Sunday Thoughts (Ep. 46)

Hellooooo buddies! Hello hello hello! Happy Sunday! I'm here for another weekly update of the goings on in the life of this little blossoming independent art business!

It is chilly and grey here in Seattle today, I am drinking peppermint tea and bundled up in layers on layers. But it's April, which means the bright pink cherry blossoms that line my street are in full bloom, and there are flowers of every color all over the city. And as Zach pointed out, the grey skies make the colorful blooms look even more vibrant. Thanks, color theory!

This week was a fairly busy one here at Ragonia Art. I worked through the weekend to get ready for the Vegan Mac & Cheese competition on Monday. 

The biggest thing that needed to get done was finishing another round of hand made pins, and FINALLY making new backing cards for all of my pins and earrings. That's something I always put off or make by hand for some crazy reason. Who knows why, but sometimes it feels like a big commitment to design backers digitally and then print and cut them. Instead I've been using markers to color and write the names by hand. It's totally irrational. 

Anyway! I finally made backers for all of my pinned products, and I'm excited to share the result with you once I photograph them next week!

This Monday I had my first vending opportunity of the year, and the first since OCTOBER?! Agh where have I been??

 The Seattle Vegan Mac Down is a fundraising event to benefit the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition , and it's held all over the country! I was honored to be one of the very few vendors at the event, and people seemed so excited to support a vegan artist. And I was excited to meet so many enthusiastic like minded people.

Zach took off work to help me out. He was so helpful to run home through the rain and back when I forgot my cash box.

But check out all that fun new stuff in action! One year ago I never thought I could have such a wide range of products to offer now. I'm so proud of myself!

Look at all the people waiting in line to get their mac!

Zach and I each got a plate of the delicious samples. Our favorite was a gluten free Reuben Mac n Cheese from a local private vegan chef, but the first place winner was No Bones Beach Club's (my old job!) deep fried jalapeno mac. They win almost every competition they enter, haha!

If anyone's interested, my best sellers were my stickers. People go crazy for stickers. But the product that brought in the most revenue was my handmade pins! I didn't sell any t-shirts, but I sold one tote to a very excited customer. And one of my original animal paintings sold on Etsy after the event to someone who had seen it there!

It was so much fun, so encouraging, and so something that I want to do more of. I could see myself doing a market at least weekly or every other week. I'd love to work up to that.

On to art! I had a intermediate custom illustration order that I finished this week, that I think came out so cute! I'm excited to finish this because I'm getting ready to open up my Mother's Day commission spots this coming Tuesday.

If anyone's interested, I'm opening the spots on Tuesday 4/16 at 5PM PST! If you'd like a portrait I'd love to offer special free shipping for my patrons, so just let me know!

I also finished my most recent Big Exciting Project, a poster designed for Seattle Storm, the local women's basketball team! This project really makes me feel like an Official Local Artist, and I'd adore doing more poster designs like this. I'll share a process video for this poster for you all very soon.

I'm so excited to see this printed and for sale at the July 3rd game! The proceeds of the sale are going toward a local organization that connects local kids with the arts, which you KNOW I am in to! 

I'm feeling real real, really legitimate lately, my friends. Which I know I am, but sometimes it can take a while to sink in. And it is sinking in. I have some other really exciting projects that look like are going to happen soon, that I can't wait to tell you about. All I'm going to say for you all is that maintaining an active social media for your art business can bring you some real and exciting opportunities. Always put #(YOUR CITY)artist in your tags, the #seattleartist tag has gotten me real life clients and vending opportunities. Do it! Trust me!

Life Outside of Art:

We went to Portland for the first time! Can you believe? 

Tori's  wish for her 25th birthday was to take a quick trip to visit Portland, and she let us tag along with her! We rented a car, and the next day left at 8AM to make the 3 hour drive down from Seattle to Oregon.

Our first stop was Voodoo Donuts, a funky quirky fun amazing donut shop that started in Portland and has since opened locations in Denver, Austin, Eugene, and Universal Studios in both Florida and California! And they have a ton of vegan options! 

Some of their doughnut options include the Maple Blazer Blunt (shaped like a blunt and dusted with cinnamon sugar,) the Voodoo Doll (shaped like a voodoo doll, filled with raspberry jelly, and comes with a pretzel stick for stabbing,) and the Cock-N-Balls (shaped like exactly that.) Awesome. 

Zach and I got the Maple Bar, Voodoo Doll, and Old Dirty Bastard (topped with chocolate, oreos, and peanut butter.) No, we did not eat them all at once.

For lunch (I'm all about the food, can you tell?) I thought we had to go to one of Portland's iconic food cart 'pods', a whole block taken over by food trucks. A ton of them had vegan options, but I of course had to get a vegan  Bánh mì, which had fried tofu strips in place of pig belly and edamame pate in place of mayo. 

 Bánh mì is one of my favorite foods that I hadn't heard of until I moved to the West Coast. It's a Vietnamese sandwich, the vegan versions of which normally have tofu, pickled daikon and carrots, loads of cilantro, jalapenos, and mayo on a baguette. I would eat one every day if I could.

After getting to the Portland Art Museum too late, we wandered around a bit before getting cold and heading for the closest bar I could find. And what I found was adorable!

The Rookery is a bar on the upper floor of the oldest wooden building in Portland, the former carriage house of a prominent businessman and politician. Now it is LEED certified and on the National Register of Historic Places, and houses a gastropub and one of the Food & Wine's "Best Bars in America". I'm lookin' at you, Norris, I thought you'd love this place.

For our purposes, it was warm, had a long list of Oregon wine and beer, and had live! Irish! Music!

And then of course we had to keep exploring. Still full from our lunch, we saw a bridge far in the distance and said "Let's find a way to hike to that." And we did, for this delightful view of downtown.

Thus far my impression of Portland is that is similar to Seattle in terms of weather and attitude, but smaller and less corporate. The European similarities were notable, especially the streetcars, bike friendliness (bike lockers near street car stops, awesome!), and a much more noticeable mix of historic and contemporary architecture. And even in just one day I can tell that the vegan scene in Portland is 10x more expansive than in Seattle, and it's pretty great in Seattle!

I didn't see much of Portland's famous 'wierdness', except maybe one guy wearing a pot leaf patterned suit. And I got a lot more compliments on my blue hair. But then again I went to art school, so maybe I'm not as easily surprised.

So that's Portland in a day, according to Tori, Ragon and Zach! We'll definitely be back, especially once we have a car in May. 

I have a question for you!

What do you think of this mini travel blog? Traveling is one of my favorite things to do, and apparently I love writing about it. Would you be interested in hearing more of this kind of thing here on Patreon? Or do you prefer to read just about art and art business? Maybe I could write these little travelogues in a separate post. Or does it not matter?

Let me know! As always, I'm here for you.

That's all for this week! Thank you so much for your support, and comments, and for sharing your time with me. You are the best!

xoxo

Ragon