Post-Thanksgiving Painting Video

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a smashing Thanksgiving yesterday, and are now lazing around with bloated bellies until it’s time to dig into your leftovers. To give you an excuse to avoid getting into another political fight with your crazy Uncle Albie, here is another instructional video for one of Artistic Abandon’s paintings, Blue Window.

If you’re interested in licensing our paintings (all of which are copyrighted) for your own paint and sip business or classroom, please contact us at artisticabandon@gmail.com. If you’re a budding artist and just want to paint along at home (not to teach or to sell as your own painting or financially profit from in any way), you are welcome to use this video free of charge. Have fun!

Smart Meetings

Artistic Abandon has been featured again! The magazine, Smart Meetings, even included a picture of Emily teaching. One of the fun things you can do as a paint and sip studio is team building events. There are so many options for customizing it for each company that comes in for a painting class! We’ve done everything from small doctors’ offices to huge tech companies and everything in between. It’s a great way for coworkers to get together and use a part of their brains that doesn’t always get tapped, and it’s a fairly level playing field: generally, the boss has no more painting experience than the entry-level employee, so it puts everyone on an equal footing as they get to know each other a little bit better.

We’ve Been Featured!

Hi everyone, sorry for the long gap in posts, but I’ve been hard at work on a variety of projects. I thought I’d pop over to share some fun news with you: Artistic Abandon has been featured in the February/March 2017 issue of Professional Artist magazine! Here’s an excerpt of what they had to say:

“Emily Page taught for Painting with a Twist, and when she decided to open her own paint-and-sip studio, she wasn’t happy with the franchise deal the corporation offered her. She had created many example paintings for the company, so she thought she’d just make more. And, she could contract someone to build a computer system for her for a lower price than the franchise would offer for their systems, she said. And in her heart, it just didn’t feel right to franchise.

‘It didn’t really seem to me like a very good deal,’ she said. ‘I watched franchise owners get frustrated at wanting to try something different and being told by corporate that that’s not the business model.’

She opened Artistic Abandon (artisticabandon.com) in Raleigh, N.C., five and a half years ago. There are a couple things that set her studio apart from the franchised ones: The painting library is ‘less cartoony, more like real paintings,’ and the teaching style is more comprehensive. ‘I figured out how to break it down in a much more step-by-step method,’ she said.

Independent studios have some unique challenges. The franchises have the name recognition, and they can put locations anywhere, and sometimes they don’t separate them out very well, Page said. It can be hard to compete, especially in the beginning. And, if new owners don’t partner with other indy studios, they will probably have to pay more for art supplies because they won’t have access to bulk pricing.

Her advice to artists looking to start a paint-and-sip of their own? ‘You have to have patience. It is a customer service job…If you’re not willing to repeat yourself a bunch of times, it’s not the job for you.’ She also warns artists to make sure they understand the liquor laws in their county. Contact the state department of alcoholic beverage control to find out what can and can’t be done.

A couple years after opening Artistic Abandon, Page was approached about franchising her business. ‘It seemed hypocritical. If I wasn’t willing to do it [join a franchise], it seems unfair for me to offer it,’ she said. So, instead, she started a consulting business – kind of like franchising lite – to help artists and non-artists alike open their own studios…

She’s helped seven studios open so far. She offers tools, including a library of paintings, guidelines and suggestions. The studios have banded together to get wholesale prices on materials. Unlike in franchising, the studio gets to pick its own name and doesn’t pay a royalty fee.

In addition to running and teaching at her studio and consulting, Page makes what she calls her ‘real art,’ original paintings, to sell through emilypageart.com. She said during the first couple years of having her paint-and-sip, her art took a backseat, but now that the studio is established, she’s able to spend more time making art, and, maybe more importantly, marketing it.”

Franchiser Is Trying to Re-brand at Franchisee’s Expense

It’s come to our attention recently that one of the major paint and sip franchisers is revamping their brand, making changes to everything from their logo to the look of their franchisees’ studios. What I find really disheartening for those franchisees is that they invested their hard earned money into designing and decorating their space, and now their corporate bosses have decreed that they should redo all that hard work and spend more money to do it. To change over, they’ll need to purchase new aprons, wall decals, and other promotional materials to include the new logo. They’ll have to pay to change the interior decor of their studio spaces. To be fair, corporate has agreed to offset some of that expense to existing studios, but they won’t eliminate the amount completely or make up for the days studios will have to close for the renovations. And all of that comes after they’ve paid exorbitant buy-in and royalty fees to open under that brand name in the first place.

But even putting that aside, corporate’s need to redo their look tells us that they’re not doing as well as they claim they are. If they had strong paintings and their staff had been trained how to teach properly so that customers could do better paintings, they wouldn’t need to pump money into a re-branding effort. Clearly, their customers aren’t getting a good enough painting experience, so they’re trying to make up for it by glitzing up their spaces.

As a studio owner and artist who opted not to go the franchise route, I hurt for those franchisees who have been so let down.

How Soon Can We Be Open?

A question we get a lot is what the time frame is for opening a paint and sip studio. Honestly, it varies pretty wildly. We helped a studio open within a month of them signing with us, and we had another that took almost a year. The biggest factor is finding a studio space and the state of the space you decide to rent out. If it requires a large build out that requires pulling permits, it can take several months. A lot of times the build out is fairly simple, but contractors get stuck waiting for the city to give them the permit. So when you look for a space, obviously, the less you have to do, the sooner you’ll be able to open.

The other aspect that takes some time is hiring your artists. It takes a unique person to teach this kind of event, because they have to have good people skills, a sense of humor, be a little bit of a showman, and be able to not only paint well, but paint quickly, and explain exactly how they’re doing it. Finding artists that fit that criteria can take a little time, but it’s worth it because it will help set you apart from other studios that are less concerned about the quality of their instructors.

The rest of the prep work for opening can go fairly quickly, but again, it’s entirely up to how much time you’re able to devote to it and how fancy you want to get with it all. You can choose to do your own website, or our tech guy can do it for you. You can go with the furniture we recommend, or you can choose to have it specially made. Because we’re consultants and you’re not franchising, we give you all of your options and you’re free to choose what route you take with everything, so there are no rules and there is no set time frame.

On average, I’d estimate that the studios we have helped have opened within about 4 – 6 months of signing the contract with us.

Testimonials

Here are some testimonials from a few of our clients:
“When I first met Emily, I immediately knew that I had made the right decision in hiring Artistic Abandon. Without her advice and training, I would not have been able to have a successful business only a few months later. They are very attentive and respond to my needs promptly. Emily’s honest and sincere approach in providing clear-cut advice, assistance, and counsel has been instrumental in the opening and running of my studio.” – Caroline Mullins, Honeysuckle Studio, Blacksburg, VA

“I am so glad that I found Emily and the Artistic Abandon team. I was in the process of purchasing a franchise but wasn’t comfortable with all the royalty fees, franchise fee, and the list goes on and on. We decided to do some research and came across Artistic Abandon which is the best thing I could have done. They have been so helpful from beginning to end even traveling to train the artists, helping with marketing, lease negotiations, and any questions that may come up. It is definitely well worth the investment and not having to worry about all the monthly fees the franchises charge. The best part about it is that you can make the business your own without all the restrictions. They just guide you in the best way! I love Emily and Sebastian. They are amazing!” – Aliyana Thornton, The Art Bar Virginia, Suffolk, VA

“We were very happy with the services Emily provided. It was a fraction of the price we would have paid if we had gone with a franchise company. We tweaked the forms and policies she provided to fit our needs. The studio training for my employees was great and we use her policies and procedures for our daily operations…Emily was worth the cost for having a successful opening, and just having someone to brainstorm with was priceless.” – Harry and Brenda Jackson, Tickled Paint, Salisbury, MD

Making It Your Own

One of my favorite things about teaching sip and paint classes are the people who decide to go off on their own a little…or a lot. I love when they want to make it their own, and I’m totally an enabler. The weirder, the funnier, the better. If someone wants to add a dementor, or a fraggle, or Van Helsing into their painting, I am happy to draw it for them. If they want to change it up on their own, absolutely! Some are spectacularly bad, some are decidedly good. I’ll let you decide which is which. The image on the left if the image that was being taught, the image on the right is the customer’s version:

I’m Giddy

This weekend, I had the honor of training the staff for a studio we’re helping open in Blacksburg, VA. I really love doing the consulting work both because it reminds me that I really know what I’m doing in terms of how to give customers a great experience so that they want to come back, but also because I’ve been very lucky and worked with some really great new studio owners.

It feels good to help smart, talented, funny, and creative people become entrepreneurs who don’t have to be bogged down being just another employee at a job they hate. They get to be their own bosses in every sense of the word. By not franchising, they really are their own bosses: they’re saving a ton of money both in the initial franchise fee and the crazy monthly royalty fees; and without a corporate office telling them what they can’t do, they’re free to get creative and try all sorts of new stuff that will help them sustain their businesses for years to come. They’re figuring out how to become an integral part of their unique communities without a corporate overlord who knows nothing about their area telling them that it won’t work. I’ve been so proud and so impressed with them, and sometimes I have to pinch myself when I think about how I’m helping them become their best, most adventurous selves.

I’m proud to raise a glass in their honor and I look forward to adding more people to our sip and paint family!

Who Will Help Us?

For those of you who are more independent minded, going the franchise route is not for you. You will undoubtedly bristle at being told how to run your business by someone who’s not even there. And paying a franchise fee after the first year when you know what you’re doing doesn’t make a lot of sense. If you were buying a franchise like McDonald’s where the name is so utterly recognizable it’s guaranteed to bring in business, that’d make more sense, but no single franchise in this industry has such great name recognition that it’s worth paying a royalty fee for the use of their name every month. That being said, opening without any kind of guidance at all is, understandably, daunting. You need to find someone who knows what they’re doing and won’t be upset when you choose to listen to some of the advice and go your own way or disregard other bits of the advice. You need someone to cheer you on and tell you what’s worked for them to help you avoid common mistakes, but who will give you the room to grow and shape your business into the enterprise you want it to be.

So, if you decide to hire us as consultants, who will actually be helping you? Emily Page is an artist and the owner of Artistic Abandon. She has run all facets of the business, from advertising and marketing, ordering and tracking supplies, handling day-to-day emails and phone calls from customers, tracking and teaching both offsite and in-studio bookings, training support staff, to teaching the bulk of our classes. She knows the business inside and out. She even worked for one of the earliest franchises, teaching classes and creating their paintings, before opening Artistic Abandon 5 years ago and growing it into a successful business. While we do have a tech guru to help you with your website, all the rest of your training will be done by Emily, so you know you’re dealing with someone with a lot of experience who knows what this whole exciting and scary process feels like. To learn more about Emily’s artistic background, or contact us about opening your own studio, go here.

We’d (we say we because Emily’s husband, Sebastian, will be available for assistance, too, but let’s be honest, it’s Emily you’ll really be talking to) love to talk to you about your vision! Feel free to email us at artisticabandon@gmail.com.

Copyright Issues

Let’s talk about copyright issues. First, let me preface this by saying that I am not an attorney, so always seek legal counsel with questions about copyright issues. The following information is my understanding of the copyright law and should not be construed in any way as legal advice.

As an artist, copyright is something that I take seriously because I’ve had people rip off my art and profit from it. We’ve had studios use our images and sell them as their own, and I can tell you that it feels like you’ve been violated in some way. I’ve also had customers say they’ve tried to paint some of our studio paintings at home on their own. This is, essentially, theft. All of our paintings are copyrighted, and use of those images without our consent is copyright infringement.

If you want to use a piece of art created by someone else, you either have to get their written permission, or the artist needs to have been dead for at least 70 years. For works created before 1978, the copyright endured for a first term of 28 years from the date copyright was registered/secured, and could be extended a renewal term from 47 years for a total of 75 years. This was later extended to 95 years for anyone with still holding a copyright as of 1998. Any work that is created on or after January 1, 1978 is automatically protected from the time of its creation, and it’s given copyright protection for the entire life of the artist, plus an additional 70 years after the artist’s death.

You’ll see a lot of Van Gogh and Monet paintings at sip and paint studios, and the reason they can use them is that the artists have been dead long enough or the work was created long enough ago that the copyright has expired and the images have become public domain.

When we do consulting, we license our images to the new studio but retain the copyright. If you own a sip and paint studio and have artists creating new art for your classes, you need to make sure you have them sign a contract giving you the sole copyright for the works they’ve created. They are works “made for hire” and are the employer’s domain, but you need to protect yourself by having them sign a document to that effect. For works made for hire, the copyright duration is 120 years from creation.