The Hustle, Phase One

Oh Dear Readers,

I’m sorry if I’ve been neglectful. I’ll give you the quick and dirty low down. Your girl is trying to get her hustle on. My friends, I need to conjure at least $550 by the end of November to keep The Beast aka Betty White (my car) on legally on the road. Betty is a from 1998. She has over 315k miles. She came from a friend of my mother’s who let her grandson drive it while he was in college. It lived through all that, and has been the best “first car” beater vehicle that I could ever ask it to be for me. I’ve replaced brakes, rotors, the catalytic converter, filters, tires, hoses…. And now, she needs a charcoal filter. She’s old enough and high mileage enough to pass emissions with a waiver, but in order to get the waiver you need to dump over $200 worth of work into doing so. And nothing you’ve tried to do before taking it in for inspection counts.

Oh, and did I mention that I’m the most financially unstable I have ever been in the last 7 years? Yeah, I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants here, sweating the nickles and dimes while I try to come up with a better long game.

And so, the hustle, because that’s the fun part, right? That’s the part where you pull the sweet baby Jesus Hail Mary miracle out of your ass at the last second, right? Gosh, I hope so. It starts with this Saturday with the Penn Ave Arts in Motion. It’s a local arts festival. I will have a table there, with my friend, and both of us will be selling our handmade wares.

I’ve rounded up my canvas work. Some of it is framed, some of it is not. I told myself I’d take new pictures, outside, in natural light (like all the “tips and tricks” tell you that you should), but instead I have older photos taken with my phone. C’est la vie.

These are the unframed pieces.

These pieces where my finding a use for the yellow pages. (Does anyone actually use that thing to look up numbers? Most people throw them away with out using it once, but you get one every year.) I titled them “Bygone 1 and 2”.

This one I used my favorite photos from a cat calendar. I titled it “Cats Rule Everything Around Me”.

(It’s propped up against my laptop, there are no lighting effects in the piece. But ya’ll knew that, didn’t you?)

This one I finished tonight. I had first tried to do a resist with a white crayon and watercolor. That ended in an unsatisfying result. So then I tried to use lace as a stencil and watered down acrylic paint in a spray bottle as “spray paint”. Let me tell you, Pinterest LIES. But I hadn’t given up on it. Tonight I did the Virgin Mary stamps, and I feel that it has found its purpose.

These pieces are framed. (Though they might not be represented here that way. Because I get excited when I finish something and snap a photo and toss it up on Facebook.)

I also have some of my decorated boxes still available for purchase.

(Guest appearance by Pork)

I’m trying to have something at every price point. So I’m bringing the post cards I made, too. I don’t know if the ones pictured here are included in the inventory I have, but these give you the idea.

I might also have a few new boxes and hopefully one of the bags I’ve made to sell. Plus I did get the bucket of Twizzlers to hand out again, because I am not above luring you in with free candy. Expect to see lots of Facebook and Twitter updates from me on Saturday as I try to create the social media hype that one must do to “self promote”.

So this, friends, is Hustle Phase One. Next week is my birthday and then the week after that we’re having a yard sale here. I’ll try to get some sneak previews up here to get you all riled up for that one, too. I’m getting rid of handbags, nail polish, plus sized women’s clothing, men’s clothing, sundry household items.

And if that doesn’t get me to where I need to be, you might see me promoting a bake sale. I make a goddamn mean vegan margarita cupcake, if I do say so myself. But we’ll cross these bridges as they need crossing…

Also, I’ve started devising my plan for holiday crafting. Oh, you laugh, but I found what I needed, on sale, right now. So stock piling at the end of September? Yes, yes I am. Look, I didn’t buy the cat Vans, or the cat nail decals, or the Halloween chapstick from Avon that was all brought to me by the fates as wicked, wicked spending temptation, so I feel okay spending the wee amount I did to make something (hopefully) cool for my friends this year. More on this to come…

So if you feel neglected by my absence in the virtual world, you can come see me in person on Saturday from 12-8 in Garfield on Penn Avenue and hopefully have some fun and get something cool. (Maaaaybe early Christmas presents for your own loved ones?)