Let’s begin with my love for October
October is my MONTH. I live for crispy mornings, community festivals, and tailgating. I don’t even have any tailgate events to attend to in Savannah, but I relish the idea of sitting in a camping chair in anticipation of a college band fight song circulating the atmosphere. My new house is nestled in-between a small university and a high school, and I probably tear up every time I hear a distant marching band on the field. October is a month for school spirit, park concerts, my birthday (!!!), carnivals, fairs, corndogs, and backyard fires. I’ve really been on something all month… just ask my friends. I guess the energy of the month really gets me. I love celebrating anything and I love it when the community comes together to be in the same park or something. I’m so sad it’s over… I might love autumn, but I have a bleh winter attitude (+ an annoying dose of seasonal depression). Time to dig up that happy lamp.
This October checks out on the activity-meter… for it was full of projects, 1.5 work trips, and at least one wedding. As well as the launch of a new *puzzle collection* that really snuck up on me!
Pretty much Jiggy Puzzles started a new program where selected artists can submit multiple pieces of their art to be made into puzzles for sale. The sets are 500 pieces and packaged more simply than their normal puzzles. Artists (hi, it’s me) get 25% of the puzzle sales from their specific designs and they make great holiday gifts! Everyone wins! Since this specific program is a different website address than normal Jiggy Puzzles, it’s up to us to spread the word.
Here’s how you can help a simple girl sell her puzzles:
Text the link to my puzzles to your group chats and friends and relatives
Share about my puzzles on your Instagram and Facebook! I surrendered to making like 3 reels about my puzzles… just find them on my Instagram and post them on your stories, if you’re feeling a niche combination of silly and generous.
Buy one if you’re in the market for a puzzle! You can even give it as a gift and tell the recipient that the artist essentially begged you to buy it. I’ll gladly sacrifice my ego to pump up yours. Everyone wins!
A-Hall in an A-Frame
We’ll take a short break from obvious self promotion (are we kidding… you have subscribed to my promotional business newsletter, drizzled with girl-next door personality… you can only blame yourself) to inform the subscribers about my little autumnal Colorado stint. Long story short, when I was hounding Joshua Tree airbnbs a few months ago, a kind airbnb host offered a work trade for her property in Colorado instead. I responded with “this works out great because I’ll be in Colorado in October anyway” and then I booked my flight.
I rolled into Denver, fresh from a birthday/Dreamhouse/wedding weekend and headed west to Como, Colorado for a little artist’s retreat at Triangle Cabin II with my buddy Caroline Clarke. (Gosh I get so link-happy during these things, don’t I?) Caroline is an amazing artist based in CO Springs and we spent the week eating snacks and working on our own projects, until she left and my dear friend Ellie Moran popped over to work on her creative writing while we ate snacks. It was nice to have another person also working on their own thing during one of these retreats. I was way more productive than I was in Joshua Tree and completed two large landscape paintings, along with some sketches. My trade for our stay was that the owner, Kellie, got to pick a painting to keep to hang in her cabin. She chose the painting with the blue sky because there was a wee goat on it :)
We’re back, Dallas! (Hi, it’s me. I’m back)
Oh! And I announced another Dallas art show (swirly face emoji and then a starry eyed emoji here).
I’m truly so excited to go on the art show journey again, but this time I’ll have musical friends! Yay! I went to high school in Texas with Story Slaughter and Lait Fitzpatrick and we are all entrepreneurial and don’t live in Texas anymore. So we’re showing our hometown what we’ve been up to, in the form of a big happy art show! My head hit the pillow in March after my Catchall show and I was already dreaming of the next thing I wanted to do, and I knew I wanted it to be landscape paintings and involve Story somehow. I’d been following her musical journey from afar and love a good collab, so here we are! Seriously, check out her vintage, vibey, country/pop songs- she’s stellar and I can’t wait for her serenades to compliment my work.
Dallas friends- mark your calendars! I’d love to see you there!
That’s all for now! I’m not going to feature the normal stuff for sale like I usually do, since these days I’m really on the puzzle train. I think I’ll make a cute little ~holiday gift guide~ to share in the next few weeks. Gotta push those pencils and make those profits, baby! I’m all about my creative journey, but November holiday prep calls for saleswoman Allison to rise from the gouache grave.
Oh wait, this week my favorite songs on Taylor Swift’s Midnights are Anti-Hero, Sweet Nothing, and Bejeweled. Subject to change.
Happy Halloween and RIP October,
Saleswoman Allison