Taking stock of the rocks
May. 21st, 2012 03:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbg::This started in a rambly fashion but quickly became a post about the current state of the pretty rock pictures. I've left in the rambly bits Because I Can.::
--
I am way behind in blogging. Take away the odd pretty rock post and I've been very quiet here indeed. Not that I've been short of material, but I have been thoroughly seduced by the low cost of entry and responsive audiences over at Twitter and Facebook. I'm here now because I have a cold that only increases in ferocity and irritability when I attempt to sleep, so I decided to make blog while the nose runs.
Once FB made it possible and indeed easy to post paragraph length and longer status statements, well, that was it for regular LJ posts. I do recall planning to review all my posts and tweets at the end of the day to compose a sort of digest with extra commentary, but clearly that never happened.
Other things have been consuming my potential blog energy, namely redbubble and the burgeoning Pretty Rock Designs empire. Burgeoning in the sense that the empire has done some sums and pee'd on a stick, and is planning a quick trip to the pharmacy to get another test kit because really it's too early for any kind of definitive diagnosis, let alone announcement. i.e. it's very early days for Pretty Rock Designs. So early, in fact, that you might have no idea what I'm talking about. You are in good company; it's so early I don't even know what I'm talking about.
To recap:
I like taking pictures of rocks. Many of these pictures have ended up right here in Pretty Rock of the Day posts.
Quite a few of these pictures are rather interesting if I do say so myself.
I entered some pictures into the Swancon Art Show, sold a couple, and got plenty of positive feedback and general encouragement.
As a Thing To Do/Part of Moving On With My Life/Many Other Emotionally Laden Reasons I started uploading pictures to a redbubble account and offering prints for sale. Redbubble takes care of the offering, printing, selling, and dispatching side of things, and sends me royalty payments. Or they will, hopefully, one day.
I started to look at other product lines. Redbubble doesn't do much in the way of merchandise, but I've rendered out a few iPhone covers that look nice and plan to do more. I've been having a slow-motion chat with an old neighbour/friend about t-shirt ideas. I've nabbed my preferred username stephbg over at DeviantArt which does much the same as Redbubble but supports a wider range of things wot you can print pictures on. Mugs, notepaper, mousemats, that sort of thing.
Meanwhile I started ordering postcard prints of my artwork - the cheapest hard copy option available. At the time I didn't know what if any identifying information was printed on them, so I began to plan address labels so I could turn them into impromptu business cards. Maybe I should just cut to the chase and make business cards. I should probably do both. Somehow I imagined approaching gallery owners with my portfolio which would lead to an exhibition.
But first I needed a business name. That was actually pretty easy, as I've been calling them pretty rocks for a lot longer than I've been blogging. Longer than the Internet as we know it, come to think of it. I. Am. So. Old. Anyway, I chucked Designs onto the end of Pretty Rock to acknowledge the vast array of merchandise that would one day bear my images and there you have it.
So where are we now? The redbubble portfolio has over a hundred images and counting, so I have a stock. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rabbit1080 www.prettyrockdesigns.com (don't go there)is just waiting for me to claim it, safe from Evil Squatters. Today I reserved the Pretty Rock Designs page on Facebook. The business name is available in Australia, but that's the next level of complexity I'm not quite ready to face yet. I'm kind of hoping I won't have to. Trademark ditto.
I do need a logo. It doesn't have to be the very final one that I'll be stuck with forever, but it has to be good enough to not make me later weep with regret. I've been playing with fonts, but the urgency for the logo decreased when I saw that the postcards included attribution information on the back, and a link to my profile page. In the short term this would suffice.
I did face a setback when the postcards started arriving and I found out that they had been cropped, contrary to redbubble documentation. For a brief while there I felt I'd lost my entire portfolio and generally catastrophised in a frankly embarrassing manner. My solution was to start a project on Snapfish to create a bound book of my first however-many uncropped images. It's very easy to create a flashy photo book design, but it's arse-tearingly slow and frustrating to create something simple and elegant. I am currently in the arse-tearing phase, but it's starting to come together.
(The book isn't actually a book, in case you were wondering - it will be a bound set of prints, basically, and not remotely economically feasible to sell as any sort of product. I have no plans to become a publisher *shudder*.)
The next phase is immediate-circle marketing to friends and family, with judicious extension to broader contacts. I've done this a little, but it's time to strain cherished relationships and threaten the harmony of family reunions by asking for support, signal boosting, andpity orders. Thus far I have a promise from Middle Sister to use my cards for Christmas. It's a start, but I need to push on. I have a list of hopefully not too noxious things to do and contacts to exploit next, and that's where I'm at right now.
Subtle, eh?
I am still making new Art while I do all this. I really don't think it's necessary to ban myself from the fun bits until I achieve certain marketing goals, but I am trying to set myself a few manageable deadlines and so on. The trickiest part of spoon management is that these business-side activities are in direct competition for spoons with The Day Job. The one that actually pays. For now, the Day Job gets precedence, but I have become pretty good at performing fragments of tasks as fragments of spoons become available. One juggles, cautiously.
I'm keeping an eye out for other opportunities including fabric designs (hello quilters!) and iPad/laptop covers, so feel free to throw suggestions my way.
Questions?
--
I am way behind in blogging. Take away the odd pretty rock post and I've been very quiet here indeed. Not that I've been short of material, but I have been thoroughly seduced by the low cost of entry and responsive audiences over at Twitter and Facebook. I'm here now because I have a cold that only increases in ferocity and irritability when I attempt to sleep, so I decided to make blog while the nose runs.
Once FB made it possible and indeed easy to post paragraph length and longer status statements, well, that was it for regular LJ posts. I do recall planning to review all my posts and tweets at the end of the day to compose a sort of digest with extra commentary, but clearly that never happened.
Other things have been consuming my potential blog energy, namely redbubble and the burgeoning Pretty Rock Designs empire. Burgeoning in the sense that the empire has done some sums and pee'd on a stick, and is planning a quick trip to the pharmacy to get another test kit because really it's too early for any kind of definitive diagnosis, let alone announcement. i.e. it's very early days for Pretty Rock Designs. So early, in fact, that you might have no idea what I'm talking about. You are in good company; it's so early I don't even know what I'm talking about.
To recap:
I like taking pictures of rocks. Many of these pictures have ended up right here in Pretty Rock of the Day posts.
Quite a few of these pictures are rather interesting if I do say so myself.
I entered some pictures into the Swancon Art Show, sold a couple, and got plenty of positive feedback and general encouragement.
As a Thing To Do/Part of Moving On With My Life/Many Other Emotionally Laden Reasons I started uploading pictures to a redbubble account and offering prints for sale. Redbubble takes care of the offering, printing, selling, and dispatching side of things, and sends me royalty payments. Or they will, hopefully, one day.
I started to look at other product lines. Redbubble doesn't do much in the way of merchandise, but I've rendered out a few iPhone covers that look nice and plan to do more. I've been having a slow-motion chat with an old neighbour/friend about t-shirt ideas. I've nabbed my preferred username stephbg over at DeviantArt which does much the same as Redbubble but supports a wider range of things wot you can print pictures on. Mugs, notepaper, mousemats, that sort of thing.
Meanwhile I started ordering postcard prints of my artwork - the cheapest hard copy option available. At the time I didn't know what if any identifying information was printed on them, so I began to plan address labels so I could turn them into impromptu business cards. Maybe I should just cut to the chase and make business cards. I should probably do both. Somehow I imagined approaching gallery owners with my portfolio which would lead to an exhibition.
But first I needed a business name. That was actually pretty easy, as I've been calling them pretty rocks for a lot longer than I've been blogging. Longer than the Internet as we know it, come to think of it. I. Am. So. Old. Anyway, I chucked Designs onto the end of Pretty Rock to acknowledge the vast array of merchandise that would one day bear my images and there you have it.
So where are we now? The redbubble portfolio has over a hundred images and counting, so I have a stock. Thanks to
rabbit1080 www.prettyrockdesigns.com (don't go there)is just waiting for me to claim it, safe from Evil Squatters. Today I reserved the Pretty Rock Designs page on Facebook. The business name is available in Australia, but that's the next level of complexity I'm not quite ready to face yet. I'm kind of hoping I won't have to. Trademark ditto.I do need a logo. It doesn't have to be the very final one that I'll be stuck with forever, but it has to be good enough to not make me later weep with regret. I've been playing with fonts, but the urgency for the logo decreased when I saw that the postcards included attribution information on the back, and a link to my profile page. In the short term this would suffice.
I did face a setback when the postcards started arriving and I found out that they had been cropped, contrary to redbubble documentation. For a brief while there I felt I'd lost my entire portfolio and generally catastrophised in a frankly embarrassing manner. My solution was to start a project on Snapfish to create a bound book of my first however-many uncropped images. It's very easy to create a flashy photo book design, but it's arse-tearingly slow and frustrating to create something simple and elegant. I am currently in the arse-tearing phase, but it's starting to come together.
(The book isn't actually a book, in case you were wondering - it will be a bound set of prints, basically, and not remotely economically feasible to sell as any sort of product. I have no plans to become a publisher *shudder*.)
The next phase is immediate-circle marketing to friends and family, with judicious extension to broader contacts. I've done this a little, but it's time to strain cherished relationships and threaten the harmony of family reunions by asking for support, signal boosting, and
Subtle, eh?
I am still making new Art while I do all this. I really don't think it's necessary to ban myself from the fun bits until I achieve certain marketing goals, but I am trying to set myself a few manageable deadlines and so on. The trickiest part of spoon management is that these business-side activities are in direct competition for spoons with The Day Job. The one that actually pays. For now, the Day Job gets precedence, but I have become pretty good at performing fragments of tasks as fragments of spoons become available. One juggles, cautiously.
I'm keeping an eye out for other opportunities including fabric designs (hello quilters!) and iPad/laptop covers, so feel free to throw suggestions my way.
Questions?
