Marketing, the leap from backyard enterprise to real stuff!

Marketing seems to be the only way to get anywhere in the world now. Either through self marketing to get that promotion, or business marketing to create and maintain a successful business - no matter how large or small it is.

The real difference now is that social media has made marketing skills accessible to the average Jo Blow who wants to have a go themselves. This has then become a given that all small business operators will have a successful campaign going on even if they haven't the time or education to really know what they're doing. I suppose on one hand this is good because it levels the playing field and means that even if you can't afford for the latest hot shot graduate to join your company or even do contract jobs for you, you can still be out there in the market place being heard.

Anyhow, what I'm getting at by all this mumbo jumbo about marketing, is that Larrkin Lace is right there with the rest of the population trying to use social media to get our work out there. This means countless lessons by various family members (and anybody else who is willing) on various types of online media. It also means trying to figure out how to make holiday style snaps of our jewellery look impressive when placed next to proffesional photo shoot type photos.

It also means countless hours staring blankly at a computer or mobile telephone screen trying to make sense of a new "app". This would be fine if either of us were techno lovers, but really all we want to do is create art and sell it, so we can make a reliable living from it... not so much to ask really is it?

As part of this marketing scheme, when I took a holiday weekend recently with a group of my girlfriends, I took a collection of jewellery with me and asked one of these dear friends (who is mighty handy with her camera) if she would help me set up some photos shoots of the other dear friends present wearing our jewellery. She did an amazing job and we now have some lovely photos to put up on our various social media sites. All my friends modelling were fabulous too - as if they had all been modelling for Prada for years! Where would we be without the help of those whom we love and who love us?!

The jewellery we have been working on is being madly configured in snippets of time between the other money earning work we currently do and the hours of internet time. I hope this will increase the sense of spontaneity showing in the work?

By the way, the photos you're seeing here aren't the beautiful ones my friend took. For them, you have to look at our Etsy site :)

Strike while the iron is hot

I am the iron. I learnt a lot about a lot of useful tools today and I would like to put them in to action. I read some great inspiring articles that mostly all say that if you want to be a successful creative person, making a living out of your creativeness, you need to work hard for it, not in a bad way, just in a purposeful way.

I had always assumed that well known artists, musicians, designers or actors probably just flitted around doing what they enjoyed and somebody saw them and made them famous. That justified me not even trying to get anywhere with my hopeful creativeness. I find this is pretty much wholly untrue, which means I need to get my butt into gear and work to get my stuff out there.

There. That is the beginning of this time's attempt at getting it out there.

I said previously I would say more about Mum. The above photo is of a necklace which I made using Mum's lace. This is what all my work does. Mum, Vicki Taylor, is a hugely talented bobbin lace maker and all round textile artist. Her work inspires me to want to make stuff.. Any stuff. 

This is Mum hard at work learning to manipulate Perspex in a class we did together at ContextArt 2012. The above necklace used some of the techniques we learnt together.

This is Mum (right) with her good friend Francis Keevil. Francis owns a gallery in Double Bay, Sydney and has been very inspirational and encouraging for Mum in her art endeavours.

Right now I must snap to it and do some work on our Facebook site (The Studio) and figure out how to use Instagram.