My cheapo grinder is here and it works!! I mean, it turns on and spins, yay. It only came with a 1000 grit diamond wheel, which is not useful at the moment. I did order an assortment of wheels in coarser grits. The wheels were supposed to arrive several days before the machine, but now they have gone from California to Oregon to Washington to Indiana to Kentucky to Colorado?? and amazon reassures me they "could still arrive by feb 6". Cool cool cool. They got rerouted due to the CA fires, I assume. So I ordered another set (they wear out, I'll need more eventually) and now I'm hoping I get that ASAP, so I can give it a proper test this week and get going on making my blanks. Fingers crossed.

It is a ratchet little device. There is no full cover, just a piece of sheet metal bent around it, so you can see the wires and connections and the motor itself. I def have to make something to protect the internals from water, because I need some water on the wheel for grinding glass. The metal has rough, sharp edges. It's not kid or pet safe at all. But if it does the job, great.

The machine I really need is an 8" lap grinder. But for something decent, plus extra for grinding wheels, maybe $800-900 total. If things go very well, I could hopefully swing it by late summer. I have accumulated about $2k of expenses in vending display stuff, tools, blank product, etc including everything I spent when I got started in 2021. So I won't be comfortable with such a large purchase until my business pays that back and covers all vending booth costs and whatever expenses for this year. I need to prove I can sell this stuff, before I commit to an expensive specialized tool. I just need something in the meantime to help me make the product to get the $$$ to buy the better machine. I may put out some feelers and see if anyone in AK has a used one they could sell me.

So we had the Harry Potter Christmas party and it was really fun, I thought. As usual I came up with too many "must do" ideas and made way too much work for myself. Spouse and I were absolutely exhausted on the day of the party. Just beat to hell. I don't think we will ever be able to top it because I will not commit to that much work for the party in the future (she said, lying). One of the things I did was a potion making station. I made drink syrups in four flavors for the four houses and portioned them in 45ml plastic test tubes with fancy labels, and then I made up some "potion" recipes. I had butterfly pea powder potions as well (a blue food coloring that turns pink in acidic liquids - used to make fancy color changing drinks), so it was possible to make some lovely looking beverages. I put edible glitter in the drink syrups, so all the drinks were sparkly. Of course, at the party, some people didn't bother to read the instructions I laid out and assumed they were shooters. They do not make good shooters. I truly did not anticipate people drinking them straight from the tube like savages. There's no alcohol at the party - non alcoholic shooters make no sense. It's a potion MAKING station, you don't just chug the base ingredients. No wonder Snape was so cranky! Aside from cloning myself and posting a clone at the potion station to handhold people through it (seriously, I wrote clear instructions and recipes and they were RIGHT THERE), I don't see how I could have avoided that. I really liked the whole thing and thought it turned out well, the execution was just wasted on a certain audience segment, let's say. And I mean young men around 20ish.

I did a red cranberry spice syrup for gryffindor, a golden ginger syrup for hufflepuff, a green lime and jalepeno syrup for slytherin, and a blue lavender syrup for ravenclaw. I bought the lavender syrup because I wasn't sure where to get enough lavender (also I'd never had lavender syrup and wasn't sure I would make it right), but the others I made. Mix and match them with lemonade, sparkling water, sparkling grape or apple juice, etc. Do an italian cream soda. Like, they were delicious, and beautiful. I had berries to muddle at the bottom, garnishes, etc. Like a charcuterie board but for drinks.

Originally I was going to have engraved glasses at the party, but it quickly became obvious that wasn't going to happen. I thought the sparkly potion drinks would look lovely in an engraved glass. Which brings me to my newest genius idea - I think I'm going to start a blog/newsletter for the business and come up with a monthly mocktail recipe. Nobody cares about the details of amateur glass bottle cutting and engraving, but perhaps a nice beverage recipe might spark interest. Sometimes it's easy to forget how ... uncurious and creative-avoidant a lot of people are. They want everything laid out and a guaranteed outcome before they'll try. My friends are all bright, curious people with varying areas of interest. If they aren't bright and curious, we'd probably lack the mutual spark to be friends. So I forget what it's like to be around ... muggles, for lack of a better term. But when you have a business, the vast majority of your would-be customers are muggles. You gotta be muggle accessible. You gotta give them something interesting enough that they perk up, but not so much that they get intimidated or weirded out. That means pretty pictures and basic stuff that will fit in their lives. So I think a monthly mocktail recipe (with a nice photo in an engraved glass) might help create some interesting adjacent content. Anybody can enjoy a mocktail, and they're cheaper to make than cocktails. Buy my nice glasses, make this nice drink. I think it's a decent pitch.

I'm thinking about doing a sparkling grapefruit and thyme drink for January (thyme/time for the new year, get it??). I wanted to do a blue colored drink but I'm not having much luck hitting an appealing and interesting flavor combination. Plus blue is such an artificial color for drinks (blue raspberry?? come on, that ain't natural). There's a blue spirulina powder, but I'm trying to stick to ingredients anyone can find locally. Also, algae is a questionable mocktail ingredient and I'd have to do something creamy, more like a smoothie, probably. An idea to save for next january.

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I went to our local health food store and they DO have a GTs kombucha made with blue spirulina called "sacred life". So I got a couple, thinking maybe I could use it as a mocktail ingredient. It is electric blue, really pretty. It has an odd coconut/ginger flavor and I am puzzling over what might mix with it while not diluting the blue color. I don't care much for coconut.

While I was at the health food store looking for possible mocktail ingredients, I realized another low effort thing that might be fun would be to buy strange beverages and review them. I always hesitate to buy unusual beverages because they're expensive and I don't know if they're any good. (The other day I got a pack of seltzer water that was DISGUSTING. I didn't know it was possible to ruin mojito flavored sparking water. It tasted like vegetable oil. I'm returning it and getting my $4 back, I'm that upset. And the fancy health food store beverages are more like $15 a pack, so who wants to risk that money for a drink they may hate?)

Then I thought, wouldn't it be fun to get spouse in on this, as a dudebro for a contrasting opinion. Spouse hates sparkling water and kombucha. Spouse likes mtn dew and gatorade and the occasional energy drink. And then I realized we could get our friend Michael in on it too. Michael is boujie and likes good food, goes to all the fancy new restaurants, and probably has the best palate of all of us. Plus he already comes over to paint minis every couple weeks or so. I feel like the three of us bring a variety of perspectives and tastes and would make for a fun writeup.

Michael came over to paint minis this week and brought a pack of alcoholic seltzers none of us had tried. I was in the middle of pitching my "let's review weird health food store beverages" idea as we cracked them open. Michael takes a sip of his and says "Does anyone else think this smells like noodles?" and that's exactly the sort of observations I want.

I'm gonna call it "Boujee Beverage Battledome". (I found out that though I prefer the boujie spelling, "boujee" is supposedly the actual, original spelling. I still prefer the ie ending - I think it visually looks better.)

So I figure I'll have a monthly mocktail recipe and do a Boujee Beverage Battledome once or twice a month. That'll make for fairly low effort but entertaining additional content for the website, plus excuses to take pictures of my glasses filled with pretty beverages (yes!!). After poking around at various blog options, I think I'm going to start a substack. The health food store has enough selection we'll be set for a while, and we can also try drinks from the international markets in a pinch. And there's new flavors of mainstream beverages sometimes (although Alaska's soda selection is limited compared to l48 - seems like they only ship us the top sellers). I'll never have a huge audience, but if I could get a few dozen genuinely interested locals subscribed, that would be fantastic.

I'm fairly chuffed. If I hadn't made those Harry Potter syrups, I might not have had this idea at all.

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I keep hunting for good art/artist/craft content to replace the political podcasts I followed. It's hard to find stuff that fits the groove I am in/want to be in. Most artist focused content is shallow and terrible. Or the craft marketing/selling content is also shallow and terrible. Like everything these days, I guess. Beginner level stuff is wasted on me and that's the intended audience for probably 80-90% of content.

I found this guy on youtube - thehungrydotart. He's definitely more POD focused than I see as ethical. Having worked in screenprinting, the bloom is off the rose for me. I'd never do redbubble or printify or whatever. Just because the details of the manufacturing process are opaque to the artist and customer doesn't mean it isn't exploitative and terrible. Sweatshops are bad, screenprinting businesses can be equally as bad and there is no way to know if a bunch of people aren't being flogged to deliver a stupid joke tshirt in 7 days or less that will get worn twice and thrown away. I want no part of a merch generating machine. But between and around the tacky POD hype (which kinda comes off like MLM hype), he's got some valuable observations and pointers about being an artist in general, and trying to make a business out of creativity. I like how he approaches things.

He said something very quickly in his video titled: how 'do what you love' is terrible advice. At 9:54 after talking about how some artists do nothing but post their art on instagram and wonder why customers aren't clamoring to purchase, he says:

1. Make the thing.

2. Provide the value.

3. Gain the authority.

4. Gain the awareness.

5. Get the dolla dolla bills.

I might print this out or write this somewhere. Authority is such an interesting word to use around/for artists. Picture "authority" and it never comes packaged as a artist. It's such a male oriented word, too. Women would be more likely to choose a cooperative word, a helper word, a softer word. If a woman made that list, it would probably be "gain the relationship". Women are conditioned to be humbler and display less confidence when it comes to the fruits of their labor. They don't present themselves as boldly as male artists, because if you display too much confidence, you get knocked for being stuck up or delusional and a certain insecure segment will mob and actively attack whatever soft underbelly they can find (looks, etc), to put you in your place.

So it's no wonder that women artists focus on selling to other women, especially at craft markets and small venues. Men do the "go big or go home" thing and invest in showy, expensive booths with aggressive art because they can. So they get the full male and female audience spectrum while women are limited to mostly other women and children. Because their boldness in the market is encouraged and rewarded, while women are put in a place of "seeking permission" from their audience. Am I good enough to show my work in public? Am I good enough to charge these prices? Will my work serve your need and fit into your lifestyle? Women are submitting themselves to judgement and take the smallest things to heart. Men judge others and take judgements on themselves less seriously. There's less risk in being bold for men. (These are broad generalities, I know not everyone can be put in a bucket. I'll bet the more niche and tightly themed an event is, the less stark the differences between male and female coded booths. But for big general events like a state fair, it's super easy to pick out the "women" booths from the "man" booths.)

It's interesting how different the craft market business video content is if it comes from a woman or a man's channel. The women are doing a lot of vlogs of their booth setup and sharing their vending experiences, good and bad. They make hands on, manual crafts like crochet or sewing or assembled (beaded) jewelry. The men are doing videos about online marketing, ranking different selling platforms and sales strategies, mass produced machine based crafts like CNC woodworking, laser engraving and 3d printing. If they do jewelry, it is fine jewelry with precious metals. Men are way more likely to pitch courses for business success or to position themselves as an authority to other businesses. Of all the content I've watched (and the majority of arts & craft content is heavily woman created) I still have subscribed to more men. Am I subconsciously biased to see women's content as less valuable? Do I just not care about crocheted animals which seems to be the hot craft thing right now? Or do men get the attention because they have the "permission" to present themselves more authoritatively?

I'm tangenting but this is something I've been thinking about and will continue to chew on. Not that I ever want to sell courses or business advice, but I do want a booth that makes both women and men think "that looks interesting" instead of pigeonholing myself into a "woman" coded presentation. Like if you go to a fair, you judge booths from a distance and never bother going inside if it looks like they have nothing for you. Men are unlikely to go into "chick" booths with pastel colors and cute decorations. "Dude" booths tend to have a bold sign in plain typeface saying exactly what is inside, with bare minimum display and simple primary colors. I'm just thinking via typing ...

Also in there is an interesting observation about how people factor in their feelings about the artist they are buying from. It helps if they buy into you as an artist to give them the courage to purchase more creatively risky work with a higher price tag. Because in capitalism, what you buy is who you are. So not only is there the cash cost, but the ego risk as well. If you buy something for a gift and the gift receiver thinks it is tacky or the artist themselves is a known terrible human, it reflects badly on you. But if you buy something cool from a cool artist, it adds cachet. It's never just a nice picture. Which is why AI art might be good enough in the short term, but it will never buff one's ego like human made art, bought from a human. You might have cheap AI art all over your walls in your 20s, but as you get older you'll likely want to swap for more expensive real art with sentimental value. Where did you get it, who made it, etc. The more rare something is to find and purchase, the more personal and special it will be.

As an artist, if you just post photos of your work (or lay it on a table to sell) with no other value or hook, it's very poor salesmanship. There has to be some extra value to help make the sale, even if that's just a pleasant human interaction. If you are in a craft booth, you are the only living thing in that booth that can bring energy and broadcast your vibe. It's all dead stuff, without you. A customer may as well buy some schlock art off amazon. They are purchasing the experience as well as the product.

I keep thinking about the girl with RBF and the vendors busy checking their phones at the event I just went to. I know it's easy to assume that the work will sell itself and a customer only needs attention when they've made up their mind and are ready to pay. But it's not so. You have to be present to take advantage of opportunities for connection. Which is why IRL markets can be so exhausting and tough for introverts in particular, and why so many people are great artists and craftspeople but can't sell their stuff for shit.

I already know salesmanship is a big part of the game from tattooing. My mentor was fantastic at striking up connections with prospective clients and gaining their trust. It is no small thing to trust someone to draw on you permanently and painfully and pay $$$$ for the pleasure. He taught me how important it was. He said that people come into a shop with a ball of energy over the tattoo they want to get, and it's your job to take that energy and magnify it, so they leave a consult even more excited to get that work done. Don't drop the ball. He could have a 30min consult with someone and get them to put a $2k deposit down on a sleeve at the end. Easy peasy, saw him do it multiple times. He was that good. He could turn on the personableness.

I'm doing a lot of processing and considering.

I did find a good woman led craft selling channel. Creativehiveco has some really good business advice. She's not as punchy as thehungrydotart, and she's more craft than art focused and a lot of her advice is for online selling, but she's straightforward and smart. She sells little food themed polymer clay jewelry that smells like the food item. The scent part is genius - she figured out how to take a generic craft and add something unexpected to differentiate it from others. Super smart. The one thing I took away from her content was ideas about getting writeups about your work in various media. Getting free publicity, instead of paying for social media advertising. Send free product to people for endorsements, etc. I won't be ready for that for a while but I probably wouldn't have thought of it on my own.

I've been looking for various events and markets and I have a good list. Good enough to keep me busy every weekend through summer and fall. Unfortunately, vending opportunities are almost nonexistent until May. I found a woo-woo festival in early March, but that is the earliest possible selling event so far. On the plus side, plenty of time to make product and settle on booth details, right?

I do think I need to come up with a low pricepoint item. I'm not sure what I could offer for $5-20 that would fit in with the other products. Even carved beach rocks might take more labor than they'd be worth. Coasters? Small tealight holders? Hmm.

It's mid january already. By the end of the month I need to have fresh finished product so I can redo my product photos, update the website, and get ready to put in vending applications.