Patrons of the Arts – January 2024

We started 2024 with a convention last January. Inggo and I joined Patron of the Arts: Spring Beginnings held at Centris once again. Pretty proud of our full table! Looks like we’ll need 2 tables in the future, no?

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This was one of the smoothest ingress and egress con experience for us. It was quick and stress free. We were one of the early birds during ingress and we took our sweet time setting up. I brought more original paintings this time hoping that they’d find homes. I sold a few and I’m really thankful to the buyers! ♥

I also organized a stamp rally! My idea was to make a palengke-themed stamp rally so I recruited artists who have fish or produce related stickers. Those who completed our stamp will get a crochet bayong made by Inggo with all of our artist’s prizes. We had meat, fresh fish, dried fish, veggies, fruits, and more. It was so cute! I also made giant stickers again and bought fake ice as decor for it. It was a huge hit!

Our friend also made a stick normally seen in markets. I borrowed it to take a photo with my fresh fish stickers. This was also the first time that we used zipties for the acrylic boxes tied to the mesh wires. I wanted to display my postcard prints efficiently, and while it was sort of a success, it wasn’t stable enough and sometimes the prints would fall. 

Aside from the usual tilapia stickers, I made parrotfish ones. They are available in A4 and A5 size at the same price. My thought process was “who would even buy an a4 fish?!” but a lot did. They said it is a future me problem on where to stick it. Thankful as well to officemates, friends, and family who visited our booth. Some were first timers in this kind of convention, I’m glad they had fun! 

Overall it was a convention. I truly felt that we started the year right by participating this event. ♥

Rest of 2023 Works

I finally had time again to work on more blog entries. This will finally be the last 2023 entry! So, after 4 conventions last year, I decided that December will be my “rest month” before I tackle 2024. My hands were recovering at this point, and I could finally hold a brush again. It was time to get back to painting!

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The paintings above were practice pieces, from left to right – a rainbow peony on Canson XL watercolor paper. I still have a lot of this type of paper that I use for practice without feeling guilty because there’s an abundance of it; another peony on a new watercolor pad that I bought from one of the events, its an 1264 Fabriano 300gsm watercolor pad in A4 size; an A4 sized cattleya painting as a practice piece before creating the 2 ft x 2 ft painting commission. I always believe that you should do warm up paintings first before you dive into larger pieces, just to get used to painting again and practicing the color mixes.

Below, also from left to right – our server’s December art jam was a Christmas Art Trade. The one I got requested the character Zoro from One Piece + Netflix & Chill. I have no idea how to interpret this wholesomely so I did that instead; we did a bonus round of art jam for our server admin’s birthday! I messaged most of the active members to contribute to this surprise, and thankfully they joined; finishing up my 2023 commitments by finally painting this office art trade. She requested a painting of her cute pet!

I continued painting on my 1264 watercolor pad. Nothing much to say about the left and right photo as they’re still practice pieces. The middle flowers are strawberry blooms. I made these for my planner sticker sheet of strawberry goodies.

Looking at the tags of this blog is so confusing. What counts as a compilation post, when everything in my blog posts are compilations? I should have written that somewhere. Maybe I should also clean up the tags while I have the time?

PlannerCon

My next event after Art to Cart was PlannerCon. This was StickerCon’s first event for planner and journaling enthusiasts. I applied for a half table this time and this is my real solo stint event because assistants are not allowed for my type of table.

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I was partnered with another artist for this type of table. She was really nice! I also have friends who also boothed in this event – Clair, the sisters Beatrice and Joyce / Ella and Marie, Louise, Alyanna, and many more. ♥ Inggo was also there for support – to switch with me whenever I need a break (or to shop lol). I really liked my table display that day! I added wire baskets on my mesh wires to display some of my other products – more washi tapes and my misprint postcards. The misprint postcards were just desaturated versions caused by my printer supplier’s error. Thankfully, they replaced it with the correct colors. I couldn’t sell it full price due to my pride so I did a discount basket. 

I also made giant versions of my tilapia stickers just to give away to my friends who will visit the event. One of my customers wanted to buy some of them but kept asking for a price, so I said its 100php each. She bought two! 

Huge appreciation to Inggo – whenever he wasn’t at my table, he was around the venue crocheting away, sometimes in the middle of the wide aisle lol. My friends from each aisle kept on commenting about it. He made around 4 mini clodsires that day! 

This was a pretty chill convention. I’m glad that I got to join another StickerCon event. ♥ I didn’t earn as much compared to the other conventions (but Art to Cart still was the lowest sales). But I really wanted to join another event like this that when they announced PlannerCon for 2024, I immediately joined. ♥