Paint Party Friday: Week 33 Check-In

And now for something a little bit different... and a little bit fun and Halloweeny! Welcome to Week 33 of Paint Party Friday where this week the big treat, as always, is sharing in and seeing each others' painting endeavours!

Last week our poll talked about where you buy art and while "all of the above" won (as usual), the top three were - from Etsy stores, from the artist directly and from art festivals or friends who are artists. That suggests to us, that these could also be good strategies for selling paintings (if you are so inclined). The contact between buyer and artist seems to encourage you to buy and so contact with you as an artist, may encourage others to buy from you.

We would like to explore that further but Hallowe'en is fast approaching as is the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos). Many of you have been showing us art inspired by these celebrations and we thought we'd join in with a silly, fun poll and ask - What's your favourite Hallowe'en candy?

Please make sure to use your post URL address NOT your blog home page URL address as there are many late visitors who get confused as to which post is for PPF when they arrive (after Friday) at your website. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Linky, an explanation of how this tool works can be found on Week 1 and Week 2 check-ins.



By the way, our friend and fellow partyer, Natasha May, is having a Halloween Party !! Join in the fun on October 31st at her blog if you'd like to partake in some artsy Halloween festivities.

Meanwhile enjoy all the wonderful paintings and fabulous fellow artists here at Paint Party Friday!

Paint Party Friday: Week 32 Check In

image created at dumpr

Welcome to Week 32 at Paint Party Friday! So great to have you all at the party, showing off your painting and visiting with the rest of us PPFers!

Last week there was a great discussion at the party about framing - until the poll died temporarily. Everything seems fine now. (We are sorry - it was beyond our control and ability to fix it - we're so relieved it came back!) While you could, you told us that you use a number of different techniques for framing or that you paint the edges so framing may not be necessary. A number of you mentioned that buyers often want to make the framing decision themselves, and that made us think it would be worth looking at painting from a buyer's perspective, as we've spent the past few weeks looking at it from a seller/creator's perspective.

So we wonder about the paintings you buy - this week we'll ask about where you buy and soon we'll discuss why you buy what you buy. The answers are interesting in and of themselves but we hope they also may help those of us who wish to sell art, to understand buyers' decision making processes.

Please make sure to use your post URL address NOT your blog home page URL address as there are many late visitors who get confused as to which post is for PPF when they arrive (after Friday) at your website. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Linky, an explanation of how this tool works can be found on Week 1 and Week 2 check-ins.

Hope you have a great time at the party!

P.S. We've had a number of people raise the issue of Blogger commenting and the time it takes to fill out all those annoying "captcha"s aka word verifications. As you probably know (haha) Kristin and EVA are not techies or programming whizzes and are trying our best in our technological naiveté to manage PPF and keep all the players happy. Kristin and PPF eliminated all blogger moderation and word verification. So far - no problems! You may want to try taking off the word verification and just delete any questionable comments if they happen. (Or you may prefer to do as EVA does and still moderate (approve) comments without using word verification but people sometimes get confused then as to whether their comments went through. Not a perfect system either.)

It is also important to allow "anyone" to comment as some of our players have their own websites and do not use google id, blogger, wordpress etc and they want to comment but can not! (This would help everyone to visit you.)

The decision is ultimately yours and we want you all to be comfortable no matter how you decide to manage your comment settings.  We just thought it was worth mentioning since we've received so many comments and emails regarding this subject.

Some PPFers also love to reply to your comments but can't - Geri has eloquently explained here how to change that so people can reply directly to the comments you leave them.

We understand Blogger is changing everything on us soon so there may be more things like this to chat about as most of us (using Blogger) adapt to these changes next month. Let's try and help each other out and make it easy to visit, socialize and spend time together. Thanks everyone!!

Paint Party Friday: Week 31 Check In

Thank you all so much for your comments last week - we are so thrilled that Paint Party Friday is helping most of us to paint more!! Welcome everyone to Week 31 - the "Framed" edition!

Two weeks ago, we were talking about marketing your art, and there were many great suggestions in the comments, including donating pieces to charity auctions, showing your work in businesses or restaurants displaying art and signing your emails with hints like MimiTabby "I also paint gorgeous watercolours" plus many more. Have we said how awesome and helpful your comments always are? Wow! Thank you! And this week we are hoping for more comments as we know the poll won't catch everything...

That same week Scarlet asked "I'd like to learn how to frame my own work. I have no idea how to do this but would love to learn. I'm wondering if anyone here frames her own artwork and HOW." Great question! We know some of  you do (as does PPF hostess Kristin) and we think this is a very good topic to discuss to help show off our paintings to the fullest extent. We wonder - How do you frame your art? (And if you have favourite video-tutorials that show HOW, we'd love the links!)

* The blog poll site is currently down and so seems to be our poll :( Hopefully it will come back soon (14Oct2011 7pm). Sorry!

Please make sure to use your post URL address NOT your blog home page URL address as there are many late visitors who get confused as to which post is for PPF when they arrive (after Friday) at your website. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Linky, an explanation of how this tool works can be found on Week 1 and Week 2 check-ins.

Have a great time at the party!

Paint Party Friday: Week 30 Check In

Welcome to Paint Party Friday (Week 30)!

We are thrilled to have so much enthusiasm for PPF and there continues to be great fun and inspiration at the party each week. Thank you all!

With any group there are bound to be a few growing pains along the way and it has recently been brought to our attention that Paint Party Friday is starting to veer off course a bit. This week we'd like to address that and get back on track by sharing our original intention behind the creation of PPF. You have built this into an amazing playful and helpful group, forming many great cyber-friendships, and bringing fabulous talent and paintings to be shared here:

"In early 2011,  we (Kristin and EVA) each mentioned on our blogs that we wanted to paint more this year. We had both just finished up the intense Sketchbook Project and have been participating in the fun Sunday Sketches (with Blue Chair Diary). We realized that having a weekly check-in helps us actually find the time in our busy lives to create.  Otherwise procrastination often sets in. But where were the painting check-ins? If they existed, we didn't find them. So we decided to create one!

Paint Party Friday is a fun place to visit and check-in to show off your Works-In-Progress (WIP) and your finished paintings. Let us help you celebrate what you've done! There are no rules, we are here to play, paint, share our efforts with our friends, encourage each other and hopefully accomplish more together!"

We still want to avoid rules. So we have a big favour to ask all of you wonderful partyers. PPF is about painting. It has turned out to be great fun and we always want to attend the party ourselves. But if we haven't painted, we don't link. (And that usually keeps us painting!)

Your visits are awesome. Everyone loves being visited and you are the best visitors ever! PPF feels like a loving family. If nothing has been painted and people still link though, it takes up visiting time that could have been spent visiting those who have painted. We'd really appreciate it if everyone could respect that and only link in a week when you have a painting to share.  Many of you already do this (Yay!) - if the rest could join in... that would be super! Thank you so very much! (And if you could make sure to link to your blog post url versus your blog home page url - also appreciated.) 

With that in mind, we hope you continue to share your weekly painting accomplishments with us! Whether you use watercolors, acrylics, oils, or mixed media and whether you paint on canvas, paper, in a sketchbook, on walls, wood  (or chairs) - the paintings you create are welcome here!

  

Here's Mr. Linky!

Hope you have a great time at the party and lots of fun painting!

P.S. What incredible comments and advice last week! We will return to that next week.

P.P.S. It was hard for us to talk about things like this issue, fearing to offend anyone. (We hope we didn't!) Since people are mentioning it to us, we felt more of you might silently be thinking the same thing and so it should be addressed.