What is not to love about this lovely piece of work? I ask you, how can this kind of genius be rejected? Because one person's genius is, well, not another person's genius. Yes, not being accepted to a show definitely falls into the sucks category. I've had rejections to three major shows already this year, which will result in an estimated loss of income of $6000.00 or more. That REALLY goes in the "sucks" category! Now, I could sit around and feel sorry for myself. Let's face it. That's exactly what I've been doing. Or, I could examine the reasons for not being accepted to these shows and learn from them, in theory anyway. Unless I'm too butt hurt to open my eyes and look at it without the "who can resist me" attitude. So let's have at it.
Show rejection #1 - I have applied to this show for years. It has a very complex application process and it's very hard to get accepted for the first time. I got farther this year than ever before in this process. I made it through the first jury round. My understanding is that there are two rounds. So, I'm getting closer. At this point, I think the only thing I can do differently is to apply earlier. It shouldn't make any difference when I apply as long as it's by the deadline, but sometimes it just does.
Show rejection #2 - Quite frankly, this one pissed me off. The jury consists of retailers, not crafters. The jury form stated my craft was not hand made. Which leads me to believe that although I was told submitting my website URL was sufficient and would be referred to for the artistic process and additional photos, that this did not happen. Even though as the result of continuing research I have never found a big box store, import store, or another crafter with the same product, or even close, for that matter, I received only 7 of 15 points for creativity. Really? They decided I was simply embellishing the resin. OMG. Honestly, I'm not even going to address that because it's so ridiculous. The first, and only thing I could think of that turned them off is that I use manufactured resin and porcelain animals instead of making the animals myself of polymer clay as I have in the past. The problem with making my own animals is that a) I suck at it, and b) it is simply not cost effective or time efficient. I would have to raise my prices by at least $15.00 per piece and then I would not sell even one of them. So, from a business stand point, I can't justify hand crafting my little animals.
Show rejection #3 - This show is, again, very difficult to get into. There's a huge amount of entries for a relatively small amount of accepted artist's/crafter's. I think a sign of the times is that more and more artisan's are applying to only the larger, more "sure thing", very established, long standing shows. We can't afford to have shows where our profits are tiny, or worse yet, we wind up in the hole. I have found that the smaller shows are searching for crafter's while the larger shows are turning many quality crafter's away because so many apply. I also think this will level off as the economy improves. That may take another 150 years, but I'll try to remain optimistic.
That sums up my words of wisdom. My apologies for another thing that sucks, which is my grammar. I'm having a humongous brain fart and just throwing ,'s and 's all over the place because I can't remember the basic rules of the English language. Sniffin' too much resin, I'm sure.
Happy crafting,
Kathy
http://nnlamps.com
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