Free Love Fridays- Ozone Alert Day!

This update comes to us via Eddie Ruiz who owns Avenue Arts Venue...

"If you've ever been to deep ellum or expo park you've seen ozone's murals.

don't miss your chance to check out his new paintings and collect his new toy at avenue arts venue saturday sept.13th.
reception 6pm-11pm
Free!"

Did you hear that? He said FREE and he said toys, it's like everything a kid wants to hear in one sentence. Too bad those toys aren't free! HAH HAH! Insert Nelson laugh here.
Avenue Arts Venue is located in lovely Exposition Park, across from the State Fair of Tex-ass!

Free Love Fridays- A Fine Distraction

A Fine Distraction

A Fine Distraction has a beautiful array of handmade jewelry. I was very partial to the "whimsical blue hues blooming" earrings. The colors are gorgeous and I'm happy to report there are other colors of flowers in this little garden of an etsy shop. Go poke around for yourself, please mind the blooms...

A Fine Distraction on etsy.com

Free Love Friday- Eye of the Tiger....Bee

AntLee Artworks

This is my pick from AntLee Artworks site because damn do i love myself some TIGERS. And bees too, hence why my DJ name is DJ Tigerbee! AntLee has quite an assortment of stuff in his shop- from this cool wood pendant with a handpainted tiger to interesting stuff like a handcarved domino ring in the shape of a raven with a....ruby eye!

I like the animal and nature theme in his stuff, go check out more little handmades from AntLee on etsy.com

Free Love Fridays- For those about to rock....

Bagladee
If you're about to rock you might consider throwing all your rocking essentials into this really rockin' little rocket chic tote bag. Hot booted mama "rocket chic" print bag is totally up my go-go bootin' alley. It even has a matching internal pouch which for me adds bonus points! Thats where I would put my fave lipstick and cellphone in a heartbeat! And little diamantes are sprinkled on this honey for extra star appeal. Two thumbs up!


Visit bagladee on etsy.com

Free Love Friday- A little bird told me...

minelolly
This is the sweetest little plush softie! I want to stay up late like an owl! I really love the colors and the starry eyes. What a cutie, for more assortment of soft sweet dollies go visit Minelolly's shop on etsy minelolly

FREE LOVE FRIDAY!

Yes, it's Free Love Friday again and that means five people have been given some free promo love here on my blog. I did an experiment today. I posted my usual announcement on Myspace and got my usual no one cares for free promo attitude. Then I posted it on etsy and it was WILDFIRE. Everyone is trying to get their little crafties seen and loved. I love my little etsy community, so much warmer and fuzzier than deadspace..I mean, myspace.
Anyway- I have a feeling some myspacers are gonna sneak something in later so heres a two parter. I'm doing double duty in the love department today. First up is ETSY LOVE!


Fivefootfury13


I just had to list this little beauty from fivefootfury13's shop. Mainly because I'm a sucker for Pink Floyd, granted I'm a Syd Barrett era kinda gal this is still one rockin' piece of jewelry! Beautiful beadwork here such as this rose headband

very unique totally bead crazy stuff here! Check her out!
fivefootfury13 on etsy!

All is Fine

"All Is Fine"
Yes, right now everything feels fine. The weather, my mood, my creativity and energy and health. All is fine. Then why do I feel so restless?! Oh because i just finished reading a book and haven't had a chance to work on anything for my etsy shop and...um (scratches head) kinda been neglecting that painting I'm working on. The book I just finished was great. It's called "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner. It was one of those books you could just happily go on reading, along for the ride with no destination in particular and just loving the journey. I must link you to the authors site so you can enjoy it as well :
Eric Weiner
So now I feel restless, the journey is over and I must find a new book to read. I must work on my painting. I must take advantage of this all is fine feeling.

Promote thyself! Cardinal Sin?

Since we've been on the subject of promoting your art biz...
I was reading in an etsy forum yesterday how some sellers are "shy" about giving out their business cards. I can relate, but to an extent you must remember you're just letting them be AWARE of this really cool thing you're doing. You're not bragging or pushing a sale on them, just raising awareness. Which good promotion is about. Promoting yourself gets a bad rap though. Unfortunately a lot of people think it's bad form to promote yourself. To that I say PSHAW! In this world if you don't take action for yourself it'll never get done. The old saying "if you want something done right you have to do it yourself" rings true. No one is just going to stand up and shout out to the world what an awesome little painting or tshirt design or whatever you just did. You have to do it. Don't let your business or dreams suffer because of some made up etiquette. I have to be a little aggressive with my band and art, any good artist needs to be in this competitive world. Being pro active is only common sense.
In honor of promoting yourself some more FOA links!
kijiji
lunacraft
adleaf

Printed!

I just added two new additions to my etsy shop. One is a digital print from a digital illustration and the other is a digital print from a real life acrylic painting. These are my first forrays into the world of prints. I like prints, they are so colorful and easy to carry around. Nothing like heavy canvas and quite economical on the ol' wallet. Check them out!

back on the chain gang

I just celebrated a wonderful birthday and after 5 days away from work I'm back on the chain gang. And speaking of chains...here is another link for your Free Online Advertising (FOA) purposes! This one is geared towards the artists or arteeests, as some say. It's basically a free directory where artists can register themsleves and their sites. Why not? It's free! And remember we're trying to proliferate the web with our wonderful links so get to linking! Head over to ARTCHAIN and link away!

Selling your Art

Ok, we've been talking about ways to get your art into the world and aside from Free Online Advertsising which we'll refer to as FOA from now on, you're gonna need some nice physical business cards. These are great to put with any art and items you sell to make sure your customer always has a way to contact you. Building good relationships with all your customers can keep them coming back for more and spreading the word about you. If you have yet to go the business card route here is a CHEAP (basically free!) route to take if you haven't yet settled on your branding, logo and all that important stuff. If you need something now and cheap I would check out vistaprint.com. You can get 250 business cards for FREE but you pay for shipping which is a steal. They have some nice templates to choose from and it's a great way to spread the word about your art/site on the cheap!

Pip Pip! Cheerio!

Today I'm diligently working on another English Tea Time box. I sold the Panda box last night and just can't "bear" not having another box to take it's place. This one is so complex with it's layers but it looks so cool when it's done (see pic above, cool huh?) so aside from that, packing up Panda and working on my newest canvas that will be my Sunday. But this is what Sundays are for right?

It's Free Love Friday!

Promo Day! September 5th at the Double Wide my friends band is playing. Check em out! And did you notice the F word?! FREE!

Promoting Your Art

I'm going to be starting up a little regular installment here featuring ways to push your art into the world. For the past two weeks I gave myself little assignments- find places to market my stuff. This week I was to find 5 new places to put my link so that the world could see my stuff. So I will be sharing, because thats what makes the world go round. For today- if you have yet to do so, go to linkreferral.com and Artzee.netand insert your sites info. This is a great little tool that lets you view all the traffic to your site, blog, online shop, etc. I like the reviews feature, you can review other peoples sites and they can review yours! So far I've made new friends on etsy and had more traffic to my shop. I need to make a link referral for this blog next.
The Artzee is easy and the more places your link appears the better! Stay tuned for more on this topic!

I got your back

It's nice to have people (or creatures) who got your back when you got to get into it with some raucous birds....or squirrels.
Newest 8X8 painting on Etsy, posted this weekend.

Artistica

Because we're all artistic up in here today!
This comes to me via Ben Fleming of Blackheart Society who will be playing at this mega fest crammed with music and art. So much to do, see and hear around here!

TOYS!

TOYS! I can't wait to see this upcoming show over at Avenue Arts Venue here in Dallas, tx. Heres a toy by Eddie Ruiz (purple monkey featured). Show is coming in September, details to come to keep your ears to the walls.

Show Pony!

This one comes from my new crafty friend Claudia of ClaudiasBurningInk.com This sounds like an awesome event for the crafty minded and look my fellow EtsyDallas crew is going to be on hand!

Come hang out with www. ClaudiasBurningInk. com and www. JDStar. etsy. com , www. TaranehsBazaar. etsy. com , www. katscratch. etsy. com at the Doudlewide Bar Saturday Aug 16th, and then come see us Sunday Aug 17th at The Show Pony Show

Free Love Fridays

I'd like to do this semi-regularly (time permitting)on Fridays. I posted a bulletin via myspace asking for 5 people to step up who wanted something promoted here and in my bulletin section and this lovely lady was the first in line. This was submitted by the lovely Melissa of Melissas Deluxe fame- sounds like a great time if the sun pops out to join in the fun! Just a little local love on a rainy Dallas day. Heads up for the next 4 contestants!

Bluette 8x8

Heres the first little canvas I started and finished in one day. I really just enjoy the process and feel of painting, pushing the paint around, finding new colors and even "scratching" into the paint like I've done here. I've tried to sketch out my ideas first but it seems so..unnatural to me. Forced. So I just let myself loose on the canvas and let my brain walk around and put stuff where it wants it. It's better this way.
Posted today on www.tigerbee.etsy.com