Bluehost.com

Through my last couple days of research, I have discovered that WordPress will not work for my purposes with this site, so I am now going with Bluehost.com.  My reasons for this are WordPress is quite limited with what I can add in terms of widgets, and the fact that they don’t allow you to have ads on your site. WordPress is still fantastic for the average blogger, but I want to make my website huge, with any artist being able to easily access it for help on whatever they’re trying to do, so I’m trying out Bluehost.

I have heard great reviews about Bluehost; you can set up a website with them, get a domain name from them, and they will host your site, all for about $84 a year. With the extra security settings they suggest you get, it comes out to about $120 a year. Once I get this set up I will edit this post to let you know how it’s going!

Some of My Mixed Media Paintings

How to Ship Prints

Shipping prints can be a pain. I’ve had to go through some trial and error in this recently, so I thought I’d just write out what I’ve learned so far. Keep in mind that shipping original paintings is quite different, and I myself haven’t even figured out the best way to do this, so that will be covered in a different blog post.

Shipping 8×10 prints (or smaller) is really easy, you just sandwich it securly in between two pieces of cardboard, stick it in a cardboard envelope and mail it off.

Larger prints are more difficult. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. You’ll need to ship it in a cardboard tube, which you can get from the post office, a shipping store or even art stores usually. There are all different sizes so you need to get the size that will fit your print, in length and circumfrence.

Example of a shipping tube from USPS:

2. Then you’ll want some brown packing paper, and you will roll your print up in the paper, and tape the roll so it doesn’t come undone. You want the roll to be smaller than your tube, so the recipient can just slide it right out and the print does not get damaged.

3. I would then recommend taping a piece of paper right on the packing paper with your address and the recipient’s address, just in case it happens to fall out.

4. Put your rolled up print inside the tube and tape it shut very well.

5. Then you just address it as usual and take it off to the post office or UPS for shipping.

Ready to be shipped:

Putting on Your Own Art Show

If you would like to have your own art show or an auction for your art as a fundraiser (I have done both) here are some useful tips:

1. Pick the date and time you want to have your show. I would start planning about 4-6 months in advance from this date. Saturday nights usually work best so you don’t have to contend with people’s work schedule and Sunday family activities as much.

2. Find a space to borrow or rent for the amount of time you want. I recommend allotting 2 hours for the show, with an additional 1-2 hours for set-up/break-down. I would pick a studio type setting – a big empty space, usually with hardwood or cement floor, track lighting or otherwise good lighting, a way to play music and ample space to display everything you want. For my first couple art shows I rented a gallery for a day for $200 a pop. I recruited a few other artists who wanted to show their work and we all chipped in. For my auction I got the space donated. Local coffee shops can also be good sometimes (I have one near me that has a big space they use for open mic nights, yoga classes, etc. so I rent that space).

I would recommend getting a few other local artists to do the show with you. That way it’s cheaper and you get more promotion out of it (5 artists each bring 20 friends = 100 people. One artist = 20-40 people usually). But of course you can do a one-man show as well, you just have to work harder on promotion.

3. If you are attached to you art as I am, get everything scanned beforehand so you can keep them digitally forever and make prints if you want.

4. Decide if you want to charge for the show or not. I usually charge a $5 entry to my art shows and am charging a $10 entry fee for my auction, which is all going to charity. The entry fee will cover the food and some of your costs of renting a space (or if you’re lucky it can cover all of your costs for the food and the space).

5. Plan your menu. I have always catered my own and I usually keep it pretty simple with finger sandwiches (tuna, egg salad, cream cheese and cucumber), fruit and vegetable platters, cheese and cracker platter, and some sort of desert (cookies or eclairs). I usually also have wine, champagne, juice and water. This is the most cost effective, but if you won’t have the time you could always have it catered.

6. About 1 1/2 months in advance make or have made invitations and pass them out to your friends. Create an event page on facebook. Promote on twitter. Send out an evite to your email list. You can also post a free listing on craigslist in the community section (I haven’t tried this before but I plan to do it for the next show). The biggest thing will be word of mouth, so get your friends and family to help promote you to their friends. You could also look into putting a posting in a local newspaper or magazine (I also haven’t done this so am not sure how that would work).

7. Recruit a couple friends or family members to help you at the event. If you’re charging you’ll need a person at the door selling tickets. You’ll also want to have another person in charge of the music, making sure the food is stocked, and any other random details. You want to leave yourself free to be the host and roam so you can answer any questions about your art as needed. You may also want to recruit someone to take photos, which you can then post on your blog, website, facebook page, etc.

8. Set up about 1-2 hours before hand (depending on how much art you have to set up). Make sure art work is fashionably shown, evenly spaced, at a good height if it’s on the walls, and well lit. Put your price tags next to each piece (it’s a good idea to have a master list already made with each piece of art work and the price listed so you can keep track). It is also a good idea to write a biography for yourself with a picture and post it next to your art. If you have business cards lay them out on the various tables. Set up food table in a logical location. Set up a play list for music or pick a good set of CDs to play and get the music rolling.

9. Greet your guests and have fun!

Making Your Own Wix Website

How do you get your own flashy website without going broke? I have been working on figuring out how to do this for a while. I looked into having someone make a website for me, but they seem to start at about $400 and go up from there. I’m a “starving artist,” I don’t have that kind of money! I wish I had a friend that made websites who could cut me a deal but I don’t know of any such person, unfortunately.

So I braved it alone. First I went with Google Websites. This was great! It was free and very easy to use. This satisfied me for a couple months. While Google Websites is free and easy to use, it is also VERY limited and there were a lot of things I wanted to do with my website that I couldn’t.

I did some more research and asked around. My friend Tim told me about Wix. I checked them out and I have definitely found what I am looking for. I am in no way, shape or form and computer tech person (websites for dummies would be too complicated for me) but I was able to figure it out fairly easily. The whole website operates in flash, so I can do a lot more with it than with Google. The fact that it’s flash is also good if you’re a photographer or an artist, because your pictures can’t be copied. I wanted to like my domain name to it, so while it is free to make the site, you do have to pay to be able to link your domain name to it. I paid $70 for a whole year, very affordable.

They also have the option to upgrade so that you can actually have it be an e-commerce website as well, with a cart and the ability to recieve credit card payments, etc. This is about $15 a month if you pay for a year or 2 at a time. I will be doing this eventually, but I’m not up to that point yet.

By the way, I got my domain name from godaddy.com and linked it to my Wix website. Also, I went on-line before purchasing the domain and before upgrading my Wix websites and I found discount codes for both, so I got the Wix upgrade free for a month and my domain name for a year for about $6. Very affordable!

My new website is www.meartist.com (you can see a screenshot of my home page at the top). Let me know what you think!

As you can tell, I am currently setting up a WordPress website. I am attempting to figure out how easy this is, and how much it will end up costing. When I figure this out I’ll post my findings and compare it to Wix.

About SoCal Mixed Media

Welcome to SoCal Mixed Media! Here you will learn all you need to know (as I learn along the way) about mixed media ART!

We will be exploring mixing various kinds of paints (oil, acrylic, watercolor), adding photos/pictures/paper to your art, adding unspecified objects to your art (rocks, glass, papyrus, you name it)…..and of course using different surfaces for your art, like canvas or wood.

There will be as many pictures posted as possible, along with the how-to’s, and any comments or questions are welcome. There will also occasionally be a how-to video thrown in there to help with the visualization.

About me personally:

My name is Marcy Eiben. I am a 26 year old artist currently living in San Diego and doing my best to make a living off of art, because I disagree with having a 9-5 and would rather be my own boss and do what I love: art!

I have worked hard over the last year figuring out how to do everything, from getting prints made of my art, to shipping art, to putting on art shows, to getting a website made, to getting business cards made, to marketing myself, etc. etc. so I am now documenting that in this site for anyone else who needs help with the business side of being an artist.

I do a lot of mixed media, but I also do regular, non-mixed media paintings and drawings. I will also occasionally be including pictures of these pieces of art.

Welcome to my journey of creativity! Let’s make some ART!