This Week's Favourite Things! May 5th to May 11th, 2014

1.  The pair of mallards that have been hanging out by the river near our house.  Mr and Mrs Mallard seem to have staked out a territory because Mr Mallard flipped out and tried to beat the crap out of some other waterfowl that tried to hone in on their turf today.  It's nice that they swim around so close to us and we all hang out together.

2. Jenny Jib.  I finally took some new stock to Jenny Jib in Lunenburg this week; it's such a great shop and the closest venue to my home.  Plus the consignment rate is very low.  I'm very happy to drop off any work off my Available Art page there, especially if I can time my trip to happen during the weekly Lunenburg Farmer's Market (on Thursday mornings - I'm not a vendor I just like to check things out).

3.  Etsy and my new Etsy shop which I just opened yesterday.  As much as I love Jenny Jib I have a houseload of finished sculptures,and more items I want to finish, so it seems that time has come for me to try out Etsy.  I've been hearing about how great Etsy is for ages, and, it's actually really great! It is super user-friendly and the shop set up is comprehensive and thoughtful.  Plus it is so fun and inspiring to see all the great work all over the site.  Etsy makes me want to be a better artist.  

Here's the banner for my store which I had fun making:

From what I've heard of Etsy it seems to require a truckload of marketing so that brings me to...

4.  My new Facebook page.  I started making a page last year and yesterday finally got around to publishing it.  I made the cover photo using my next favourite thing...

5.  Adobe Photoshop and quick selection tool which is so handy for cutting out things and pasting them on to other things.  Like shrunken stoneware crow wall hangings onto a blown up bit of field-meets-sky bowl:

Haven't used photoshop for a long time so I'm pleased I remembered how to do this.