Geeking Out About Workshops

Earlier this week, I taught my first workshop on selling through Etsy.  It was a little odd putting the presentation together, thinking "who the heck am I to teach others on etsy?" but as I kept outlining and writing I realized that I do, in fact, know a ton about selling on etsy.  Who knew?  Ok, apparently the people who asked me to teach the workshop knew.  But it was a great moment for me to see how far I've come since dipping my toe in the massive pool of etsy back in mid-2009. 

See, I love teaching workshops.  LOVE it.  I love gathering my thoughts into a coherent presentation, I love creating informative handouts, I love the anticipation of getting a group of interested people together to geek out over something I find fascinating, and I love the interactions between all of us for a few hours as we share knowledge.  Love. It.  My favorite part, though, is getting others excited about a topic and encouraging them to get out there and give something new a shot. 

So tell me, friendly readers, what makes a good workshop experience for you?

Behind the Scenes of a Photo Shoot

Today I thought I'd share a little behind the scenes look at how I photograph pieces for etsy.  I'm a DIY kind of gal, and if i can do something with a home grown solution instead of a lot of expensive equipment, I do it.   So my process for photographing my work to sell online is decidedly low tech.  Here's my photo studio - my kitchen :)

 

It has a small north facing window to the left of the table, and between 10:30am and 1:30pm, the light is perfect.  It's not too bright, it's not too dark, and it doesn't cause a lot of glare.  But, just sticking a planter on my messy table isn't exactly going to bring in the buyers, so I do a little rearranging:

I found out the hard way after photographing a ton of work that the colors in the mahogany table really mess with the color balance in my camera (a canon photoshot elph point and shoot) so I cover part of it with a plain old piece of foam core I found in my closet:

Next, the subject:

As soon as I get a close up shot, the setting works rather well:

I could use any inexpensive photo editing software at this point, since really all I do is crop and dicky around with the contrast, but I use photoshop since I'm comfortable with it and have been using it for years.  After tweaking, here's the finished product:

You can check out all the photos I used in the etsy listing!

My State of the Studio New Years Post

I know that everyone and their cousin has a blog post about New Years resolutions and year-end recaps, and yes friends, I'm jumping on the band wagon.  But I'm doing it because 2011 was a heck of a year.  I mean, in the record books of years, 2011 was a big 'un.  It started with me directing a large national service program for the federal government out of an office in a marble laden city hall, and, thanks to federal funding cuts, it ended with me working out of my living room painting and gluing and shipping like crazy.  I'm one of the lucky ones.  Instead of having to go on unemployment, I had a business I'd been building for years to fall back on.  Plus the holiday season was coming and that's go-time for sales, so it seemed like great timing.  But it was a much more challenging adjustment than I was prepared for.  I used to get dressed up for meetings.  Now I can work in my pjs all day if I don't have errands to run...not that I do that...seriously.  I used to have a steady pay check.  Now my sales are my livelihood.  It's been a liberating experience, and yet has been a very rough transition for me.  I've been thinking a lot lately about this transition, and here's my year end cap:

The cons:

• All of my income goes right back into my business.  This isn't something that's widely advertised when you think about running your own small business, but the majority of your money will get funneled right back into your business.  Pretty much every cent I make goes right back into buying materials to make more.  This is totally fine if you have another means of income, but when you see those sales figures and they're looking really good and you still can't find the money to pay the electric bill, it's a bit disheartening.
  
• It's isolating.  Going from working in a large office with plenty of in-person human contact and daily meetings with people I supervised to working alone in my house was rough.  I'm not going to sugar coat this one - I was really lonely and depressed for the first few months I ran Found Beauty Studio full time.  I missed interacting with other people.  I missed having purpose. I missed being able to bounce ideas off of people who knew what I was doing and collaborate at the drop of a hat.  Now socialization outside of superficial interactions with the good folks who work at my local post office takes effort.  I mean, my cats are cute and my husband is awesome, but sometimes a girl just needs to talk to someone else. 
• The mission is money.  I know this sounds obvious since it's a business and my purpose is to make money, but for most of my adult working life I've worked for nonprofits with really amazing social missions.  It's what kept me going.  When work was tough, I just focused on the mission and it got me through.  Now I am my mission.  Keeping my electric bill paid is the mission.  It takes a major mind-shift to get through this one.
• I don't have control.  You'd think that as the sole owner and staff person of a business I'd have complete control, right?  But I don't.  My measures of success are all at the mercy of customers and shop owners.  I can't just make something, put it up for sale, and be able to count when it will sell.  That lack of control was staggeringly difficult for me. 

The pros:

• I work for myself!  I've had some great supervisors in the past, and I've had some really crappy supervisors.  Now I make all my own decisions without having to massage them in a way that makes them palatable to a higher-up.  I may not have control over sales, but I have control over everything else.  And that's incredibly liberating.
• I make stuff and search for neat vintage items for a living.  Seriously.  It's kind of awesome.  When I'm sick of making one kind of thing I can go make another.  Or I can go thrift store and antique store hunting.  And it's my job.  Instead of feeling guilty that I'm wasting my time when I could be doing work for my job, now this IS my job.  I mean, how many people get to say that?
• No one can fire me.  I'm no longer at the mercy of grant funding.  No one is going to tell me that my program funding hasn't been renewed and my job will be to close down a program and lay people off.  I don't have to justify my worthiness or my program outcomes to anyone to keep my job.  After years of worrying about that stuff, it's amazing to have that taken off of my shoulders. 
• My customers are fan-flippin-tastic.  I mean it.  The people who are attracted to my work tend to be hilarious, quirky, fabulous people and I love when I get to meet them in person at shows or exchange emails with them when they buy online.  It's like I've found this secret club of interesting individuals who all like the same aesthetic that I do.  And that's amazing.
• I can do this.  For years I wondered if I had what it takes to run my own business successfully and, you know what?  I do.  Turns out that I love the business end of things. I love the financials, I love the spreadsheets, and I love the intellectual challenge of constantly looking for ways to innovate and streamline.  I'm running an artisan business in one of the worst recessions in decades and I'm actually making a profit.  I had record breaking sales on etsy in November and December, for crying out loud!  I can totally do this. 

So that's my year-end recap everyone.  It's been a big year with heaps of ups and downs.  It hasn't been even close to smooth sailing but I imagine that anyone who, for whatever reason, leaves full time employment to run a small business encounters much the same thing.  I'm looking forward to 2012 and hope you are too.  Thanks for following my blog, and may your year be full of happiness and good health, friends.

A Landmark and a Challenge

YESSS!!!!  I've done it!  100 sales on etsy!  For the record, I understand how completely arbitrary a distinction this is, but it's been a goal of mine for 2 years.  I passed the $1,000 in sales this year mark in March, and now in April I've passed the 100 sales.  Triple digits!  WOOT!!!  I can't quite tell you why, but I feel like this gives me more legitimacy.  They like me!  They really like me!  (apologies to Sally Field for borrowing her oscar moment)...

I juggle Found Beauty Studio with a lot of other obligations.  I'm the director of an AmeriCorps VISTA program as my day job, a volunteer guardian ad litem in the VT family court system, a board member for a local arts organization, a mentor, a fundraising consultant, and I try to fit being a good friend, sister, daughter, aunt, and partner in there too.  I also aspire to be a counselor for children and adults with complex developmental trauma, and attend a lot of workshop and read a lot of books and research in that all too elusive spare time.  To sum up, I'm busy and pulled in different directions.  But the studio keeps me grounded.  In a fantastic workshop I attended today on Trauma Stewardship, I heard yet again - yet really heard for the first time - that when we "overdeploy" ourselves, creativity is the first thing to go.  This means that all creative thinking and problem solving, in addition to any sort of art, is beyond our capacity.  And hoo boy have I ever felt that lately.  But I'm trying hard to make this a continued priority in my life.  It keeps me sane.  It exercises a part of my brain I don't use enough.  And, most importantly, it makes me happy.  And for some reason, surpassing these sales goals has helped keep me motivated.  They may be small successes, but I'll take what I can get.

Now for the challenge... A few weeks ago I picked up this absolutely atrocious skirt at good will:

Um, yes.  It is indeed a full length heavily pleated rainbow wool skirt.  I was visually offended and drawn to it in the same breath.  It was my civic duty to make sure no one ever wore this again so I grabbed it off the rack and took it home.  And mere minutes ago I turned it into a sweet purse.  Photos to come :)

Fun with Crafts!

The new items in my etsy store are flying off the virtual shelves! Thanks so much to all of you who have supported Found Beauty Studio and remember that I'm always thrilled to do custom work, so if you have any materials you'd like to see reused or reworked, drop me a line!