Old Hobbies Die Hard

The last few months have been rather difficult financially. Sales on and off the internet had been slow, school started again and I am there 3 nights a week so I have a little less time to work and produce inventory. I'm working a "normal job" in the mornings, but only about 12-15 hours a week. Not enough to make ends meet and they don't need me there any more than that. All of this is not by any means helping the bills get paid.

Since we will be moving out of state at the end of this summer, what I've been doing lately is looking around the house and trying to figure out what I don't need to take with me, what I can sell now and what I can sell later. I'm currently trying to get rid of a few large musical instruments, to no avail, and I've been weeding through my cd collection and taking the not-often-listened-to albums, burning them to iTunes and selling the cds. That still left me with only $100 for March rent. I need $700.

Winter Garden - oil painting, finished about 4 years ago

So, two days ago I decided that I would try and sell off most of my art supplies. I'm keeping all the drawing stuff that I can use for fashion design, but I had a LOT of paints, oils and acrylics, and a bunch of canvas, etc. I used to really like to paint. I wasn't the world's greatest or anything, and I was slooooow at it, but I haven't touched any of those things in at least 3 years. Fashion has consumed all of my creating time. I declared to my boyfriend that I was going to get rid of all that stuff and he said it made him sad. I'm not entirely sure why, since he doesn't paint, but I think it's because he thought I was doing it ONLY because I needed money. That's a big part of the reason, but also because lots of awesome paints and supplies are going to waste and honestly I'll probably never ever have time to touch them again.

I sent a text to one of my friends who is in school for fine art and asked if she wanted to come check out what I was trying to sell. Her reply was simply "Throwing in the towel?" Um, noooo... I'm just trying to focus on ONE thing and get really good at it and eventually make it my career. I'm not really sure if she meant it snidely, but that's the joy of text messaging and it kind of made me mad.

Untitled acrylic painting, started about 7 years ago and finished about 5 years ago

So, I sent a message to another friend, who isn't in school and is actually painting and showing his work constantly. And who also is never rude to me. He came over right away, took everything I had and gave me a decent amount of money for it too. While I was unearthing all the boxes of paint to show to him I was a little sad about getting rid of it. I really liked painting, I just wasn't nearly as serious about it was I am about fashion. I knew deep in my heart that if I kept any of it, it would still be sitting around untouched this time next year and the year after, etc.

Only Fools Rush In - oil painting finished about 3.5 years ago, the last painting I've done

I told this friend, whose art you can see more of here, what my art-school friend had said. His reply was "What! Throwing in the towel? No, you are REINVENTING the towel, that's why you don't have extra time." Really funny and it cheered me up. I knew my paints were going to a good home where they would be used and loved. That was last night and I don't feel bad about it today. Plus, as a bonus, I've got a whole lot of extra closet space now.