A Brief Hiatus – Based on a True Story of Music, Event Organization + Bottle Caps

Bath Salts (the band)

Hey internet, how’s it going.  I have been on a brief hiatus from posting new Etsy listings, making “Little Eye” products and being a good businesslady.  That’s okay:  the ebb and flow of the creative process shouldn’t be fought.  In fact, to do a good job sometimes you have to act like an anti-business to maintain your happiness and freshness – that’s what I’ve been doing.

What’s been keeping my hands busy:

Big Thaw applications just closed, so now begins the process of learning everything about the vendors and posting article after article online.  I love that part.  I think we’ll be doing some raffles/giveaways through the site this year and I’ll try to amp up marketing.  Anyone know anything about that?  I sure don’t!  Well actually I know a little… what I really need to know is someone on TV or someone who writes for local press.  Hook it up!

Also, I’ve been chugging away at a large wholesale order for a lovely wine and beer supply company out of Seattle, WA.  There’s nothing like filling your kitchen with a stockpile of bottle caps, washing them, poking holes in them, beading them, packaging them and shipping them to really get your heart racing!  Actually, it’s fun and totally satisfying to complete a huge order and to do it with some kind of process.  But it’s definitely taking up some serious creativity time!

Lastly, our band Bath Salts has been writing, recording, practicing songs like nuts since September.  It’s so much fun.  We just get together, make loud sounds, work until the sounds are good together, then find some people who want us to play at their venue and pack it up in the car and go there.  You can view a couple of our songs here on Bandcamp, but there’ll be about 6 more in the next coming weeks.  Check back!

The Big Thaw Applications are open – and will be until February 29th!

Click here to purchase last year's poster from my Etsy shop

Hello, all, just a quick word that The Big Thaw 2012 is going to be on Saturday, May 12 at the Mayo Street Arts Center in Portland’s East Bayside — applications are open and available at the Big Thaw website.  You have until February 29th to get them in!

The Big Chill

Well, I’ve been up to it again!  Applications for The Big Chill arts, crafts and vintage sale are now up at The Big Thaw website.  Is that confusing?  I just didn’t want to make a whole new site to re-name the winter fair.  It will be held on Saturday, December 3rd from 10am-4pm (9-5 for vendor set up, break down, etc.) at Mayo Street Arts Center at 10 Mayo St. in Portland, ME.  Applications are $45 for upstairs spaces and $35 for downstairs spaces – and spots are limited!  So send in your applications!  🙂

Audrey, Where Have You Been??

Hiding! Ok, actually just giggling.

Short answer:  busy!

Long answer:

Since The BIG THAW completed its wonderful, whirlwindy, nutso course I’ve been doing a few excellent things.  In no particular order… celebrated three birthdays, spent quality time with family, got really, really, really, REALLY sick, got better, got sick again, can’t hear out of my right ear for 48 hours (current), have been working on an enormous wholesale order, have been building stock for tomorrow’s craft fair (9am to 1pm at the Williston West Church, Saturday May 7th, Thomas St. in Portland’s West End) and desperately trying to clean my house… only to mess it up again very quickly with the previously mentioned wholesale order.

Bottle Cap Wine Charms, $10.00 for a Set of 6

It’s pretty cool.  A beer and wine novelty supplier out of Washington State saw my work online, contacted me, and enlisted me to make a bunch of these wine charms.  One of the really great things about making things with my hands is that oftentimes my window shoppers and customers are the most inventive with ideas for new products.  Without them I wouldn’t have made pendants (necklaces), wine charms, earrings, custom magnet and pin sets, wedding favors, alphabet magnet sets, and on and on.  This is the latest addition to my line up.  What’s next?  Mike Cunnane (of Brass Cankles, Huak, Rattlesnakes, Sunset Hearts fame) suggest ‘beer medallions’ as a beer drinker’s alternative to the wine charms.  I am so on it.

Together, at last

Talk about a whirlwind month.  After 8 years of us not being in the same room, college buddies and bestest ladies in the universe (myself included) met up in Boston.  The reason we were able to do this was that Jet (center) was visiting with her boyfriend who is the director of photography in upcoming film Bellflower.  It’s going to be in theatres in August and we got to see the flame-throwing car that Evan built for the film.  And lit it up in the parking garage outside of Boston University!  Rock.  Well, anyways, she lives in Ventura, CA and Shira (right) lives in Boston and me (left), I’m the yokel who decided to move away from any major metropolitan area.  I love Portland.  But I think I might love Jet and Shira more.

Brunch! Family!

You know what else I love?  The Good Egg.  It’s even better when, once a year, my grandmother (on the left side of the table) visits with her brother and his wife.  This year I joined them along with my aunt, uncle and two cousins who were down for the weekend from North Haven.  My cousin bought a lobster boat with his own money saved up from hauling traps by hand for 5 years – he’s 15!  Pictures of that to come.  🙂

The BIG THAW Pictures are coming soon!

I got some awesome pictures of vendors, shoppers, helpers and purchases from The BIG THAW.  The images will be up on the website shortly (finally!!) as soon as I can get twenty minutes to do it.  So bizarre to look back at them and think how smoothly and wonderfully the day went.  Yesss.

Clothes are Awesome! Share them!

That’s Kate in an awesome dress at Althea and Jay’s marriage celebration.  Coincidentally, she’s involved with a team of Portland fashion bloggers who have organized Swap Maine, a citywide clothing swap to benefit Goodwill of New England.  It will also benefit you because you get to pick out clothes you like just for donating your own!  Or paying $10 at the door.  It all goes to Goodwill and you get to fill a bag with awesomeness.  The first 250 shoppers will receive a swagbag, and included in it will be your very own Swap Maine/Little Eye Designs bottle cap pin.  I’m excited to work on this, support great writers and support Goodwill of New England.  Yes!  Please click here for more information about how you can join in the fun.

That’s all for now, I’m sleepy and I have to sell a bunch of stuff tomorrow!  Seriously.  My craft fair dream is to sell half the stock I bring… if I did that tomorrow maybe I could finally catch up on my student loans.  Which I just deferred.  For a year.  Thank you, pro-credit score governmental initiatives.  Maybe I’ll start looking at grad schools now…?

Joke!

I Showered: Woohoo!

Planning a craft fair is a little like having a newborn infant in the house.  The free time you used to have for little things like cooking dinner, watching a movie, laundry, going on a walk, etc. all take a backseat to the huge responsibility you have.  Instead of a little baby I am responsible for the happiness of 30+ vendors at tomorrow’s BIG THAW Arts, Crafts and Vintage Sale at 10 Mayo St (Mayo St. Arts Center) from 10am-4pm.  Annnnd in some ways it’s easier than being a Mom because it’s not like if I don’t feed the vendors they’ll cry but in a lot of ways I’ve found myself foregoing daily luxuries (showers, leisurely strolls) to paint a sign, make a blog post, etc.

Good news, though!  I showered this morning!  After getting up extra early to do an epoxy pour for the THAW magnets and pins I was like “Hey!  I could be clean today!” and jumped in the shower for a few, glorious minutes.  You’ll all be thanking me tomorrow for my powdery fresh scent.  The thought just occurred to me:  what will I do on Sunday??  Empty nest syndrome, here I come.  Might as well start planning for The BIG FREEZE… haha…

Progress

Here’s me making a bunch of signs for The BIG THAW:

Step 1: Paint fumes

Step 2: Mess up the living room

Here’s my cat, Cash, snuggling with my friend, Kate.  Awwww!:

Kate has a great jacket

The Silliest Paws

Here are some bottlecaps that Kelley gave me.  Thank you, Kelley!

Future Little Eye Designs

You Either Stay Up Late or Get Up Early

…or Both.  Sometimes I do both.

I’ve been rather neglectful of this little corner of the internet.  I like to think of it as the cyber equivalent of my bathroom which, up until I had guests over exactly seven days ago, had been ignored in the same, increasingly inconvenient way.

A little recap, here is what I’ve been busy on:

Poster by Meagan Anderson and Kris Johnsen. $8 on Etsy!

The BIG THAW Portland – she is coming to a Mayo Street Arts Center near you and it’s going to be just brilliant, I am sure of it.

Shallots, $6.50 for 5"x5" Print

I’ve been listing photos on Etsy, which while not totally profitable is getting my work included in lots of treasuries, so I cannot complain.  Above is one the community just couldn’t get enough of the first couple of days it was up.

Metal Feathers is Good.

The ‘busy season’ has started at work again, so I’ve spent less time trolling the internet for awesome things.  But in the meantime, you should probably just check out Mike’s tumblr.  Which is fun to watch because Metal Feathers, my boyfriend’s band, is on their sometimes playing, sometimes heckling the people who are playing.  All in good fun, much like their new album, Contrast Eats the Slimey Green, which is so worth listening to.

Set of 6 Bottle Cap Wine Charms, $8 on Etsy

Lastly, but not leastly, I’ve been working on a new project do develop bottle cap wine charms.  I’m also in to the idea of flipping these guys upside-down and doing custom orders for weddings, baby showers, bridal showers, etc.  The wedding market is truly untapped by Little Eye Designs.  Why, oh why?  First of all, I love weddings.  I love shooting weddings.  So why wouldn’t I furnish them, too?

This is just a little dose for now.  If you’re jonesin’ for some smarmy writing it’s probably better if you go visit The BIG THAW for awhile until all the dust settles in mid-April.  That’s where most of my efforts are, these days!

Hibernator

 

We Are Safe While Sleeping print by PhizzWizard on Etsy, $18.

This is just a formality. My terribly lonely little blog has been gasping for air, and attention, in the last few weeks.  My cats have been pawing at the bedroom door wondering what the heck happened to everyone (they can’t go in there, boyfriend is allergic).  The pile of dishes, mail and clutter has been steadily growing.  What happened to Audrey?

Truth be told, in the late days of February I become a hibernator.  I’ve done nothing, literally nothing creative for about two weeks.  This is a dry spell for me.  I lurk around my house in the dark after reading chapters and chapters of murder mysteries, glancing at the unattended to-do-tasks (open mail, put laundry in hamper) as if it’s the novel incarnate, but this time the killer is a seeping sense of domestic failure and artistic gloom.

Oh, so sad, Audrey!

So what have I been doing, then?

In addition to dreaming of summer, we’ve been indulging in reliving the Sopranos from Season One.  I’ve been reading “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and I’m 20 pages away from finished after staying up until 3:30am last night (on a school night!)  We’ve ventured out in to the not-that-cold to visit pizza joints, Indian food oases and dive bars with delicious breakfast.  On Saturday I lived vicariously through a MECA student who photographed Kate with  her Toyo (I miss my Toyo!) field camera at her apartment.  Like an arty vampire, I watched her frame photographs, direct her subject, snap — and probably feel super satisfied with herself.  Jealous.

After some guilt I expressed about being a puddle of inactivity, boyfriend reminded me that no one should expect anything of me at this point in the winter.  God damn it, he’s right.  I’ll tend to my Etsy responsibilities as needed but much energy needs to be stored so I can hit Spring with the full force it deserves.  I think I may start drawing because it’s non-committal and totally fun.  Dishes be damned:  I just won’t throw an elaborate dinner party any time soon.  Kate lent me the second book in the series I stayed up like a zombie reading and I will absolutely finish one (tonight) and dive right in to the other (probably tonight through 3:30am again).

Then there’s the matter of The BIG THAW.  Wow, I am so excited about it but at this point there’s nothing I can really ‘do’ until February 28th when all the applications are in.  My amazing artists are working on the poster design as we speak, applications are coming in daily (all are amazing, I hope we have room for everyone!) and I’ve already divided up the floor layout to figure out the numbers we can accommodate.  But this is what I need to focus on, this is the big deal of 2011.

I refuse to feel guilty about sink scum or scattered shoes this week.  If I get to them, I get to them — if not, who really actually cares?

Then there’s the matter of feast and famine.  I learned long ago (after four intense years of art scholarship) that you can’t go-go-go all the time at art.  Some people can, but they are totally insane and don’t have the best living/hygiene/sanity standards among us creative people.  After art school I took an entire year and a half not touching anything creative before coming to my senses.  Perhaps a busy December marked with the flourish of creating a craft sale out of thin air in January made this relaxation in February completely necessary.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  Perhaps in a few weeks something will pour out of my hands so freaking fantastic that not washing my hair for three days seems totally justified!

I encourage everyone reading this to join me in a night of sloth, eat potato chips off a bowl perched on your stomach, wear the same shirt to bed that you wear to work the next morning.  Hibernating solidarity! The bears would be proud.