June Adventures (2023)
Hello there!
June has been busy for me. Though busy, it has been a fun one. To kick it off, I turned 21! I spent time with family, celebrating, really leaning into my creativity, and experiencing new things. Today I am going to share some highlights of my adventures with you!
For my birthday, I had a party at my new home with my family and friends! We ate good food, played my favorite board game, Clue, talked amongst each other as we catch up, and painted birdhouses! We even had a mini competition to see who painted the best birdhouse. And though I was the birthday girl, I didn’t win. Guess I didn’t get an advantage. But this was one of my favorite birthdays yet!
This month is also the birthday month of my two youngest sisters. But with such a packed month, we just celebrated them a couple days ago on the 1st of July. We didn’t do anything artsy that day but we did get quite the workout at a trampoline park! I am still sore!
Along with birthdays we also celebrated graduations. One of my sisters graduated the 8th grade and my two brothers graduated high school! I am so proud of all of them! They worked hard through many life changes, the biggest arguably being the pandemic where their school lives changed for a long time and probably even after they returned to school with their peers. My sister has the journey of high school ahead of her, while my brothers have their service in the Army National Guard and college, and whatever else may await them as they all move ahead into new chapters of their lives.
This month I also spent some time focusing on putting together and organizing my new art studio space! I have upgraded from having my studio and my bedroom be one in the same to being separated! Though my Cricut will remain in my bedroom space, most of my other artistic supplies will be in its own space where it will live and can be used! My favorite containers have been these spinning containers that I got from Joann Fabrics and Target that will hold some of my paint, paint pens, markers, and paint brushes!
Also this month, I decided to experiment and paint in my coloring books. A while back I watched a video on YouTube from Sarah Renee Clark who is an Australian artist who does a lot of coloring videos, art supply reviews, and trying other fun art projects! In her video, she was trying to figure out the how to get her coloring books to allow her to color to her fullest potential, just like when she colors on her better quality paper. She decided to use clear gesso. Gesso is a base or a primer that can allow you to have a better surface to paint on, usually for priming canvases or using on objects that don’t have the texture needed for paint to really stick to. Sarah using the clear gesso in her color book gave me an idea. She used it to see if she could better use her pencils and I think markers on her page, and I thought “why not try this for painting in a coloring book?” So that’s exactly what I did! I have used both watercolor and acrylics in two different coloring books so far! And I am happy to report that it does great! I haven’t used it yet for markers or colored pencils though so I am interested to see how that goes for myself!
I had another craft market this month. I went again with my mom as she continues to teach me about vendor selling! This month’s market was called Pride in Small Business! Unfortunately unlike last month, I didn’t end up selling any of my creations. But I still learned a lot, mostly learning about patience. Not only patience with waiting for sales but patience with myself. It was a but disheartening to watch customer after customer pass by, or come up to my booth and then leave empty handed. But I reminded myself that this isn’t a measure of my art but of my current business. I am still very new to selling in person. Overall, I am still new to selling my work. I haven’t really learned all the techniques or how to gage my audience yet. But I am definitely learning and am taking note so I can give it another go! I actually have two markets I will be selling at in August! I am hoping those go better than this market, and I am hoping to take what I learned this month to those markets that are upcoming!
But something that did turn out well at the market was the cute price tags I made for our products! I made them with my Cricut and then really made me feel professional! The Cricut team on Instagram even showed them some love when I posted them! It was a honestly a cool moment for me to see that they liked them! It really made my day when I saw that! It also reminded me that even though I am still very much a beginner when it comes to selling my work, I have really improved in other skills. I am no longer a beginner with the Cricut and I have really grown since I was.
Though I had a lot going on this month, I found time to sketch too! It was mostly in my smaller, travel sized sketchbook which I like to carry around with me! There was so much to celebrate and experience and it really inspired me. But though I had a handful of sketches this month, here is my favorite! This is a sketch of a map for my youngest sister that is inspired by her favorite things!
Thank you for catching up with me! I loved sharing my adventures with you! I had a fun, busy, and educational month! I hope June was fruitful for you and allowed you to kick off your summer good! I look forward to catching up with you next month!
-AnnMarie
