March 1st drawing

I just had an amazing San Diegan photographer volunteer to donate a portrait session for my "opportunity drawing!" I'm so excited! That's worth several hundred dollars!

Decided to hold an "opportunity drawing" and poker night

I asked friends on facebook for fund raising ideas and got some great feed back. I decided to hold an "opportunity drawing" (I can't call it a raffle because of some weird rules California has with raffles where you can't do them on-line and LLS wants it to be kosher, of course). I am "selling" entries this week until Feb 28th. People can either go directly to our team page and donate $5 or more (entries are $5 each) or give me the money directly and I will donate it, either way. The drawing will be on March 1st and so far I have a couple Starbucks gift bags and also some of my art for the drawing. I'm going to go tomorrow to Jamba Juice and a few other places and see if I can get donated items for the drawing.

I just began promoting the drawing last night and so far already have 5 people from work participating but I'm hoping to get a lot more. Pay day is Thursday and I already have lots of promises, so we'll see :) I'm also going to LA this weekend so hopefully some of my LA family/friends will participate as well.

I will also be doing a poker night. I haven't totally thought this one through yet and I need to get someone's agreement to have it at their house, but I think it will be a lot of fun. I'm thinking it will be a $10 buy in with snacks provided. I haven't decided on the drinks yet, maybe another $10 if you want to drink? Any suggestions on this would be great.

Otherwise, the art auction is still coming along. I'm working out getting prints made of some of my art work by this weekend. I don't know what's possible but I will do my best. I wish it was a lot easier, it seems to be made more complex than it is. I just want a simple flat art copy, how hard can that be? I actually live next door to a printer so tomorrow we're going to try to do some copies and see how they come out. I hope they come out well, that will be an easy and inexpensive solution.

Training has come a little bit to a halt this week, other than cross training. My husband is out of town and I had to rearrange my schedule to be able to watch the baby in the morning and at night, so I have shorter lunches. I will try to figure out how to squeeze in a run tomorrow but then probably won't get another chance until Saturday. I will at least keep up the cross training :)

Training is going great and art auction is in less than 3 weeks!

My training has been coming along surprisingly well. I went from being able to run at most 6 minutes at a time (3 1/2 weeks ago) to now being able to run 30 min straight without much difficulty. I've been running 45 min to an hour 3-4 times a week (about 4 miles) and last Saturday I did a long run (almost 8 miles!). I'm quite proud of myself. Now if the baby would just let me get more sleep!!!

The website is also coming along very nicely. I'm learning how to do things with it I never thought I'd be able to do. It would be nice to have someone to help me but I'm doing quite well figuring things out myself.

Yesterday I spent quite some time figuring out how to enable visitors to leave comments on my website, so that when the auction comes up people can post their bid. I never thought this would be so difficult with a google web site but it was VERY difficult. Finally I got it though.

I've also had quite a few friends/family members looking it over for me and giving me pointers on it, which I much appreciate. It has helped me a lot. Some things you would just never think of and need someone else to point it out for you :)

Very excited about the auction!

Last weekend I went to LA and pried some art pieces out of my families hands for my auction. My dad donated a beautiful piece of wood art that he made out of exotic woods. My brother donated an awesome metal sculpture.

Also, I finally got ahold of a friend who is an artist and she gave me the name of a guy to get prints from. I never imagined it would be so difficult to figure out where to get prints made of my art but it was. On that same note, last Saturday my husband and I got the most awesome camera in the world! I will now be able to take much better pictures of my art to post on my website and to post for the auction.

I just finished a new drawing today and I love it! It's one I started about 6 years ago and I finally just finished it. It will be posted on my facebook and on my website by tonight.

I think this art auction will come off very well, with the way things are currently going. I am working on spreading the word and generating as much interest as I can. I also have several friends and family members helping promote it to literally about 12,000 people, so I'm sure that will help :)

More on website/art auction

I am still so unbelievably excited about my website. I feel like I finally have a place where I can really promote my art and also help promote it. I have received advice on it from several people and I'm very grateful. I do want to keep the website very simple, which I feel like it is.

I now so far have 2 artists that will be donating for the art auction. So far it will be me (of course), Carl Watts and Simone Ralph. Carl does work with exotic woods and Simone is an illustrator. Very exciting. I'm getting a lot of help with promotion from friends and the word is getting out.

My goal for this event is $500 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. More would be nice. I hope that's not too lofty of a goal. I guess it will depend on how many artists we have donating pieces, but I have a feeling I'll be able to get at least 8 artists or so to participate (hopefully more) and I want to have about 20 pieces of art to auction off. We shall see.

Let me know if you'd like to be promoted on my website

I set up a link on my website which will take you to links for other websites. I have sub-categories of "artist," "musician," "authors/writers," and "services/stores." I like to promote people who are artists and people who are just good people.

Please help refer my website to others and also let me know what you think about it :)

http://sites.google.com/site/marcyeibenartist/

I set up my own website!

I'm so excited! I finally set up my own website! I'm pretty darn proud of myself, considering I had no idea what I was doing. I still have a lot of work to do on it but I think it looks pretty dang good so far. Check it out:

http://sites.google.com/site/marcyeibenartist/

I do plan on purchasing a domain name (what I have set up right now is free) once I figure that all out so hopefully shortly it will just be www.marcyeibenartist.com.

Let me know what you think!

Art auction is underway

I got one artist so far (besides myself) who is donating for my fund raiser. I'm very excited about this. Hopefully more artists will come on board, if not, I'll make due with what I have.

The art auction will be Friday, March 12th, through Sunday, March 14th. I picked this date because my mother's birthday was March 13th, and I'm raising money for her (basically).

In case you haven't visited my fund raising page I'll write it on here: my mother died about 2 1/2 years ago of lymphoma. By the time the doctors spotted it, it was too late. She lived for a few more months in the hospital and then passed away. I joined Team in Training in honor of her and to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, so hopefully they are able to find a cure for this. She was my best friend and I miss her very, very much.

My husband is going to do a bake sale at work for our fund raising (sounds funny but he likes to cook). He's making some honey wheat bread right now for that and I will help him by making some cookies, fudge and eclairs (yum!).

I'll keep you guys updated!

I usually wouldn't blog today

I usually don't blog on the days when nothing is going right, but today I figured I might as well. Maybe people can help me get past my frustrations.

I've been planning this art auction for my fund raising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. My family are all artists and I have a lot of friends who are artists. I thought people would be excited about it. Nothing. No feed back whatsoever, no volunteers to donate art work, no comments on it, no interest, etc. I don't really understand it. It makes my faith in humanity go down a bit.

I've also been trying to drive traffic to my blog through friends, family, facebook and twitter. I know it takes time but I've been working on this for a couple months now and I still only have 8 followers (I love you guys!) and only about 6 people going to my blog per day. I have no idea how to increase this. I guess what I'm writing about isn't interesting enough? This may definitely be true, but I don't know how to improve it really. Any ideas?

Well, I did take a break while writing this and went for a 1.5 mile run during my work lunch break. That has made me feel a little better. Also working on my art makes me feel better, but today I left my sketch pad at home :(

Anyways, I'm done rambling for the day. Any comments and help are welcome, as usual... The next blog will be happier, I'm sure :)