Color Matching with the 50's

I've been working on a new way of color selection for new pillow and wall hangings. I bought this great book on the history of color schemes and Pantone colors. Of course I'm starting with the 50's. I'm matching felt colors with each scheme. Can't wait to see where this goes!! 

Charley Harper, how I love you!

Ok, I'm late to the table here. I just discovered the Charley Harper web site. Maybe that's a good thing for my wallet. I bought my family Charley Harper puzzles for Christmas this year; I bought myself pairs of smart wool Charley Harper socks and now, as jennyjen, I discovered Charley Harper fabric! I bought the fat corner sample. They are perfect for coaster sets that I needed to stock up on. I actually ran out over the holidays and have needed some motivation to revamp my design. Here they are! With new hand printed packaging ! Come shop in my etsy store! 

Ready to Work

On my walk to my studio/sweatshop this morning I had this brilliant idea to actual document my making routines. I've been taking a buisness for artist class at MICA and it's making me focus on the buisness side of jennyjen42, so that I can grow this to a full time career that I love! Mind you, I do love teaching, but in this day and age, I am losing steam and enthusiasm for a fast pace, let's just try this, put more and more on the teacher strategies that , let's face it , I'm getting too old for as well as out of that generation of thinking. I'll have my 30 years in before I know it and will be able to retire with benefits at the age of 54! Retire to my full time jennyjen gig. You know I like to travel, and eat well, and drink good wine periodically. I still want to do that! So here goes, I've learned that people want to hear your story. They want to know what inspires you, in hopes that it inspires them to buy from you and continue to support you .

Sweatshop story today is a simple photo documentary of my sweatshop routine in the winter time. I stole this from Mr. Rogers : 

Loading up the Shop

This weekends goal has been cleaning and organizing my sweatshop and listing new items in my shop. Did you not get what you wanted for Xmas? Need a little pick me up for the dreading winter blues? Well stop on by the shop! Use coupon code FREESHIPPING for just that!!! www.jennyjen42.etsy.com 

Thanks for The Best Season Ever!

Happy is the crafter who gets to watch her handmade items go into the happy hands of the faithful customers! Happy is the maker who gets to see her clients multiply each year!  Happy is the anxious salesperson seeing people remembering her products and wanting to buy more! I was the happy one this year. This holiday season I had tons of complements and very good sales beginning with two Clover  Markets along with a fall Art Star craft bazaar in a very special race car museum. 

The holiday season started off with "All Craft Considered" in the NPR building in Washington,DC. which was an amazing start! Then "Bazaart" at the American Visionary Museum and lastly "Holiday Heap" Charm City's Craft Mafia which had early bird tickets for the first hour. That first hour almost sold me out! 

An incredible season thanks to my incredible fans!! Thanks Again! I'm going to take a couple of weeks off to visit Family in England for the Holidays! Will post pictures when I get there! 

Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet = sale in the shop till Jan. 15 with coupon code Tweet

That's tweeting right! 20% off any item $16 and over ! Use coupon code TWEET . Price will not show until you check out!  Check these items here and more in the shop!

Bird Cage Pillow

Pelican Tote

Pink Flamingo Tote

Kingfisher Portrait 

Water Tower Messenger Bag

True Owl Messenger Bag

Nuthatch Pillow

Birds on Wire Pillow

The New Sweat Shop!!! Amazing Happening #2 of 2013

Its true!!! Jennyjen has gotten another amazing happening in the second month of 2013! I got a beautiful space in the Mill Center! Suite 219! On the corner of the third floor with southern exposure! My new bud Kim of alittleparty was looking for a studio mate and I happened to see the google group post and acted! I am so excited! tons of space! Hopefully there will be a nice little open house in March. 

What’s been happening in the Jennyjen Sweat Shop!

 It’s been a busy summer in the Sweatshop! We started our summer out with AVAM’s Sideshow Flea Market, Pile of Craft at the end of June and then Artscape in July. I had a number of wholesale orders and a new project that I will write about later on. I didn’t teach or write curriculum. That’s right, the first summer in 24 years that I did not work a summer job of some kind! Well, I guess that’s not true…this is the first summer that I worked for myself! And my boss wasn’t too awful to deal with! SO I did have some creative moments and started to do more drawing with my sewing machine. I started to draw bird portraits with my sewing machine. No programming involved! Just me freehand sewing on my machine! I really love these and they help me feel like I’m honing my artistic and observation skills! These are all for sale and in my shop! 

Apologies for Neglecting My Blog and reflections for Getting Older

Sorry for not keeping up with this blog. I was so good at one time, enjoying the sharing of what’s going on in my thoughts, my life and my art. Seeing this lacking since March, I woke up this morning with some sort of motivation to write and reflect. I turned 49 this summer. One more year of this half a century left and I have to admit, I may be in denial, but I’m really not that upset with how fast this life is going. Its been a pretty good ride so far! Oh yes, it slows down horribly when stuck in meetings and I have no escape plan. I notice how hard it is to concentrate and have exact meaning of what it is I am suppose to comprehend, even when the discussion is the lack of meaning and comprehension our students have in daily studies.  I am getting optimistic but some of the new trends in education that have been persuaded by the experiential education movement. My way of learning.  I learn by doing…making mistakes and using problem solving to solve the problems I need to solve. I think most of us learn that way.

      I am anxious about my school year this year. I am in year 25! Yes, that is how fast our life can go when all of a sudden a career that you thought you wouldn’t last 5 years, becomes 25. I head a department of 5. All but one is being evaluated this year, which means lots of observations, pre and post ob meetings and write-ups.  I have now 5 different preps, meaning 5 different courses I am teaching (one is an on-line class that I just have to monitor and be there as support). So really maybe make that 4 different preps: Art 1, Photo 1, Studio and Advance Studio, oh yeah, and Studio AP. Lets go back to 5 preps. And I’m monitoring AP Art History.

   
         My Jennyjen42 business is going well and surviving. It is my retirement plan. I need to stick with this teaching career for a decent pension and medical benefits…this will be my mantra for the next five years. I spent my summer working towards this retirement life of daily sweatshop routines and have quite enjoyed being able to work on a normal, refreshed mode, as opposed to tired teacher making items for shows and whole sales till the middle of the night. I wanted to work on this blog this summer and you can see how much I did that, but it’s all ok. I am going to work on writing more. Writing and exercise, eating well and getting rid of my muffin top that appeared last school year and is slowly going away. The exercise helps the mood and gets my brain thinking smarter. Hopefully help with my attention span as well.

  
      Today is my last full day of my summer vacation since I will need to go into school tomorrow to set up my classroom and have a full school day getting ready for next week.Gonna make it a full sweatshop day. I have tote bags to make for the BMA! I will post about this later. And a wholesale order to work on. Meaning its potholder day! I know I use this blog as my journal. And I hope to write more and keep more consistent with it/ I know I have lost a lot of readership. I’m going try to keep up with it. I miss it as well. OK, enough for this morning. Thanks for reading.

Bazzart 2011 Best Show EVER!!!!

WOW!!! That's about the best sound I can come up with after my day hiatus from my extremely busy crafty-teaching season. I guess you've notice my lack of posts and have probably given up on me. I am trying to get my act together and welcome 2012 with more posts and more reflective time to figure out my artistic future.

 Bazzart, is held every Friday night and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend at the American Visionary Museum and I have been so gracious to be accepted for the past four years! I get to create my own 10 foot square shop and this year IKEA really came though with beautiful birdy bird curtains that look like they came right out my own pen! in fact many customers commented on my wall curtains and thought I had to have made them. The amount of complements and purchases let me take the day off today and clean and organize my new house ( future post to come on that one, I promise!)/ Here are some pics f my shop! I really do think I could do this for a living!