The nightmare before Christmas

Today is only Halloween, and yet I've felt it for months, creeping into my peripheral vision, lurking around with its insidious, low-grade stress and endless to-do lists.

Christmas.

Or, more correctly, the winter holiday gift-buying season, which seems to officially begin November 1st.

I used to love Christmas, I really did. I still like Christmas, but ever since I got more seriously into the business of being an artist, Christmas has come to equal a lot of work. All of my summer now is consumed with thinking about what to make for the Christmas season, because nothing happens quickly in the ceramics world. Even if I'm really pushing my schedule, it takes me at least a month to make something start to finish, due to the drying time and multiple-stage ceramic process.

So I spend all summer thinking about what to make, when to make it, how to sell it, where to sell it, how much to sell it for. In the fall, I finally get down to the actual making of things and by then, I'm usually already behind. Take this year for instance. I'm already behind on my self-imposed schedule. I do a special Christmas ornament every year, and this year I wanted to debut them on November 1st, but due to delays in my studio, it's going to be more like November 10th, assuming they all turn out ok in the firing, which a good potter never assumes!

This will be my third Christmas on Etsy. Before Etsy (BE?), I usually did one small group holiday sale with the Foothills Clay Arts program, and I thought that was pretty difficult. Then, on a whim, I opened an Etsy shop in the summer of 2006 and did pretty much nothing with it until right before Christmas of that year. After my Foothills holiday sale was over, I posted all the remaining pieces to my shop. And then I got slammed. By "slammed," I mean that I got about 12 orders in five days, which was total overload for a person who had had three Etsy sales to date. I didn't know how to package stuff for shipping, that you could print postage online, none of that. And I had the most awful stomach flu. It was craziness.

In 2007, I was more prepared. I had been selling more regularly on Etsy, and therefore knew a lot more tricks. Still, my monthly sales more than doubled in both November and December, and I was spending long hours after work every night packaging orders up in my little office/guest bedroom. And I got sick again, and had to spend an evening in the ER.

I'm determined that Christmas 2008 is going to be less stressful. I've been working on a holiday attack plan since June, which has helped with all the necessary planning (although I'm already behind). And I spent a day last week organizing my office with my mom, who is very organized and tends to have more energy than me. We created this cool little shipping nook inside the closet. I'm hoping that having a designated shipping/packaging space helps me stay more sane this year.Priority Mail boxes are lined up under the table, jewelry inventory is ready to go in gift boxes, and mailers are up on the top shelf. My bubble wrap is inside the door on the other side, along with my packing peanuts. I even cable-tied a little halogen light to the clothes pole so I can see what I'm doing. It's worked pretty well so far, and I love that I can close the door on it and put it completely out of sight.

I'm doing some other things to try to reduce my stress this year. I'm going to be using Endicia.com for my shipping, instead of PayPal shipping, which is what I normally use. The reason for the switch is that Endicia can print First Class International postage, while PayPal shipping can't. International orders are the only reason I have to stand in line at the post office anymore, and being at the post office during the Christmas season makes me absolutely crazy. My goal is to not set foot in there this year. I'm going to rely on carrier pick up and the drive-up drop boxes. I'm also going to pack and ship orders only three days a week. Last year, I packed and shipped orders as they came in, which was every single day. That was too much!

I'm not a real high-energy person, so I've come to accept that I must have some built-in downtime during this stressful season. Therefore, I've declared Sundays off-limits to all studio and Etsy work, and to any and all social engagements. Sundays from now until the end of the year are reserved for sleeping in, staying home, eating snacks, and watching Broncos' games. I'll still renew listings on Etsy to stay visible, but I'm be doing it in my jammies!

In the beginning

I first threw clay on a potter's wheel when I was about nine years old. I was taking a kids' clay class at the local community college, and they actually let us attempt to throw on the kickwheels. I remember it being so HARD, and couldn't even begin to imagine that anyone could ever get this crazy throwing thing down. I turned out a little tiny gritty pot and glazed it a bright yellow. I kept jewelry in it as a teenager, but now I don't know where it is.

Because I was showing an interest in clay, my parents bought me a "pottery wheel" like this one for Christmas. I don't remember how old I was, but I was ecstatic! How cool to have a wheel of one's own! The only problem was that you can't actually throw on these things. The wheel grinds to a halt as you apply the pressure needed to move the clay around. It didn't turn out good pots of any sort, but it was really fun. I got a HearthSong catalog yesterday and was so surprised to see this little wheel for sale. It brought back a flood of memories.

I got into my first "real" clay class when I was eighteen. I had just graduated from high school, and had always wanted to take a ceramics course in school, but had never had the time for it in my schedule. I got on a waiting list for the one ceramics class offered at my local rec center, and after a few months, I finally got in. My first pot was a very short cylinder, about four inches across and maybe an inch tall. I glazed it with green and white glazes and was very proud of it. It still is with me every day in my studio, holding the little posts for my Giffin Grip. It reminds me of how far I've come.

Now, I've been making pottery for nearly 10 years and have just started learning how to sculpt in clay. The excitement I feel every week in my sculpture class reminds me of my early pottery days, when I had no idea what I was doing, but was loving every minute. I still love to make pottery, but that excitement is sometimes tempered by thoughts on pricing, marketing, personal development, and so on. Some days, there's a heaviness of it that makes me wonder why I do this in the first place. Then I go to my sculpture class, tired and sore from a long day already spent in the clay studio. When I pull out my sculpture from my cubby, my heart lifts and I feel a rush of that first love feeling. And I am reminded of why I do what I do.

Sculpture Update

Here we are at the end of another week, and I have another sculpture update for you!

I think she's coming along pretty well! This week, I added her hair and refined her cheeks and chin a bit more. As I was working to add more fullness to the cheeks, I was suddenly hit by the fact that the piece is really starting to look like my little niece. With this being my first sculpture ever, I never really thought it would resemble her at all. Bob is truly a gifted artist and teacher.

I took this photo right before I had to cut off the top of her head, pull out the newspaper, and begin hollowing her out. That was very traumatic! It reminded me a bit of cleaning out a Halloween pumpkin.

My class is almost over already! I think I need to sign up for the next one too, because I am loving this sculpture thing. It's such a different process from making pottery, which requires so much time management. With clay sculpting, you just keep working it until it looks right, and you can always carve things off and replace them with new clay, because you don't have to worry about the piece cracking in the firing and being ruined. Bob showed us how most of the sculptures will crack in the kiln, but they can be repaired with various fillers and fixed right up. This is a totally radical notion to a potter like me!

Halloween Jewelry!

This year, I've created some very special, limited-edition versions of my jewelry line just for Halloween! Very limited quantities of my pendants, earrings and rings are available in pumpkin orange and a very cool variegated black and white pattern. These will only be available in my Etsy shop for the month of October, so don't wait to get yours!

Back in the saddle again

Well, I'm back from Wisconsin. The trip was a whirlwind, but it was nice. My grandma's funeral and burial went well, and most of my family was there. It's hard to say goodbye to a loved one, but it was really nice to see so many family members too. I think we gave her the send-off she deserved. Thanks to everyone who has contacted me with sympathies, I truly appreciate it.

I was able to get to my sculpture class Wednesday night and get back on the portrait head band wagon. I worked on her features mostly, working off of photos of my niece to sculpt the nose and eyes. My instructor Bob showed me how to do the eyes, carving a recess to create the colored iris of each eye. A little speck of clay gets put back in to create the little white highlight we all have in our eyes, and then all of a sudden, the sculpture is staring right at you! It was really eerie, to suddenly have this sculpture making eye contact with me...

I still don't think this sculpture looks like my niece, but it does now look like a fairly realistic human being. Next week, she gets hair!