What to do when you hear a calling

but you don't know exactly what towards?

Let go and follow where the wind blows...


\\\

I love spring.

SUMMER FUNS

A few more pics to finish up that little disposable...

Bend

I went with my good friend Meaghan to Bend, Oregon for the Fourth of July. We stayed with her brother Taylor and his charming pup Lynn. Here are some of the sights I saw...

I've really been loving that small-town-feel lately, I think the city hustle creeps up on my psyche more than I realize. Being in Bend was so restful and the drive was so beautiful! 

I've been wanting to take more pictures lately, but my old Polaroid just doesn't seem to be the right fit -it's big and heavy and sort of limited in it's abilities - and I don't know why, but I just can't bring myself to take pictures for fun with my digital camera. So I bought a disposable camera to take with me and I loved it! I might have to keep one around more often or just find an old little point and shoot at the junk shop to have on hand.

sketchbooking

One of my goals lately has been to do more drawing, so here are some tid bits from my sketchbook:

a school of fish \\

// ouroboros

process from this class assignment \\

// I had a crocodile dream....

...and now I can't get them off my mind! \\

// Sometimes I try to explain the ups and downs of life with a graph.

PMA!! \\

horse on driftwood

This has been sitting around my apartment for the past several weeks. Driftwood + wood cutting tools + pen + watercolors. Not sure if I should consider it a work in progress, leave it as is, or move on. It began as an impulsive act; I rifled through some of my old stuff, found a drawing I liked, slapped it on that driftwood and attacked it with my little used wood carving tools. The process was very enjoyable, but I'm still not sure how I feel about what's there (or not there).

past

Here's another assignment from my online class, well... part of it anyway. It was a three part assignment inspired by the past, present, and future - above is my piece inspired by the past. I haven't tackled the present or the future yet, should I read something into that you think? I've decided I'll finish up all parts of the assignments in my own time as I'm more satisfied with my work when I'm not worried about keeping up with the pace of the class. I'll get to it all eventually and learn something from each, I'm sure.

Which part of my past was this piece inspired by you say? Why the part of my past where I obsessively collected model horses of course! The horse in this piece is modeled after my first model, whom I called Red. I had fun playing with circle shapes as they've been in my head a lot lately. I'm also excited about the technique I used for the horse here, drawing directly onto a found image or texture. One of my recent goals has been to draw more, so I think this will be a good way to work it into my mixed media adventures. I wish there were more contrast in color/texture between the largest circle and the horse though, and maybe I want to see a little more of the blue shapes?

**edit** I think I like this crop better....

new works

First, I just have to say -- the light lingers on! I'm writing this at 7:30 in the evening with a beautiful pastel sunset to gaze upon.  It is spring!

Well, I've had a very busy work schedule lately as this transitional time in my life carries on. I guess you could say our lives are constantly in transition, but you know what I mean. Transitions vary I suppose, they differ in character and intensity and what not - some being more acute, others more subtle and unassuming. This transitional time isn't particularly wild but I am noticing it for sure, and I find it very interesting. I find myself thinking back to other transitional times in my life and they seem equally vague and traumatic to my memory, and I wonder how this time will look to my future mind. I think of the things those transitional times led to and I wonder where this one will bring me. I feel fairly well fortified and flexible, change is good exercise for sure, but I'll still be happy when a little more rhythm and familiarity return.

Anyhoo, like I said, lots of days working and not much free time. Many complaints from Ralphie and very little time for art projects and contemplation. And yet! I've got a few new things to share. Two of these you've seen in earlier stages and one is very, very new.

Trying new things is good! And scary! Working on these little wood plaques is new, and seems to be going ok so far. Though, when a piece is at one of those tough/awkward stages I think to myself "what a waste of this wooden thing!" I also did a little more involved illustration with our crab buddy up there than usual. Drawing tends to make me very frustrated and crazy because I want everything perfect and exactly right, so I cheated a little and used some tracing paper for help. I'm not ashamed. At least I still have my sanity. Work smart! Not hard!

I've been reminded by my busy schedule that pursuing an art requires so much self discipline. It's staggering how much. I've also been reminded that art is a practice, and that it takes practice. I feel rusty when it's been a while, more fluid and productive once I've warmed up or have been consistent in my work. So here's to more hours spent on arts!

portfolio site

I finally got real and made myself a legit porfolio site. Woot! I've been working on it obsessively for the past two weeks and I'm very pleased with how it's turned out. Go see for yourself:

I'm using Virb to build/host, it's pretty straight forward and you can customize their templates a little or a lot depending on your skills and knowledge and/or patience and dedication. They'll hold your hand through most basic design aspects but you can also jump in and re-write code yourself. I don't really know any code but I'm always willing to spend a few hours mixing Google search with trial and error - this time it paid off and with minimal frustration! Pretty low frustration factor overall actually. That's a thumbs-up in my book.

I have yet to finish my "about" page. As you'll see if you visit it, I'm not sure what to write yet. I'm working on that. I also want to add a secret page with surprise treats on it and maybe a "sketchies" page. We'll see.

Next I'll be working on uploading some artwork to a site called Society6. They provide an online store, do the printing of the art-prints, and ship them directly to the customer. I've heard only good things about their print quality but I'm still a little nervous since my work is small to begin with. I need to do a little more homework on the topic. I'll say more when I know more.

Then I need to make myself some new business cards... but anyway, go to www.heychelcie.com already!

new arts!

Elliot and I are planning a little collaboration! I will make a few pieces of art that he will use as inspiration for some writing or poetry, meanwhile he'll be writing a few pieces that I'll then use as inspiration for art. We're in no rush so don't get too excited just yet, he's busy on the epic task of recording his second album (woot!) and I, well... I've got plenty of free time at the moment. We're thinking final pairings will be presented in a zine or two. Here's what I've finished up lately:

gournal share

I'm fascinated by the way my brain communicates with me through dreams. Often I'll have very elaborate dreams with complex and multi-layered story lines, many characters, and time lines that seem non-linear at best. Despite contents that are confusing and terribly difficult to articulate or accurately depict when brought into the waking world, I understand the emotional aspects of these dreams absolutely and completely non-verbally. I can literally feel the meaning of what's happening but without using any words what-so-ever. Lately, instead of getting mired in the details when recounting dreams I try to describe the action to myself in the most general and arguably obvious way, the results are usually no more than a sentence or two and they tend to hold profound meaning and relevance to either my current state or a situation I've been pondering. 

Cool!

{I'd like to apologize for my scanner. Apparently it prefers to totally disregard some colors while making others unbearably loud. Sorry, periwinkle blue.}

hex blanket stage one

Every fall my nesting and hibernation instincts kick in and I get the urge to make myself blankets. Makes sense, right? I got started at the first sign of such an urge this year and am mid-way through knitting a hexagon lap blanket. I'm using a big chunky 100% wool Burly Spun yarn from the Brown Sheep Company (thanks mom + nan!) in hand dyed "strawberry fields" and "forest floor." Red and green are my favorite pair of complimentary colors, though these yarns are so much more than just red and green. 

I found a really sweet pattern for knit hexagons at Cotton and Cloud. It's simple and clever and really quite easy to knit once I got the hang of the double pointed needles. The hexagons actually knit up circular and are then blocked into hexagon shape. I love-love-love this method, I found many-many patterns for knit hexagons while researching this project and this one made the absolute most sense to me and I think looks the sharpest. 

(Look at the range of colors on that left hand needle! Gorgeous!)

I've sort of been designing the blanket as I go, I started knitting the circle/hexagon pieces before I knew where I was going with them several weeks ago (actually I started a few last fall but never followed through). I figured out the pattern and layout for the whole blanket last week and just finished knitting all the pieces I'll need for it within the past few days. Next step is to turn all the circles into hexagons by blocking them, something I've never done before! I read up on a few different methods so hopefully one will work well and make the process relatively painless.

I haven't figured out how I'll put all the hexagons together once they're blocked... sewing? crochet? What yarn will I use? a contrasting color? maybe cream? If you've got a recommendation I'd love to hear it!

search ads vs. relevance

Etsy's had all this info about "search ads" up in my grill since mid-September, they seem like a pretty affordable way to get some exposure so I decided to give it a shot. With search ads you can advertise single items, a section of your shop, or your whole shop; when a shopper searches a term relevant to your item(s) one of your listings appears in a row of other search ads at the very top of the search results. It looks like this ➷ (the listings in the blue box are search ads).

I chose to advertise the BLOCK PRiNTS section of my shop, I went for the broke-and-just-experimenting plan and bought 5000 impressions for $5 over the course of a week. One day into my week of search ads I had a sale. "Jeepers!" I thought, "they really work!" And I rushed to my stats to verify that search ads got me this sale... but no, apparently search ads could not take credit. In fact I'd only raked in a view or two from search ads at that point. "What they hey?" I say.

Now, right around the same time that I signed up for search ads I started to pay more attention to the relevancy of my listings. Etsy recently changed the search results default from "recently listed" to "most relevant," meaning that instead of furiously relisting to appear at the top of search results, Etsy sellers are maniacally shoving hot keywords into their titles and tags to appear most relevant. (I won't go into the details of all this but if you want to know more there are lots of articles out and about.) So anyway, I had just spent some time rehashing the titles and tags on my block print listings so they'd appear within the first few pages of search results and THAT is what I think got me the sale.

Lets look at some stats for further illustration. The first set of stats are from my search ad campaign: 25 views, 1 favorite, no sales. (Pause for a moment to differentiate between "impressions" and "views" -- an impression is when your listing pops up in the blue box on the search page, a view is when a shopper clicks on that listing to view your item.)

This second set of stats is for my shop overall, little more than a week into October and I've been favorited 12 times (only one of those from search ads) - that's as many favorites as I received in the entire month of September! Interesting.

The search ad stats are great because I can see exactly what sort of traffic I'm getting from them, if there's a simultaneous increase in traffic and it's not from the ads then I know it must be from something else. In this case, I think it's from my work on relevancy. My listings are showing up sooner in search results and getting more views, and as I think the favorites show they are getting more views from people who are interested in them. Excellent!

I think Etsy search ads are alright, I just think time and effort spent on your listings' relevance is more worthwhile and effective. It does take quite a bit of time and effort though, and some real brainstorming skills. I found several EXTREMELY helpful articles at Handmadeology, probably couldn't have done it without these honestly.

If you care to share, I'd love to hear about your marketing adventures and experiments and what you've learned from them.

Rollerhook Drama, Tricky Trucks & Boo Acrylic Paint!

Naturally I've had tweek a few bits of my press between getting it and printing my first job. When it first arrived the wooden base it was screwed to was totally busted, so my step dad Mike made me the gorgeous new one you see here:After that there was the overly drawn-out rollerhook/truck/roller action drama. The trucks and rollers were getting hung up on the corner of the chase bed, I had to manually lift them over the corner every time. Maybe its the thick paint on the hooks I thought. So I scraped paint off the hooks. But NO! The hooks were bent! Scraping paint made no difference to bent hooks! So for months I pondered until a friend helped out by taking them to a smith to be straightened. It was quick and simple and now they are nearly perfect. Surely things would work perfectly. But again - the trucks were getting hung up on the corner of the chase bed. Woe was me! What could be done? I agonzied, and then I oiled. And everything was fine. :/ I also noticed my trucks slipping away from the roller every few strokes as I worked the press. So I used these tiny hair bands to keep things in place:
Most recently (today) I had the hairbrained idea to try acrylic paint on the press. Now I kind of knew better -- but what if it totally works? how convenient, clean-up would be so easy! I thought. It did not work, AT ALL, and now my rollers are green...and a tiny bit sticky. :( It seems the yellow paint that was on them soaked into or became one with the rubber on the rollers. If anyone with actual press experience stumbles upon this, I wouldn't mind hearing exactly how & why my idea with the acrylic paint was so dumb. (Is this a situation similar to no silicone lube with silicone toys?)I think they will be ok - but boo bad ideas with acrylic paint!!