Craftboston: A review

Summary of Craftboston: Wow.

It's been almost two weeks since Craftboston, and I'm just getting back to the blog to talk about this. I'm finally recovered from the rush, and I'm ready for my next huge event, which will happen on Friday, April 8th. And no, I'm not telling you what is happening, but you'll definitely know when it happens. It's that big.

Anyway, back to Craftboston.

The show was HUGE, an entire convention center full of awesome. Seriously, I was in awe of my fellow vendors and so happy and surprised I was invited to join them.

Setup went very smoothly, however time absolutely flew by, and before we knew it we were only 2/3 done and had been there for a full seven hours! The trees looked great, and were easier to install than I had planned, though very time consuming. The drapes looked great and the lighting was well worth the investment!
I was very fortunate to have one piece sell the week before the show (Water). This worked out well in two regards: The first, it took away most of the pressure to sell like crazy at the actual show. The second was that I had digitally planned for (and created) 9 pieces, but the column in our booth took up the space of one of my pieces, so I only had 8 slots. Worked out perfectly.

VIP night came on Thursday and the very first person in my booth fell in love with my most complicated piece and purchased it. In the first 10 minutes of the show. Before it opened to the public. Yeah. It set a new artist record for my work as well.

Needless to say, it was amazing from that point on. I couldn't keep any small pieces in the booth and completely voided my studio/apartment of pieces to restock each day. In the end dozens of small pieces found new homes, and one of the show pieces was purchased (the one that sold at the beginning). Two if you count the sale the week before the show.

The thing that made me most happy, though, was how many people immediately "got" what I do and truly appreciated the work that goes into these pieces. I think being in a craft show, and being one of the few wall art booths immediately made people look at my work (which usually looks like prints or silkscreens) and think..."there must be something more going on here". I also put up a sign that simply read "Hand-Cut Paper Art" and that definitely got peoples interest.

The crowds were great. A few times I had to leave the booth and stand in the aisle due to the number of people in my booth. I had a blast! The show organizers were incredibly kind, my lecture went great, and moveout went smoothly. I really look forward to applying for next year!

All the pieces are now available on Etsy, so if you've been dying to have one of my best pieces, here you go:

Microcuts

I get up at 6:45 every morning and start work some time around 8. Typically I spend part of the morning catching up on emails and The Internet, then I cut or design for people, break for lunch, then finish cutting, package new pieces, trip to the Post Office, return, email people who emailed me while I was at the Post Office. THEN sometime around 3:30, with 30 mins before my wife gets off work, I have this creative time that is MINE ALL MINE!!!

Well, lately that time hasn't been exactly enough time to work on a large 18x24 of a famous Boston landmark I started weeks ago and have gotten almost none of it finished, so instead, I've been focusing on smaller projects I stand a chance of finishing the same day I start.

Inspired by the creative geniuses over at etsy, including kfarrell, creater of tinysaurs, which I have miniature collection of, I decided to go small.

The wonders of the computer combined with the printing ability of laser printers, I realized I had everything I needed to shrink down an original design to mind-numbing porportions. SO, with a Sunday evening filled with Jen madly trying to finish a monstrous reading assignment (studying for her MA in Historical Archaeology- aren't we so interesting?) I dug through a bunch of photos looking for an appropriate idea.

I settled on a photo I took of the Chicago Library domed Tiffany glass celing during our trip to that amazing city last August.

I figured I should probably start with a size that made some logical sense, so I chose one square inch, popped the new design into photoshop, and Ta-Da!

I started cutting, and quickly realized I couldn't use my usual swivel knife as it wanted to move a bit too much for the delicateness of the design (wanted to twist and turn when I was cutting a 1mm thick straight line), so I switched to my usualy #11 blade/knife. Here's a progress shot:

Once finished, I mounted it to a 12x12 inch background to give it some presence on the wall and framed it up but good. Here it is unmounted and finally framed:

AND, if you are so impressed, you can even purchase the $65 framed original piece here on etsy.

After completing that and getting lots of "oohs and Ahs" I felt pretty good about the decision to go small and immediately started thinking of new ideas. Apparently this is harder than it looks to go so small because I've had a hard time coming up with ideas for interesting, cutable designs. I soon thought of the world map, since I was working on the Continent papercut designs.

I had to subtly modify the map a bit (bring the two hemispheres a bit closer together) but in the end, I was really happy with the design, which measures 1 x 1.75 inches huge.

Apparently it was a really awesome design because it was on Etsy a whole 6 hours before getting snatched up and now lives in a great home in Missouri:)

Like I said before, I'm struggling to come up with designs that would both look interesting small, but also be physically cut-able. Here are some recent experimentations that I love, but I'm not listing yet as I'm hoping to do even better.




I am working on a 1x1" version of this piece, which now hangs in a private collection in London:

About 1/3 done as you can see



Okay, that's it for now. If you have brilliant ideas for microcuts, do tell, do tell. And, speaking of telling, I have some very exciting news that will be confirmed at 10am today, after the confirmation, I'll be back with a nice announcement:)

New Website Design

I do these too often, but I'm really happy with the new design. It's streamlined, less messy, same content, and lots of fun surprises.

I condensed all the pieces into two major categories (Architecture and Nature) with 15 thumbnails for each.

I also am going to be directing people to my etsy page much more since there's no reason to reinvent the wheel when I have a successful shop already.

Overall I condensed the site from about 15 pages to about four.

I also put in some measures to make sure people can still see the site even if the don't have flash. iphone and itouch do not currently support flash, so when they visit, they will be redirected to a flash-less homepage.

I also am in love with Java especially Lightbox, which does those fun effects when you click on a thumbnail.

Let me know if you find any glaring problems

papercutsbyjoe.com

Let me know what you think:

Here's a screen grab: