Fabribot Invasion!!!

After letting this big pile of printed fabric sit around for the better part of 4 months, I finally got down to business with Fabribots, cloth versions of my Quelstar Tin Toy Robot Series.

I was a bit rusty at sewing, but after the first few, I was able to pick up a little speed, and have used almost all of the fabric I had on hand. Got 5 more to sew (including Electroman and the x-9) and I'll be done with this batch. Just ordered fabric for another 36 robots, so I hope to have more for the Holidays.

These are not really intended for children under 6.

Land of Nod...

We love Land of Nod in our house, so I was pretty excited when they contacted me about carrying a few of my prints.

They chose 3 images from my Quelstar Tin Toys series, and it's nice to finally be able to share this news with everyone.

These are available at the Land of Nod website, and as they tend to do, they have created a nice room with available bedding and such, a room of which these prints can be a part.

UV Resin Tutorial...

Another tutorial, this one on UV Resin! UV Resin is much easier to apply than 2-part resin, as you don't mix anything. It starts to cure once exposed UV light, so you can cure it in sunlight as an inexpensive solution, or using a UV lamp for more consistent results.

Has a nice window of workability in which you can deal with bubbles and such prior to exposing it. It sets very quickly though once exposed, so it is important to minimize bubbles and such as much as possible prior to exposure.

One of the best things about it is that the quick "setting" of the resin lets you see which pieces aren't coming out well, and the resin can often be popped out of your finding before it sets completely, giving you a do-over of sorts.

A new leaf, and all that...

So I am about to take the littlest one to preschool, and when I get back, my wife and I are going to start a walking program. And by walking program, I mean we are going to walk around the block at least once. Maybe on Wednesday we will go twice.

Over the last two years we haven't had a lot of exercise, so we're trying to get active again. I had started walking/running this summer, after I returned from a week at summer camp in the mountains. I started that week with a swim test that I thought would kill me. I had to jump into some pretty cold lake water which was over my head, swim 200 yards, any stroke, and then backstroke 50 yards, and then tread water for 30 seconds. 100 yards in, I thought I was gonna die. I had thought that my arms would tire, and that is what would get me, but it was the breathing that was the culprit.

I made it to the end, and got out of the water, equal stunned that I had made it, and that it had been so hard. It took 2 hours before I felt back to normal after that.

Then there were the hills. And shinsplints. But towards the end of the week, I started to crave the burn. And when I got back to the flat ground of the coast, I couldn't walk fast enough to get that same level of exertion, and I'm not quite ready to full-on run just yet. So that, along with a low-level of fitness, and my general lack of dedication to physical activity led me to stop walking in the mornings.

But now we are resolving to eat smaller portions, walk 3 times a week, and get more sleep. So new leaf, consider yourself turned. For now.

New Digital Art Demo

This new video has been waiting on deck for me to do the voice over, and it's finally done. It's probably an intermediate level demo, in that it might make more sense to you if you have a little Photoshop™ experience, but I like to think you can just watch it just to see the process I go through as I create my digital art.

My latest tutorial...DG3 Art Glaze

New Dog: Shih Tzu

How about that? Only a little over a month between posts! I have to do better...again.

Finally finished a Shih Tzu. Available at Etsy.

New Dogs...

I finally had a chance to do some new dogs, a German Shepherd and a Doberman. On the way to those breeds, I ended up with the beginnings of about 7 other breeds. Got lots more breeds to get done before the holidays.

You can find them on Etsy.

Back to Normal

Everything is back to normal, following Hanna. We are keeping those in the path of Ike in our prayers.

Had a pretty cool thing happen recently, that I have been meaning to post about.

One of my customers in England sent me this photo of something he happened upon whilst shopping in a John Lewis store.

Yup. Those are some of my dogs, all framed up and available without shipping charges. I'm pretty excited to be getting my work in front of new viewers and to be included in such a high-quality store.

Now just trying to catch-up from a half-day on Friday.

Pretty Quiet Night

There was some wind, but very little rain as Hanna passed through.

We lost power at some point, but it was back on by 4:30am or so.

Headed out soon to check the studio, gallery, etc.

It's moved again

The 11pm advisory has Hanna going 30-45 mins to our west. It has been extremely quiet, with little rain or wind. Last I heard, landfall was going to be around 3am.

Not staying up for that.

Ho hum...

Still pretty much just rain. 8pm advisory seems to say same projected track.

Battening down... or not.

The much mentioned trip to storage finally happened. Saw one store that was shuttered, a grocery store.

Did not see any other dwelling or structure with any hurricane prep. My house included. So I would say many folks here aren't expecting much damage, IMO.

Annnndddd...She's back

That did not take long. The 5pm advisory shows Hanna's projected path heading right over top of us again.

It's actually a little sunny out, and I can tell it rained a little. I fell asleep on the couch watching the Weather Channel. Told you the wait was exciting. :)

Still have not gone to storage, so that's gotta happen soon. It will be interesting to see what folks have done to get ready.

I am not Hurricane/Tropical Storm Obsessive enough

Can't believe that I let a whole 20 minutes go by before I realized that the 2:00pm advisory was up. :)

So Hanna's a bit stronger, close to hurricane strength, and it is picking up forward speed, and the path seems pretty much unchanged since 11am. We had the first rain bands come through about 45 mins ago, and they were pretty heavy for outer bands.

Gotta head to storage units to secure some things there.

A little bit of wind...

We are getting ready by grabbing all the loose outdoor stuff and securing what we can. The 11am advisory has the storm passing further to our west, so for at least the next hour or so we are no longer directly in the path. But we are still awfully close. Looks like it may move through a little later than thought in previous forecasts.

We are starting to feel the wind pick up and a few raindrops now and then. Going to run out in a little while to secure things in our storage units.

Here comes Hanna!!

Welllll...Looks like Tropical Storm Hanna is headed our way, and she may be a hurricane by the time she gets here. It's a bit of a scramble today, to get as many orders out as possible, so they won't get stranded in the Post Office here if things get dicey.

We are hoping that the storm will stay a lower level hurricane, which is what is forecasted.

Should give some time to blog though. I blogged about Hurricane Ophelia as it passed through 3 years ago, and I like to say I think I really captured the mind-numbing level of boredom that a wait for a hurricane to strike can achieve.

It's supposed to start raining tomorrow, so at some point I need to stop and get everything off the floor here in the studio (possible flooding) and cover everything with plastic. Many years ago, the building that the gallery is housed in had a collapse of a facade on to the roof of the building. It took out 3 floors on the way down.

I'm next door to that building, in a building just as old (1850s).

Hopefully we will not face anything worse than power loss.

Handmade Kids Contest

It has been a busy summer, and once again, I barely blogged about it. So I will have to do it in retrospect.

First bit of news is that I am a finalist in the art category of Etsy's Handmade Kids contest. Yay! You can go over and vote for all kinds of cool handmade kids stuff here. And, of course, if you want to include me in your votes, that's much appreciated. My "No Monsters Allowed" print was chosen. Voting enters you for prizes. Mmmmmm...prizes...

Got more news about spreading my art across the world, but I'll save that for another post.

Golden Supply Co. is off and running. I have begun to set up a page for Golden Supply Co. on johnwgolden.com for those of you that are not Etsy members. I've got lots of new findings coming in, and I am excited to get those up and available.

What a couple of weeks...

Well...the drawing dogs in the back of a van as it drives across half the country was an ill-fated idea. Much too bumpy :)

The trip was good, and the subsequent week in the woods at summer camp was nothing short of transformative, if that's a word. Walking up and down hills all week went from "this is killing me" to "my body is starting to crave this".

Back now, in the studio, filling orders. My wife and I have opened another Etsy store, this time to meet the rising demand for the ring blanks that I use in my resin tutorial. We will also be offering the pendant plates I use as well. So many folks were having trouble finding the rings, and now they can get them using Paypal.

The new store is called Golden Supply Co.

More on my week in the woods later...

19 hours each way...

End of this week, I will embark on a long and arduous journey. My son and I, and my sister, my uncle and my folks are all piling into a vehicle and drving halfway across the country to our annual family reunion. Sure...flying would be faster, but I'm looking forward to the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my son (in addition to the full week we are going to be spending at Scout Summer Camp later this month) before he goes off to become a middle-schooler. And I am looking forward to the time with my extended family.

It has become harder and harder to find large blocks of time to work on creating new art, and the list of requested breeds for my dog series has gotten long. So, I'm thinking as I cruise through North Carolina, Tennessee, and parts beyond, that I could get a little art done. and maybe shoot a few photos on the way. And maybe eat an indigenous sandwich or two. I have this dream to one day rent an RV and travel the country eating the sandwiches that originated in the various parts of the country. I have a feeling that this will be a $5 footlong version of that dream, at various Subways along the way.

If I can get Wi-fi access, I'll post each day's progress.

For now though, I've got a lot of prints to get out before I leave. Got new rings and pendants underway, working on glass pendants, and thanks to Spoonflower (some fellow North Carolinians, I might add), I'm getting closer to seeing my robots in a form you can pick up and hold. I wanted to create something using my Quelstar Tin Toys series, in keeping with the era that inspired that artwork. So, introducing the Fabribot, a retro-styled stuffed fabric robot in 6 or 7 models. These will probably be sold with a small print of the box art for that robot design.

These are hand-sewn by me, using fabric that Spoonflower has printed for me. Yes, I sew. It was a requirement that I be able to sew and do my own laundry before being allowed to leave home for college.

It will probably be a few weeks before I can get these in the shop, due to my upcoming road trip and a week at summer camp shortly thereafter, but maybe I can get a few in there late next week.

So slow to post...and to grow

I've had plenty of little tidbits going on that I might have blogged about, but I have been I have sort of been keeping my head down and working. I finally got caught up on leaving feedback (some went as far back as December), and may have finally, after almost 2 years on Etsy, perfected a system for making sure that every buyer gets a personal estimate of ship date and a personal notification of shipment. I have had to rely on the e-mails that are automatically generated since things got brisk on Etsy about a year and a half ago.

I have been thinking lately that I am standing on the brink of more growth both personally and professionally. Two people gave me Eckhart Tolle's book, "A New Earth" for my birthday back in May. One gave me the printed book and the other the book on CD. I read the book whenever I could get a moment, and listened to the CDs driving to and from work. The reason these folks gave me the book was because they saw me in its pages. And I did too. It has helped me a lot to get to work on changing a lot of conditioned behaviors that I exhibit and that I think waste a lot of my energy and keep me from being focused on the task at hand.

It did help me figure what I think my purpose here is, just in time to have a chance to serve my purpose pop up (see prior post). But still there is a lot of growth to come there.

Father's Day was great! Got lots of cool t-shirts from Etsy sellers and Mario Kart for the Wii. I'm looking for Wii friends to race, so you can comment here if you wanna join in. Just put your Wii number (comments won't be visible, unless I approve and post them, which I won't do for Wii numbers).

I got to thinking about how much our perspective of our progress can affect our actual progress. I think my life as a working artist is bursting to grow more and needs to grow more and is going to grow more, but I am nervous about being able to handle more business than I already have. I think I need another set of hands to handle a lot of the managerial aspects of the business. As it is now, I do everything related to my Etsy store, with the exception of my wife listing for me when I am trying to get packages out.

So then I started thinking that maybe it's me thinking that I can't handle any more growth that's kept growth steady but slow. Never more than I could handle. I do believe we get what we ask for, and by fearing more success, I may be asking not to be given more than I think I can handle. So I have stopped thinking that. For the most part.

So, then, some major things happened business-wise this week. And those things have great potential to lead to great growth. Of course, we will all have to wait and see.

So...what's my point? My point is don't hold yourself up with doubt. If the potential for growth comes, don't worry if you are ready for it. It wouldn't be there if you weren't. Oh, and give "A New Earth" a chance. It has been life changing for me.

Here's to being overwhelmed.

New Critters...

From the moment I created my very first critter in my Woodland Critter series, I have wanted to create other groups under the Critter umbrella. So, finally I have begun the Aquatic Critters. Right now, that consists of the Colossal Whale, the Nimble Octopus, The Playful Porpoise and the Patient Seahorse.

More subsets, sub-series, etc. to come.

These are available in my Etsy shop.

Opportunities to do what it feels like you were meant to do...

So I write a good bit about about some of the more mental and spiritual aspects of trying to follow a dream, for lack of a better term. It's now been more than a year since I realized that being a working artist is what I am "doing" with my life.

So far, so good. No one at the Golden house is going hungry. But it still feels like there is a long way to go before being what I wished for will make a comfortable lifestyle for us. Of course, being a working artist has removed a lot of the stress and turmoil that is built into being a freelance graphic designer, so, in a huge way, we are already living a more comfortable life. A shift in attitude from "There is always something else I need to be doing for work" to "This is exactly what I am supposed to be doing right now" has resulted, and all kinds of opportunities present themselves.

The most fulfilling of those has been the opportunity to give a piece of my art work to someone for whom I truly feel it was made (plus the opportunity to have my almost six-year old daughter at my elbow as I type this, telling me the words I am typing, "You writed (sic) 'good' in your sentence didn't you?").

About 2 years ago, I created "A Good Robot Would Do Wonders for Your Soul", as a companion piece to my "Rayguns Don't Kill People". At the time, I chose text that I thought was a play on the idea that a traditionally "soul-less" oject, a robot, could be good for your soul. These little text snippets that I use pop into my head, and I know that somewhere, out there, that the art and the text will click with someone and have some meaning to them.

If you go deeper, I would say that robots and depicting them has been very good for my soul, as I now am able to finally be a working artist, and that drawing a few robots has allowed me to draw many other things for which I have affection. But I don't believe that to be the true meaning anymore.

Many folks have connected with "A Good Robot...", and I think we all have different reasons for connecting with the piece. Once again though, a stranger reached out and delivered a message. The message in this case was the answer to the question: What am I here to do?

My thanks go out to Bryn for helping to get "A Good Robot..." into to the hands of the two people that I feel somehow it was made for.

I will warn you, this link takes you to a blog that will break your heart. But it will also inspire you, and may remind you that your own troubles are small. I am linking you to the entry from 11 weeks ago. I recommend you read the entries in order.

Matt, Liz and Madeline

International shipping is back!

After much research into the myriad of affordable options for shipping internationally...well, okay...it's not a myriad exactly, I am pleased to announce that I have reinstated international shipping in my Etsy shop!

Now everyone can get their mitts on some John W. Golden art :).

What's better for aches and pains than camping?

I took 7 kids camping this weekend, just so I could sleep on the ground and add a whole new set of aches and pains to my repertoire. We went on a 5-mile hike, but I don't feel any worse for the wear from that. Except for the sunburn. Had some of the best spaghetti, and some of the best scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage ever cooked by a bunch of 11-year olds.

On the art front, I continue to work on my list of dogs and cats, critters, etc. and I am gearing up for another round of rings and pendants. I hope to add another resin pendant design – a stainless steel tab with rounded corners and no sides. I'll shoot a sequel to my resin tutorial that covers that process.

I mentioned before that my resin how-to has been entered in the Spread the Craft contest over on Mindbites.com. The overall winner will be picked by judges, but there is also a People's Choice winner, determined by voting. You have to register to vote and rate (and it will be a few more weeks before voting begins), but I do appreciate any votes and ratings that you throw my way.