WOW! What an fun learning experience it was for me to have my first Zentangle inspired art booth at Art in the Park on Aug 11th & 12th, in my home town of Loveland CO. This was the 48th year for this festival and one that I have attended as an art and craft lover for the last 30+ years. How exciting it was to be on the vendor side this year, something I always dreamed about doing! I started thinking about doing the show last January, and really got serious with the planning in February. It was a very scary prospect at the time, as a new artist, to put your work out there....yikes! I sensed it was time to give it a shot, and every new experience makes us grow, right?
Since I have been practicing and teaching Zentangle, I try to approach new things in my life with the same philosophy....any thing is possible one line (one word, one day, one action,etc.) at a time.™
My corner dots and border became my objectives for doing the show:
1) Get the word out about Zentangle and get an email list of potential students.
2) Sell enough to cover my booth fee
3) Put my Zentangle inspired art out for all to see
4) Have fun
My string became my outline of planning for all the different items I wanted to create.
Then came the actual tangling....and I did a lot of that! What fun I had creating the work. Just like tangling, I tried some new items along with the tried and true. If you have been following my blog, you have seen some of the items in my Weekly Wednesday Sneak Peeks. I had the following items for sale: Matted tiles, Mandala's & Zendala's, Zentangle inspired art in all different sizes...some matted in poly bags & some matted and framed, two sizes of canvas tote bags, visors, paper earrings, glass pendants & earrings, cloth napkins, bookmarks, and zenspirations letters and dangles.
Did I make too much of each thing, yes! That was the hardest part of doing the show, deciding how much to make. My most popular items that sold were the note cards and cloth napkins. I did sell a couple of ZIA pieces, and a variety of the rest, including 2 Zentangle kits. In hind sight, I also realize now it's hard to compete in a show with 185 vendors!
The shading became all the unexpected things I learned that made the whole thing come together as a wonderful experience. I learned that there are still a lot of people out there than have not heard of Zentangle and there are only so many ways to explain it-LOL! I also found it very interesting how so many people thought my work was computer generated or a lithograph, and when they found out it was all hand drawn, pen and ink, original work, they had a whole new respect for the art. Meeting a lot of the other artists was great. So many travel around from show to show, city to city...incredible! I also found out that it makes you feel really good, when people other then your relatives and friends tell you how beautiful your art work is....defiantly the frosting on the cake!
My initials became my taking ownership over this whole new experience and meeting all of my objectives!
1) I got 62 email addresses for future students, and a lot of people that didn't put their name down took my card and/or flyer. One already emailed me for a private class.
2) I sold enough to cover my booth fee and quite a bit more.
3) I took a big leap of faith and put myself out there and was so glad I did.
4) It was a lot of fun!
A big thank you to all of my relatives and friends that came to the show!
I can't thank my husband, Doug and sister, MaryAnn enough for their help in preparing for the show, and helping me man my booth. They both were great (wearing the Zentangle T-shirts), setting up, staying the whole time, taking down, and never complaining about anything. I couldn't have asked for a better crew! Thanks also, to Rick and Maria (the founders of Zentangle...see www.zentangle.com ) for sharing this wonderful art with us and making another one of my dreams come true!
If you made it to the bottom of this long post.....thank you for following my blog and for being part of my Zentangle adventure!
