Salvation Army

The Salvation Army on Bedford avenue and N7th street is one of my favorite shops in the world! really, it's so awesome.

First of all, they have great cloths in really cheap prices, which I like!

Second of all, they have really cheap cloths that though I might not be able to wear, like an extra extra extra large red sweater from Moreno wool for 3.99$, I can still buy and use as material to work with and make stuff from.

Third, I really love wearing second hand cloths, not only someone else did all the work and wore and washed them till they got all soft and nice and not too clean and crisp to wear, it's also better for the environment cause cloths gets to go around and last longer in the world.

Forth and probably the nicest thing - I love the way that this is contributing to the community, people who wants to get rid of cloths, have an easy way of doing it, people who wants to buy cloths have a good place to do just that. Stuff get reused and people with no money get to have great stuff if they want to.
Also, for some of the people that work there this is an opportunity to have a real serious job for the first time in their life and gain confidence and work abilities on the way of rejoining to working community. I love to see the same faces there every time and how much better they become in working there.

So today, with an idea about a pink fox in mind I went shopping, I intended to just get a pink sweater and get back to the house, but then some other stuff caught my eyes and this is a result:


1) a pink sweater size Large, as planned....

2) An Ann Taylor Loft Stripy skirt, probably to wear, it's really nice and I can't wait till it's warm enough to actually wear skirts.

3) Another skirt with a brown and pink Paisley motif. I thought of using the fabric as material, but now I think I like it too much as a skirt and don't want to destroy it.

4) A Gap sweater. This was on their posters last fall, and I saw a lot of people wearing it for a while so I'm not sure I'll be able to bring myself to wear something so recognizable, however, it'll make a cute elephant or something if I decide to cut it up.

5) a Red and blue star Tshirt, bought mostly for the stars and for the fact it was 0.99$

So, good day of shopping, 16$ spend on 5 items and spending time in my favorite business in the neighborhood...

Above you can see Henzel the Fox which is made of a half of a salvation Army sweater I got last week at half price of a 3.99$.

Illustration Friday - multiple

I used to take part at the Illustration Friday site a few years ago. It was when I worked in an office and it was a good way to jolt my creativity and waste some office time as well as free use of their scanner (I didn't have one at home at the time) Then I started doing other stuff and forgot all about it.

But, over the past couple of weeks, I've been highly inspired by the beautiful work of Gennine and the beautiful way in which she is inspired by the Illustration Friday theme to create beautiful artwork in her style. So I joined again.

I got a difficult word for my first week - Multiple, At first I wanted to do something with the periodical chart, much influenced by a Making history podcast I was listening to, but nothing came up really. Eventually, I decided to just go with multiple drawings and created 3 of them for this artwork.

For a while now, I want to bring myself to list a painting or a drawing on the Etsy store. It's somehow a lot more scary to me to sell art then it is to sell craft stuff, probably because I value the art more then the craft creations. I take myself more seriously as an artist then as a craftist - but I am going to live up to the challenge and list those 3 pieces.

Treasury West is Back!

And with it, the awesome possibility to get one right as you want it like I did last night when I heard the good news. The main problem was that I had nothing ready to go so it's a bit theme less, however I think I manage ot build a pretty respectable one out of my favorite store list, It manage to get a strange color look which I'm not even sure that I like.

Still - no sales this week, it sucks. I haven't put much in the store since the fox, but renewed a couple of items, even with the slow week and a half, I'm still really happy about January, I had to pay 55$ in etsy free for January and half of February Which 'm really impressed with. Also, I finally started illustrating the new Minor arcana tarot deck, I'm half way into finishing the "cups" element. I'm still not sure whether I should sell each element on it's own or wait till the whole set is done and sell the 56 together, or wait till the whole set is done and sell the whole 78 together including the major arcana.

It's very strange to find myself thinking in terms of marketing and cost effectiveness. I know that waiting till the whole set is done probably make more sense but I'm still probably going to try and sell each element on it's own because I can't bring myself to commit to finish the entire project, for now I'm saying "I'll do 14 and see what happens..."

OK, breakfast and back to work. I made another Tarot deck last night that need to be shot and listing, and I have every intention in the world of finishing those illustrations today and perhaps, make the first "cup" deck and put it in the shop.

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!