Pieces and Parts from THE CIRCUS THREE by Le Tron ~ "Toys with a Twist"
It’s a
Balancing Act!
“Giselle, have you seen my…”
“Managing Mike, have you seen my…”
“Madame, have you seen my…”
“Coffee mug?” inquired Madame.
“Cell phone?” asked Giselle.
“Razor?” continued Managing Mike.
“Razor?!” exclaimed Madame and Giselle in unison.
“Since when do recyc-letrons shave?” questioned a bemused
Madame Le Tron.
“Well, ever since I have lost my eyeglasses, Madame. I cannot tell if this texture upon my face is
rust or just a four-o’clock shadow,” replied the robot, as he stroked his chin
with a wrench-like apparatus that worked as a hand.
Giselle approached Mike and regarded him closely.
“Hmmm, looks more like dried gluestick to me,” observed
Giselle, as she scraped a bit off his chin for a closer look.
“Managing Mike, it is not your custom to be careless and
misplace your eyeglasses,” said Madame Le Tron.
“It is not his custom to shave either,” giggled Giselle.
“And you, Mademoiselle, I have never known you to misplace your cell phone. Why,
you paid two weeks wages for your iPhone 5,” added Madame, waving a black-gloved
finger in front of Giselle’s pretty little nose.
“Excusez- moi, Madame, iPhone 5 and service plan to be
precise, but your misplacing your coffee mug, well, we won’t even go there;
here,” offered Giselle, picking up Madame’s mug from the floor by the corner of
the divan.
“Merci, mon cher…” but before Madame could complete her
sentence, off went the lights, bang went the front door, crash went the mug,
and Giselle’s cell phone alarm sounded in the distance.
“Madame!” cried Giselle, as the lights flashed on and then
off again. The temperature in the room
dropped, and a child’s laughter could be heard coming from the same directions
as her phone.
“Giselle, are you okay?” shouted Madame.
“Qui, Madame, but I am afraid I dropped your coffee mug,”
answered Giselle in a quavering tone.
“Do not fret, mon cher,” said Madame, and with that the
lights came back on. “Mike, roll over and close the front door, s’il vous
plait.”
“Qui, Madame,” responded the robot, rolling first into a
chair and then into the wall enroute to the front door.
“Madame, what in the world was that, an earthquake?” queried
a visibly shaken Giselle, as she picked up the pieces of the broken mug.
“I think not,” answered Madame Le Tron, “but I have a notion
that…”
Buzzers, bells, whistle and whirs interrupted Madame Le Tron
this time as Ghoulish Gordon entered the scene.
As the gravely gruesome recy-letron rolled into the room, it appeared as
if he was dragging something or someone along behind, though this someone or
something wasn’t really there. What was
there? A pair of eyeglasses floating about two-and-a half feet above the ground
and Giselle’s cell phone floating just to the right of the same. In addition to
what one could see, the glasses and the phone, was a sound. It was the sound of
a child laughing.
For a moment Giselle thought she was going to faint. “Is-is-is
th-at m-m-my cell phone just floating in the air?” she whispered.
“And, Managing Mike’s eyeglasses,” confirmed Madame, as she
snatched the glasses from mid-air.
“Merci, Madame Le Tron,” chimed the robot, as he bumped into
the divan on his way to retrieve his eyewear.
“G-g-ghoulish Go-go-Gordan, is th-at a G-ghost?” stammered
Giselle.
“Oui, mon cherie, her name is Alice, and she is only three;
well, in our time that would be 103,”
replied the robot.
A bewildered Giselle sank down upon the divan.
“Oh my,” sighed Madame Le Tron. “Here, allow me.” Madame walked over to Ghoulish Gordon and
plucked Giselle’s iPhone5 from mid-air and handed it to Giselle, who accepted
the phone reluctantly. “Really Alice, I think you have caused just about enough
trouble for one day. Gordon, would you like to explain just why you have
conjured up this specter?”
Ghoulish Gordon waved a work order with a ratcheted hand.
“I’ll take that, Madame,” said Managing Mike, grabbing the
work order as he passed by. “I am afraid this is all my fault. I am the one who
gave the order to the staff. But without my glasses, I read the order as ‘103
ghosts’ to be made for sale, not just these three,” he said, indicating the
words upon the page. “And with the staff
already up to their eyebolts in creating fairies to fill an order, I am afraid
the message got misconstrued.”
“I’ll take the blame for that. I could not imagine Mike here was asking for
103 ghosts with the production staff already at an all time max. Therefore, I
assumed he was asking for the ghost
that was 103, specifically Alice. We all know she is a whiz at finding things
and what with Mike having lost his eyeglasses and all, I called on little Alice
here to…hey, where did she go?” Gordon desperately asked.
“She’s over here, next to me,” beamed Giselle. “And does she
ever get the Passbook app!” Looking down at her cell floating in mid-air,
Giselle read aloud, “ ‘Graveyards near you’…Cool.”
Alice giggled.
“Thank you so much for finding my phone, Alice,” said
Giselle
“And my eyeglasses,” added Managing Mike.
“And my new assignment…” chimed in Madame Le Tron.
“And what new assignment might that be? I think we all have
enough on our plates already,” stated Giselle.
“Prioritizing an unexpected workload!” winked Madame Le
Tron!*
*Note: It could happen to you as it is happening to
us here, at Le Tron. With Etsy sales not being what we would like them to be,
not only have we strategized and moved forward to increase our Etsy sales, but
we have reached out to shops and events right in our own back yard. The result
- a need for a lot more inventory to be
created, all the while keeping up with our commitment to social media and our
2013 Etsy goals. So…
Simple How To Prioritize The Unexpected
Workload
(Take a deep breath…)
1.)
Put all of your project deadlines down in your
calendar.
a.
You will work backwards from these dates
-
Decide on how much time each project has, not needs, to be completed.
-
Take into consideration all personal scheduling
conflicts.
-
Take into consideration time to manage your
social media obligations and your on-line stores.
-
Don’t forget to budget extra time for the
unexpected – one work session per 5 items is our guide.
2.)
WRITE OUT YOUR ORDERS, for example 10 Fairies–On-A-Stick, three Ghosts on hand-painted backdrops with storybooks.
3.)
TAKE INVENTORY OF MATERIALS you already have and
those things you will need to purchase. Make your lists. Pull/purchase your
supplies.
4.)
LAY OUT YOUR WORK! For us this is the most
helpful step. (We actually lay out, on our studio floor, each item to be
created along with its’ pieces and parts. Think in terns of making “kits”.)
5.)
THINK in terms of ASSEMBLY LINE work.
a.
Paint all the pieces that are the same color at
the same time. Once dry, return pieces
to their individual “kits.”
b.
Make all your fabric cuts.
c.
Do all your gluing. (You get the idea…)
6.)
Once all the pieces and parts are perfected and
you are to the point of final assembly of each individual item, GIVE UP THE ASSEMBLY
LINE WORK AND BECOME THE ARTIST THAT YOU REALLY ARE. This is where you shine.
7.)
FINISH EACH INDIVIDUAL PIECE. (This way if you
are short on time, you can release each piece as it is completed and deliver.
This is not the ideal, but it is better than hitting a deadline with nothing to
show.)
8.)
REMEMBER, before delivering any piece, make sure
you have photographed it and logged it with a date, time, price and where it is
going. This really helps when you come
to a sale and to, eventually, TAX TIME!
This is what works for us.
We would love to know what works for YOU! Share your comments below!
Bon Chance! May your
problem be “too much” and not “too little”!
Madame Le Tron
Join us each and every Friday at 3pm…
