So, DesireLines… may I call you DL?

Hahaha…well, if you insist- though you can just call me Ryan if you want. I was going to say that’s what everyone calls me, but…erm…that would be a lie… And, no, I don’t think it would make family friendly reading if I told you!

Let’s start off with a very simple question: how did you acquire your shop name?

I thought long and hard about it for ages- I wanted something that would suit me forever, so I could build a brand with it. Then I came across this name- it’s an ordnance survey term for the wavy, meandering lines that people create in public spaces when they don’t follow the paths set out by the planner. These wandering paths are known as Desire Lines and I liked that it suggested going your own way, making your own decisions and not necessarily going the expected way. Also, at the time I was working on some work about sexual psychology and paraphilias and I liked that it sounded faintly seedy and a bit like a sex chat line Read More

Let’s jump right in by discussing why business planning is a necessary effort in planning for success (you do plan to be successful, don’t you?). The primary intent of business planning is to provide you with the focus you need to prioritize your work, develop your communications, and invest your dollars. There is much more beyond this, but this is where you will want to start. Once you have a business plan, you should be aligning all of your work activities to the plan to avoid wasting extraneous effort on items that don’t support your business goals.

Let’s start by asking the seemingly most basic and straightforward question: What do you want your business to be? In other words, what are you going to be selling? Is it a tangible product such as jewelry or will it be a service such as graphic design? Mind you, services often come with tangible end-products (i.e. Graphic Design may end up with a logo, a banner, etc). Sometimes you can confuse the two, as happens occasionally in sewing. For instance, if you pre-sew plush dolls and sell them, you are offering a product. If you are taking an order for custom apparel, you are actually offering a service, even if the end result is a tangible product. Read More

The Persistence of Memory (1931), Salvador Dali.

Well, going back to a 40+ hour work week last week really had a major impact on my art and crafts. I thought I was prepared for it, I really did, but I wasn’t prepared for it at all. Despite my best efforts, I have done very little painting, no sewing, and even went a day without any new original blog posts! As Pink Floyd sings, time is slipping into the future….

As being productive is very important to me, especially in light of the additional plans I’ve been working on, I really needed to whip my prioritization and time management up a notch. To begin with, I needed to determine what my priorities really are. Putting aside family (my children in particular), the priority of project-focused effort goes: Read More

Ever since I started painting again, my kids, my niece and my niece’s best friend have been asking me to teach them to paint. I’m not actually very patient as a teacher in most things, and have sent my 9-year-old to both a sewing and cupcake decorating class because I knew I’d want to throttle her before it was done due to my lack of patience. For some reason though, I don’t have that issue with painting. Read More

The ‘Daily Artisan Spotlight’ is a regular feature on Mindless Pursuits intended to provide insight and exposure to the tons of talented artisans working today. Please comment and give them some encouragement and check out their work! If you would like to be considered for the Spotlight, click on the ‘Free Press’ link above!

What is your shop?
Creations by KazeSeka (http://kazeseka.etsy.com)

What is your art/craft?
The main addiction is ACEO (Art Cards Editions & Originals). These little cards (3-1/2″x2-1/2″) are so much fun to paint (and collect). But I also have a passion for painting larger piece, and sewing, knitting, woodworking…ooh and the list goes on. You can say I’m a crafty person (but never sly!)

Describe your style in 2 words:
Freestyle…

What is your favorite piece and why?
That’s a hard question. I guess I’d have to say two pieces are my favorites: “Purple Orchid Ghost Butterfly” for now. It’s an ACEO done in acrylics. My husband bought me these orchids for my birthday. They are beautiful!! And I knew right away that they had to be painted. The ghost butterflies “just happened”. Maybe in my subconscience I knew the beauty of the flower will not last forever. And the other favorite is “Tropical Fruit” because it looks so delicious!

What is the most memorable piece of advice you’ve ever received?
From my dear daughter, who has inspired me. “Look” She has advised me to “really look and see” at what I’m drawing/painting. And it’s amazing when you spot an object that you know you “gotta paint”, the image you see comes through in vivid colors and contours.

What is the one piece of advice you’d give?
Paint what you love. Because when you actually feel it, it will be portrayed in the artwork. And others will feel it too

At some point, I suspect everyone has heard the familiar idiom: ‘practice makes perfect.’ It’s a mantra thrown about frequently for anyone attempting to learn a new skill. Frankly, I think it’s a crock, and I’ll tell you why: if you ever think your work is perfect, then give up and go home as you’ll stop growing as an artisan or worse yet, become complacent and your quality will suffer while the world passes you by. Thus, I prefer the simple statement that practice brings improvement.

When I set about to begin painting again after not having touched them in twenty years, I knew my meager skills from high school had completely fallen aside and that I would have work to do to get even those back. When I left high school, my most accomplished piece of art was painting one of those little bears with hats that used to be in the art school ads in the TV Guide so I knew I had a lot of room to grow!  Thus it was with a bit of hesitation that I invested the dollars needed to purchase my first supplies. Even harder was getting over the fear of how badly it might turn out and touching brush to canvas.

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OK, here’s a post from my now-closed previous personal blog. It’s for a worthy cause so I wanted to repeat it here. The Snuggles Project is an effort to create ’snuggles’ for pets in animal shelters. I became involved last year due to my developing fondness for Kiki the Wonder Dog, and so have made 3 of these to date for a local shelter. A snuggle is a little blanket/quilt thing that you make and the animals can snuggle with it instead of sleeping on the cold cement floors found at most animal shelters. Because of this, the animals tend to be more at ease, which makes potential adopters more at ease and so adoption rates increase. 

If you have any sewing talent, or even if not, check out the site and make a snuggle for a pet today!

Have you ever been looking at craft sites and come across a shop that was just filled with such potentially cute stuff but in the end you just couldn’t bring yourself to make a purchase? Sadly, there are a lot of sites out there that could do so much better in sales if only they took the same time that they use to make their creations so well and put it into their shops. I suffer from this as well and so in looking to write this review, a lot of what I am going to discuss applies to my shops as well. So let’s move on to the subject of today’s review: Bugs in Rugs on Etsy.com.

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This is the tale of a humble little garden tote. It is a story of high hopes, of humble beginnings and of cruel rejection… or is it? In the creative process, and definitely in selling crafts, a little harsh reality and rejection can sometimes be a good thing. Today we’re going to look at this humble little garden tote and why it was consigned to a giveaway to a family member instead of being put up for sale in my craft shop.

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Today I thought I’d begin introducing my readers (hopefully to come) to my creative process. As with anything, the creative process starts with an idea. Oh, in some cases the idea may be more about finding motivation, such as in the popular “what can I make that might make me some cash” or the frequent “what can I make that will keep me entertained” and of course the distress call of the lonely artist: “what can I make that will impress the opposite sex?” We’re going to put those ideas behind and start at the next level of coming up with an idea, which is to begin finding ideas for projects after the motivation has been established. In my case, the creative process begins with a simple notebook. This notebook, in fact:

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