Painting A New Header and Blessings

Ok, first off, I've been sucked into another challenge by Kristin over at http://reclaimingthehome.com/typepad.com Every Thursday she will be featuring a collection of paintings sent to her by any willing to take up the gauntlet. I'll be trying to post my entry here earlier in the week, probably the Wednesday before, so I don't leave it to the last minute and not get it done on time. For this week, I finally got around to painting a header for this page (as you probably already noticed). I'd been intending to do this since I started writing here.

Now, for the blessings: God is so good! At the beginning of the year our little church started a radio ministry. The pastor challenged all the families to try to give $20 extra a month to cover the costs. Sometimes not having a job outside the home, I feel sad not being able to contribute to such things myself. I began praying that God would bless my efforts to make a little money on my pottery*. Last week, I got a call from the owner of the shop where I have consigned some of my work. He told me that he'd sold several pieces and also that if I had more pottery to please bring it as he had dropped a few other consignors and would like to fill the space with more of my work. How exciting! I knew that God was well able, but still wasn't expecting him to answer with such abundance; I asked for $20 a month in sales and the first month, he sent me $68.

* For those of you who may not know, I actually went to school for art and got a BFA with an emphasis in pottery. Yes, I actually paid good money to learn to play in the mud. Anyway, since leaving school I've found it very hard to find studio space and have had to go years between times of actually being able to make anything. For a while I was given free studio space with a working kiln on the town square but the shop I was in decided to move, and, alas, I was not to be part of that move. That was about a year ago now, but then this last summer I was given the opportunity to consign some of my work in another shop on the square, but sales have been slow. We live in a very rural, agricultural, economically depressed area. Few people here seem to see the value in the handmade AND have the money to support a local artist. Luckily, I don't have to live on my art income. I'm glad I have an old-fashioned husband who appreciates a wife who wants to stay home and tend to the house, and who also supports and admires what I do as an artist. Slowly, we're trying to set aside funds to enclose our porch to turn it into a studio, and to get my kiln rewired. I've thought about doing an Etsy store but all the details of taxes, getting paypal, and the need for packaging supplies, etc... has kinda scared me off, besides I don't know when I'll be able to make more stock. Anyway, that's where I'm at pottery-wise.

See ya tomorrow,
-Jayne