Friday, October 14, 2011

Phew, it's been a long time!

I have really neglected my blog for way too long, and sincerest apologies!

It has been a turbulent year, with a lot of ups and downs thrown into the mix. What has happened, you may ask.

Well, Design Indaba happened in February. My stand was part of a group of 11, and we got the most gorgeous charcoal black/grey walls. Which made all my work dissapear. The black clay bodies were totally invisible, all one could see was little bits of colour peeping out of the rims of the vessels. So after a bit of a panic we painted my stand a traffic yellow colour (the accent colour).

I had some sales off the stand, and got a couple of orders. Which kept me busy for a while :-)

I moved home at that time too, just a couple of weeks before the show. Unfortunately my beloved Thomas Cat could not move with me, and I decided to bring him to the shop. I kitty proofed my door and hoped for the best. But my darling Tom was a real trooper and made the shop his new home. He loves the shop, loves the lovely garden in the apartment block next to my shop even more and demands that all the shoppers say hello to him with hugs and tickles.

The shop kept me busy, but I could see numbers of shoppers dwindling, and customers also tended to spend less. This was confirmed to me by other shop owners in the area.

So I spent some time preparing a tutorial!

And in June I launched my Disc tutorial. I was very happy with the response I got and it helped me financially :-) Thank you to everyone that bought a tutorial!

In August I traveled to Johannesburg for another sponsored trade show. I came back with a few sales and some orders again. but this time I really started to panic. My little shop was not doing very well, and on some days I had more beggars than shoppers visiting me!

And the beginning of this month I realized that I had to close my beautiful little shop. Financially I could not carry it anymore. I also found that my ceramics demanded more time from me, as I sold more of it than my glass range. But I spent up to 8 hours a day with glass, and could only squeeze 3 - 4 hours of clay into my day at night.

So now I am planning another BIG move in a few weeks!

I will try my best to be a well behaved blogger from now and is already thinking of my next blog-tutorial, as well as another 'for sale' tutorial.

Thank you for still following me :-)

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Sneak preview :-)

Geeze, it's been ages since I have updated my blog! Between a nasty case of internet stalking, and me preparing for Design Indaba things were really hectic here in the Mother city!