The Quick Red Fox...

Last week I got a new Tattoo, it's a fox. For a while I wanted a new one and Ned wanted a new one as well, we've been planning them basically since last May, when it was Ned's birthday. I was planning to get an owl and he was planning to get a Bison. Every time he set to design his, he got stuck, we end up having bison Tshirts and bison cigarette case (it was when he was still smoking) and bison stenciled on our motorcycle helmets, but no tattoos.

Eventually, and based on a couple of days choice, I end up getting a fox and he end up getting a wolf - which is cool cause there are a lot of similarities between those 2 animals, it feels like it's the day and night versions of the same thing.

I chose a fox for many qualities I feel like I'm missing - quickness, daring, courage, cunning and spunk. I hope that the spirit of the fox would encourage me to push myself harder in interacting with people and promoting myself.

So today, to celebrate Ned's wolf and my fox, I made this red fox doll, it's prefect if you want to bring the same energies into your life, but don't want to commit to a tattoo.
Also, to celebrate Ned's wolf, I curated this treasury - which is dedicated to this beautiful and wild animal.

Etsy was pretty quite today, no sales and very few views, I spend most of the day working on the minor arcana cards - I illustrated 5 already - so 9 more to go before I finish the cups series. I really hope I make a sale soon, this is starting to be too depressing...

However, not all is bad because I found out today that I'm in the Gift guide! one of the felt notebook made it and I'm sure the bear is now patronizing over the other two and think he's all that just because he's in the gift guide...

Weekly Summery

Sales This week: 2

Hearts: 301

Treasuries: Curated 2

Main source of inspiration: A random photo of flickr of a bear, inspired me to create 3 notebooks with images of dears.

Best thing to eat: undoubtedly the Fried Chicken at Egg. The started doing dinners this week!

Shopping: Actually, there's extra in the kitty box for shopping, I had to return papers I got last week, so 6$ back from Staples. Still need to solve the paper problem though... I got 3 skeins of embroidery floss just cause they were pretty. And a pack of nice blend wool felt came in from Australia, I ordered it from an Etsy store a couple of weeks back and got them today.

Greatest achievement: Not the best week for me, I'm glad I manage to keep the store going even though it was slow and I felt crappy.

Disappointments: Only 2 sales?! that sucks!

OK, so lets see how I did with this weeks goals...

1. Last week I made my monthly goal of sales, it was 25 - I was hoping to make it to 30 by the end of the month. I'm on 27 sales now, there are still a couple of days, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

2. Make 2 tarot decks for the store - done! there are in there now

3. Starting to work on the minor arcana cards - this sadly did not happened at all!

4. Make a new weasel and a new fox - big success! I not only made a new weasel and fox, they both got sold! I was so excited that I made another weasel, she's up for sale now!

5. And idea for a new item never got executed. I might give it a shot tonight. instead however, I made some new notebooks, so I think it balanced it out nicely...

6.I did write a cut out + keep tutorial.

7. I got 2 treasuries, which was great, one was dedicated to block printing and the other to peanut butter and chocolate colors. I wasn't featured in any, bummer.

Goals for next week

1. list a new item everyday - so far this had been the best tactic to get buyers - just keep the shop fresh.

2. Try and get the cream paper I was using originally for the tarot. If I find it - make 2 new decks.

3. Make another fox and get some red felt for a weasel like fox and make one.

4. I'm really scared to do this for some reason, I guess cause I'm more sensitive about art then about crafts, but I got to get over that - list at least one art print \ drawing \ painting.

5. get at least one more treasury and hopefully, be in one.

6. Write a blog review about another store.

7. Get those minor Arcana cards going!

As said, this was not the best Etsy week ever to say the least - so hopefully, next week will be better - wish me luck!

A little Better!

Sales today: 1
Items posted: 3 (a fox, a deck of cards and a weasel )
packages send out: 0
Main source of inspiration: A shoot we had yesterday, nothing concrete came out of it, but I have some cool ideas.
Best thing to eat: Man, we totally let loose today - 3 meals out and non of them healthy! but the best (and worth) was dessert at Blackbird Parlor - I had the Baklava!

After the excitement from the shoot and last week being so strange that I couldn't bring myself to do much, I finally manage to dedicate a whole day to the Etsy store - and there are some results!

Last week Eliza Fox was sold to a nice lady in Ohio, she mentioned that if I make another guy she'd be interested. So when I finished making Edward Fox I send her a convo and she bought it right away. I'm sad to see him go, he's the best fox I made so far and I'm especially proud of him.

Also posted today - the first of the low budget tarot deck, basically, the same cards I've made in the past, but because they are unpainted and the case is simpler to make, I could knock the price by quite a bit. So that's good... I hope that some people who wanted them before but could not afford them, might buy this deck.

The Weasels always take so much more time then I plan for them, but I enjoy making them so much. When I made the first one, I named it after my neighbor's son, since then I created the whole family across the hall, 4 weasels in all. So now I had to find a new resource of names... I decided to name this one after the downstairs neighbor, a really nice shy girl called Laurel. I'm going to name the next one after Laurel's dog!


And last, but not least - I manage to get a treasury, as today was dessert night - I named it after my favorite dessert ever - peanut butter chocolate pie.

So - one sales and a lot of promotion and crafting, over all a very good day!

Not much to report...

Man, am I having a slow week...

Only one sale this week so far, it sucks! In my defense or rather fault, I haven't been doing that much. We are shifting our schedule into daytime and it's hard for me to craft and work while there's light outside, I don't know why but the quietness and darkness get me all active.
I have been renewing some older items this week, but nothing sold - it's a crappy feeling when things are going slow.

I did have some minor achievements in the past couple of days.

I did manage to get a treasury, which was fun, I dedicate it to block printing which I love. It gave me a chance to show off the store of 2 favorite artists and flickr friends M.Lee and Felicitate88 I've already got a plan for another one and I'll try to catch it tonight.

Also, the new weasel I made, sold less then 24 hours after I put it in the store.

And - I made a new fox, Ned's taking pictures of it now, I think I'm going to call it "henry".

Also I made 2 new Tarot decks, one is in the store and one still haven't been photographed, hopefully it will be listed later today. And a new set of Bookmarks.

I still hope to start working on the minor arcana illustrations this weekend and make a new weasel, the store's sad without one...

I just wish there were more sales going on!

Thursday

Sales today: 1
Items posted: 1
packages send out: 1
Main source of inspiration: a shopping mistake
Best thing to eat: Eggs Benedict in Pastis (it was so decadent, but so worth it...)

I just realized that for the past week or so I've been managing 2 blogs that are basically the same, both were made to share the experiences I have through running the Etsy store, one on we-love-etsy and one on indipublic and that on top of the not very used personal blog Homeworld and a couple of website and a flickr account.

It felt really strange to have to split the store blog info into 2, so I decided that what I need is yet another blog to have all that info in (plus I really hate NING's graphics - it's too overpowering and sell I say - ugly).

So here it is, in all it's glory - new blog weepee!

And without farther a due, today's Etsy news:

A Sad Story of Shopping and Returning
One of the things that I really like about the store is that it pushes me to do stuff that's really hard for me, like being assertive. So this is what happened - a while ago I went to Staplers and got 3 packs of cover stock paper in green, gray and cream, I thought I'd use them for pages in books I made, but they were too heavy and so they were left aside. Then, when I started prining out the Tarot cards I remembered them and the cream was just perfect for this.
So, eventually, the paper was over, after about 15 tarot decks and I needed new one. I went to the store and got some new one, but, coming home, it turned out that the different brand doesn't work well at all with the printer and I can't use it.

If this was just for a personal project I would toss the paper away and forget about the whole thing, however, because this was for the store, I felt more responsible and assertive and me and Ned went into the city today, and though the package was open, they were still able to refund the money.

This story is boring, but it has 2 important morals - the first is that it's good to be assertive, cause I feel much better about myself after I returned the paper. The second is that necessity is the mother of invention, because, having no cream paper, I tried the gray and it came out really really great.



A Happy Story About a Weasel

We both woke up early and in a really bad mood this morning. We didn't feel like eating anywhere in the area and eventually took the train to Ned's old neighborhood just to have breakfast in a really fancy place he loved going to when he was living there. It was a really nice breakfast. On the way back I asked "do you think something sold in the store?" and he said "yes" and then I asked "what" and he said "Everything!" and I said "I wish the weasel would sell, it's really cute and it makes me sad when animals that I make don't sale.

I got home and what do I see?! It did sell! that was really cool. I send the package out right away.

Also, a tutorial I made in the morning about making weasels got published on Cut Out + Keep.