More success than I expected!

So far I've had some pretty stunning sales. One of my OSWOA scratchboard artworks went for $61 and yesterday, a scratchboard ACEO went for $50.99 -- I'm starting to see eBay turn into a venue that has all the best aspects of the SF conventions I used to go to (auctions are fun!), and the street market in New Orleans.

Much to my pleasant surprise, I found out selling supplies is also lucrative. I posted one lot of precut ACEO blanks in specialty Stonehenge paper, a sampler with one each of seven different colors, and another lot with six precut scratchboard ACEO blanks. They took off. I sold most of the scratchboard I had on hand, and started running low on baseball card sleeves. I needed to reorder those! So I put in a Blick order and got some more scratchboard coming in, ordered some more baseball card sleeves and will post lots again.

One of two things will happen. Either it'll eventually saturate the market and most of the artists who want to try scratchboard and don't want to invest in a giant sheet to do so will get what they wanted and be done with it, or it'll become a staple and I'll wind up opening an eBay store with various cool papers and specialty papers cut into ACEO blanks. I could cut some from watercolor paper too, in two different grades.

I've got lots of good watercolor paper, having picked up a super bargain Arches Block and Brush set from Blick before that ran out. 12" x 16" block with a size 6 Arches Kolinsky brush. These brushes are neat, not only are they incredibly high quality but the brush comes with a little snap-on protective cap that has breathing holes so it can dry out -- but keeps cats, toddlers, random dust and so on from getting into the nicely shaped point.

I don't think it'll turn into a full scale art supply shop, but who knows? Maybe if I can get good prices from manufacturers I could carry a few small supplies eventually. I'm holding off on starting a store until I see how it goes. While I made enough on those lots that I could cover a monthly fee if I started it this month, I'd have to know I could turn over that much volume every month.

But then, I go to other sellers' stores like that all the time, and if I specialize in ACEO blanks in papers that don't specifically compete with saigonron2000 and the other big sellers, then maybe I will have made myself a niche.

I have a Blick order online waiting for supplies too, something I wanted for years but never actually got, that I see a reason now to get it. I love working on colored Canson Mi-Tientes art paper. It's very high quality, heavy paper, good for ACEOs because it's stiff and thick paper, and it comes in 60 different colors. For a decade I've been going to art stores and drooling at the display, then making hard choices and getting maybe a dozen sheets at a time in different colors. I bought some pads, so I've now got 20 different colors in it.

But I have a cart where I added one sheet each of all 60 colors, which would do for a start if I can sell ACEO blanks, precut to size and packaged in a baseball card sleeve so the artist can do an ATC or ACEO without worrying about running out of sleeves or finding the box with the sleeves. In every lot, I put in one card of the other paper for the artist to try, a random Stonehenge color with the scratchboard, a scratchboard card with the Stonehenge lot. If I do this with Canson Mi-Tientes, I could cut a lot of cards at once and offer either a big sixty-card "All Colors" pack or assortments that let the buyer choose what colors they want in the lot. Pretty much like the stores sell the big sheets, but in little ACEO sizes with sleeves.

Then restock when any given color starts running low and keep it going indefinitely, maybe get extra sheets of popular colors if certain colors like black or a beige or gray start selling a lot. This is a fairly large capital outlay to set up the store and get that stock.

On the other hand, I live on Social Security and they'll take any income I earn out of my check. Which, as long as I sink everything back into my business, is not actual income. Buying stock to sell, paying eBay fees, packaging expenses are all legitimate business overhead, so the trick here is for me to build the business very solid and wait till I have real profit over the overhead to go forward with it and become independent. I browsed printers today, just pricing, and passed up a good deal on an Epson printer because I don't have the funds yet to do that without having more in hand.

Yet that is on my agenda. There were so many printer listings that I'm pretty sure I'll find a good deal when I'm ready to get it. Right now if I want something printed, I need to email it to my daughter in the other room. Her printer's hooked to her computer but we're not networked due to the physical layout of the house. I would be on a wireless network able to just print from my keyboard, but I think it's the heater that's in the way blocking the signal.

I also need to get printer package labels once I get the printer, so that I can use PayPal's neat little software trick of click and print the package label from the email that tells me the buyer made a payment. That'd be handy. We're also looking into a couple of rubber stamps. One permanent one for return address, another to do the backs of ACEOs with a line for title, line for signature, line for medium, and the rest of my contact information all printed out on the stamp instead of my hand lettering each and every card with a lot of information on the back. That may make my earlier cards with hand lettered COA information on the back a bit more valuable.

I've got a logistic problem with doing them on black paper. I did several on black colored paper, and that means the back information needs to go on with the white colored pencil! Harder to write that small with a white colored pencil, but I managed it on the one I just sent out.

This is so exciting. I was a self employed artist for years in the 1990s, when I lived in New Orleans. When I look back on all the day jobs I've held, those years were the best. That life was the best -- until now, when I have a happy household to live in, loving grandkids and critters and family, and an art venue that doesn't involve pushing a 50lb cart several blocks to wreck my back hanging it on the fence. If I'd been undisabled, I would still be down there in the Big Easy doing the street art, probably have an A license and be on Jackson Square by now. But I might still be looking at eBay and doing ACEOs because these little collectible works are so much fun to do. I can go all out for detail on them or just come up with a good composition, vary my medium, establish various specialties, pretty much do whatever I want.

That's a lot of what keeps me happy selling art. Being able to do something different every time, not just repeat the same drawing over and over. New mediums, new papers, new paints and pencils, it's exciting to pick up a theme or a contest and do something I've never done. I'm working on a collage for the ACEO Art Cards Editions & Originals group's "New Years Resolution Contest" which takes doing a medium I have never done.

It would've taken some searching to find one, but the post specifically mentioned "If Robert did a collage..." as an example of going out of one's comfort zone!

So naturally, I had to do a collage. I've tried that in the past and always gotten bogged down by taking too long choosing and cutting out the images I'd include. It was always at some workshop or art jam or get together, so the supplies would be brought by whoever led or suggested the activity and when my collage wasn't done, it'd go down in the bottom of my portfolio and get forgotten.

Of course those collages were usually large, half the time on full sheets of poster paper or something! No wonder I didn't finish.

I have a good concept for it. My cat is my muse, he sheds Cat Hairs of Inspiration on everyone in chat and on the message boards I participate in, so some lucky collector will get the genuine Cat Hairs of Inspiration neatly packaged in a corner of a penny sleeve, with a picture of the furry muse and a caption all within a pretty, trifold, gold and silver fancy cuts little shrine of inspiration. Open it and see the cat and the relic, like a little reliquary.

But I also get inspired by new art supplies. And I was thinking about Inspiration and about why I didn't continue those old collages and got another idea! Cut up old Blick catalogs that I throw away anyway, and use the images of various art supplies in a collage. Eh, those are usually a bit large to put enough of them into an ACEO piece, so I may do the "Inspiration" collage larger, OSWOA or bigger, after slaughtering catalogs for it. Could be fun, certainly would be colorful and cheery!

eBay groups always give me lots of good ideas!

Tip of the Entry: When doing scratchboard, consider using a magnifier for small areas and test the particular scratchboard you're using before coloring. Claybord Inks will dry completely transparent on the black, inked areas of any scratchboard, so you may want to use those to color your art rather than other types of colorants. For tools, you don't need the fancy Claybord Tools set, a sharp Exacto blade point is good enough to get a fine line and the curved Exacto knife blade will give a nice broad but shading stroke. Improvised tools also work, like an unbent paper clip or a needle mounted in a cork, or even an awl. Anything pointed that can scratch through ink will work on scratchboard. Steel wool can be used for texturing, and an old toothbrush can be used to brush aside ink and clean spaces entirely back to white for pen and ink detail.