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Well, the second weekend of the Open House has ended. We had our private view on Saturday as well, which was great. I was lucky enough to have family and friends ready to part with cash to buy bowls and platters, which was also great - thank you family and friends! Earlier in the day I managed to get this bowl completed, going from its unfinished state on the left to the finished one on the right.
I decided to try a colour in the bowl as well, which obviously spoke to someone, as it was the first thing I sold on Saturday. There is blue in the colours mixed on the rim and the bright blue in the bowl itself helps to bring this out. There's been a huge jump in my Youtube subscribers as well, since Mike Waldt's shout out on Friday - about 90 new subscribers, more than doubling what I had previously! Thank you again, Mike - and thanks to all my subscribers, old and new! I've just posted my latest video as well, showing how I decorated this platter.
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It's Friday, finally, which means tomorrow is the second weekend of my Open House. It's been a long week at work, so I'm really looking forward to doing something completely different this weekend. I've got three nearly finished bowls to add to my stock that I might get completed early tomorrow morning, if I can keep away from checking my Youtube channel for new subscribers and comments after a magnificently generous 'shout-out' from Mike Waldt in his latest video. Just saying thank you seems like too little, but thank you, Mike! It's greatly appreciated.
This generosity of spirit is something I've really enjoyed since joining my first woodturning club four years ago - free advice, offers of help, having a trunk chainsawn into blanks, a year long loan of a Woodcut Bowlsaver and McNaughton Bowl Corer, constant encouragement, and of course some gentle deflating of the ego! Not to mention the triumph of an occasional raffle win... I also hope to get some more video work done this weekend. I'm trying to avoid repeating things in my videos, with the focus on different colouring and texturing techniques. There are plenty of great videos showing how to turn bowls, so my focus will remain on colouring and texturing for now - there are a couple of new ones in the pipeline that I hope to get out soon. The photos show the results so far of a couple of different airbrushing techniques. The blue and green platter video is nearly ready, hopefully by the end of this weekend. The platter itself was one that was bought last week...and this takes me to the subject of pricing work. I didn't really know how to price it as I had spent a lot of time on it (partly because after I'd done the airbrushing, I ruined the finish with some not very good lacquer work so had to sand everything off and start again!) The finished platter was about 11 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick. I settled on £35. Does this seem right to anyone? Too cheap?? Too expensive??? (Though, probably not as it did sell!) I'd love to know your thoughts, so feel free to leave a comment. I think that pricing must be the hardest decision when we start selling our work and we're just delighted to have people like it. I also feel that I'm still at an early stage of this marketing and selling malarkey. Perhaps it takes a few displays of work to feel comfortable with pricing it higher.
 Finally, this week's purchases - are there any weeks when I don't buy something turning related - might lead to some new videos as well. These were reduced on Amazon this week and I thought they might be fun to use to try some new texturing ideas. The diamond wheels are very thin so could produce some quite fine work. It might be a while before I get to try them out with the remaining Open House weekends to do. I've also been offered some space to exhibit my work in early July, so I'll have to be doing some of the things I know how to do to get some stock ready for this, rather than venturing into something new....well, I say that, but the temptation might be too great!
If you've enjoyed reading my blog, it would be great to hear from you, or to have it liked and shared. Have a great weekend yourself!
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Stewart is...Keeping sane and finding creative expression in a piece of spinning wood Archives
December 2018
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