Ross Art and Craft is 25 years old this year and this anniversary has me looking back over the last quarter of a century to where I started from, the growth, the changes, the adaptions made to survive and where I am now.
Twenty five years ago, I was a young woman trying to work out exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Where was I going? What was it I wanted to achieve with my life? What did I want to do?
I had a degree in Art and Educational Studies. I was working as a Conference and Wedding Co-ordinator and had just been given the option to move to a different site (adding a good hour onto my commute) or be made redundant. What should I do? Was I really happy with what I was doing with my life? - The simple answer to that was ‘NO’ but what else was I going to do?
I decided I was going to look into becoming my own boss and opening an art shop with the idea to use the shop as a base for my artwork and teaching of art - six months later and Ross Art and Craft opened its doors and my art shop became a reality.
I had so little stock that it was very artfully spread out on the shelves to make it look more full and slowly but surely the customers started to find us and within a few months I had a regular customer base and with the money starting to come in the shelves started to fill up as I invested all the takings back into the business so I could buy more stock. Reinvesting back into the business did mean that I had to work nights in a call centre so that I had a wage coming in. It was a long hard slog but was going to be so worth while.
The first few months I spent just trying to get used to working in the shop all day and then heading to another job of the evenings. My working day was opening the shop at 9am, closing at 5pm and then working at the call centre from 5.30pm - 9.30pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, Wednesday was half day closing and no call centre, Saturday the shop was open 9am - 5pm and Sunday was a well earned day off for a 65 hour working week. I must have been mad, but I was loving every second doing what I really wanted to do and I hadn’t even got the classes up and running yet!
Four months after opening and the workshop was ready to take its first class and although watercolour was not and has never been a favourite medium of mine, it was at the time very popular in part due to a to programme called ‘Watercolour Challenge’ and just because people have a misconception that it is a lovely medium and is going to be easy and so I started a class teaching watercolour basics. This grew over the next twelve months into four watercolour classes and a Saturday morning kids art club and I could finally stop working at the call centre - Yay.
I would like to say that it was all plain sailing from there but alas not!
2008 Ross Art and Craft was hit by the effects of a recession and although the sale of art and craft materials never really climbed back up to pre-recession levels, fortunately the classes where not too badly effected. At that time I was teaching six classes a week and two kids art clubs and the recession caused me to have to drop three classes and a kids art club and I also had to find a part time job once again, but Ross Art and Craft survived when many independent retailers did not.
Slowly but surely the business picked itself back up and I knew that surviving was dependant on my ability to move the shop into the digital age and onto the ‘World Wide Web’. One very steep learning curb later and rossartandcraft.com was born and we were little by little starting to sell country wide. It took me 10 years to master the skills of running a successful website which ended up being our saving grace when in 2019 the pandemic hit and we were in lockdown. The modern age of ‘Click and Collect’ for local sales and the development of shopping online meant that Ross Art and Craft would survive yet another financial disaster that yet again many small independent businesses did not.
Although the long term effects of covid 19 are still being felt, not only on our health and lifestyles but also on our finances and the way we shop, we are starting to recover. The biggest impact on Ross Art and Craft was the loss of all the classes. I did manage to do a class online via ‘zoom’ but this was not the same as the in person classes and has taken years to get back to a position where I could resume teaching in person, but get there we have and this year is set to be a whole new beginning again for us.
This year - Ross Art and Craft’s 25th year - sees us move from teaching lots of small classes of 4 to 6 people in the back of the shop, to teaching a large class of up to 20 in a lovely local hall and weekend workshops focussed on specific art skills and crafts. This is something I would never have done if it hadn’t have been for the pandemic and the way we as a society have changed our habits and interests. Again Ross Art and Craft has survived, changed and adapted and will hopefully be able to weather then next storm that life throws at it and perhaps with the next transformation it will have a legacy that will even outlive me.
‘From little acorns, mighty oak trees grow’
I am a firm believer that all small things have the potential within them to become something great and I aim to do just that with Ross Art and Craft, it may take me another 25 years but I believe I can do it.
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Making a living as an artist is no mean feat. There is plenty of demand for people wanting pictures created of their beloved pets. A smaller fraction of people willing to pay the price you want to be paid for the use of your skills and your precious time spent creating their original and unique portrait created just for them and there is no denying that the pet portrait business can keep you in fairly decent paying work for most of the year. The problem I have is that all the time I am creating portraits of the paying customers pets eats hugely into the time I need to be creating my own person work, but with this work I have no guarantee it will actually sell and create an income but is where my passion lies and is the reason I am an artist. If I have a full diary of commissions it leaves very little time for anything else but all the bills are more or less paid and I don’t have to work about money. But the artist side of me is left deflated and disappointed because I have had no time at all to produce any of my own work, of which I have a huge reservoir of ideas stored, ready and waiting to be used and produced. Where do you draw the line? How do you balance the need for paying work with the need to create your own (no guarantee to give you an income) work in your (already stretched to the limit) time you have available to produce artwork.
If anyone does have the answer to this particular conundrum, please send them to me on a postcard :-D
Last year I was struggling to find time for my own work as all my time was spent doing commissions for other people. For 2023, my plan to balance this problem more evenly is to better organising my time management to be able to find a harmony between the need to have the paying work and the need to be creating your own work. It isn’t unfortunately a 50/50 split, which would be wonderful but at the same time doesn’t leave me in as comfortable position with the bills as I would like, so the proposed balance is a 65/35 split, which should give me enough time for the paying commission work (65%) and time to produce my own work (35%). It would be a more balanced split if in actual fact the cost of living hadn’t just skyrocketed as well, but with my new time management plan which allocates set amounts of time to these two different types of work, should hopefully make sure that I am actually getting some time to produce my own work within my working day instead of finding scraps of time here and there to just have a little dabble at some of my ideas or ending up working into the early hours and eating into the time I should actually be a sleep, which invariably is what happened last year.
Let’s not forget that this is not just so I can have a better balance between the production of my two types of work, but also to create a happier and more fulfilled (and less sleep deprived) me. So we shall see if this time management plan actually works. It’s not set in stone and can be altered if it’s not working but only time will tell.
]]>The New Year brings us 12 new chapters and 365 new chances, just got to decide what to do with them!!!
Last year I tried an idea from another artist to organise and make my artistic life more productive and hopefully achieve more and grow my business. This came in the form of a ‘Productivity Journal’. The artist I took the idea from just did a black and white pen drawn pages of lists, boxes, charts and info gathering pages to help organise her art business and make her more organised and encourage her to be more productive with her artwork. This I decided might be something I could use to help me in the same way, all be it more colourful and attractive, as I need it to be pretty as well as functional.
My first attempt at a ‘Productivity Journal’ was based on the same format as the artist had used for hers. This was great for getting me started and gave me the groundwork to see how and if this journal would be of any use to me and if it was a worthwhile thing to do. Her format was good but not all her things worked for me and I expanded and formulated the journal over the year into one that was perfect for my business and the way I worked so that this years journal is specifically designed for my artistic needs.
My journal starts with an Index Page which is fairly self explanatory.
So this week I have had a student from the local sixth form doing her work experience with me in the shop and studio in the name of doing my bit for the potential artists of the future.
These kids are full of excitement and wonder and it is always a pleasure to take them through the ins and outs of being a self-employed artist and showing them just how diverse and open to challenges you have to be to make it in this game, as well as how much work you have to put in - long hours and a head for figures helps.
So this lovely Year 12 girl arrived bright and excited Tuesday morning and I spent the whole day just talking to her about all aspects of my business and all the different ways I make money to keep the roof over my family’s heads. I showed her the shop website and the EPOS system, the different types of stock and revenue streams, the paperwork and all the boring stuff. Then I chatted to her about my artwork - the commission work, the artwork to sell and all the other things I do to promote and sell my work.
I tend to find that it is a real eye opener for them. They really have no idea what is involved and how hard you have to work to make a living as an artist. Even if your work sells on a regular basis, or you have a diary full of commissions, you still have to constantly promote yourself and your work and be creating new pieces all the time and try to stay current and produce work that people will be interested in and will hopefully buy.
We then spent the rest of the week in the studio creating. As it happens I had a project to do for the local community that I agreed to do for free and my work experience student spent the rest of her week creating artwork to decorate a space in the town that is used and seen daily by people of the town but the space was currently drab, boring and very unloved and a group of local people who have been working incredibly hard to brighten up all areas of our lovely town asked me if I could add a touch of magic to this particular space. So my student spent her week designing and creating artwork for this space with some help and guidance from me as to what she could do, how to present it and how to make it durable and weatherproof as it is an outdoor space. She had a wonderful time and did an amazing job and by the end of her time with me, the space was transformed and looked absolutely amazing. When I added her name to it once we had finished it, she was bursting with pride. It was so wonderful to see her light up with pride and experience an element of what I feel every time I finish putting an exhibition together or sell a piece of artwork.
Every time I have a student on work experience, I make sure I show them all the boring but important stuff, give them an honest and true insight into the life of an artist, as well as the fun studio stuff, (I’ve done it so often and so many times I have an unwritten schedule that I follow with each student) and each time I go through it, it does make me realise how much work I put in, how many hours I work and all for practically the same pay, maybe even less money than I would if I just stacked shelves in the local supermarket, with none of the hassle of having to do the accounts, run the business and worry about sales dropping off all the time. I could also leave work after a set amount of hours and be done with it instead of working constantly and slotting my family and home life in around it. You do have to wonder why we do it.
The question is… Would I be happy doing anything else? And the answer is… NO.
I have the perfect job. I am doing something that I love and there is no bigger thrill than someone coming along and looking at your artwork, picking a piece they like and paying you for it. All the long hours and hard work evaporates with that sale, big or small it doesn’t matter, it just makes it all worth while and reaffirms why you do it. But each and every time you have a work experience student it always makes me question it, until the next sale comes through and I remember.
Happiness is the key. Happiness and enjoyment in what you do is all that matters. If you love what you do and find it rewarding and get a feeling of fulfilment from it, all the long hours and hard work is worthwhile. My son does object to me working while we are on holiday though lol 😂
]]>We are all dreamers, planners and adventurers, but how many times do our dreams, plans and adventures get put on hold because our day-to-day routines and lives get in the way!
I drew up a plan for my business in November 2021, but unfortunately what you can’t allow for when you draw up these great plans and ideas is that your attention is needed elsewhere and your time is swallowed by the first priority in your life - your family.
Family has to always come first and although you still have to dedicate a portion of your time to your business, it may be a lot smaller portion than you had planned and all those dreams and plans have to go on hold until you can allow more of your time to those great ideas you had.
For me, the whole point to growing and building my arty crafty empire is to create a better life for my family and it is a means to an end, a goal to achieve, but never at the expense of my family. That is the balancing act you find yourself facing everyday to have the successful business whilst having a life outside of it that you spend with those you love.
Things have to go onto the back burner to allow you the time you need to take care of your family and hopefully you can eventually come back to them at a more suitable time, when you can give them the time you need to to make them successful and worth doing. Artwork is no different in that respect than any other job or business and with most things in life, to do them well you need to be able to focus on them and give yourself to the job at hand for you to do it justice.
On top of that, things always end up taking longer than you think. A piece of artwork always has the potential to take twice as long as you plan it to because you either can’t focus on it enough (the mojo isn’t flowing), or you end up so wrapped up in it that you put far more into it than you had planned and you add more detailing than you originally had in mind. The time spent on a piece of artwork can be an unknown entity in itself and the more time you end up spending on one piece automatically has an effect on the next piece and if you are working on commissioned work rather than your own creations, there is always a customer wanting to know when they can have the piece of work they are commissioning you to do and might not be very understanding if your run over the timeframe you suggested.
My commission bookings were lined up to take me through to the end of July, but with one week left to go of June I am fully aware that I am a whole two to three weeks behind and that will mean that the next piece that I should be finishing at the end of July will now be run into September, because it can’t be allowed to effect the wedding work I have booked in for mid August as that has to be completed for a set date. So I am left to apologise profusely to those whose pieces are delayed and hope they are understanding enough to not cancel their orders. But also in the back of my mind is that the orders for Christmas usually start to come in by the end of July and that work will fill up every hour of my time from the beginning of September right through to Christmas week. Stress levels are rising even though I do always say to the customers that the timeframe I give when they commission a piece of work from me is only a suggestion and might very well take longer than predicted and all the while you have to make sure you are balancing the work and home life in the right proportions to make your life a happy and enjoyable one. What a nightmare!
These are the joys of my Arty Crafty Life.
]]>So here goes my first painting of 2022 and starting once more with a blank canvas. I have been doing lots of sketches and planning my artwork for the coming 12 months and lots of other creative things, but then once you have done all that and find yourself at the point where you really need to put pencil to paper, paintbrush to canvas or cutting tool to lino.
For me at this point there is period of what I call ‘Blank Canvas Syndrome’. I have a moment where I stare in complete bewilderment at the canvas I have placed on my easel and although I have sketched, researched my subject and planned exactly what I am going to paint onto the canvas, I am at a complete loss as to where to start!!! The moment passes fortunately and I move on to the job at hand. The time I am paralysed by it can vary from just a couple of minutes to sometimes an hour or more. I have often wondered after experiencing this ‘Blank Canvas Syndrome’ if it is connected to my confidence in what I have planned and my belief in my abilities to do the subject justice that dictates how long I am effected by it and I also wonder if anyone else suffers the same problem or if I am alone in this and is just another one of my quirky, weird habits!
Is ‘Blank Canvas Syndrome’ an actual thing?
So today I placed my canvas on the easel and this paralysing feeling came and went in just a brief moment thankfully. But was it so brief because I had been thinking about what colour I was going to paint on the background while eating my breakfast, and while I drove my son to school and again while I was gathering my things to head to the studio, and therefore by the time I came to be placing the canvas on the easel I had decided on the mix of colour and had a starting point already decided! If that is the case then surely I shouldn’t have experienced any “Blank Canvas Syndrome’ at all, but it was still there all be it briefly but definitely still there - it is almost like it has become part of my process, a permanent step that I have to take when starting to paint a picture!!!
Now I have gotten past that annoying and what seems to be an inevitable stage I have to go through, the first coat of base colour is on the canvas and the creating can begin :-D
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When it comes to writing a blog, the helpful information that came up on Google when I typed in “How do I start a blog?, tells you that you need to write something that is interesting for your reader, something informative and factual, while also putting yourself and your ideas across. Come up with an interesting name for your blog that will draw potential readers in and then write content that will keep them on the line once you have hooked them!!!
]]>Another new venture into the world of the internet is actually this blog! I keep getting told I really ought to be writing a blog. “It will let people get to know you and not only what sort of artwork you do and how you do it, but also your character and personality and encourage them invest in you and buy your stuff.”
Well, as I am trying my hand at new things, I thought I might as well try writing one of these blog things - so here it is!!!
When it comes to writing a blog, the helpful information that came up on Google when I typed in “How do I start a blog?, tells you that you need to write something that is interesting for your reader, something informative and factual, while also putting yourself and your ideas across. Come up with an interesting name for your blog that will draw potential readers in and then write content that will keep them on the line once you have hooked them!!!
Well I have decided that I will just write about me, my life as an artist, business owner and someone who is trying to survive in these interesting times. My life is full of highs and lows, some moments that you can do nothing other than laugh out load about, moments of pure genius (they actually do happen once in a while) and I also manage to create some artworks too. Hopefully this will interest someone out there in the vastness that is the internet, but if not, I will just write to my hearts content, to myself and treat it as therapy lol
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