Just working. . .

I haven't been as regular with my postings, not just on this blog but also intagram, pinterest, overall I have just been busy with other things.  😉

I have been creating, making, painting, imagining, daydreaming. . .

I think the new style is off to a rockin' start.  I really am loving the words on canvas, Liz is the best-est at making just what I pictured. 😁

I started with the "RainbowPride" because ya' know rainbows and Pride, what could be more awesome.  😍

Well the only thing I could think of better is Love, because all you need is love, right!? 😇  Love makes the world go around, Love is powerful, Love is kind, Love wins, we all need a little more Love. 

Sticking with online. . .

For months I have been looking forward to getting back to in person events, unfortunately at this point, I just do not see that happening this year.  😔  Many of the events I had scheduled were cancelled and I have resisted scheduling new events due to concerns that they may also end up cancelled on short notice. 

I have re-opened my etsy shop and I am continuing to build my goimagine.com shop, so for the foreseeable future I will be sticking to online sales only.  This will be a challenge, mainly to my sub-par photography skills 😅 but I'll manage.  I look forward to more reviews like "Pictures don't really show how awesome these really are, " "The photo didn’t begin to do it justice.  " Yes these are actual quotes from previous reviews, it is something I hear regularly. ~LOL~  😇

So if you are interested but on the fence, I know buying things online without really "seeing" them can seem risky but I would say take a chance you may end up pleasantly surprised. 😉

Jinkies !! I'm messy . . .

Or maybe I'm just a mess. 😏  

Ok, so it's a bit of both, I guess.

When my easel was new it was all clean and pristine, now 4 years later look at the mess I've made with my drips, splatters, drops, whoopsies and oopsies.  It's a good thing I have a large drop cloth under there and yes it's a mess too. LOL 😄  

As a person I'm also a bit of a mess.  I have some health issues both physical and mental.  I try not to dwell on them but they do get in the way sometimes.  Also worth noting when going slightly mental I have tendencies toward rhymes.  

I chalk the rhyming up to the mental circus, like the OCD, social anxiety, impostor syndrome, yup I'm nutz and it's OK.  😇  Physically, I have early onset arthritis developing in my hands.  I also have some pretty serious vitamin deficiencies that cause uncontrollable numbness and muscle twitches at times. 😏

So, yeah my arts and crafts are challenging for me and my photos almost always suck.  I have taken all the photo advice, I got a better camera, I got a tripod, I have banks of lights, I have solid clean backgrounds, I've tried natural light next to a window, I've tried colored backgrounds instead of white, I have multiple versions of editing software.  I do my best but accept that "my best" is still not that great.  😕

Self acceptance a.k.a. acknowledging I am a work in progress 😇

Not what I planned. . .

That's life though, things often do not go according to plan. 😄  

I bought these crates for storing and transporting my art.  I thought they were a great idea and a good solution too, they are nearly the perfect size, the built in handles make them easy to carry.

Ok, so they were plain and a bit ugly but function was the key factor as I can always make things pretty. 😊  So I contemplated ways to brand them and brighten them up.  I started with the idea of using peel and stick lettering to trace and then hand painting and edging, it was time consuming and tricky as my hands tend to shake at times.  

I got one done and I was super happy with it, but when I looked at the other 4 and realized how long it would take me I sighed and nearly cried.  😔  But I did like the way it looked so I started. . .

On the second one at the very last stage, there was a paint pen explosion of sorts. ~sigh~  Yeah that's not exactly the clean logo look I was going for there. 😕  I was so disappointed in myself as well as the exploding tipped paint pen.  Then I found a fellow seller with the amazingly perfect thing that I didn't know I needed.  She made me custom signs.  

I thought "heck yeah, that will make it easier!"  ~LOL~ I'll paint those up pretty and then just attach them to the crates, bing.  Well, painting them up with tiny brushes and my shaking hands turned out to be it's own time consuming tricky test.  It took longer than I thought because I had to do several coats of paint to get the brightness and depth of color I wanted. When I went to do the silver on the edges I had lots of oops and had to repaint the front.  😒

Eventually, I did get one done in a fashion that I was happy with and ready to seal.  I laid it on a canvas thinking I was going to gloss varnish it, the nature of the cut-out means it has to be laid on something and I was afraid the varnish would stick to paper or cardboard and cause problems after.  Once I laid in on the canvas though. . . I fell in love with it and my mind started running amok with so many ideas.  😲

But this one is Mine!!  as so many first attempts and prototypes are.  I am using in my office and plan to use it as booth signage (if I ever get to an in person event). Also I made it into logo photos for my social media. 😁

Now I'm off on a whole new line of art, thanks to Liz Wengerd of LizsWoodDesigns on etsy 

New can be scary. . .

Trying new things is often scary, forging into unknown territory is bound to cause anxiety, after all, how do you prepare for the unknown.

Some people are better at adapting than others, some people are more adventurous than others, while some people become practically paralyzed by fear and the unknown. 😔

I am not a tech genius but I have been using computers since the aol dial-up days and I am not afraid.  I am not afraid of breaking them, I am not afraid of clicking something wrong because anything that can be done can be undone (most of the time) even if it takes a bit of work sometimes.  😉

Over the years I have used a lot of websites and all of them were different, in format, functions, terminology, I have learned to pay attention to details.  Some sites like to make obvious button-y looking buttons, some use simple text links, some have some really hidden stuff and unless you know what you are doing you can't find things. 😏

I had a stand alone website hosted through ipower where I used multiple different web builders, wizards, add ons, etc. a lot of things changed over the years I had that site, eventually the security and payment security issues became too much (annoying and expensive) so I ditched it.  I closed that business, I killed the website, I let the domain names expire and moved on.

I did a lot of research on ebay, amazon, etsy, artfire, etc.,  I read all their terms of service, I read seller handbooks, I read help articles, I looked at a bunch of shops on all sites.  I decided to start with etsy and in spite of all my reading I still didn't understand search or stats or how things worked. 😏  But I jumped in and just started doing.  Etsy was an adventure, like learning to ride a horse on very shifty sands. No joke, etsy in the 5 years I've been there has been regularly, if not continuously, changing things sometimes for no obvious reason.  They changed the seller dashboard, they changed the shipping interface, they changed stats, they have changed advertising multiple times, they changed the dash interface again, they combined ads, they separated ads, they changed shipping to be through pitney bowes and started charging people "adjustments" etc.,  Every time etsy pulls one of these genius moves the forums fill up with angry and confused sellers who can't find what used to be so simple and right there.  😕  

I do feel for those individuals and I have tried to help by answering questions, with screen shots and step by step instructions sometimes, but I have found some of those individuals do not really want help they just want to complain. Sometimes you just need to vent and are not ready for help, I compare this process to the 5 stages of grief.  So by all means be annoyed and let it out, but then you have to progress through the rest of the process, don't get stuck in one stage too long. 😉

I have always coped with etsy's changing formats by giving myself that first day to just be annoyed, give it dirty looks and make a list of all the things I don't like about it. The next day I try to look with less personal annoyance and more of a critical eye looking for functions or info that may have been moved and make a list of things I need to look for or re-learn.  After a couple of days I will dedicate a block of time to literally click on EVERYTHING and by everything I do mean every thing that looks in any way like it might be a button or link.  I click on things just to see what happens, where the links go, do they open pop ups or new screens to explore.  I hover my cursor over nearly every inch of the screen just to watch what happens, do arrows or drop downs appear, does the cursor change, does the font/color of text change, these things can indicate hidden functions.  When I see those hints I click to see what happens. 😎

My generally curious and adventurous nature has served me well in these situations and I apply that attitude and methodology when I set up on new platforms.  Last year I got my hopes up for the "AC Moore" marketplace hosted on zibbet.  I wasn't afraid to try, I wasn't concerned by format differences, and I never cared if it took off I just wanted another platform to try.  It was weird, it was different, it was confusing in places but I clicked my way through and set up shop. Now sadly that turned out to be a waste of time as it never took off, AC Moore never really promoted it like the said they would.  Zibbet never followed through on the promised upgrades and eventually I ended up taking down all my products. 😕

However, the failure of one platform did not stop me from getting excited about or wanting to try goimagine.com  I joined the #caringeconomy knowing that the platform, layout and functions would be different and it is.  Again I looked at the help articles, I watch all the Wednesday webinars and I clicked on everything I could find.  Setting up shipping was the trickiest part but mainly because it was just different and honestly it looks intimidating because there are so many different options.  I can understand why some have found shipping settings overwhelming, it took me multiple tries to get things the way I wanted them, but eventually I did get things set up just the way I wanted, it only took 3 tries.  😇

I have not finished adding all my listings yet, it's a process.  I was initially confused by the idea of "global options" and I don't find that helpful but I'm sure other's do, many of my listings/products have different/non-standardized options.  So I created all my one of a kind listings first, no options necessary.  Now I am working on listings with options and in the weeks in between I have read and seen more info and have new ideas about how to set up my options and realize that there is no limit so I can set up each listing with its own options if I want, I just have to name and code them so they make sense to me. 😉

I have high hopes for goimagine, Jon and his team are willing to listen to sellers about how we would like things to work. When they say they are working on a change they follow through and changes appear.  When people have questions or get confused they are in the facebook group with answers, they reply to their emails.  The regular webinars where Jon shows his screen and walks us through settings and changes are incredibly helpful.  The site is still in beta so things are continuously changing and there have been a few glitches that were usually quickly resolved.  😇

Jon has a PR and advertising plan, a list of improvements under way and things seem to be progressing well.  I genuinely appreciate Jon's openness, honesty, and transparency about this process of building goimagine's new #caringeconomy. The platform has processed tens of thousands of dollars of sales already and made its' first charitable donation.  I personally think things are off to a great start. 😁