To “hunker down” – to hide, to shelter in place, to cower from the storm, to huddle under the covers, to roost in a warm spot.
We are dead-center for the worst of Jonas with a possible 36″+ snow fall and blizzard conditions. So we are hunkered down! If you are hunkering down for Jonas you might want something fun to do as you watch the snow fall.
For our pyrographers, check out Grandpa’s Pride, a quick look at how dramatic tonal value contrasts will increase the impact of your burning.
For our 3-D wood carvers, have fun creating your own Tiki Chess Set, a beginner’s level project.
Want to try something new? How about Chip Carving!
Many of us sell our finished projects and a primary outlet are the arts and craft shows in our local area. How you mentally approach those shows can determine whether a show is a success or a flop for you as a business person. For many years I did the craft show circuit and I would like to share my experiences in this posting. Hopefully you will find a few ideas that you can use to make your business grow.
Any business strategy or marketing website will tell you that first and foremost you need to create a Business Plan, but what does that really mean for the art and craft show artisan who does wood carving or pyrography?
Who, What, Where, When, and Why! These are the five basic questions you need to answer for any business planning. Let’s take a few minutes today and look specifically at what a business plan for selling shows might include as we answer a few of those basic questions. I know that you have already gone through these questions with the standard business approach, but let’s look at them again with a little twist in your perspective. Let’s look at the Who, What, and Why from your customer’s point of view.
Who?
Who are you, who are your customers, and who do your customers think you are?
As a free lance artist I have worked in many different crafts over the years. One of my earliest was pin striping and lettering for commercial trucks. I saw myself as a sign crafter, and advertised myself that way on my business cards, letter head, and in my local newspaper. While I did have a small going business I was in direct competition with the larger sign crafting shops in my area. That is until I got a phone call one day from a new client. “Are you that lady that does the tricked-out painting on cars? I have an old pick-up that I want fancied up!”
This gentleman’s phone call woke me up to who my customers thought I was, not who I thought I was. “Are you that lady” told me he was not looking for a business, he wanted one real person for his job. “Tricked- out painting” told me he didn’t want something that everyone else had or that anyone could get through a catalog, he wanted something special made just for him. “Old pick-up truck” told me that he treasured his truck, it was important enough to him to not only keep in excellent condition, but worthy of investing the money for pin striping to make it outstanding. “Fancied up” told me that he wanted bragging rights when he showed off his newly pin striped truck to his family and friends!
His phone call clarified to me how the customers I already had saw me, were talking about me and the work I had done for them. It also gave me the clue as to how to encourage more business by not focusing my sale’s pitch on my own skills as a sign crafter, but on my client’s desire to have their special old truck fancied up and made special.
After that phone call I changed my business cards and advertising from Sign Crafting and Lettering to Have Brush, Will Travel – Trick Out Your Truck Today. Business boomed because I finally was presenting myself to my customers as the person they were looking for to do their job!
Are you an artist, pyrographer, or wood carver or are you that person who will make their desires become real?
What?
What are you selling and what are your customers really buying?
You may think that what you are selling is your pyrography art or your carved caricatures, but that is not what your customers buy. People do not pay $50 for some little 8″ x 12″ piece of scorched wood or $75 for some 40″ tall walnut sapling stick that you cut down in your wood lot. Would you? No! So what are your customers really buying, what do they really want to buy from you that gets them to open their wallet and put money on your hand?
They are buying things that re-enforce their emotions. For many years I worked in the fine arts focusing on pure bred dogs, doing both limited edition prints and commissioned pet portraits. Limited edition prints for the fine artist allows you to invest your time into one work then reproduce that work to create multiple sales. But those prints never became a ‘hot selling’ item – not because the fine art work was not high quality or not artistically rendered, but because people do not want artwork of someone else’s dog on their wall!
They want pictures of their dog, set in the scene of their backyard, or with the toy they gave their pet that shows their love for their dog. Their dog is not an investment or an object they own, their pet is a treasured, important member of their family. Pet owners seldom purchase limited edition art prints as financial investments that may increase in value over time … they buy pretty pictures of their beloved pet. They buy memories that re-enforce their emotion feelings! So while I did not sell out any of my print runs, those prints were promotional items that kept my bookings for original artwork pet portraits filled.
When my husband I ran our dog art website we had an artist submit his limited edition dog art print to us for inclusion on our site. The print featured a particular breed of dog that only had about 500 breeders in the US, with a specific color pattern in a dog breed that had six color variations, seated on a specific brand of motorcycle. With his submission he asked us how many prints we wanted to handle, as he was extremely concerned that his edition was only a 3000 print run. I had the sad task to telling him that while we very much wanted to promote his print we only wanted 3 prints in-house to cover potential sales.
His artwork was spectacular, his skills were superb, the printing and paper was the highest quality, his price range was very reasonable, but the image has four major marketing flaws. To sell that print we needed to find someone that owned that particular breed, in that particular color pattern, that also owned and drove a motorcycle, and a motorcycle that was made by that particular manufacturer … AH! Owners of black Labrador retrievers do not by art featuring yellow labs, and people who drive Harleys don’t put pictures of Yamaha cycles on their walls. We never were able to find the customer that had his specific combination of elements. In contrast one of our best selling dog prints was a small work featuring a non-describe mutt-type puppy chewing on a teddy bear. Why you ask? Because that puppy could have been anyone’s puppy, that teddy bear was a very common pet toy they most likely had purchased for their pup, and it was full of one loving memory moment.
What are your customers really buying at the craft shows?
They are most likely buying items that re-enforces some particular life choice or sparks an emotional feeling. Your customers are not clients that buy pyrography enhanced wooden kitchen spoons – they are nieces looking for a special gift of love for Aunt Minnie who taught them how to bake Christmas cookies. You are not selling a piece of wood, you are selling a special memory that will be shared between the buyer and his or her gift recipient.
The more you can get that ‘niece’ to share her story about making cookies with her aunt, instead of talking about how you use a specific wood burning technique, the more likely you are to land the sale.
As a wood carver I don’t think I ever really sold a ‘cane’, and never pitched a cane as an orthopedic support. If my customer needed that type of cane they bought them from the medical supply house. What I sold was a fancy stick that let a ‘gentlemen strut his stuff and make his next door neighbor just a bit jealous’ as he took his dog for a walk through the neighborhood. I did not present my walking/hiking sticks as part of their hiking equipment, but as a wood spirit or spiritual companion that went with them into the wilderness on their journey.
What is the most important item you ‘sell’ at the craft shows?
Its not some item, its not a tangible finished work, its not that special, extra-hard endeavor that you created … its you and your story!
It had been a long, hot day at our local community yard sale, one of my better selling shows. I was tired, I was ready to go home but I had one more customer waiting to talk with me. So I put on my ‘I am glad you are here’ smile and said “Hi” to the gentleman. Within one minute he was talking about his niece, who was 5 years old, and how his refrigerator was covered with her artwork because he knew one day she would be a great artist – implying that even at 5 she was a better artist than I. OK ?!? For twenty minutes he exclaimed her virtues as a budding Rembrandt, how she could already color inside the lines, and how she loved red. OK ?!? For twenty minutes I listened this man brag about some 5 year old, armed and dangerous, and already a greater artist than I would ever be because he had given her a box of crayolas.
I will honestly admit that his conversation, at first, irritated me just a little bit – maybe more than a little bit – maybe a whole, huge bunch of bits! But after I got home, quieted down, and really thought about what he was telling me I learned one of the most important marketing techniques that I needed to make the sale.
He taught me that every customer buys more than an item, they buy bragging rights. My customer with the 5 year old niece had bought himself bragging rights when he gave her that box of crayons and he was sharing those bragging right with me or anyone else who would listen to him.
Your customers want bragging rights too and they want a story to tell all of their friends about how they discovered this ‘new artist’ or what story you were creating with your burning or carving. Honestly, when you look at any customer through their eyes they really did ‘discover’ you and they are the ones that will carry that word-of-mouth advertising to their family, friends, and co-workers. You want them to have and use their bragging rights!
Your customer wants to talk with their friends about the item they purchased and your story is one way that they can. You can also give them a story about the item they are interested in buying, a story that can become theirs and that they can tell over and over again. After giving my sales pitch about Wood Spirits and how they fit into mythology over and over again at shows I finally wrote it down, printed it, and attached it to all of my walking sticks. Many browsers who came into my booth would stop and read that paper, then buy the stick. They bought two things – a stick and a story to tell.
Each time they tell their story they re-enforce that they are one of your special customers and are more likely to purchase more items from you.
My Experiences on the Whys and Whats
During my craft show years I always displayed several pet scenes, house portraits, and truck or old car scenes, either in wood carving, pyrography, or oils on canvas. But I considered those items as samples to promote commissioned projects, not as direct selling items. I created a photo album that included commissioned works that I had completed for other customers along with the photo of house, pet, and truck portraits – my biggest selling items. That album also had photos of the different styles of walking sticks that I carved and notes about the hiker, where they hiked, and which hiking clubs they held a membership. That photo album was displayed, opened, on the very center front of my selling table where it could catch everyone’s attention. It was my instant advertising that I was willing to do custom work and to get a one-on-one conversation started about what they would want to order if they were making a commissioned order with me.
Also on my table was a full page printed Artist’s Biography that any browser or potential customer could pick up and take home with them. While it did give information about myself as an artist and about my art, it really was a ‘cheat-sheet’ that gave my customers bragging rights information. I even had little pull-off tabs along the bottom edge that included my name, phone number, and art specialty that my customers could give to their friends and family.
If you are like me and have problems ‘bragging’ about yourself ask someone in your family or a close friend to write it for you. You can give them the information details, they will add the impact to those details. Include in the printed bio at least one photo of your best work to show off your specialty, your name, your business name, your website, your Facebook account, and, of course, your phone number.
And, please, remember in writing your bio that Grandma Moses was a farmer’s wife, a self-trained artist, and did not start her art career until she was 78.
Many of my art and craft show did not show a direct monetary return – meaning I did not make many sales of the pieces that I displayed. The chance that I created those specific pyrography burned images that would spark an emotional desire in the browsers of the show was really as low as my finding the customer that fit the dog on the motorcycle print. I might be showing Western scene burns featuring cattle ranching or Rodeo Show riding on the very day that everyone at the craft show happened to be a quilter, a truck driver, or hiking fanatic. Direct sales on larger items can be slim.
I went to craft shows because it put me in a one-on-one connection with potential customers and gave me a chance to engage them in the ‘conversation’ about what they really wanted to buy. I saw my display of finished items more as promotional work to secure commissioned work than direct sales items. And while I often spent more at a craft show than I took in, I always came away with my schedule booked with commissioned projects.
For me, these shows were never about what I could sell, but about how many show browsers that I might be able to turn into new customers!
Hope this gives you some new insight on who you are, who your potential customers are, and how you can turn their desires into sales.
Lenore, made a great post on the Pyrography Board at Facebook concerning copyright. Its a common question I get here in the studio and so I want to address your questions and concerns.
Before I begin I note that I am not a copyright specialist. If you need specific information concerning Copyright Law you should contact a Copyright Attorney!
I know this is one of those long, long, long posts but after reading through this information you can use our patterns and instructions worry free!
The short answer –
YES, you can sell your finished project that use my pattern art or instructions given here on LSIrish.com and ArtDesignsStudio.com. NO, you can not sell, distribute, or post my pattern art or instructions, or distribute them in any manner even if you give me and my sites credit. My copyright give you the USE of the patterns in your work, not for the DISTRIBUTION of the patterns and instructions in and of themselves.
The definition of a finished project is: the basswood board, the burned leather purse, the pen and ink t-shirt, the quilted fabric square, the stitched thread and cloth embroidered patch – a tangible, hard item.
The long answer –
Lenore in her post is so right about Copyright being a ‘sticky issue’ in pyrography, wood carving, and crafts – something we all need to address. If, as she used in her example, you work from someone’s photograph you are creating what is legally called a ‘translation’. Translations do not give the crafter copyright to the image, photo, or finished design. Just as if you translated a book from the German language into English the story line is not yours but belongs to the original author. It is the story line of a book that is copyrighted, not the language in which the book was written.
Translations of Original Work
Doing an exact copy of a photo into a sepia burning is simple changing the method – camera to hot pen tip, you are not changing the original image. The copyright of the image still remains with the original work, not with your translation and you can be in violation by claiming it as your own.
Just giving the original copyright owner credit does not mean that you have avoided copyright issues or protected you from violating their copyright to the work. As my beloved hubbie once noted … if you steal a hammer from Ace Hardware, telling everyone where you stole it from does not clear you of petty theft! So, yes, if you really, really, really have to use someone’s original photo please protect yourself by getting written permission first from the photographer or original artist.
One more thought on photography is that just because a photo is old or a common icon image – a photo you have seen over and over again – does not put that photo into public domain. A copyright is good for around 75 years, or for the life of the artist, and can be part of an artist’s will, passed onto the their inheritors. So, just because you see it everywhere does not mean it is free to take and use.
Now, saying that, the copyright for the patterns that you can find freely given with tutorials or purchased from pattern makers is different from that of photographs. Patterns are created specifically to be used – traced – in your craft.
In the case of patterns and written step-by-step instructions it is the line art/shaded patterns and text that are copyrighted. But both of those are specifically created for you to use in your art! The pattern and instructions become two parts of the whole that you use in your burning – just as you use a specific burning tool, a wood or leather blanks, and a painting media.
Not everyone wants to spend hours searching the net for images of a white tail deer, a fallen log, a thick forest background, and a split rail fence. Nor does everyone want to spend several more hours combining, adjusting, and refining those images to create one new, original composition. Most pyrographers and carvers have not studied composition, line flow, balance, perspective, or other art techniques for creating a design. What many of us just want to do is to sit down at our craft table and burn or carve!!!! That is where using patterns and instructions comes into our crafts.
OK … so what does that mean for my copyright to both LSIrish.com and ArtDesignsStudio.com. It means the patterns and instructions are for “Personal Use Only”. You get to use my patterns and instructions in your craft. You get to burn them, carve them, paint them, and even cut them out for your scrap booking! The key word here is USE.
Distribution of Patterns and Instructions
You do not have ownership of the pattern images or of the written instructions. You can’t post my patterns to your blog, print them and put them in a kit you sell, or copy and paste my instructions to your selling website. You can not ‘snatch’ these and create an e-book that you sell on Amazon. Changing the digital format – say from a .jpeg to a vector art format – is simply a copyright translation and does not give you copyright over the Work. The patterns and instructions belong to me under copyright law.
Your finished project belongs to you! You get to share your burning or carving anywhere you want. You get to sell as many as you can at art shows, craft fairs, and even on the net – up to 25 works from one pattern!!!! This is your work and it belongs to you. You do not get to make up a kit that includes a board, a printed copy of my step-by-step instructions, and a printed copy of my pattern art and either sell it or give it away.
Educational Institutions
There is a clause in Copyright Law that allows educational institutions to use Works that are copyrighted for teaching. Posting someone’s Copyrighted patterns or instructions to your own blog does not fall under this clause. If you think that your site might qualify as a teaching or educational institution, please contact your Copyright Attorney before you post to insure that you are within your legal rights.
Mass Production and Licensing Agreements
Our copyright covers personal use, it is not meant for mass production usage. If you intend to create multiple units of any LSIrish.com or ArtDesignsStudio.com pattern, over 25 units, then you need to contact us to discuss a licensing agreement. Example, if you want to trace and paint 25 glazed coffee cups for sale at the craft shows using one of our patterns you are covered under our ‘for personal use’ copyright. If you want to create a fired decal that can easily be applied to a thousand or more coffee cups through mass production, you need a licensing agreement. Please write us through our Contact the Studio link in the nav bar.
Pattern Catalogs for Finished Project Sales
Many of our craftsmen that sell finished projects purchase the Complete Pattern Collection, either by download or on thumb drive. This is the best price value for our customers and gives you all of our original Lora S. Irish patterns and designs at the time of your purchase. Currently we have 140 pattern packages, sorted by theme or topic, and are approaching the 3000 mark for individual patterns.
To increase your sales and stay within Copyright law, you can link directly to my pattern website, ArtDesignsStudio.com, and advertise to your customers that you can create any project for the patterns shown and offered there. This saves your tons of printed paper, and tons of bandwidth, while increasing the chances of making the sale. Your customers are just a click away from finding that specific pattern they want you to create!
Copyright conclusion
So … have fun sharing your finished projects on Facebook if they were created using one of my patterns. If you are selling finished items work using my patterns I truly hope you sell everyone and make a mint of money!
And if you really want to share my work, please share the link to my websites – LSIrish.com and ArtDesignsStudio.com – or share the posts from my Facebook page. You get the “Ohs and Ahhhs” for sharing the link and I get the “Ohhs and Ahhs” for creating the work.
Please remember the finished work is yours, the pattern art and instructions are mine – an easy line of ownership, use, and copyright … 🙂 Thanks everyone !
Craftsmen and Hobbyists: Reaffirmation of Our Policy With Respect to Use of Our Designs
Dear Friends, Craftsmen, Hobbyists and Users of our Patterns.
Those of you who are familiar with our products know that for many years we have been creating and supplying patterns for use by hobbyists and craftsmen . We have from time to time received offers to license our designs to commercial distributors.
All of our designs have been registered with the United States Copyright Office and the unauthorized copying, distribution or sale of our patterns to third parties is a violation of the copyright laws of the United States.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
When you purchase a pattern from ArtDesignsStudio.com and LSIrish.com, or receive one of our “Freebies”, the pattern is subject to certain restrictions reserved under our copyright. You have the right to use the pattern for your own personal use to make finished products for sale or personal use. A “finished product” is an article of manufacture on which the pattern is embodied. For example, it may be a laser engraved wall plaque, computer routed door panel, wood carved bread board, a stitched out cloth quilt, or any other tangible hard goods project enhanced by our pattern design. A “finished product” is NOT a copy of the original pattern made for further distribution. You may display and sell your finished products on your web site to show how they have been enhanced. You may personally digitize or alter the computer file format of the pattern to assist you in personally making multiple copies of finished products.
WHAT YOU CANNOT DO
You cannot copy, reproduce, publish, distribute, redistribute, sell, barter, transfer or otherwise make available the pattern which you received from us or duplicates thereof to third parties. You cannot publish our patterns on your website (other than as embodied in a finished product) and represent them as your own. You cannot distribute or include copies of the patterns as part of a kit or instruction package, whether as computer files or as paper copies, to be distributed and used by a Third Party. You cannot offer the patterns which you received from us for sale to third parties. You cannot sell or distribute digitized versions or altered computer file format versions of our patterns to third parties, nor can you request third parties to digitize or alter the computer file format of the patterns for you.
SUMMARY
All patterns distributed by ArtDesignsStudio.com and LSIrish.com have been copyrighted under the copyright laws of the United States and are published with a copyright notice. These patterns are for the personal use of hobbyists and craftsman. When you receive a pattern from either ArtDesignsStudio.com or LSIrish.com and open the package, you receive a limited license to use it personally to make one or more finished products enhanced by the design which you may sell. You may not copy, publish, sell, distribute, redistribute or otherwise make the pattern you received from ArtDesignsStudio.com to any third party and you may not publish or advertise the pattern on your web site as your own.
A Lora Irish FaceBook follower asked to try one of the patterns from my scroll saw books, North American Wildlife Patterns and World Wildlife Patterns for the Scroll Saw. Since I am sharing it with him, I thought I would share it with everyone. Both patterns below are full-size, 100 dpi, 8 1/2″ x 11″ patterns, just like every pattern on my pattern website Art Designs Studio.
Simply CLICK on the pattern image. A new window will open with the full-sized pattern. RIGHT HAND CLICK and SAVE to your desktop. They are ready to re-size in your graphics program or just print for the large image.
Hope you enjoy them, and if you do, the books are available at Amazon.com.
3 Pattern Packages for only $19.95, Reg. $25.00 Save 20% on your favorite patterns at Art Designs Studio Carving, Pyrography, and Craft Patterns by L. S. Irish
Are 137 pattern packages with over 2500 carving, pyrography, and craft patterns a little overwhelming?
Then try our new Sampler Pattern Package with 126 line patterns and 72 complimentary shaded drawings chosen from our most popular designs – wood spirits, greenmen, dragons, celtic, landscapes, wildlife, and so much more! Another Lora Irish Exclusive Pattern Package.
New Online Tutorial
Monday, July 20th, I will be posting a new pyrography project here on our blog. Join me as we work through the wood burning steps to create your own Celtic Bird patterns postage stamp design. Includes a free, Lora Irish wood burning pattern.
