Open-House Gallery

Every year for many years now, the artists and designers and illustrators and photographers and sculptors and ceramicists in my local area of Bristol organise a weekend, the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail, where there are lots of open-house galleries and shows, and arts exhibits and events in local schools and churches etc.

For as long as we've lived here, we've been keen punters of the SBA Trail, but this year, after a lot of urging from friends (and encouraged by kind comments from Blip), I decided to make the ground floor of our house into a gallery and try to sell prints of my photos.

This is our hallway, with a row of 60cm x 60cm prints on aluminium dibond -- every one of these started life as a Blip. Also got some printed on 1m x 1m canvas, and a few with acrylic glass over the dibond -- they're in other rooms, not visible here.

It was nerve-wracking, but a lot of fun, and by the end of the weekend I had sold enough prints that I had covered my printing costs, which felt great. And people said nice words about my pictures, which was also fab.

So, thanks to everyone on Blip who ever said anything nice or encouraging about any of my photos, because I don't think I would have had the guts to do this if I'd not had such a positive experience on Blip last year.

PS I still have some spare prints for sale, if anyone is interested. :-)