yay!money!

Remember when a while ago I won 250$ in the apartment therapy tutorial competition?!that was about a month ago and the money stayed in my paypal account till now, I already had one nightmare about not spending it fast enough. There were just too many choices and wonderful things on Etsy that I want and I just couldn't decide.

And so, though the reasonable thing to do would be to spend it on some heirloom piece that would service me for a long time, like a leather bag or spend it all on 25 pounds of fudge, this money kept making me think of the first sale I ever had on Etsy. It was on late November, when I decided to pick up my long abandon store and make and list at least one thing every month to see what happens. Now, making one thing and listing it a day look like an easy work day, but then it looked like quite a challange. I've been doing it for 2 weeks, trying to promote and getting pretty discouraged, and then I sold a sock puppet I made to the awesome Queancy Pearson. It suddenly made all this making-money-of-art thing looks possible and that though it was a bit of a rude awakening to list things that I loveingly made for pretty small change and still not having people rush to buy everything, a little reality worth so much more then a hige fantasy.

And so I thought that the best thing I can do with a 250$ in Etsy money would be to give this awesome experience to other sellers and make them realise that they to, can make some money from making stuff.

So, for the next couple of weeks i'm going on a shopping spree in stores who never had a sale (I might bend the rules if I see something I really want and the store had very few sales so far), I'm going to try not to spend more then 25$ in each store, and try ot give this cool experience to 10 people. Also, I'm going to review the stores I'm buying from and hope that the blog feature will get them some more exposure.

I'm going to try one more thing in my search of stores that didn't get any sales yet - If I come across any that don't make sales for a reason that look obvious to me, I'm going ot critique them, again hoping the exposure would get them some attention.

If you are or you know any cool shops with no sales yet that you would like me ot critique or buy something from, please comment here. I can't promis to buy or critique any of those, but I will take a look at what they make, so at least they'll get some views out of it.

New Year's Resolutions

Or rather just things I want to do and never get around.

I hate making those lists.

I wanted to do a whole Etsy year review and goals for next year and also my own personal things that I want for the year and all that.

But as this year is beginning, I'm not feeling up to it at all. I'm tried and can't sleep well and my brain feels like mush.

I haven't made any art in the past couple of weeks, or very little compare to what I'm used to and this might be the reason.

Talking to a friend today, and talking about New Years resolutions, I thought of how redundant the whole thing is, making rules to your life that if I could, I would have already kept last year. Planning a head into being a person I'm not now. I might as well just wish to win the lottery and be 6 feet tall.

However, there are a lot of things I want to happened in the upcoming year and a part of me does believe in the magic power of intention and making declarations and all that.



Disclaimer! I don't really intend to be and do everything on this list, but even if I only do some of it, it'll be pretty cool. I'm mostly doing this right now cause I feel so uncomfortable in my skin and I wonder who is the person I wish to be instead of who I am.

So here goes nothing:

I want to keep going on my Etsy store, I've been really good about putting at least some work into it almost everyday this year, and it brought be both money and joy. So I hope I'll keep listing new things every day or couple of days. I made it to 273 sales this year which is 23sales over my top goal. I'll be really happy to end Next year at 600 sales. My top goal is 750.

I started selling in a store in Brooklyn and took part of a few trunk show at Ned's mom's house. I do want to be more active as far as craft selling venues, I hope to have at least 2-3 other stores by the end of next year who will be selling my art and take part in 2-3 trunk shows or fairs that does not involve Ned's mom.

I had my first solo art show this year. I want to have at least one more, and this time in New York. I would actually like to have at least 2 of those.

I want to write for at least half an hour everyday, whether it's e-mails, or blog entries or even Yedda answers or Etsy forum comments. I feel like I'm losing my voice.

I want to get a new lens, and a remote control for the camera.

I want to be more brave about interaction with people, and be more social, and start being not afraid from using the stupid phone.

I want to travel, but probably not to Israel.

I want to go back to doing yoga at least once a week, or do a daily half an hour walk, or learn to live better with my flabby body. Or all of the above.

I want to read more.

I want to be better about sleeping hours.

I want to make more art. And more money.

I'm thinking about maybe going back to school or doing some classes, or going back to therapy. For some reason, those things fills the same slot for me, I'm not sure if I want to or not, but I guess I want to think about it more.

I want to keep better connection with my friends in Israel and my family. But I don't want my mom to start talking to me again, even though I dream about that almost every night.

I want to be there for Ned when he needs me and work together on the business side of his photography. It'll be really cool if we get to do some commercial or magazine work together this year.

I want to expend the louchelink site to a monthly art assignment challenge, tohugh I'm not quite sure which shape this will take.

I want to design a new site for myself.

I want to dress better and take better care of my body and look nicer, and put lotion everyday and all this type of crap I feel like all women aside of me do. (yes, this one I already know will not happen...)

I want ot be less scared.

New Store

After I made the books from the set paper Ned used for a shoot a couple of days ago, using Ned's photograph to decorate the covers, we thought it would be really cool if Ned had an Etsy store to connect to his Erotic site, and sell photography prints and other erotic related art in.

So today we set it up together.

It was not easy, we were both stressed and were having a pretty shitty day as it was, but we went for it. Ned manage to get a cut on his hand from the frame glass he was cleaning to take a photo of one of his prints in the frame, and then break it. We were feeling more shitty then before. Eventually he shot it with the frame without the glass and it came out really nice.

The cool thing is that while we were trying to not get cut by glass and freaking out, the new store first sell happened! it was so exciting. One of the notebooks we listed less then half an hour before got bought! it was awesome.

I felt like we were doing the right thing after all!

Check out Ned's new store!