This past Saturday I had a booth at the St.Louis Catholic craft fair and it was an excellent way to end my craft fair year. It was busy pretty much from start to finish! I sold a couple canvas paintings, including one of my larger ones. Story stones, especially Nativity sets, sold very well too but the best seller of all were the polymer clay gift tags. They sold very well! I took a few custom orders for story stones and I've been busy getting those painted and ready for delivery. This was my final show of the year and aim looking forward to just focusing on Christmas now but I am already starting to plan out next year's events. Stay tuned and I'll post a list of events I'll be attending soon!
In addition to craft fair orders, my etsy shop has been busier than usual, all with Nativity orders. I love that the Nativity is still holding true to be my best selling story stone set. Recently, the 901 Rocks group I've mentioned before had a member copy the picture from my Etsy listing for the Nativity set and post it to the group Facebook page and ask if anyone would make her a set for free. And then someone, several someones actually, proceeded to do just that. The members of the group actually painted sets that mirrored my design almost exactly. Someone who had seen my work saw this happening and tagged me in the post. It's hard to explain how it felt to see my work being copied so exactly and given for free. Yes, it was super flattering that my idea was so well liked but it also hurts to see other people stealing my ideas. If they would've just put their own twist or influence on the Nativity sets it wouldn't have bothered me at all but they didn't. They just painted theirs to look like mine. And until that one person recognized my design and tagged me in the post, no one was even bothering to credit me as the original artist. Not being credited as the artist in the initial post lead to a few uncomfortable moments at my craft fair when more than one shopper mentioned they'd seen that exact set on 901 Rocks just that week. My husband said I shouldn't care and that people who paint 901 Rocks aren't the people who are buying my story stones. But while I do hate missing out on a few sales, it really isn't about that for me. It's more about my thoughts, my creative design being stolen. I'm trying really hard to be positive and not think negatively about it but it definitely is pushing me further away from painting rocks in the future. I'm actually contemplating not painting rocks at all anymore. We will see.
The most exciting thing I've been doing this week though is a custom canvas painting for someone who saw my work a few months back at Cooper-Young and decided she needed a new painting for her living room and she wanted me to paint it for her! This is perhaps one of the biggest compliments you can get as an artist. Her color palette was a bit different than my normal go to color palette so it was more of a challenge but still incredibly fun. Here is a picture of her finished custom canvas:
Well, my work is calling so that's all for blogging today! I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!
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