And you thought tea parties were harmless fun …

I recently finished a new piece that appeared in the Part Time Artist, Full Time Friend show, held at the Classic Comedy Club on Sunday 18 November. The show was a great local arts initiative combining a one-day art show, 14 bands and musicians and comedy acts running all day. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the show in person (it’s crazy this time of year), but apparently it was a roaring success.

“The Great Victorian Food Fight” was inspired by one of my favourite children’s book, Princess Pam Fell into the Jam, as well as an exhibition of food paintings I saw about 10 years ago. Mostly, it’s just a fun illustration of how a tea part can get dangerously out of hand.

Detail of my favorite sections – the pink cupcakes, the immaculate hairdo, the jelly flying, the cat sneaking some cake, and the little mouse in the teapot.

Detail of the gold decoration around the edges.

This piece didn’t sell in the show, so is still available for purchase for $310. If you’re interested, contact me at steff AT grymmandepic.com and I can give you all the details. To see more examples of my art/illustration work and hire me for editorial or custom commissions, check out my Gallery page.

It’s a lazy, sunny Sunday here in New Zealand. My husband and I have just purchased a 4 acre lifestyle block – eeee! – and it is sucking away every moment of free time we have right now. It’s wonderful to be spending so much time outside, doing physical labour, feeling the satisfaction of dirt under your nails and a sun on your arms. I haven’t had such restful sleep in years! We have a lot of work ahead of us before we can even begin to build our dream home, but we’re excited about building our future in this place.

Since it’s a lazy Sunday, and you might be spending the day thinking about your business and catching up on your Internet reading, I thought I’d link you up to some of my most recent articles for writers and small businesses around the web:

Read On…

The handmade movement is booming all over the world, and is becoming a real force in the market. Aimed at countering mass-produced consumerism, “buy handmade” has become a mantra of many disenchanted consumers, and owners of small handmade businesses are benefitting. People want less stuff, and they want to feel connected to the stuff they DO buy – they want to know things are ethically produced, they want to feel as though they KNOW the person who created an object. They’re tired of mass-produced crap.

But handmade businesses just can’t compete with the prices of goods from China, and the economies of scale for larger companies mean most small business owners are struggling with increasingly small profit margins.

As an example: two brightly colored wool hats sell in a clothing store for $30. One hat was made in China, shipped to the country and sold to the retailer by a large hat-buying chain for $15. The retailer makes $15 and that hat-buying chain makes $8. The costs of shipping, storage, freight and packaging add up to $7.5 and the Chinese hat maker earns about .50c.

Read On…

This is a guest post by Emily Helms, an incredibly talented, intelligent and compassionate writer, bookworm and creative copywriter (she’s humble too, but trust me, this girl has the “brain smarts”.)

If you’re a creative biz owner who is just starting out, I’m willing to bet that the money isn’t rolling in the door yet. In that case, teaching may be a great way to earn some extra cash while honing your skills.

I’ve taught for almost two years in three different settings: out of my home, out of a community arts school, and most recently, out of a teaching studio at my local music store.

In this post, I’ll go over some advantages and disadvantages of teaching to help you decide whether it’d be a good addition to your artist’s bag of tools. I’ll also go over some of the things you’ll need to consider before taking on your first victim…er, student.

Read On…

Here on Grymm & Epic, I talk mostly about business – but I’m a true believer that you are happiest when your business – what you accomplish in life – is a reflection of the person you are inside, and when you’re able to reach out and help a group of people who you identify with. In life, everything we do comes back to the basic truth that human beings are inherently gentle and kind.

I wrote about this, and in particular, about the kindness of MY people – the metalheads – over on Amanda Oak’s amazing blog – Kind over Matter. This post – The Kindness of Metalheads – was published while I was away, but I’d love it if you wanted to go and have a look at it and maybe leave a comment over there, or here, or on your own blog, and let me know what you think.

And, you should also check out the rest of the Kind Over Matter blog – a world of inspiration for artists just like you who believe that the best work is that which brings kindness to others. I especially love this recent post by Dyamond Robinson-Patlyek called Fight Fire with Love.

Also, yay, I’m back!

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