Ellen Million (ellenmillion) wrote,
Ellen Million

  • Mood:
  • Music:

EMG, Elfwood and art stuff

Slaved over the heat press for a while this afternoon. Kev's always a kick, and the T-shirts look smashing. The AnthroCon box just needs to be inventoried, and it's off. Yay! Some of the mousepads ended up with the transfers running, so I won't have those to mail, but I'll pawn them off in the bargain bin at the fair. Had some mugs made, too, but one of them had a cracked handle and one of them was waaaay too light. Not real pleased with the results, but I'll send the decent ones along as samples in case someone wants to order one. The lightened ones go in the bargain bin. (Yay, fair! Yay, Jennie's coming!!) This box is already monstrously heavy, so it's probably just as well.

I have art mojo, and nowhere to put it. Argh! Maybe tonight... I have a wonderful sketch started, an idea I've had for some time now, but much fleshed out, with a background and interesting looking people and snowies that look mostly good. Lots of fur and snow and mountains and trees and some people in Viking/Siberian/Native Alaskan/fantasy-esque clothing. I want to post the pencil sketch for some input from someone who knows anything about horses. (I went to buy a how-to-draw-horses book at Ben Franklins, but the closest they had was how to draw horse heads. I want the whole animal, darnit!) I was even smart and sketched large, and on bristol stock. Maybe I can color this one. I have a couple of recent ink pieces I'd like to print out on cardstock and splash color onto. Splash not being literal, as it would be colored pencil. I'd really like to do something colorful with the Birka/Jerumal picture, but I'm not sure what at this point. Prolly ought to ink it first.

Considering taking a life drawing, painting, or ceramics class this fall up at the college. Life drawing would be enormously useful for the kind of art I most like to do, and I'm horrendously rusty in the field, but painting would be more loose and arty and there's a lot there I don't know. Ceramics would be Just For Fun, something unheard of in Ellen's vocabulary, so I'm trying to convince myself I'd make useful cool things for our house or sell some or something.

Oh, and can I just mention that I really hate it when webpages muck with the cursor? If I wanted an exxy cursor, I'd set up my computer that way. I don't want bells, whistles, blinking anything or music when I visit a webpage. Period. It's not as bad as pop-up ads, maybe, but it's still gross. And frames. I still hate frames.

Note to self: 88 wide banner for Woodworks.

I consider it rather ironic that I seem to have this remarkable timing in regards to the Elfwood journal. I get an article for Woodworks drafted, and bam! the question I'm attempting to forestall ends up there. This time, a tutorial on stitching big scans together in Photoshop. Since a lot of the hints and tricks I was going to mention weren't discussed, I'm still going to write it. Absolutely hate the article I wrote on Art files now, and will probably rewrite it entirely. Thank you for the input anyway, Jenni and Erin. I'll send you the next draft. :P

I love being a perfectionist. /sarcasm

Damn. I'm glad I'm not more involved in Elfwood. I still owe a draft of recommendations to Eliza, but I've got a baaad feeling about this new so-called rule. There is nothing concrete to enforce in any of the wording I've seen, which is a complaint I've put forward before. You need cut-and-dry rules when dealing with this magnitude of people, not wishy-washy criteria that seven different people are going to interpret seven different ways, leading to confusion and resentment. *shakes head* Rules that rely on personal interpretation only work when there's one person in charge, making every single judgment call. Even then it's not a good system base. Eh. I've been avoiding elfwoodrant, etc, just on the basis that it's too easy to want to try to help out, and I am Not willing to invest that kind of energy again. *writes and deletes about sixteen sarcastic sour-grapes sounding gripes about how my input apparently isn't worth six beans anyway...*

I'm much happier on projects I retain control over. Does that make me a control freak? Possibly. Deal.

Got my printing services page updated with T-shirts, On-demand printing and a few tweaks. I just keep plugging away little bits at a time... need to go back and mess with the prize page, too, with input from the first prize-winner to collect their goods and Tarlia. Thanks!

Have more thoughts on the whole contracting process that should make my life bearable. (Not that it isn't, really, but Gaaaahhh... I hate contracts.) I'm going to make the damn thing flexible and on-line. The contract itself, with signatures, will only have to be signed once, at the beginning of the agreement. It will have a clause that 'this contract is subject to the additions and exceptions on the so-and-so page'. The artist will be given a login and password, and a link to that page, on the web, which lists addenda to the contract and current pricing, keeps a record of their current designs, and restrictions, and has a field for 'exceptions.' They have to 'agree' to the addenda and pricing by submitting a form with their password (once they've read over the changes), every time I change that page (probably every few years). None of this signing and returning crap. It cost me nearly $50 last time I mailed out contracts, and nearly all of them were months late. Some of them many, many months late. I'd rather give that money to the artists than to the post office, and there's no reason to trouble people for their stupid signatures. A legally binding contract has never required signatures; that was just me being paranoid and covering my butt.

My new database rocks!!! It automatically calculates artistpay, just in time for July 1, and tracks inventory and sales and auto-adds customers to the address book... it even deciphers the email invoices I get from the credit card processor into an order. It prints bee-ootiful invoices! It prints out a checklist for me! It even gets rid of the ugly all-caps when it adds a customer to the address book! (The button says 'make pretty!!' heee!) My dad is wonderful. :D And there are some *funny* error messages.

Eh. All for now.

  • A Saturday


  • Suddenly Shifters!


  • June in review


  • Post a new comment


    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded