Hello! Here for a weekly update, but it's actually the last three weeks, really. I had my first ever Instagram story sale, so I thought I'd chat about that a bit and how it went. Other highlights of the past few days are some new art supplies, a fun virtual seminar, a renewed plan for developing a sketchbook practice, and my first ever Instagram live stream.

Sooo an instagram story sale is both exhilarating and incredibly stressful. I did everything I could to prepare in advance, and if you'd like to hear more about that in detail please do let me know! Basically it involved creating photo "slides" of each available sticker to share in my stories during the sale, gathering an updated inventory and creating a master spreadsheet that I could input order information to and also have calculate all my totals for me with shipping costs. This way, since I'd have to respond manually to each order in my DMs as the came in, I'd be able to keep organized and not have to waste any time on math and such.

It ended up going really smoothly, and I received 60 orders! Everyone was ultimately kind and patient while waiting for payment requests, and I would definitely consider doing a sale in this method again when I have a big inventory like I did with my stickers. There are still some designs available, so if you missed the sale and are interested you can check out what's for sale still here (password is "shop").

After that I spent a couple days prepping and packaging orders. I have a big stash of envelopes I've accumulated from goodwill trips over the years, so I used those, my posca pens, some washi tape, and colored pencils to make little thank you notes for each one!

The next week I crossed another item off my Instagram bucket list: I did a live stream. It was very casual and sort of spontaneous. I had a sketch of a raccoon all prepped and ready so decided to go live to finish drawing and chat with some followers/answer some questions. It ended up being about an hour and a half and actually quite relaxing! I was so nervous at first though, my hands were shaking and I felt a little silly. But this went away quickly, and I think it could be fun to do again in the near future 🙂

I also set out the last few weeks to try and start a sketchbook practice. I've owned and used sketchbooks in the past, but haven't really had any type of consistency and never had what I would describe as regular practice. I've been feeling a bit of art block coming on, combined with the fact that I'm spending a lot of time on other non-illustrative creative pursuits, like sewing. I thought I might get a moleskine since so many artists seem to love them, and I liked the small sizes they offer. But once I got to the art store and saw them, I decided I didn't want to spend $20 on it when I already have so much loose paper at home. So instead I purchased a Micron pigma no 1 pen and a couple prismacolor col-erase pencils. I want to keep this sketchbook fairly simple and use only a few materials throughout it.

When I got home I bound up a small sketchbook of about 50 pages. I am trying to draw in there every day, if I can. So far I have missed a couple days, but it's already been paying off. I have several messy sketches that I can envision as the starting point of a more complete illustration. Here are a few snapshots of some spreads:

In some sadder news, my dang wrist keeps having flare ups (I had to take a long break from art earlier this year due to wrist strain). It's really my own fault as I have been slacking on keeping up with the exercises my physical therapist gave me. So trying to build that back into my daily routine.

The US presidential election, as I write this, has still not been called, but *knocks on wood* it's looking like Biden will be the next president. Ian and I were prepared to move back to Canada rather than face another four years of 45, but we really would love to stay in Seattle for longer so hoping for the best. No new updates with my green card, just stuck in the void of an "audit" and awaiting further information.

That's all from me, have a good weekend and do what you gotta do to stay relaxed friends 🙂