Piddix 2.0

Summer 2017 Road Trip--Oregon to Minnesota and back again--Painted Hills, Spencer Opal Mine, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Laura Ingalls Wilder homestead, Glacier & Silverwood Water Park.

To all of the awesome, amazing people who have supported piddix (and thus me) over the past 11 years, a huge hello and lots of love heading your way from the other side of brain surgery. I’ve tried a dozen times to write about my experiences over the last two years, and I just can’t. At least not yet. Suffice it to say I’m here. I’m 98% recovered, and, as long as I get a good solid 8 hours of sleep, I’m feeling great. We even took a huge, 4000-mile camping trip this summer. It was time spent with my boys I will always treasure.

With all I’ve learned about myself and my business during this process, I’m planning to switch up piddix quite a bit in the next few months. I will be phasing out my printed collage sheets from www.piddix.com, though you’ll still be able to find them online in places such as Annie Howes and Fire Mountain Gems. My focus is moving more toward art licensing, including several new home decor and wall art lines with some amazing companies that I’ll share at some point. Digital collage sheets will stay on etsy for a while, but I’m not sure yet how much time I’ll be putting into launching new images. Etsy is just too unpredictable as a company right now, so I’m waiting to see how that all goes.

In the mean time, please know you are all in my thoughts. The love and support I’ve received from so many of you for so long is incredibly appreciated. Absolutely no way I would be where I am without it.

All the best,
Corinna

More Miles Than Money

New baby cousin!

Portland public schools sometimes have more days off than on, so for a recent 5-day break I grabbed the boys and flew down to sunny Santa Barbara to hang out with family and a new baby cousin.

We're lucky in that we get to travel quite a bit, often for free.

For a long time I didn't see a collaboration between being crafty and saving money, then I stumbled upon a graduation speech by Chuck Close that made the connection:

"I’d like to say something to the parents of the art majors. This is probably not what you had in mind, you know? You hoped maybe—I don’t know, maybe medical school, maybe a degree in law, but I want to tell you that a life in art can be a wonderful life. Artists live better at near-poverty level income than yuppie bond traders do at much larger income."

For me it's fun to come up with creative ways to do amazing things for free. For example, for the Santa Barbara trip I grabbed two Alaska Airlines credit cards. They each come with a 25,000 mile sign-up bonus, and if you use this special trick they'll even PAY YOU $100 to use them (which covers the $75 annual fee). So we ended up with three free airplane tickets and $20 in my pocket after taxes.

In fact, we've received around a million points/miles over the last several years with similar programs. If anyone is curious, I might write up a longer description of how exactly to go about traveling for free. Or here's a couple of good places to start:

The Points Guy Beginner's Guide
Make Your Dream Trip a Reality (or his free website here)

It mostly works if you have 4-8 hours per month to coordinate different trips and cards, love excel spreadsheets, and can pay your monthly bills off each month. It's definitely not for everyone. Or even most people. But for those with some creativity and a "why not" attitude, traveling and staying at places like this for free is pretty awesome.

Park Hyatt Maldives, where you can stay for free with your Hyatt certificate (photo from The Points Guy).

Nine Days and Counting to New York City

Next Saturday, May 14th, I board an airplane headed for New York City. It will be my first solo flight since my son was born four years ago, and the thing I'm perhaps most excited about is having eight uninterrupted hours of time to sit and read whatever cheesy sci-fi/romance novel I pick up at Powells.
 
I'll be going to NYC for two shows: Surtex (licensing) and the National Stationery Show, both held at the Javits Center in Manhattan. I've never been to either, and have no real plan other than to wander around and soak it all in. I will be able to meet a couple of folks in person to whom I've licensed images, so that's pretty exciting. There's also at least one party to attend, and my agent will have a booth at Surtex with some of my artwork (#408, if you'd like to come by).

I've also tacked on two days at the end of the trip for archival work. Scanning images in archives is more prep work than perhaps you'd imagine. I've spent weeks emailing and calling a dozen different archivists to figure out what I can and cannot bring (camera, scanner, tri-pod, etc.), what I can access, what might be in storage, and above all the intricacies of seeking permission to use the archival material in my own artwork. I have my eye on some amazing vintage travel posters and French postcards, so depending on what I end up with I'll definitely share.

A very wise woman once told me that attending a trade show is almost always worth it for your business. Last year at the Craft and Hobby Show (CHA)--my first trade show for piddix ever--I came away with my agent, who has been amazing to work with. This year I'm not 100% sure what to expect, but I am most definitely very, very excited to be going. I hope to write a bit about my experience and the shows, so if anyone has any questions about what it's like to attend them, definitely send them my way.

A Door of My Own

I have a door in the office where we're staying in Minnesota. A real door. A door without glass, that closes and everything. I had no idea what a big difference that would make.

See, back in Portland I have a nice home office....with two huge divided light French doors. It's a bit like a fish bowl, surrounded by glass and right in the middle of everything, which makes it relatively impossible to work when a certain 3-year-old puts his little nose up to the glass and says "Mommmmmmy, play soccer with me." Or a certain 30-something-year-old says "can you do this little thing real quick." It means I work in fits and starts. Never quite getting an undivided chunk of time. In some ways it is wonderful. I definitely don't miss anything going on in the house. But it is definitely not an ideal situation for actually getting work done.

In Minnesota (where we're staying for a month) I've set up my temporary office on the second floor in an area that is small, bright, and best of all...has a door that closes. In Portland it is a huge struggle to balance home/home life and business/home life. I feel like I'm always working but also never working efficiently. That's part of the trick with having a home office, right? And I know it can be frustrating for Brian, too, since I'm always so anxious to shoo them out of the house so I can get things done.

I'm pretty thrilled that something as small as a door that closes might be representative of the door between work and home. Creating that division more strongly may allow me to not only work more efficiently, but also to leave work at the "office" at the end of the day. Who knows, maybe I'll even get my evenings back again? What a wonderful next goal to work toward.

Traveling, Crafty Style

My family loves to travel. Even Declan makes us play "airplane" on a frequent basis, where he'll pack up his mini suitcase and practice flying across the county. So even though we've had to scale back on plenty of expenses while building up piddix, we've also come up with several creative ways to contine our traveling on a budget.

1. Rack up the Miles.
Now that we have to pay for three airplane tickets, flying is even more expensive. We almost always try to get at least one if not two of the airplane tickets for free using miles we've collected with credit cards. Both Brian and I signed up for the American Express Delta card, where we get 20,000 miles with the first purchase and no annual fee for the first year. When looking for the best airline miles cards I first ask friends and research online. I then call the credit card company, read the fine print, and make sure that the miles I "earn" by making my first purchase automatically transfer into an airline account rather than staying with the card. That way, I can cancel the credit card if I'd like before the yearly fees kick in. I also add a little sticker to the front of the card that says "cancel by May 2010." That way I won't get hit with a $95 fee by accidentally keeping the card more than a year. We have also set up most of our bills to be paid automatically by credit card and then pay off the cards right away (another great way to add up the miles). And yes, we're careful not to apply for and cancel too many cards, which may negatively affect our credit.

2. Do Your Homework Beforehand.
We're hoping to go to Disneyland in mid-January for a tradeshow/mini-vacation. Upon learning that one-day entrance fees are $70-$100, I did some research for alternatives. I found that by volunteering at a non-profit organization before we go, we can receive a free park ticket. It is often much easier to research and print out coupons and specials beforehand. That way, I'm not wasting my vacation trying to hunt down deals.

3. Find "Bonus" Time.
When I think of timeshares, the first thing that comes to mind is this South Park episode. In other words, not a very pleasant experience. But we've actually been fortunate to pick up "bonus time" through my parent's timeshare quite often. Basically, we purchase unused rooms for a small portion of the cost plus a cleaning fee. You have to go through a friend or family member who can book the timeshare for you, and in our case we have to wait until two weeks beforehand to secure a room. Another bonus, besides the very-low cost, is that the rooms have full-sized kitchens so we can save money by eating several meals a day at the condo.

4. Combine Work and Play.
For us, pretty much any work trip can be made into a mini family vacation. When I was still selling at craft fairs, we'd pick which fairs to sell at based on where we wanted to travel. Similarly, when I decided to attend a tradeshow in Anaheim this winter for piddix, we looked into activities we could do as a family in my off-days (like Disneyland). I also spend a good portion of my traveling time visiting different archives to scan material for my collage sheets and we almost always go as a family--definitely one of the large bonuses of us all working from home and having flexible schedules.

If all of our winter travel plans work out, I'll be posting from both California and from a month-long trip to the mid-West. Who knows, perhaps I can find a tradeshow in Venice this Spring? I'm sure they have some amazing archives, too...