Successfully Sneaky Slogans

Yesterday I presented a workshop for artists in the Cornwall area on Successful Selling Strategies. The group was great; a lot of great energy in the room that I could feed off. I also met a fellow found object artist - Candice Nixon (http://www.meltingpotstudio.ca/). Anyway, back to the story... when I cleaned out my briefcase this morning I found an old napkin tucked in a corner that I kept from our trip to North Carolina earlier this month. The napkin is from the Detroit airport ( a great airport by the way ). I kept it because I loved the slogan on it. It's short, memorable, cheeky, and most of all gives you a mental picture of exactly who they're talking about without saying it out loud. In the workshop yesterday we talked about knowing who your target market is, what your competition is doing and what needs you are filling. This slogan sums it all up in one cheeky statement - doesn't it? It's a very successful sneaky slogan!

A trip down memory lane

My son the other day laughed when I told him about when I was in kindergarten. He didn't believe that I had ever been in school. So I dug through my memories box and found the Ziploc bag labelled 'kindergarten' (I used to think it was crazy how organized my mom was, now I'm so glad she was). The two of us had a good laugh going through it. Everything from the 75 cents it cost to go see a puppet show for a field trip (25 for the bus, 50 for the show) to the photo of me with pig tails.

I also noticed the artwork. I'm surprised I didn't become a fibre artist, it seems 90% of my art was done with wool that year. My son pointed out that I spelled my name using both capital letters and lowercase letters and he thought that was funny. Until this fall when he started school we had always written his name using all capitals, but in school he is told to use lowercase. The first month, he kept correcting the teacher and telling her how to properly spell his name. I started getting worried, maybe we had taught him wrong, or maybe we should have started with lowercase letters earlier... maybe he'll always be confused! Oh no! Seeing that I was a confused little 5 year old and I eventually figured it all out and turned out OK (for the most part), I realized that I have nothing to worry about. James will turn out at least as OK as I am.

The next thing we noticed was a ribbon for 1st place. James asked what it was for. I couldn't remember. Every piece of the artwork brought back a vivid memory, a smell, voices, what table it was created at, but that ribbon... no idea. We strive all our lives to get 1st place, and when we do we don't even remember what it was for. Now that's a lesson we should always remember.

A true treasure

This posting is going to be a little different then my usual business oriented ones; but it is a good little story so I have to share it.

As many of you know I've been collecting beach glass since I was in the womb I think. My husband on the other hand, only started collecting last spring during his trip to Bermuda as far as I knew.... but....

My mother-in-law brought me a present last week, a jar full of beach glass. She said she had found it in her storage locker and just found it. I asked her where it was from. This is the cool part. Matt (the hubby) had given it to her for mother's day when he was 8 or 9 years old! He's been a closet collector his whole life! On days like this I'm not sure what the greater treasurer is - the beach glass or Matt. I'm think I'm lucky to have found (or been given in this case) both.

Design by Oops!

I just finished a ring that is nothing like I originally intended it to be. I'm sure you've all been there, you know, the design by oops situation?! In the class I'm taking, the other students get frustrated when it doesn't turn out how they intended it to, and one of them even starts from scratch every time it's not perfect. Me, on the other hand, love to work with it until the very end to see how different (or similar if I'm lucky) it turns out. Remember, someone will love your discards as we talked about in an earlier post. They don't know what you actually intended it to look like, unless you tell them.

So, just for fun, here's my latest design by oops. And the story...

You can really tell by the photo, but the band is twisted slightly, it kind of spirals up the finger. It was supposed to be flat, but it adds an neat touch. The beach glass was supposed to sit straight up and down on the finger, but because of the twist it actually sits on a slight angle, again a neat touch.