Secret of Vintage Jewelry

This week I have been busy preparing for a forthcoming trade fair in March. A 6’ folding table has arrived, amid much excitement from my LO, who thought it was for him, and immediately put all his cuddly toys on top! He also wanted us to have our lunch on that table, but I drew the line at that, as I wanted to keep it clean. I have put together contact sheets for all the artists and have been preparing some greetings cards featuring some of my paintings. I’ll also put together Power Point type display on our laptop, featuring many of the paintings.

I also took part in a similar fair at the end of last year, at the same place. I belong to a support group for local businesses, and the fair had been organised by the very helpful man who runs it, Paul. I was the only “arty” person there, but there was a variety of other trades people, about 15-20 of us altogether, including an author, a milkman, a sports masseur and a few IT folk. This time, we will have some new faces, including an undertaker.

The previous two weeks had been extremely busy preparing for an art exhibition the week before (I was the organiser), getting the website completed, preparing my displays and promotional materials for the trade fair weekend, combining all of this with the usual home stuff – all very tiring. I had plenty of interest from people looking at the displays I’d done – one showed different stages involved in a watercolour painting, the other featured small copies of paintings by us three artists, on a palette shaped card background. These took several weeks to do, and seemed to catch people’s eye, so I’ll be using them again this time. I didn’t find that trade fair did much to get paintings sold, but there had been an accident on the motorway on that day, so Dobbies were short of visitors. It was still a good opportunity to let people know the site existed, and I’m hoping for better attendance this time. I am also going to try the greetings cards to see if people go for them if they don’t want a painting. If they don’t, I can use them myself!

I have also added a new artist, Elizabeth Chater, to the site this week. She has been a member of the group for two years now and continues to try out new subjects and media. She seems to have a soft spot for Hardwick Hall for some reason. It was Elizabeth who took the photos of Venice that I used for some of my recent artwork. Her first ten paintings are on now, but she’s coming round with more tomorrow, so look out for those new ones in her gallery.

I’m beginning to prepare for the art group’s Easter exhibition, the main one of the year, and am about to frame several paintings for that. I’ll also take along the greetings cards to see if they get much interest. Oh and I’ll need to bake a cake (will have to warn the family that it is “earmarked” and not to be eaten – which happened once before).
All for now.

Jewel