Bravery Merchandise and More

In efforts to raise money to continue the portrait series for Bravery, I am introducing a new segment of Bravery Project, Inc. This page that will begin with this modest list of merchandise and will hopefully continue to grow over the next year. Being the creative person that I am, I started a card series that will begin with a holiday design and one Bravery portrait (Henry's Story). Eventually there will be several types with uplifting messages, seasonal, and some of my artwork on the custom cards that you can enjoy as one of a kind. I will take requests for special designs that you can use for your nonprofit gency or as personal cards as well. I do have card items in stock, but you can order them and I will get them out to you within a week.

Bravery Project tshirts and autographed mugs are available now and over time, I will introduce some really fun sassy apparel that will show everyone that survivors ROCK! There will also be the option to put my artwork onto clothing by request.


The Merchandise page is not exclusive to Bravery Merchandise. I am leaving it open to other business who want to provide quality products to sell via my website. The only thing I ask is a small percentage of proceeds given to Bravery Project. I continue to get quite a nice chunk of traffic via the web and hope to expand the merchandise page to not only help my organization, but others who need to raise funds as well. If you are interested, let me know.

Marketing

Collaboration is a great thing. After working on Bravery for the past eight months, I ran across someone who has the experience and the time to volunteer her expertise on graphic design, marketing, and event coordination. Several other people have also assisted when they could (thank you) and we will continue to ask for your help. A big lesson for me in this journey is that I can't do everything and when I try, some things come out average when someone else could do it way better. Another valuable lesson is that I can run on tangents of seemingly great ideas. There are so many wonderful ways to use Bravery that it's easy to become overzealous and lose focus on the first steps. I always like to think big.

With that said, Bravery Project, Inc. is getting an official logo and it's own website. The plan is to have them ready in about a week, so I will be moving Bravery from vflorschuetz.com to braveryproject.org. There will still be a link on the old website to the new one. Once this step is complete, we are moving forward with a press release package and contacting different media avenues.

There are only four months left before the show and still many things to do. I will ask any of you who are interested in volunteering and have the time to please email me on what tasks that you can help with. In a couple of weeks, I will contact you and coordinate details.

Here are ways you can help:

• Research information as needed, i.e. marketing, accounting details, sponsors, grants,etc.
• Internet marketing
  
• Contact corporate sponsors for monetary/inkind donations.
  
• Hand out art exhibit cards/flyers/posters--the reception/show information to pass out to people. This could be simply sharing with family and friends at church, your job, or school.
  
• Raffle donations--talk to store managers and ask for a raffle donation.
• Volunteer for reception--need people for various tasks, i.e. donation table, etc.
• Share your ideas on anything--I am ALWAYS willing to listen.

Art Culture and Fabric Mat Tricks

Since my last post was mainly about domestic violence with that amazing video clip, I am going to focus on art this time. I discovered that there are some artists who visit my website and blog, so this post will be particularly interesting for them.

I went to the Dean's Forum this week, sponsored by ASU's Herberger College of the Arts and it was a great experience. Dean Kwan Wu-Kim spoke with a smorgasbord of ASU people, students, corporate and art members of the community. He talked about how Phoenix could become an art mecca. Instead of people looking outside Arizona for the quality and prestige of art, rather we should be looking within and recognize the diamonds in the rough, and then figure out a way to connect these diamonds into a beautiful necklace of creativity and commerce. There was more said that I won't go into here, but it was an interesting mixed response.

Personally, I agree with Dean Kim that art is involved in EVERYTHING whether we recognize it or not. Since I've taken some traditional art classes, I've learned that art is not exempt from the sciences. There is biology (art anatomy), mathematics/physics (perspective, geometry, golden section), psychology (color science, composition), textiles (art materials), and engineering (problem solving using any of the previous). It truly is the science of light and a form of universal language that should be more respected. There is no dichotomy between art and science. For instance, all the graphics we see everyday, the architecture we live and work in, the fashions that we wear, the live performances we visit, the cars we drive, movies we watch, the music we listen to--art is everywhere and yet... What happens in the real world once the classes are over? What are the opportunities and are they desirable? Boy did I want to chatter up a storm because since I've been working on Bravery, I've learned a ton of information.

I've learned more of the business side and how important marketing and networking is in order to become a successful artist. Furthermore, it's kind of fun sharing your art with people once you learn to handle rejections. Let's face it, not everyone will like the art that I produce, but amazingly enough, so far, everyone (yes everyone) has really like the concept behind Bravery, especially the positive perspective that gives the victims dignity. I couldn't agree more.


With that said, I learned a little trick on matting. I wanted one of my pastel pieces to have a purple suede mat, but they cost $70.00 for a whole board, $50.00 to have one cut and it's not even real suede! It's some kind of polyester material. Bah! Call me frugal, call me cheap, but you can't call me naive. I found that with either some beautiful purple material or (even easier) some pretty shiny purple ribbon, I could embellish matboard to create the fabric texture of my desire. What's really cool is you can take matboard scraps and piece them together and lay the material over it to cover. Fabric glue or double sided tape for the ribbon works great. Just make sure materials are all acid free.

Now one of my art teachers said not to give away secrets, but I have to tell you...I was so frustrated trying to find information about fabric mats on the Internet that I think someone needs to share so other artists won't take out a second mortgage to pay for framing materials!

In case you are interested, I included a couple of websites that offer free info on matting and framing.

Framing for Yourself
How to Mat a Picture
Framing Ideas

Think outside the green.