Lovin' Summer, Even though it's HOT

Somebody, anybody, please tell me why summer flies by so fast. 

It's the middle of July people, summer will pass by so fast it's a blur. I don't know why I'm shocked, it does this every year. I just realized it's time to get to work on Christmas ornaments, YES, that's right I said the word Christmas. I must be getting old because I can't seem to keep up anymore. Am I the only one that struggles to stay ahead of the game or is everyone else thinking about Christmas at this point in the year. 

I'm interested in painting some furniture now, my friends and I got together and went to some cool antique shops, well one was an antique mall, it was huge. I found a couple of tables that I'm going to play with. I'm wondering if I should buy some chalk paint or try making my own. There are instructions to make your own chalk paint on Pinterest ( yes Pinterest has become another of my weaknesses ), the prices of chalk paint are a little high so I think I'm going to play with it and see what I come up with. It should be fun. I'll let you know how my homemade version works.

On another note we have a new member coming into the Craft Guild Shop. George McWilliams will be joining us the 1st of August. His artwork will be in the shop by August 2nd and he's planning to have a drawing workshop on Saturday Aug. 3rd and the watercolor workshop on the 4th. This is a great time to learn from one of the best, I hope everyone will come out and support our newest member.

Well until next time I hope you dust off your brushes and find some time to paint and of course stay cool. 

Making Changes

There is a time when things just have to change. If nothing ever changes then you're not moving forward, I know there are people who really don't like change and that's sad when you are in business. Early on in my life I didn't like change but now in my later years I've come to realise the only way to move forward is to accept change. Our Craft Guild Shop is a co-op of 17 artists and crafters all very nice people until you mention making changes to the look of the shop or changes in how we do business. Our shop has been sitting there with the same look since they opened it about seven years ago, it's a nice shop very neat and
clean with wonderful handmade items to sell. The way it was set up was each vendor had their own space and that worked for a while. But then when you looked around you would see some people had their spaces overflowing with things and others had very little in their spaces.

Which seems like a waste of space.
And the colors on the walls left a lot to be desired and our lighting is not the best. Now the building doesn't belong to us we are renting so the lighting is someone else's responsibility, but the paint on the walls is an easy fix. So in a meeting it was brought up that we should take down the dividers and paint the room to open it up and make it lighter and brighter. We voted on it and everyone voted for the change.
When the work started the attitudes came out. This project is still in the works, we are still looking for a few pieces of furniture that we hope to find
to make display pieces out of and there will be more rearranging of things but overall it looks so much better now than it did. Customers have come in and made comments about how much lighter and brighter the room looks. We won't stop until we make the room look the best we can and have the merchandise displayed in the best possible light. So the moral of this story is go with the flow accept the change because it's how you grow and move forward. OK, that's enough about change I'm stepping down from my soapbox now.