Thursday, February 5, 2009

Waiting Is The Hardest Part

As you can imagine, I spent a large chunk of time pimping the giveaway yesterday. This is the first one I'm hosted and I really want it to create a great amount of traffic for Diana, so if you haven't checked it out yet, scroll down and get entered. It will just take you a minute, I swear.

Even though I was clearly distracted, I did managed to get stressed out about other things as well. I have a couple of potential special order customers swimming around the hook without taking that final bite. The timing is a bit odd, since it wasn't a week ago that I made a bold announcement about not working on things until you've been paid. What's a little different about both of these, is that that both came with deadlines, very quick deadlines. So here I am sitting on things that will take a bit of time to make. If I don't start on them and they go ahead and make their purchase, I may not finish in time. Of course on the flip side, if I do make up these items and they don't follow through, not only am I stuck with pieces that I didn't need to make, but I've lost the time I could have used to work on other things.

I do have a confession though, I went ahead and made one of the pieces requested in advance, partly because I had wanted to make this design in red anyway and I'm fairly certain it could sell independent of this customer.

All the clovers on the edges of this piece did work a number on my finger though. You see when I make a join between the rings of a clover, I slide the needle across my finger, through the picot and the snag the thread through with the needle by using my finger. I might not be explaining that well, but what it means is that I kept hitting the same spot on the side of my finger in between the ridges, slowly splitting it open. I've got some liquid bandage on there now, since real bandages snag the thread when I tat. Just a little sacrifice to the gods of the craft I suppose.

I hope I don't have to wait much longer on these orders, because I have so many other things I should get on including a couple of new ideas bobbing around in my brain.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i tell myself the same thing all the time 'wait for payment!'
Ive realized that a lot of my customers with custom orders do not want to pay for an item until they can see the finished product, so for situations like that I take a down payment.
The choker is very lovely btw :)

Anonymous said...

This is apropos of nothing - but I love the names of your tatted masks! I've been humming Labyrinth songs all night. Got to find that soundtrack on CD...

RockLove said...

I'm sure you will have no trouble selling this stunning piece if the customer doesn't follow through.

And hmm... I agree with the pay-in-advance statement. Have you notified the customers saying "I'm so sorry to pursue you about this custom work, but I want it to be completed in time for your special event - I would greatly appreciate if we could confirm its production immediately!"

Sorry, don't know why I just wrote out the whole proposal sentence :P But yes, hopefully a reminder that they are running out of time will light a fire under their butt.

Diana said...

I've never seen you smiling before. You are stunning, whatever the color hair.

I can totally relate about the hair. Not about the cartoon heroes, though, because I was much too morose to identify with them. I was in love with the anti-heroes, such as The Purple Pie Man (instead of Strawberry Shortcake). Maybe that's why my hair was always purple. Maybe not.

My mom made a similar mistake with me at 10. "If you don't stop wearing black," she told me, "I will stop buying you clothes." It turns out she lied, but I did launch a lifelong hobby of thrift shop purchasing for myself.

Hey, I hope I didn't offend with my story. The one I sent you, well, although it's true it's still a little shocking. Especially the Bobby 'The Brain' part. I just hope he's not like a family member or something. ;)