All A-Buzz

Just spent an hour fiddling with print-on-demand sites and looking up sublimation presses…but then it occurred to me that there’s already so much silly pre-fabricated crap in the world: do I really want to add to it?

The POD sites are so shiny and they’ve got so much STUFF and it looks SO GOOD with my designs on it and then I try to work with their design programs that always turn out to be way more fiddly and frustrating than I want to deal with. Then when I finally get a “product” ready to go, the base prices make me sick—and in order to make any profit at all I have to charge even MORE?! Do people really want to pay $45 for a goddam T-shirt?

Well, no. Judging from my previous attempts at selling my art with this method, they do NOT. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t.

I should repurpose stuff from thrift stores. Paint and draw on it myself. Each piece totally unique. (And thus just as expensive, considering how much time I’d have to put into it, but still–at least I’d get the money instead of the printing company.)

Perhaps I do need a kiln.

And a giant printer.

Of course, all the time it would take to make these unique items would mean charging more, but I feel like I’d actually be selling something worth the price.

I should buy a set of fabric paints.

I’ll need glaze.

And an…oh, I already have an iron. (Thanks, Grandma.)

A 3d printer would be nice, too.


In other news, I’m working on a new assemblage piece. It’s a heartfelt expression of my deeply emotional response to the fact that my studio seems to be attracting all the bees in the county who have about a day left to live. The working title is WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THESE BEES COMING FROM AND HOW ARE THEY GETTING IN HERE AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE WHY DO THEY WANT TO DIE IN MY STUDIO.

Well

Okay, I’m finally happy with the way this site is coming along. I still have a LOT of work to do on all my other sites. It’s overwhelming, but to be honest, I’m really enjoying the whole project–a massive re-design from the bottom up is something that’s been needing to happen for quite a while. I’ve kept many of the basic concepts, tweaked a few others, and jettisoned a few that just didn’t do it for me any more.

I’ve always taken this kind of thing way too fast. The picture in my head is so grandiose and glorious (if a little vague), I want to see it DONE. So I get in a hurry, get frustrated and impatient, make snap decisions just to be doing something, and end up going in bad directions and running into walls. That’s the point at which I usually just have an existential crisis and give up for a week or so and then start all over again.

I’m really tired of that pattern.

So even though some of my platforms and final results will look pretty much the same as they always have, I guess the biggest tweak I’ve made this time is behind the scenes: letting myself take the time I need. Healthy pacing. Thinking things through  and sitting with all the options for a while before I blast forward. It’s okay to have placeholders, broken links, and sites-in-progress, as long as I am making progress, even if it’s just a little at a time.

Here’s a picture of my cat.