I must start doing these round-ups more often because cool stuff keeps happening.

Art Stuff

Sister Diane from Craftypod bought one of my envelopes and wrote a rave review of it.

Diane Gilleland: Red drawing by Kirsty Hall, June 2010

Julie Shackson also bought an envelope recently and she loved it too.

If you lust after an envelope of your very own, click here – they’re a total bargain and who doesn’t enjoy getting fun thing in the mail?

The sequins are coming along just fine: there’s still masses of sewing to do but I’m starting to feel that I’m on the home stretch. I was getting dangerously low but fortunately found a supply of almost identical ones and bought an enormous bag that should be more than enough to finish the apron. If you’re in the UK and need haberdashery stuff, I was hugely impressed by the service I received from JosyRose.

I’ve also been doing a bit of drawing but I’m feeling out of balance lately – far too much internet/business stuff and not enough studio time. Sigh, are we artists ever satisfied? I don’t think so.

Want to win some of my art?

My dear friend Camilla Stacey is currently raising money for her MA. Camilla has been a huge supporter of other artists through her curating work and it would be fantastic if the art community could return that support. I’ve donated two original drawings to her fundraising raffle and there’s also the chance to win work by Alys Paterson, Claire Platt, Peskimo and Elin Thomas.

Camilla says, “I will be mailing out the artwork to prize winners totally free of charge, so for a mere quid you could get something awesome for your wall that would normally set you back ££££££££”

Raffle tickets are only £1 or 10 for £5. There are more details here or you can go straight to Camilla’s paypal (don’t forget to tell her how many tickets you want). Oh, and if you’re in Bristol, pop along to her fundraising sale tomorrow at the Here gallery in Stokes Croft.

Internet Stuff

Honeys, I’ve been a busy little internet bee lately.

I did a long interview about lists, systems and productivity over at Craft Leftovers. It’s a lot more interesting than I’m making it sound!

I also wrote a guest post for Be Awesome Online. It’s called The Power Of Words and it’s all about how the titles we give ourselves have power.

And as usual, I’ve been talking my mouth off over on Twitter.

Business Stuff

Consulting
My consulting packages will be going up in price on September 1st, so if you’ve been thinking about buying some of my time and expertise, now is an excellent time to do so. Sister Diane bought one and she’s already been seeing great results from her reorganisation.

If you’re an internet beginner, you need the Internet Hand-Holding package. If you’ve been around the block a few times but need a better internet strategy, you need the Website Tune-up package (awful name, I know, I’m working on coming up with a snappier one).

Newsletter
I finally got round to putting a newsletter sign-up on the sidebar (look to your right and you’ll see it). I need to prettify it but hey, at least it’s there. It’s only taken me three years! I’m still not entirely sure what my newsletter plans are but if you want to sign up, I’m be thrilled. I promise not to do anything evil with the information: let’s face it, I’m just not organised enough to spam you incessantly!

Facebook Fan Page
If you want regular news but don’t want to sign up for my intermittent newsletter or you find I talk too much on Twitter, my Facebook fanpage might suit you better.

Educational Stuff

I’m on a huge education kick at the moment and have been absorbing online classes, e-books and library books like a deranged info-product addict.

If you’ve been thinking about writing an e-book, Sister Diane still has places on her brand new e-book course, which starts on Monday. I’m taking part and it sounds like it’s going to be an amazing group. I’m super excited about it. And yes, this does mean you can expect some e-books from me in the future.

Like many artists, I struggle with pricing my work so naturally I’m taking this class about pricing art. The fact that it’s by two of my favourite internet people – Tara Swiger of Blonde Chicken and Catherine Caine of Be Awesome Online – was also a big incentive. I’ve worked with both of them before and they rock at explaining stuff.

I also joined The Creative Empire, a new subscription community by Tara Gentile from Scoutie Girl and Megan Auman from Crafting an MBA. The forums are very good value, plus there’s exclusive seminars and practical worksheets. I think the initial price of $15 a month only lasts until the end of August, so join now if you need a bit of support for your creative business.

Cool Stuff (In No Particular Order)

Gareth from Fight Mediocrity made a fab flowsheet (PDF link) inspired by my mantra ‘is it useful? Is it fun?’ It has ducks and chickens, people, ducks and chickens!

If you’re in Britain and want to garden but you don’t have space, or you have land but need help, Landshare connects people. I’ve joined as a landowner, I’m hoping to find some local people to garden with.

I’ve fallen in love with Kim Boekbinder’s voice. Listen to her first EP for free here.

Knock Knock have crazy stationary and office products. They’re definitely going on my Christmas list this year.

My new favourite eye candy blog is Things Organized Neatly.

LaVonne Ellis had a funny chat with her writer’s block.

Lovely short video by Tanya Davis & Andrea Dorfman – How To Be Alone

Finally, check out this superb 10 min video from Scott Belsky about bringing creative projects to fruition.

OK, that should ensure you don’t get a lick of work done this fine Friday!

Comment

As usual, comments are hugely welcome.

Photo of Achnahaird Bay by Graham Lewis, used under a Creative Commons license

Right everyone, talk amongst yourselves, I’m off on holiday for a week.

My son and I are heading off to the west coast of Scotland. Here’s where we’re going. It belongs to my cousin, Calum and it’s only a few miles from the beach where we used to holiday every year as kids. I’ve not been to Achnahaird for about 20 years and I shall probably bawl my eyes out when I see it again because it’s always been a bit of a lodestone in my life, somewhere I’ve mentally aligned myself towards.

We’re going to be there with my mum & dad, two family friends, my three brothers and their families. Including us, that’s 12 adults and two babies. Oh, and then my aunt & my cousin, his wife and their three kids are turning up on the last weekend. So for a couple of days, there will be 15 adults & 5 little kids – actually, possibly 16 adults if my cousin, Lindsey turns up. Did I ever mention that I have a large family?

It will be utter madness!

Fortunately I’m hiring a car, so I’ll be able to take off for some peace and quiet when it all gets too much – which it will, because I’m fairly introverted. Planning to take a trip to Inverewe Gardens and maybe this wonderful but very remote bookshop.

I’m very excited to finally meet my little niece, Siobhan. My brother Ewan lives in Australia and this is the first time they’ve been back to the UK since Siobhan was born last year. My mum & dad have met her because they went out to Oz last autumn but the rest of us haven’t. My delightful nephew, Elliot will also be there. I plan to spend the entire week snorgling babies.

Now, if I was an organised person, I would have written a blog post and scheduled it in advance but I am not, so there probably won’t be a blog post next week unless some sort of magic occurs. I’ve no idea if there’s even any phone reception there but if there is, I’ll be checking in on Twitter.

Come up to the lab and seeeeeee what’s on the slab.

So. With my usual inimitable flair I appear to have accidentally launched another new service mere days before I disappear off into the wilds of Scotland for a week. If you’ve read my Resources page but you’re still floundering and you’d like some individual one-on-one help, you can now buy 30 minutes of my undivided attention. Also, there are biscuits.

Behold, my beautiful creature…

I’m Selling This:

Internet Hand-hol…
$50.00

Internet Hand-holding

Now, this isn’t quite as daft as it sounds (OK, the ‘just before a holiday’ part is pretty stupid). I’ve always been drawn to the idea of consulting and coaching and I’d been making tentative plans in this direction for several months after a very thought-provoking Awesomeness Check-up session with the lovely Catherine Caine.

So when John T. Unger asked for willing volunteers to test out Bixbe on Wordpress, I did the ‘closing my eyes and jumping’ thing again.

As a way of launching this and also celebrating the 3 year anniversary of this blog, I’m offering 15 free sessions. If you’re interested, please comment below before Wednesday 7th July (the blog’s official birthday, we shall have cake). If I get masses of people, I’ll pick names out of a hat to make it fairer because I know that not everyone is online at the same time. Please note, the free sessions won’t be happening until at least the second week of July because of the whole holiday thing.

Oh and while I’m shamelessly self promoting, I updated my shop, which is now called Drawings And Delights. I added an ‘about me’ page, some shop policies and more drawings. If I get time later today, I may add a few ACEO’s that I’ve drawn recently.

By the way, would it be helpful to any of you if I did a couple of video tutorials about my experiences setting up Big Cartel and Bixbe?

What’s Been Happening Lately?

So, I sort of opened a shop for my drawings. There’s not much up there yet but if you’ve ever wanted me to send you a hand-drawn envelope containing a secret, you’re in luck! There’s also a couple of my more expensive archival drawings and more will going up next week.

You may remember that back in February I did a 30 minute talk about blogging for the University Of Arts in London – the audio is now online.

On Friday, I visited the American Museum in Bath with the lovely people from Textile Forum South West. We had a guided tour around their current quilting exhibition. Now quilting isn’t my thing but it was a fascinating talk and the level of sewing skill was quite staggering, especially when you consider that most of it was done by hand. I also ate my first ever Snickerdoodle, which is quite possibly the best cookie name ever. It was very tasty. The museum have their own kitchen where they bake deliciously exotic American goodies and frankly it’s worth a trip just for the baked goods but they also have an eclectic collection set in beautiful grounds.

I sewed lots more sequins and listened lots more podcasts. It doesn’t make for very exciting blogging, does it. But I’ve definitely passed the half way point now. Unfortunately, I’ve – gasp – nearly run out of sequins. I’m praying that they’ve got more of the right kind in Fabric Land. I’m going into town to find out tomorrow, if they’ve run out you’ll probably be able to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from wherever you are in the world.

I finally made another video. If you fancy a four & half minute tour around my studio, hit play:

Chickens

Last night I was fretting that Colette was ill, she had disappeared into the chicken house for hours and seemed strangely docile. This morning it dawned on me that the silly hen is actually broody. We don’t have a cockerel, so she has no fertile eggs – in fact, she isn’t sitting on any eggs at all but she’s making a fairly determined attempt to hatch out a pile of shredded paper. She’s not the brightest chicken, that one! Still, at least it’s keeping her quiet.

Books
I finished Among The Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson. It’s not flawless, she does rather gloss over Eric Gill’s unforgivable practice of committing incest with his female relatives but I found it a very readable account of this interesting period in art history. If you’ve ever wondered where a lot of our contemporary ideas about artists come from, this book provides many of the answers. Highly recommended.

Other Artists
Two artists inspired by animals this week:

Matt Cummings makes amazing sculptures of animals that manage to capture the essence of the animal without being slavishly realistic.

I’m loving these rabbit prints by Kyoko Imazu, especially the more sinister ones. If I had any money at all, I’d buy one.

Cool Things
Sister Diane’s video 7 Crafting Supplies I’m No Longer Allowed To Buy to buy made me laugh hysterically. Total comedy of recognition.

I’m currently enjoying Marisa’s blog, New Dress A Day, which features daily remaking of thrifted clothing. I don’t always like her finished items but I’m amazed that she looks at some of those hideous dresses and thinks, ‘hell yeah, I can make something with this 1980’s shiny polyester peach number!’ It’s a lesson in creativity, for sure.

If you like things in jars, you’ll like this, if you don’t like dead things, you won’t.

If you’ve not been listening to John T. Unger’s podcast, Art Heroes Radio, you need to remedy that asap. All the ones I’ve listened to have been interesting but the one on pricing is especially valuable.

This is a very quick update because I’m meant to be packing. My son and I are heading up to Scotland this evening to visit my folks.

Firstly, the talk went well on Thursday. I was quite pleased with the Powerpoint that I put together – only having a week to master the software made for a bit of a steep learning curve and a lot of late nights but I managed to put a simple presentation together. The talk itself was very well attended & the organiser said there was a good response to it. I think that I did OK, although my mouth was so dry from nerves that I got through two bottles of water in quick succession! But apparently I didn’t look or sound too nervous, which was good. I had practised at home a lot, which definitely helped. I also watched this long but fantastic video by Garr Reynolds on how to structure Powerpoint & do presentations, which helped immensely. If you’ve got a talk coming up, I thoroughly recommend watching it – it’ll be time well spent.

There was so much that I wanted to put in but had to leave out – 20-30 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to give a good overview of blogging – so I may do some basic intro posts about the subject in the next week or two.

Secondly, I’m taking my laptop up to Scotland with the aim of writing 5 blog posts. I want to take my blogging up to the next level this year and my first priority is increasing the frequency of my blogging. I’ve been blogging ‘hand to mouth’ for far too long. I need to get a good backlog of posts written so that my blogging is not dependant on my dodgy health. So, if you’ve got any burning issues that you’d like to see me address, please let me know and I’ll try to write about it. On a related note, if there’s anything that drives you nuts about my site, please do let me know and I’ll see if it can be fixed.

Lastly, congratulations to Gwen from Murphy Grace Home who won the Gary Vaynerchuk Crush It! giveaway. Thanks to everyone who commented. I wish you could all have won.

Right, I must go and pack, I’m just procrastinating now!

Edited to add:
Oops, I forgot this bit of news. I’ve changed a whole bunch of my photos over to the Creative Commons license. I’m retaining full copyright on my art photos but the more documentary ones are now available to use. The only restriction is that you can’t take them and sell them. I would appreciate a Flickr comment if you do use them but it’s not obligatory.

Awesome sauce – I got a paid speaking gig. Apparently the University Of The Arts in London think I’m some kind of blogging expert. I tried to tell the nice lady on the phone that I wasn’t really but she said lots of lovely things about my articles page and how they were looking for an artist who blogs and I guess I qualify on the later.

Did I mention that the speaking gig is next week and I have to learn Powerpoint between now and next Thursday? And right after I said I was going to be taking things easy too – ha, the Universe does like its little jokes. But I’m certainly not complaining; it’ll be cool and this could be the start of an actual income stream for me. Fortunately I’m feeling significantly better I was than last week. I’ve been doing lots of pacing and listening to my body, so I should be fine.

The event is all booked up but they’re going to be taping it and putting it out as a podcast, I’ll let you know when that comes out.

Kirsty Hall: Waiting For Seeds, April 2009

Other cool things have been happening – without very much effort on my part, I might add. It’s slightly odd that I decided to stop pushing and just let things come to me and they promptly started doing exactly that.

I’ve started guest blogging over at the wonderful Make & Meaning blog. I was hugely flattered to be asked to be part of a venture that includes such incredible bloggers as Dudecraft; Craftypod; Kim Werker; Craftivism; Meet Me At Mike’s and Futuregirl. To begin with we’re going to be reposting some relevant posts from this blog but I’m planning to write some original content for them soon. Just as soon as I’ve got this speaking engagement out of the way!

I’ve also joined the brand new Third Tribe initiative, which I’m enjoying a lot. It’s the first time I’ve joined a subscription site like this but so far it’s definitely value for money as the calibre of bloggers involved is just awe-inspiring, plus you get monthly seminars and other exclusive content. It’s half price at the moment but the price goes up at 6 pm Central US Time today (that’s Friday 5th Feb) from $27 to $47 USD a month. If you join today, your subscription price will remain at the lower rate for as long as you’re a member, which is great because otherwise I couldn’t afford to do it.

Finally, for no particular reason that I could see, the lovely people at Vaynermedia sent me a second copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s fantastic book, Crush It. I hope they meant to because I’m about to give it away! You can read my review of Crush It here.

If you’d like a chance to win this great little book, leave a comment on this post telling me what your passion is. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday 10th February.

Hi everyone, sorry for being so quiet. Unfortunately I was so exhausted after the Front Room art trail that I collapsed in a heap for several days and then promptly caught a virus (possibly the mild version of Swine Flu) from my son. So I’ve spent most of the last two weeks in bed with a pile of books.

I’m hoping to do a proper art trail update in the next few days but since my muscles still feel like lead, I’m not making any promises.

Oh dear, I’m hopelessly late in getting this out here. But if you’re anywhere close to Bristol, I’m showing in the Front Room art trail this weekend and I’d love to see you.

I’m at 105 Oxford Street, Bristol, BS3 4RL where I’ll be showing some sculpture and premiering a brand new performance piece. It’s the first year that I’ve taken part in the trail, so I’m pretty excited.

The opening is on Friday 20th from 6 – 9pm and then the trail is open from 12 – 6pm on both Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd November.

Front Room aka The Totterdown Art Trail is the longest running art trail in Bristol. People in Totterdown kindly open their houses up as venues, so not only can you see lots of fantastic local art but you also get to have a good nose at other people’s decorating choices! If you’re in or near Bristol, it’s an excellent day out with lots going on including workshops for kids and a street party on the Saturday. The Front Room website has more details and maps.

Check out the beautiful staircase I’ve got – it’s a very ‘Kirsty’ sort of space, all greys and whites with fantastic light streaming in from a huge skylight on the top landing.

Kirsty Hall: Totterdown Staircase, Sept 2009

Kirsty Hall: Totterdown Staircase, Sept 2009

I’ll be performing in the space where that pile of books is.

Kirsty Hall: Totterdown Staircase, Sept 2009

I’m doing a new performance piece called Red Thread where I’ll be sewing red thread to a white dress whilst I’m wearing it. In a deliberate contrast to my Pin Ritual story-telling performances, I’ll be gagged so that I can only communicate with my hands and eyes and I’ll be encouraging people to sew bits of thread to me. It should be… interesting! It’s a piece that I’ve been working out in my head for a couple of years, so I’m pleased to finally be bringing it to fruition.

In case you just can’t get enough of me, I’ve started a Facebook fan page for my art. I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing with it yet but I’m trying to make it a little bit different from my Twitter and this blog, so that it’s worth joining.

I’ve been doing some housekeeping on the blog this week. My lovely web designer, Steve, taught me how to play with widgets. If you cast your eyes over to the right you’ll see that I’ve been shuffling things around on the sidebar. I’ve added an interviews section and some copyright information and there may be a few more additions and changes to come. I’ve now moved on to exploring plugins. If anyone else is using Wordpress, I’d love to hear which plugins you find effective on your site.

Oh, and I’ve been sorting out the comments too.

Confession time: I had unanswered comments from November of last year. Oh, the embarrassment!

I’ve been replying to the most recent comments but I’ve decided not to reply to most of the older ones. Sorry about that. I do love that people take the time to comment here and I promise that I read and appreciate every single one; I’m just really, really bad at replying to them. If it’s any consolation, I’m a bit rubbish with email too. Wait, that’s no consolation at all, is it!

One change we’ve made that should hopefully speed up the way I answer comments is by adding a button at the end of your comment that lets you decide if you want to see follow ups. This means I’ll just be able to reply on the website instead of having to copy and paste my replies into email, which is what I have been doing. I know it sounds like a very small change but I’ve learnt that I am easily defeated by very small things, especially when it comes to admin.

I’m currently working on this issue. I plan to start blocking in some time every week to reply to comments and I’m experimenting with ways to make email less overwhelming, including unsubscribing to things and improving my email folders. I also want to get into the habit of only checking my email if I’m mentally prepared to answer at least some of the stuff that comes in.

…………………………………

I don’t know about anyone else but I find the amount of information in modern life very overwhelming. It seems like we’re all constantly running to catch up, doesn’t it…

Here’s a few good articles about the overwhelm problem:

A good general overview of what overwhelm is and how to tackle it.

An excellent article from Christine Kane, whose blog I recently discovered through Twitter.

6 tips for organizing your email – short and to the point.

10 Tips for Organizing Your Email – some very useful information on the different ways people organise themselves. Are you a searcher or a filer?