marketed it because I was afraid that once I paid for the advertising and it hit Google or Yahoo, I'd be loaded with jobs and be overwhelmed and end up ruining the great word-of-mouth that I have built up. Could I do it full time? Probably, but I have absolutely no desire to. I love my job.

It is time once again to renew my hosting subscription, and I have decided not to. As cool as it has been to see my own original work posted on a real, legitimate site on the big bad internet... the time has come. In the time that I have had the site, I have done a total of ONE cake topper (for income), and that was another very solid word-of-mouth referral. I dare say I would have gotten the job without the site, even if it did give them a place to view photos on-line. Now, being faced with the decision whether to renew or cancel, I have to realize that a profit of $100 on a $400 investment is not a sound reason for keeping the site. And the realization that doing these cake toppers takes up way too much of my precious free time to consider only a $100 profit has forced me to say goodbye to my website that has been "under construction" for the entire two years.

So here's to you, http://www.YouInClay.com/! Farewell!! If you haven't seen the site yet, you should still be able to see it for another couple of weeks before my subscription runs out.

Footnote: I do plan to set up a blog with photos of all or most of my caketoppers, so that people will still be able to have a place on-line to view photos. But I have realized that it's not worth the money in order to keep a more professional site. As long as the photos are organized and pretty, I don't think anyone will mind that they aren't on a formal website. At least I hope not.

I'm SOAKED!!

So I'm sitting at work and it starts to get a little dark. Then a little darker... and darker... then it starts to rain. Whew! I'm glad I went out to grab lunch when I did! The little blue scoot's out in the parking lot, but a little rain won't hurt it. Wait - is that HAIL? Crap! Can a scooter get damaged by hail? I suppose, just as easily as a car, right? Oh, and the spedometer is exposed... and the mirrors! Augh! Okay, better move it under the overhang. Wait - I don't have a raincoat. I think someone said there's a plastic poncho around here somewhere. Uugh! Can't find it anywhere - and my poor scoot is getting pounded by hail! Okay, just grab a spare jacket and throw it over your head. Oh - kick of the flops and roll up your jeans. Ready? Take a breath... Okay... GO!

I AM SOAKED. And it stopped hailing immediately after I got her under the awning.

Should be a really comfortable afternoon, sitting at my desk all soggy and frumpy. Have a nice day!

Vandelay Industries

I just want to make an announcement. We are officially artists. Here's the story:


For the past, I don't know, since we've owned our house, we have struggled to figure out what to do with this wall... this photo was taken during our remodeling project. It is a wall in our dining room that has a fireplace, and brick all the way across the bottom, with a shallow wood mantle. It's very simple and (in my opinion) kind of elegant in a subdued way. Anyway, the wall above the fireplace has always been a tough one to decorate, mostly because it's so long and narrow. And the mantle is so shallow that it doesn't allow much depth for anything above. I've tried putting stuff on the mantle, but it just looks cluttered. And anything that fits on the mantle ends up being way too small for the scale of the wall. A while back I found some square fruit pictures that we had there for a while, but still, they were just not nearly substantial enough. We finally took them down because we were just so dissatisfied and wanted to start with a clear pallette.



So for about six months... maybe even closer to a year... we have been staring at this blank wall. We've looked and looked. One of our problems is that we find it very hard to commit to art. We both find it essential to have our art speak to us. It has to evoke some kind of a feeling. And although we will occassionally come across something that is interesting or cool... it's usually just not enough. Which is also why we have very little art on any of the other walls in our house either. We've tried coming up with our own plans to make something. But nothing stuck with us. There was nothing that really stood out as "Yes, we have to do this." Until a couple of months ago.

We went to a couple of exhibits on a local art show called the Art-a-Whirl, in northeast Minneapolis. It's a weekend where galleries and studios open their doors to the public to show what they do, and to meet people who are fans of their work. One of our stops was at an old warehouse, which had been converted into artist studios. We probably walked through about twenty studios that day, saw some interesting, beautiful, and some just plain bizarre work. We were making our final pass before leaving and happened to glance into a door that was half-open, into a studio that wasn't so much displaying work, but rather had it strewn about. We asked if we could come in and take a look. The guy was busy painting, so we didn't want to disturb him too much, but we just had to get a closer look. His paintings were amazing. Really spectacular. I don't describe many things that way, but these paintings were truely amazing. They had a three-dimensional quality that I just couldn't compare anything to. We asked a girl that was hanging out in the room "What is that?" She explained that they were created by layering paint and epoxy resin in order to get their depth and he would add his own handpainted details as he went. She said he wasn't really participating in the Art-a-Whirl because he was getting ready for a gallery show he was doing in Seattle. After staying a few more minutes to quietly observe and look at more pieces, we got his info and decided to leave him alone.

His name is Stephen Filla and you can check out his work at http://www.stephenfilla.com/, although the photos don't begin to show the depth. We couldn't stop thinking about those paintings and decided to contact him about price. Well, we'll just say they are way out of our price range, although for someone who can afford it, they would be well worth the money.

After a few days of being dissappointed that the only thing we could see above the fireplace was unattainable (for us), we decided to try it out for ourselves. We priced it all out, came up with a plan of attack, and said "here we go!"

It took pretty much all of one day two weekends ago, and a couple of hours here and there the following week, but this past Saturday, we were finished and got them hung up! They look so completely awesome. I cannot even describe how proud I am of ourselves, and how cool these paintings really are. They have a completely different feel than any of Stephen Filla's work, but we love them. And they are even more "us" than anything we would have gotten from him. We each did three panels, then intermingled them on the wall.

So here are a few photos I took last night. Unfortunately, even the close-up photos pale in comparison to seeing them in person (so you'll have to come over to get a better look!). And now we are thinking we will have to kick up the rest of our super-safe decor a few notches... which is fine by me, since I've always felt less than thrilled about a lot of it.