Last days of 2013...

Never too early to start?  I just included our 2014 tour on the Teddy Bear Artists and Friends event calendar and asked that it be included in their "Teddy Bear Shows" listing. 

If you create or collect Teddy Bears or dolls it's a lovely group to join.  Not only can you take part in their annual TBAFF event but you can browse over 1000 members' profiles and see the posted "New Borns".  Neat!

The gates are locked...

For another year our tour is over!  Thank you to all who took part:  the artists and collectors who helped make the world a better place for so many animals.  In the end,

Of the 26 participating artists, 12 artists shared 28 sales (noting additionally that musician S.J. Tucker enjoyed download sales generating $600 in donations)

 

 

That's pretty incredible!  And we had 1066 unique visitors, the graph shows the highs and lows in traffic from September 27th to November 7th:

 

  



Overall, I think we can count the tour a success with $954.60 in donations for our selected animal charities!  Awesome!

Until next year, BOO!

Hi all!
I just spent the past hour promoting us on Every group I am in on Facebook, Etsy and Linkedin...Let's get those stats moving UP!!!!!!!!!! I also asked my cousin who runs the Walkill River School in New York to post for us, so keep your fingers crossed!

Hi,
I've had a great time enjoying everyone's Wonderful art pieces for the tour.  If anyone could give me some advice or tips on improving my website, I'd appreciate it.  Being new to all of this, I am not sure if I have too much, if my site loads too slow, due to all the pages, etc... any suggestions or advice, comments are welcome! Thanks to all for the great touring of some Bootiful Creations! It's been fun looking!
Deana

Glorious Hallowe'en display!

I just wanted to share with you the current display in our library which includes Diana Ussery's art!  Last year Diana created the black bat (on the left of the paper maché pumpkin) for our Online Hallowe'en Tour and, unknown to me, my sister purchased the bat and later gave it to me for Xmas!  Wow!  I was delighted and surprised!  So this year I wanted to show him off and so there he is, for all to see. 

In fact the paper maché pumpkin was created under Tammi Beaulieu's excellent tutelage! 

And the mini fabric pumpkins?  They are for sale, see my studio page!

The display is called "Get Ready for Hallowe'en" with three craft ideas:  paper maché, card making and fabric pumpkins. 

Statistics: let's break last year's record!

 

Happy October indeed!  I hope you've been enjoying a wonder-filled time preparing for the big day!  Only 12 sleeps until Hallowe'en!

 

Our tour is going very well, here are the latest statistics (courtesy of statcounter.com):

 

We've had 776 unique visitors for the period of September 27th up till today, with 24 sales.  We seem to have plateaued, though, so let's push for another run of great sales!  Please do use your physical and virtual connections to let the world know about the tour and the work we're doing to raise money for our animal friends! 

 

Yesterday we were in Elora and left bookmarks and posters at the Visitors' Center, the public library and a wonderful little store called Seasons & Cinnamon which had a Hallowe'en assortment of treats! 

 

What a lovely day we had, enjoying the Twilight Zoo which is scattered all about town and walking the gorge trail where we came across a barn with an ominous "Walking Dead" type warning and a beautiful ruin of a former industrial or mill building (the photo on the left looks a bit like a face, don't you think?). 

 

This photo below is from the Culture Days event held here on September 28th, where I set out this table to let people know about our tour.  Simple and effective. 

 

Please do share our tour's address with your buddies, friends, colleagues, collectors, strangers, zombies that still have credit cards... and let's beat last year's record of 2071 visitors and 38 sales!  Yeah!  Boo!

I added a couple of new items today to kick off the trick or treating.
Best wishes to everyone for raising money for our animal friends!
I am donating 20% of my sales to the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center
http://www.wolfeducation.org
I grew up just a couple of miles from where the center is. 

Crreeeaaakkkk! The gates open!

Happy October 1st! 

Our tour is officially open, come and trick or treat with us!!!  We've already enjoyed a phenomenal success, with 6 sales including the 2 incredibly sweet soft sculpture pieces by Kelly Dauterman pictured in her welcoming photo:

 

Grue and Willies have both found their forever homes, with $74 combined going to the charity Kelly selected:  Shark Trust !  Yes, these lovelies are supporting the much-misunderstood sharks, many species suffering terrible losses due to over-fishing and pollution. 

 

 

And sharks are essential to the health of our oceans!

these 2 panels are from the book Sharks by David Burnie

 

Ready to go....

All set and ready to go...Happy Fall to All!!! I am honored to be participating!

My Page is READY

Yay -- my page is all ready to go for the Halloween Studio Tour
I am offering this little mummy guy this great collar and more
I am working on pieces to add to the show as the month goes on -- very exciting

It's coming!!!

It's coming!!!  Only 4 days until our tour previews for Culture Days and only 8 days until our grand October 1st opening! 

 

I am being dazzled and amazed by the art coming in, and the web pages that our artists have created!  WOW!  You trick or treaters are in for a real treat!  And remember:  each artist has selected an animal charity to support, so we're helping critters like Spencer at the Whatcom Humane Society (Pam Pontious' chosen charity) 

and helping wild creatures like wolves at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center (Deana Pfaus' chosen charity).

SO every purchase makes you happy, an artist happy and animals happy!

I am Very Honored to participate in this event.  I have enjoyed shopping at it for the past couple of years! I wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Deana Pfaus, and I am a crafter from Florida.  I have been quilting for a decade or so and making embroidered items for several years.  I have a Love for hand crafted items and enjoy creating unique, non traditional items.  I have a passion for nature and animals and think this is a Great opportunity to help out.  Thanks for having me on board!

3 little pumpkins sitting on a fence...

 

This is one of the treats I'll be offering:  mini fabric pumpkins with wooden or pipe-cleaner stems.  They will be $7 each with $2 from each sale going to my chosen charity, Salthaven.

 

And today I distributed our poster and bookmarks to the 7 libraries in our network, so each one got a poster and a small stack of bookmarks!  A library is an excellent place to spread the news about our tour, so please get out there and let your community know about our event!

 

 

Scream it out!

We're out there!  I'm very pleased to say I picked up a Culture Days pamphlet for the Stratford and Perth County area and our tour is listed prominently! 

 Look at that! 

 

The tour very much depends on every artist doing her/his part to advertise, so if you were wondering what to write to get the tour listed in your local art newsletter or paper (or modify it for an online calendar), here's an example: 

 *******************************************************************************





Hello,

  Could you please include the following in your next issue of “              ”?  At least one local artist (myself) will be participating and our event raises funds for animal charities!

Online Hallowe'en Artists’ Studio Trick or Treat

www.halloweenstudiotour.com
An international online studio tour to give you goosebumps, featuring artist dolls, soft sculptures, recycled glass art, teddy bears, jewellery, masks, music, paper art and many other artistic treats! Online only, starting October 1st and running the entire Hallowe’en season, benefiting various animal charities. Please contact woosel@wildmail.com with any questions.

 Thank you,

********************************************************************************************************

 

And that's all you need to say!  Of course, you can personalize it and showcase your art, go for it!  Please, get the word out there!  Let's have an incredibly successful tour!

 

Back online!

It's alive!  ALIVE! 

We're back!  Our website is now back and everything looks okay so let's hope no more nasty blips from the web host!!! 

Sorry for any frustration this caused.  Believe me, I was frustrated!!!! 

Website down!! Deader than a zombie...

AAARRRGGHH!!!  The site is down, as of Tuesday afternoon due to problems with my web host.  Here's what they have to say:   

"We have a raid failure on our shared server van-share3 . We do have backups and we are trying to retrieve all data from the backup and migrate it to a new server . This process can take a few hours to complete and we appreciate your patience while the data is restored.

I will keep you posted with any updates .

Thank you,
Anoop"

Well, it's been 2 days now and I am pissed.  Thankfully it's not October!!!!

Furthermore, if you tried to email me at @scratchingatthewindow.com, please resend to woosel[at]wildmail.com.  Ugh...

Blog it!

Two bits of news!  First off, the tour will be opening a few days early:

Secondly, if you can not create a webpage, we've thought up an alternative:  using your blog!

ABOUT USING A BLOG POST AS YOUR STUDIO PAGE:

Since each blog post has a unique address, I could link to a specific post on your blog.

If using a blog, please include the following:

Title of the blog post:  My " studio" on the Halloween trick or treat tour

Top of the post should read something like:  I’m taking part in the Online Hallowe’en Artists’ Studio Trick or Treat (include the tour’s button) and here are my offerings for the tour with 20% (or more as you've decided) of all my sales going to my favorite animal charity:  ________________.

And at the bottom of the post it should say:  Now go back to the tour map by clicking here.   with a link to http://www.halloweenstudiotour.com/map-2013.htm

Your post can be created in advance and saved as draft and then “published” on Sept. 27th (Friday) for the Culture Days preview.
 

Remember to include an email, shipping info, payment options and all other necessary details so our trick or treaters can contact and buy from you easily!

 

The rest of the artist guidelines are at http://www.halloweenstudiotour.com/for_artists.htm so please do take a look and see if you can participate!  I’d love to have you and your art to share with our trick or treaters, of which there were 2071 last year!  Twenty artists have already said yes so I need only 10 more to have a full map.  Take a look at our Facebook page and our Culture Days listing, we’re actively getting the word out there and hope to share the Hallowe’en fun with you!

  If you have any questions, email me!

It's alive!

 

Our tour has arisen like a zombie and is now moving as quickly as a "Dawn of the Dead" corpse!  Yippy!  Thanks to Bill Slavin, here's our poster and if you go to our guidelines page you can copy the bookmarks!

 

Here's our button:

 

I'm also very happy to say we are once again a Culture Days event, and we've got a Facebook page!

 

Take a look at the 18 artists that have already joined the Tour, and their chosen animal charities!

 

  Are you an artist?  Would you like to join us?  Take a look at the guidelines and then email me!  I'd love to see your work.

98 days to Hallowe'en...

Greetings!  I've received some inquires about the Tour for 2013 and thought it best, after emailing all the artists to post an update here.  Sadly, neither Bat Conservation International nor Bat World Sanctuary wants to support us, seems our donations are too small for them to consider helping us help them.  This is very disappointing not just for us but also any grass-roots group that wants to raise funds for a charity:  are they all this ungrateful?  I hope not!  But that leaves us without our "backers" so to speak and without access to advertising through their mailing lists and on their facebook pages.

  What to do?  At first I was really disappointed, then angry, then depressed.  Then inspired!  I saw this at a local art fair and took it home:

It was created by artist Kym Brundritt and you can visit her website here.  I've hung it right over my weekly agenda which I check every morning so now I pause to read these words and re-focus.  Awesome!  And so far it's working, a great mood-lifter.

So, where do we go from here?  I want our Online Hallowe'en Artists' Studio Trick or Treat to live on, but I very much need to cut back the amount of my time it devours.  Therefore, I've asked the artists if they're capable and interested in creating their own webpages, their own spot on the tour, to which I would link so that the map at http://www.halloweenstudiotour.com would directly link to each artists' page that they created (rather than on my webspace).  This grants each artist greater freedom, as they can choose to create a studio photo and self-portrait or not, and post as many pieces (within reason) of their Hallowe'en or seasonal art, editing or adding as they want.  AND the animals will still benefit!  How?  Each artist will get to choose which animal charity they want to help, by donating 20% or more of their sales to that charity.  On their page they will clearly state which organization will get their $$ by including its website, address, etc... and perhaps some information about why they chose this charity.  

 So there's the scoop:  there will be a Tour but it will be different.  Hopefully enough artists will be interested in participating and we'll have a crazy wonderful collection of art for everyone to see and purchase, we'll share some great advertising and raise money for some very worthwhile groups, helping lots of different animals, both wild and domestic.  

If you're interested in being one of our awesome artists, email me!  And if you're one of our equally awesome collectors, we're honored and hope we'll have a truly incredible show for you to enjoy this October!       

Tour review in "Teddy Bear and Friends" magazine

Incredible news: my review for the 2012 Online Hallowe'en Artists' Studio Trick or Treat is in the current issue of Teddy Bear and Friends!  And they gave us a full page, all in color!  This is such a lovely surprise, I had thought that (when it didn't appear in the last issue) it wasn't accepted but here it is:  big, beautiful and eye-catching!  I'm especially pleased that Amanda Lollar's quote is included and that so many artists' creations cover the page!  Look at it, gorgeous! 

Thank you Teddy Bear and Friends! 

I have to admit that the tour's future is somewhat in jeopardy, but this is a wonderful moral booster and what a boon for the bats! 

 

Clawscratches

So, dear readers, for the time being this blog is dead while I'm actively posting on my "clawscratches" blog, so join me there until the Hallowe'en season drifts a wee bit closer!

http://clawscratches.blogspot.ca/