My 1st time selling at the Portland Saturday Market

I have survived my first weekend as an art vendor at the Portland Saturday Market and here are some pictures to prove it:


It was a super cold raining weekend thus I heard a lot of vendors complaining of low sales...so I dont feel too disheartened at not making my goal of sales for the weekend. I did have some great purchases and some amazing conversations with people who stopped by my booth. I also was thrilled about how friendly my neighbor vendors were and how easy I made friends with them. The crafty vendors seemed to greatly out weighed the art vendors but i did find a few and had a great time talking, comparing notes and getting some great advice.
Speaking of advice, a few days before the market weekend I did a faerie oracle reading in which i pulled 'Iris of the Rainbow' and her message was pretty much "be aware that a lot of work is ahead but the outcome is glorious and fruitful." So im going to keep at it! I don't think its profitable to go every weekend,rain or shine so i will be a lil more choosy on which weekends i vend. But i am very excited that my artwork passed the jury, i survived my 1st weekend and that im now set for the rest of the year.
How was your weekend? any new ventures?
Many blessings,
-Chelsea Rose
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Work in Progress acrylic painting + 23rd street art show

Another productive weekend was had!
I got a lot of work done on the acrylic painting i am working on:

Danny snapped this photo of me while I worked on her. After an hour more of painting i finished putting the first layer of color on the entire painting...so now there is no grey left peaking out. I have to go back in and lay more color down on certain spots + work in more shadow and highlights....then i should be ready to sign and varnish the painting.

Also...you can see in the photo i have combed out my front two locks. Now i have some soft hair to play with in the front. I felt i just needed a bit of a change and i am pretty happy with the results. It took about an hour each to comb out the dreads. I soaked them in heavy conditioner and then used a flea comb to push the knotted hair smooth. Was a lot of work but im glad i did it.

and on to some very exciting news!


Danny will be showcasing his newly created body of ebru/screen printing artwork which will include his life size Buddha silkscreen prints with his giant ebru marbling mono prints and more. For a sneak peak at some of his work that will be on display check out his flickr page.
"This is a one night event in conjunction with NW 23rd third Thursday art walk. Come check out huge Buddha screen prints, art drawings, sculpture, marbling, Industrial Dub music, jewelry, faerie tutu’s, and wine on November 18th from 6pm to 9pm. The event is being help in a "pop up" gallery that use to be a cheese shop on NW Thurman and NW 23rd. Bring friends and family!"

....So that about wraps it up for this blog entry.
Although I am excited to announce my body art photography book is ready to go to print today...so my books will be available soon for purchase. More details soon!

Much love to all,
-Chelsea Rose
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September's Last Thursday Artwalk on Alberta st + work in progress photos

...had a wonderful time yesterday at the Last Thursday Artwalk on Alberta st fair!
We tried a different spot this time ( corner of Alberta and 23rd st )and did really well. Unfortunately we forgot our camera but a friend took some cell phone photos of the booth:


We got to our spot around 1:00pm and set up next to our friend Shauna mama and her mother who makes the most AMAZING home made Tempeh in the world. Danny and I saved a spot for our etsy friend MuseTypes also...so we had friendlies on either side of us. The location was great as well...on our side of the street there were about 5 booths that were very close together so in some way we made a super big booth for people to walk through and check out our wares. I was very happy to see lots of artists out this time( less imports and food carts) so that warmed me :)

I brought some painting projects to work on since we were going to be in our booth from 1pm-10pm. But before i knew it, it was dark and the art walk came to life. I sold quite a few of my pen and ink paintings and a lil bit of everything else( prints, tie dye, silkscreen prints.) This was our most successful art fair so far this year so we were really excited. People seemed a lot more open this time, i had lots of great conversations with curious passer byes, artists and the like. I think this might end up being our last out door fair of the year since its probably going to start getting cold and rainy..so am glad it was an especially good one.

and now a look into the art room and projects in the works:

( check out the lovley headwrap- its a new one! I traded for it. I LOVE bartering. Got it from the lovley Iolithie )
you cant really tell from this photo since its only a snapshot of my easel area but last week the art room got a good cleaning and organizing. I got rid of a lot of stuff i didn't need that was clogging up the creative space + hung a bunch of art and pieces of inspiration that i had kept boxed up for too long. I finally feel like the art room is "broken in" and it feels great to work in there. Unfortunately we had to rip it all apart for last nights art fair so i will probably spend some time this evening putting everything back together again so it will be nice and inviting for weekend art exploits.
and the projects i have been working on:

So far the biggest change made to this work in progress is the background. insitally i had painted it a dark blue/green/purple but it didn't seem to "pop"...so i am working on getting a pleasant warm and glowy aura around my creature instead. i still have lots of blending work to do on the background. I then need to work on the tree/staff/pen...especially to develop the upper branches + add leaves. Then more work on her form. This is so much smaller then i usually work so i have been a bit frustrated with it. The idea of working smaller was that i could offer them for more reasonable prices...but i love working big! Ah well....we shall see how it ends up.

...and here's my other painting i am workin on right now:

I don't think i am thrilled with this at all...but then again it isn't done. It was one of those spur of the moment, super random and unplanned spurt of creative outpouring. It felt really good to paint without thinking or planning....so i had a lot of fun with it. Still...not sure i like it but at least it felt good to paint. The pink is bothering me so that might be the next thing to go.

I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend full of art room time.
...more updates soon.

Best wishes,
-Chelsea Rose
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July Last Thursday Artwalk on Alberta Street + new corset

So its Friday morning and i am having a hard time keeping my eyes open and my legs and arms feel as if they were made of lead but emotionally i feel elevated and inspired- these are the true sings of a art walk that went well!

Yesterday was Last Thursday Art walk on Alberta St ( a free art vending opportunity that occurs monthly in Portland Oregon.)
Unfortunately this was the first one of these i was able to attend so far this year because previous months it was either raining or i was out of town. So, i decided i was going to go this month and go enforce, thus i took the day off from work so that we could arrive
super early ( around 12:00pm) to stake out a good spot.

This is a photo Danny took after i had finished getting ready by painting my face for the art walk.
It was a super bright day so we were very lucky to have grabbed a spot with ample shade and trees. Still...the brightness made it hard to snap photos of our booth setup during the day but Danny managed to grab some of my body painting exploits:


I painted several lil girls faces + a few young adult faces...but when i asked one person if i could paint their face they turned around and asked " can i paint you!?"
Of course i said yes! they painted a small vine starting from my numb up a lil past my hand that ended in a heart. It was a silly/fun/unexpected treasure.
As the day crept into night danny was able to get a shot of our booth setup:

This photo was taken at a strange angle because what you dont see is the massive wall of moving people walking down the street in front of the booth. The turnout for this was just insane. After 8:00pm it was almost impossible to step out of the booth because the "river of flesh" was roaring!
We were setup facing the street with two tables on parallel sides .
One table with my my art:

the other table with Danny's art:

We used to always set up our artwork together but found that customers got confused as to "who's artwork was who's" which seemed to bother them a bit. Thus, we have found that now this separation seems to streamline customers experience making it less "modge podged" and more effective.
We did also have Danny's stencil records and a few silkscreen shirts on display laying on a sheet on the sidewalk:

We had a lot of folks stop and hover over the records- seems a particular point of interest to many.
We did well in sales this time which is always encouraging. We sold two of my pen and ink on Masonite board illustrations, a few art prints, a couple tie dye, and several face/body paintings.
Also managed to luck out and have a bunch of familiar faces pop up out of the blue so there was lots of hugs and catching ups to do. Met a few new friends as well.
And, as allways...its left me really looking forward to the next art walk on Alberta!
If you are interested in seeing some wonderful documentive photos of the this months artwalk check out the amazing Anni Becker's photographs here- bosting photos of all the crazy splendors of the day such as fire dancers, roaming musicans, dance pits, free hugs, crazy costumes, cute puppies, cops, artwork and artists , jugglers and much much more!!!

In other news, my new corsets arrived in the mail this week!
They were made by Danny's talented lil sis seamstress extraordinaire:

I am in love with it! I had picked out the fabric and sent it over awhile ago so i was delighted to have it in time to wear to the art walk last night.

Tomorrow i am going to the FaerieWorlds summer celebration festival to check it out for the first time. I am mainly going to enjoy myself but partly going to scope out the art vendors to see if perhaps i should hold a booth of my own at the fair for next year. we shall see! Also very excited that i get to do some body painting while i am there: will be painting the Didgeridoo Man in the band Telesma for their musicale prefromance at the festival! Pictures from this outing will most probably be posted via blog update on Monday.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend filled with joy, relaxation and creation.

Peace n Love,
-Chelsea Rose
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