How to use your art to promote your work and delight your friends and family!

I know I am usually late to the party but with the holidays coming up, I felt this was a good time to bring back the subject of using your own artwork in promotional materials...whether it be a business card you hand out, a postcard you send to promote an opening, or greeting cards you send to special people. Many artists I know print their artwork on note-cards, etc. themselves but since I am quality printer challenged, I usually resort to a professional printing service.

I did a little research on some online companies (Of which there are many!) and I came back to a service I have used several times.
Staples Printing Center https://www.staples.com/sbd/content/copyandprint/index.html
I feel the quality is nice, they are quick and reasonably priced and the best part for me is I can upload the photos of my work and pay a few extra dollars and have delivered to my house.

I can then do some collage and embellishment if I want to personalize the cards in any way,

Another fun service I found personalizes postage stamps using your photos. I have created special greeting cards to be given as a gift with the same art used in a set of matching postage stamps.
https://store.stamps.com/Store/catalog/photostamps_product.jsp?id=prod10094

And of course there are many service that let you use your artwork on a variety of interesting products such as books of prints of your photos, t-shirts or even coffee mugs. I have used Walgreens print center for a few of these items and again it is the convenience of doing most of the set-up work online. https://photo.walgreens.com/store/welcome
They also have a quick turnaround time for that last minute shopping??? And weekly coupons and discounts for orders of multiples.

I did check out the following company but have not used their products yet. The prices are higher but it looks like you could have some of your work printed on nice quality canvas reproductions. What a nice gift for someone very special.
https://fineartamerica.com/custom/create-custom-greeting-cards

Of course none of these can ever compete with sharing your original artwork but can be a nice way to 'share' pieces of your talent with others!

Working on adding the photos from Watermedia 2018 which just ended last week.  As always I am continually entertained and awed by the talent of the artists that enter our show.  It is a HUGE amount of work for the few dedicated MTWS members to put on our annual international show and I am so grateful for their commitment to making the show such a classy event.

Soooooo, I want to invite anyone who may read this blog to think about jumping in and participating with MTWS and helping us keep the quality of our organization at the level it has enjoyed for so many years...

And don't forget to give a big THANKS to the MTWS Officers and Committee Chairman and they continue to keep MTWS progressive and up to date!