So you sell the art works you and your wife make? Wow! So do you import art works into Canada too? What kind of art works?
My wife is the artist, and it's a bit like living with a drug addict in a way. She is always doing something. Drawing, carving, painting, sculpting and so on. She has always done this since I met her and I've always encouraged her through the years. So in the last ten years she has really come into her own with style and the experienced eye to bring out something from the medium she is working in that she sees in her head.
So with the addict analogy, I am an enabler. Part muse, part technical resource and general scrounger I keep the drugs flowing so to speak. I've learnt to cut mat and glass, frame the work we hang in our house as well as preserve what is in portfolio. About 5 years ago she got a commission from a lady to draw a picture from a photograph of her dogs. So we got that together and the lady asked if $100 was enough. My wife grabbed the cash and brought it home to show me and I fell out of my chair.
So we got our act together quite a bit from there and began to make prints of originals she would draw and sell them for $40-$90 depending on the work. Then she got a commission for two originals for a grand a piece. I thought maybe that was kind of a one shot deal. Since then she has many more originals at that price so I was inspired to get a proper business model worked out, build a portfolio of her work to give to prospective customers on dvd, in a press kit sort of format.
Lately it's been canes and walking/hiking sticks and we've sold all she's made but a half a dozen that are our own. All custom made for each person. So we've thought, it would be great to use some exotic wood from South America Mexico and Southern US. Dead falls are now great finds. Traveling by our own boat allows us to acquire the wood as part of our daily routine. We hope. The only sticky thing about that is getting the wood certified insect and disease free. So there are a few legal hoops to jump through. But it's doable.
I like the idea of bringing artwork from the South up here to sell and we have a friend in Denmark who has sold quite a bit of stuff for us there already and is always wanting more. It's just expensive to ship it to her and so there isn't really any profit in that. But if we get a regular system set up we can ship larger quantities and make a higher markup.
True. But then I guess the scare is more cause of the change of lifestyle and a bit of the steadiness of income cause you're going to give up a job that generates steady income, not because of you and your wife are going to be only the two of you without the children around ay?
Yeah just fear of what we don't know. The boat is a huge undertaking. I've not grown up in a seafaring family and so I have to learn a lot. School covers the theory and certification and chartering, serving as crew and hanging out with some friends at a couple of harbours is getting me some experience doing the work. The empty nest shouldn't be much of an issue. Number one son is established on his own now and our daughter is just finishing grade 11 this year. So in a couple of years she will be off to university and we'll be able to really make the move to living aboard. A couple of years of managing the boat in the Great Lakes, then another couple doing the Great Circle Route through the US and the Eastern Circle will give us the opportunity to experience all the aspects of it. My wife will have finished up her career within 7 years give or take and we make the final cut. At least that's how it looks on paper.
How it plays out, who knows?
We're going to buy a place in Nova Scotia to use as a land base and figure it would be great to let a few artists reside there and keep the heat on while they use the shop to work on their own art projects. So in the summers when we are up here, we can pull the boat out of the water or maintenance when needed. That sort of thing.
We'll be able to live off the investments we've made so what money we make from this can go into what we leave the kids when we're gone. The beauty of it is that a good portion of the work is soaking up the sun in a hammock, riding a jetski and seeing what opportunities the day brings.
And please no snickering whatsoever from anybody else!
If you really can't contain yourself lower to do that, do it in the Wreck Beach or your own thread, not on this thread!
Oh I don't mind so much. I just think about my commute to work from the deck to the beach and if the boss needs her drink topped up. heh heh