9 days to go - my first art fair!
Tidying up the last things for the New Artist Fair.
Business cards are designed and ordered. Urgh, that was a slog. Hope they look ok in real life!
I’ve created a Print Space aka Creative Hub account and registered with Shopify Lite, which I need in order to use Creative Hub’s app. This allows me to add a ‘Buy Button’ to prints once they’re uploaded, and the Print Space will fulfill the orders. Cool.
It was pretty easy, though disappointing that the Shopify Point of Sale app has no functionality for Android. I see from forums that this has been an issue for years. You can use it for cash payments but the card reader won’t work. Huh? Soo, let’s have a cost effective way of selling goods…buut you have to shell out £££ to buy an iphone or buy/upgrade an ipad. Aah, nope.
OK, whatever. It’s not an issue right this minute but c’mon Shopify. Android has way more users than iOS these days!
So, Monday was scanning day. The road works at Old Street station make navigation of the subways a nightmare. Got totally lost and went in circles back to the start - twice. Finally got the right road then couldn’t work out where the hub was as building numbers were all over the place if they had one at all.
Learning New Tech Stuff
Anyhow, arrived late and got a quick tutorial with the scanner. All fine; got scans done though I found it took about four minutes to do each one. I had no idea what dpi was appropriate but it was suggested 1200 would allow me to size up if I wanted.
Wish I’d known this creates ENORMOUS files which would take aaaages to upload to my hub account. (Oddly, I did this at home and put four items on faster than one would load at studio.)
Also, this set up was on a Mac which I have zero experience with. Apparently I could just drag my finished scans onto my USB stick – so I did. It didn’t move them; it copied them. Which took aaaaages. Damn.
So scanning (most of) the pieces took about an hour; effing about trying to upload and save them took most of the next hour. That was an expensive hire. Here's one I scanned:
But I learned a lot with a bit of help from the front desk girls as I went:
I need to swot up on how Macs work for the next time.
I’ll also be opting for 600dpi unless I know I want to do huge stuff.
I’ll also save as jpeg rather than tiff as it makes the files smaller (I think).
Allow more time than I think I’ll need.
The scans came up on a monster sized screen. Hmm. This made me look very critically at the images. So yes, just over a week to go and I’m still going to be painting new stuff.
Getting the mindset right
Whatever. I have to be happy with what I show. It’s freaky enough to put work out in public for the first time; doing it at an art fair that attracts around 6,000 visitors is super freaky so I better do everything I can to ensure my head’s in the right place.
That’s an essential part of anything. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not just what you do but the attitude you go in with. You have to be clear about why you’re doing it and what you’re aiming to achieve. And pick a few goals that can keep you positive even if you don't sell anything!
Me, I’m hoping that 1) people are curious enough to come and take a look and stop to chat, and 2) to get as much feedback as I can. 3) As a very shut-away-in-my-room type artist it will be really good for me to meet other artists and makers and see what they’re up to. And 4) I’d really like to make back some of the money I’ve had to spend to do this show!
A lot to learn and take away from this experience so let’s see how it goes. Nine days to go…
