I Need Your Feedback:) Coupon Code + Upcoming Shows!

Spanish Banks, Vancouver, BC

Greetings from Rain City! We really lived up to our nick name the last few days with the remnants of Typhoon Songda visiting. What a great time to be inside writing a blog:)  I will cut right to the chase! It is time for me to get ready for upcoming Christmas Shows, so will be ordering new photo leggings and skirts to have printed and sewn. But first, I would love your feedback on which are your favourites before I do!

1 - Foxglove (Lopez Island), 2 - Beach (Hawaii), 3 - Bali Cat (Indonesia), 4 - Fireworks (Naples), 5 - Sea Ripples (Vancouver), 6 - Ocean Spray (Vancouver), 7 - Shiny Waves (Hawaii), 8 - Sakura (Vancouver), 9 - Wildflowers (Lopez Island), 10 - Ocean Sunset (Vancouver), 11 - Sunset Sea Foam (Vancouver), 12 - Dusk (Naples)

.  1- Ocean Mist (Rockaway Beach), 2 - Sunset Sea Foam (Vancouver), 3 - Shiny Waves (Hawaii), 4 - Sea Ripples (Vancouver), 5 - Sakura (Vancouver), 6 - Beach (Hawaii), 7 - Ocean Birds (Vancouver), 8 - Fireworks (Naples), 9 - Ocean Sunset (Vancouver)

Simply reply to tracey@traceytomtene.com with the numbers corresponding to your favourite leggings (eg. leggings 3, 8, 11) and photo skirts (eg. skirts 4, 6, 7)! Each one is printed with a photo I have taken locally in Vancouver or around the world. All garments are hand sewn and printed in Canada! Even the fabric is weaved here:) The production process uses significantly less water than others (EcoPoly) and the sublimation inks are solvent free. To see more images of each design, click here. In appreciation of your time, please use this coupon code for 15% off anything in my Etsy shop! THANKU15 Mucho thanks! Now onto what's been happenin'!

I ended up doing another market after Khatsahlano Festival called the Art of Photography Show at the Harmony Arts Festival. All of my fellow artisans who do the market circuit will be able to relate to this experience. This is a sneak peek of just how much goes into setting up a temporary retail stall and what can go wrong!

I arrived to my two tents the morning of the show under an overcast sky. I was happy about this as set-up can be quite labour intensive and so some cloud cover meant I could keep cool. Unfortunately, this cloud cover turned into what seemed like a monsoon! I was fighting with the mesh wall panels that Cagey Bee was kind enough to let me borrow (she warned me that hanging them on my own might be a bit of a shit show – she was correct!) when I finally realized that rain water was rising in my tent at a very rapid rate aka my boxes were getting soaked that were sitting on the ground.

So I jumped down from the chair and set up a table to put as much as I could on top of it to avoid further water damage. Some of my prints got a little wet but most of all it was just a big pain having to navigate a huge puddle in my tent - especially trying to keep the white wall panels from dipping into the muddy waters! I soldiered on while trying to keep everything dry and off the ground until one of my sandals finally succumbed to the constant onslaught of moisture.

There was no way to fix them so I went to a nearby coffee shop and asked if there was a store nearby to get some flip flops. They directed me to a Sally Ann a few blocks away where I proceeded to walk barefoot to. On top of this, my knuckles were bleeding from fighting with the wall panels and I was slightly drenched from the rain (first world problems I know!). I could almost read people's minds as they walked by me..."Who's the hippy?! Oh she's probably from that art festival.";P I managed to find a pair of hot pink running shoes in my size! SCORE! The only shoes that were comfy and a size 8 and $3 - SOLD! By the time I got back, they figured out that a storm drain had been plugged which had caused the flooding. I had arrived at 10AM and finally stopped setting up at 8PM...THE longest set up EVER! This was mainly due to bringing most of my wall art including canvas wood blocks, metal prints and canvas gallery wraps along with the set up of all the fixtures needed to display them (after all it was a photography show!). Sometimes I think I should just make pillows...not breakable, light and easily washable!

No caption needed.

I honestly came home questioning WHY I do this for a living and why I don't just get a REAL job. I was thoroughly exhausted and did not make one sale all day. Prior to this, I spent weeks prepping for it and invested so much in ordering my new line of photo clothing as well as purchasing prints, canvas gallery wraps and metal prints. Of course one cannot control the weather or the traffic flow but it can be very deflating when you put literally your blood, sweat and tears into something which is an intimate extension of yourself and at the end of the day, zero profit is turned. All I could do was just go to sleep and trust that the next day would be brighter. And if it wasn't, there would still be hope for the next.

Luckily for me, it did get brighter both weather and profit-wise! Despite the low traffic, I ended up selling quite a few photo skirts and leggings. Yay! Many women came along who were getting too hot in the sun and tried on a skirt or a pair of capris and never took them off:) On top of this, I met a tonne of really great people and fellow artists which always brightens my soul!

The last day was much the same and I even sold a 20x30 canvas gallery wrap of 'Into the Mystic' taken at Sunset Beach in Vancouver! Despite being so upset the first evening, surrendering and going with the flow was all I could do. I can't control the rain or how many people come to a show but I can control how I look at the situation and choose to flow with life instead of fight it.

A summer highlight was my friend Kristi of Encircled coming into town from Toronto to do Wanderlust. We drove up to Whistler and got her set up for the show and then ended up doing a photo shoot for her sustainable line of clothing at Green Lake. The weather couldn't have been more perfect and we had so much fun (mainly trying to avoid the HUGE slugs on the pathways!) in addition to getting to spend more time together.

Check out Encircled...on a mission to help you pack lighter and do more with less! To wrap the summer up, I went to my friend Rachel's wedding in Malahat. I had taken her and Sushant's engagement photos earlier this spring (see more here) and I was so looking forward to going to the island again – I hadn't been in 5 years!

BUT, Mercury was in Retrograde. For those of you who aren't familiar with what that means...basically travel, communication and technology are really messed up during this time. If I didn't believe in it before, I do now!! I won't go into the whole story but let's just say it was amazing I even made it as there were many moments (didn't have the right payment method for the ferry ticket, bank machines went down, missed the first ferry due to said payment issues, my car wouldn't start trying to get OFF the ferry, felt very unwell the whole time, almost ran out of gas, sent voice messages to the wrong recipients, the list goes on)! The light at the end of the tunnel was that I actually made it (in the nick of time) to see her get married and it was a beautiful wedding attended by lovely people. On top of that, I got to stay with my friend Stacey in Victoria from high school (we go back 24 years!) and her hubby Aron who I had an awesome catch up with and have been meaning to visit FOREVER. Live your life as if everything is rigged in your favour.  - Osho  The more I have trusted that the universe has my back, the more it is proven to me, over and over again:) Life is happening FOR me, not TO me and every day is an opportunity to grow and evolve.

So that is all for now! Here is a list of where I will be so far for this season of holiday shows. I hope to see some of you out there. More details to come soon:)  Make It Edmonton - Nov. 24th - 27th Etsy North Vancouver - Dec. 3rd & 4th Make It Vancouver - Dec. 8th - 11th Also, if you are in Vancouver, I will be exhibiting in As The Crow Flies. To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, the Eastside Culture Crawl Society is mounting this multi-venue salon-style exhibition! This exciting event features work from 70 artists who have participated in the Culture Crawl over the last 20 years. Juried by Paul de Guzman, Eri Ishii, and Katsumi Kimoto. Opening reception will be held: Fri, October 21 at the Arts Factory Society (6-9pm) Best Wishes All, TT

Spanish Banks, Vancouver, BC  I have a plan. Do you trust me? - Universe