With a Sad Broken Heart
I type this tonight with a very heavy broken heart! Since I was in High School and took my first art class I knew the only thing I really wanted to do is art. Any form, didn't really matter as long as I got to create. That is what I have been doing since 2015.
My journey here started with an invite from my sister, Amy to spend an afternoon with her and my nieces painting at a Paint Your Own Pottery Studio. I fell in love with this new form of art. There was a tornado that hit Elmwood where Carol Potter had Fuegos. I painted in her studio once with my own children and my husband, not the artsy type, talked to her and ordered me a nativity set I was fortunate enough to paint at home when the tornado hit her store. We contacted her to see if she was opening back up to fire the nativity. She had decided she wasn't going to, but mentioned taking it on the road for home shows. I liked the idea but didn't see it as a stable income. Long story short, I talked to some people and started visiting nursing homes for their activity time and painting with their residence. This worked very well. I was able to set up several homes for monthly visits until finances were cut and they could no longer afford to have me visit. The opportunity opened for me to open my own studio in my small town of Canton, IL and so I did. I have been running it, owning it, improving it, and crafting in it since 2015.
We have had classes decorating our own pieces, had art camp for kids creating variety of crafts using many mediums. We have done Spoon River Drive and a few other vendor shows. We didn't sell much but for us it was about getting our name out there to let people know we were here. We did Birthday parties, earned badges with scouts and even poured special pieces for fundraising events for some. I started making mesh wreaths and angels to sell. My oldest son, Quinten, started selling Rada Cutlery, my youngest daughter, Amelia started making T shirt scarves to sell, and my youngest Son, Corbin, loved to talk to customers about what we had and what he thought they should paint in the studio to help grow our family business. This is one of my most favorite things about opening this studio is all of us coming together as a family working to fulfil a dream together. We are all continuing to put our heads together as a family.
We will be closing our studio doors. We do NOT have a close date at this point. What we do have is "plan". We would like to stay open until our building sells which would mean we would have roughly 30 days to evacuate. We have already begun moving our molds to our home and pouring from home over the winter months that we have been closed. That attempt has helped with having a lower electric bill but it hasn't been enough to make ends meet and stay open. We do have a kiln at our home and so we are looking at other ways of doing business. We will discount pieces we have not found molds for. Pieces we have poured or know we have molds for we will still have available to paint in studio for same prices but will be transitioning our cost to sell these pieces at wholesale cost. We are hoping to sell as a 3rd party supplier to other studios and to those artists and hobbiests that want to paint pottery at their homes. We will NOT be selling our glazes but all our pieces can be painted with acrylic paint or stains and then sprayed with a sealer in your homes. We would like to still do parties as well, but will be traveling to your homes to do so. We would still provide the same as we did at the studio with paint supplies, paint, brushes, water bowls and you can choose pieces by price, theme or by choosing from our facebook shop tab which we will keep open. We will also be doing some vendor shows with a variety of items, such as painted pottery, wreaths, mesh angels, and other crafts we have done at camps or that we make at home. We are not sure if any of this will work as we "Plan", but we are trying to keep it going as much as we can for now. We have enjoyed getting to know so many of you who have enjoyed this form of art and personally I want my own children and now grandchildren to have a love for art. Watch our facebook page for info and changes in pricing. Items we started out with from 3rd party that we have not found molds for will be removed from our page and only pieces we ourselves can pour will remain on our page under shop tab. We will deliver pieces locally or have available in studio as long as we can. We still plan on having Spring Break Art Camp the week of March 25th. Find this info also on our face book page under events tab.
We thank everyone of you for your support over these few years. We have enjoyed having this studio and sharing our passion with you. Hopefully the future will hold a different outcome for us but for now, this is where we are. This has been a very hard decision for us to make and we really did try many things to avoid this result. It saddens me to see so many businesses in our small town closing and to have to join in that decline in heartbreaking.
We will honor gift certificates already purchased but will not be selling any from here on out. If you have received one for our studio please consider redeeming it in the next 30 days. We do have a couple vendor shows on the calendar right now so please bare with us if we need to be closed to attend some of these shows. We are still working on some scheduling. We will post on our facebook page when we do the vendor shows so you all can attend the shows and shop what we have.
Again, thank you all for your support and we appreciate your continued support as long as we are still able to serve your artistic desires.