3 days

...Till my birthday, in case you're wondering. WHEW!! I just finished formatting a bunch of ACEO PRINTS and certificates for the Grit City Art Fair at the end of the month! Man, now I'm tired. I'll leave the printing for tomorrow. I'm gonna go get some beauty sleep. :-)

Check out this website if you don't know what an ACEO PRINT is: www.art-card.org. Don't feel bad. I didn't know what the heck they were either until last week. I hear about 'em all the time though, so I figured it was worth looking in to. You know, find out what all the rage is about. Now I'm with the program. And you can be too. Yeah two thousand ten! Alright!!!

CD Artwork for Nate Palin - aka - "The Bottom Line" is finished and in production!!! Yay :-D

For more info on this, go to: www.bottomlinelive.com

Monday, BAD DAY! Oh well.

So I don't know which news I received today is worse...

The fact that:
1) I have a disgruntled ex-employee trying to make my life miserable. She has a personal vendetta against me, but fortunately is dumber than she is scandalous, and she WILL be getting into some MAJOR trouble.

2) Nobody in the office (including me) could get paid today or buy any needed office supplies BECAUSE of this disgruntled employee, who caused all of our work accounts to freeze.

3) My paycheck from last week was returned, and now my account is overdrawn. Cool!

4) The appraisal came back from Thursday's walk-through.. and it's $5,000 below the purchase price (in other words, we HAD/HAVE a buyer, and it came in below even though 7 months ago it appraised for $22k HIGHER than the purchase price, & we've sunk over $30k in the house just since August). Someone was offering to BUY it! Why ruin a good thing and make it lower than what they were offering?! What an ass. We are NOT writing a check to close the sale!

5) Because of the appraisal, this also means is that the apartment we've had on hold with a friend will not be available any longer - he had to know by this morning if we were gonna be able to take it since he already had 3 other prospective-tenants. He wasn't gonna charge us deposit or last-month's like most places because he has known and done work with my boyfriend for so many years. So, basically, we're screwed out of the apartment too. Anywhere else is gonna charge up the butt.

6) Someone HACKED into one of my email accounts, and emailed all of my contacts a load of junk mail. Joy.

So I've heard bad things come in 3's... Since I got a double dose, does this mean something grand will be coming my way soon?! Please oh please say that it's so! Fuh shizzle. Today sucked.

I need a drink. Margarita anyone? I've got about 11 bucks to my name, if you're game.

On the bright side, at least I'm generally healthy, not pregnant, not homeless, and have friends, right? And I got some mad skillz too. That's always a plus.

Art for Sale!

I'm so frustrated!!! Last night I got into a big fight with Steve. His argument?..

"I see you farting around with all this art crap - it's wasting an exorbitant amount of your time - and yet you have YET to make a dime off of any of it. When are you going to GET REAL and stop this art nonsense!? It's not making you any money!! I have never met a person who struggles as much as you do - it's not like making money is hard, anyone can do it. Except you. Put the dream away, Kristina. It's just a dream. You have more important things to think about."

Now, I understand where he's coming from -oh "Mr. I-make-5-figures-per-month-plumbing"- but I don't know how to change the circumstances to prove that what I do has any value! I'm told MAKE MORE ART by teachers and artists, but I get YELLED at every time I DO because I haven't even sold any of the ones I've already made!!! ...And he gets REALLY mad when I run out of materials and I have to buy more. I took art class, yes, and granted, I learned some cool applications I hadn't thought of before, but what they didn't teach me was how to SELL ART. I don't **want** to stop creating art! I wish I could do it all day, every day!! I wish people **liked** my art enough that they wanted to buy it, so I'd have proof that I ***COULD*** do it all day, every day and actually survive!!!

Do I need to stand outside, and shout to the mountains in order for anyone to hear me?!?!

What can I do? Seriously. This is quite the pickle. I'm pretty torn up about this.

Blank Canvas

Despite my reservations and worry about posting something completely absurd in a bout of willy-nilly excitement, I have decided to start a blog. Yes, a blog.

I will be posting about various projects as they come up, thoughts about them... and most likely questions, as I have NO idea how to do this (marketing my art, getting my name "out there", tricks of the trade, entering shows, etc) successfully.

A little about me:

I'm a mostly self-taught artist. OK, I took one semester of art & design my senior year of high school. It was required to take beginning art, despite skills. Apparently, I had enough that the teacher decided to pull me out of that and place me in the advanced class one week after starting. Besides that, I took a semester at TAFA (Tacoma Academy of Fine Art) about 2 years ago to learn how to oil paint correctly, as I'd previously never used that medium and didn't want to acquire any bad habits. I've considered myself an artist, though, since early childhood.

In addition to fine art, I have a certification in Graphic Design, and a degree in Interior Design. They're both fun, however I have yet to experience the financial wealth associated with these two careers, so I've decided to go back to my roots.. for the most part anyway.

Oh yeah, and I'm a musician with a pretty stellar voice too, or so I've been told. Piano is my core instrument. I've been playing it for 17 years now (wow, has it really been that long?! I'm getting old!) I also currently play the French horn and flute in the Tacoma Urban Orchestra. And I've been known to dabble on guitar when the mood strikes me. There are others I've played in the past, but have not touched since high school.

And now you know! Probably more information than you ever cared to know. :-)

But enough about me. What about you?!