what's up with THAT ??!??!

Ok so life's weirdness is getting to me in many ways.  I should start with I sprained my finger last week and it's still swollen and sore and slowing me down in the getting things done.  😢  It's mid April and they are talking "winter weather advisory" and blizzards, seriously WTF!?!?  Pinterest has changed format stuff, I looked at mine this morning and was like Whoa!?!  My Etsy shop stats have totally tanked this week, many many hours of absolute flat-line. 😕

I'll start with the thing that's actually making me smile, Pinterest, I went to check mine this morning and they have this cool new thing they are doing in the "header" space with my pinned photos.  I really like it, I think it looks cool as hell. 😊 Check it out !! 

This continuing winter weather is so not helpful. 😒  It's not just that I am sick of it, I actually need some good sunshiny days to get photos.  ~sigh~  I have new art I want to list but I can't until I can get decent photos.  I have enough trouble getting good photos without the grey rainy day background. 😖

Now for the most annoying thing and sadly no it's not the pain in my finger. 😡  This morning I decided to do something that is/has been recommended to/by other sellers, which is to just search your tags and see where you place and if you aren't placing well look at the listings that are and see what they are doing better/different than you.  So I tried it and of course I am nowhere but I did see several other shops I know and I clicked on a few of their listings from the front page to compare keywords. I did not click on PL ads I clicked on naturally placed listings from the front page and what I found was shocking to me and the exact opposite of what has always been recommended.  Even etsy's own articles on SEO and esty search placement say to use the whole title, use all 13 tag slots, make your title and tags match for max relevency, etc. Well instead I found front page items with only a handful of tags and short ass 4-5 word titles. 😕  I am super confused now, WTF?!?!   These are not new shops getting the new boost in spite of bad SEO, some of these are long standing successful shops, 1 of which I know used to have longer titles and use all their tags. 😩  So I guess I need to try another round of editing and see if this less SEO stuff works. 

OMG!?!?! I did it. . .

OMG!?  I agonized for weeks about whether or not to list my paintings for sale in my Etsy shop.  I mean I had a raging mental debate, I talked to my Momma, my husband, and my best friend about my fear of failure and rejection, the whole is it even good enough to sell, what if nobody ever buys them.  Do they look amateurish?  How do you price "Art"?  You know the whole world of insecurities that lives inside my head. 😑  

Well I did it I Jumped off that cliff last month.  I started with the spacescapes and battled my poor photography skills.  😕 After posting the first handful I asked in the forums for advice on listings art, I meant what to include in descriptions and keywords but all I got was pages full of you need better photos. 😡  That was sad and frustrating and in the end it just annoyed me into saying "screw it" I'm gonna do it my way anyway. 😜  

Yesterday I was vindicated!!  

I have sold my first painting!! 😮😁😇

I am shocked, surprised, humbled, blown away, thrilled beyond belief, over the moon happy.  I have sold many things I've made over the years, many things but I have never felt quite this proud.  It's really hard to explain but somehow selling that painting feels more personal than any of the wire art or jewelry or anything else.  

So I guess it's official. . . I am an artist. 😉

Trying something different. . .

I like trying new and different things some times, I mean I took up painting just for the fun of it. LOL  😃  I've been thinking about a few ideas for a while now, just crazy-ish things I wanted to try. 

I have a couple of "damaged" canvases, one was damaged in the package and one the cat knocked off the shelf and put a hole in. 😏 I didn't really want to just throw them away so I started thinking of ways to repair the tear/damage, obviously canvas is cloth so sewing. 😊  Hey I can sew, I can cross-stitch, I can embroider.  The more I thought about it the better the idea sounded (in my head) I contemplated what to do and how to best go about it for weeks. 

I decided on a flower meadow, so I started with a base layer of paint for the blue sky and green grass. I had to be careful not to make the tear in the corner worse and you can see the "dent" where it is when it was a plain canvas. I layered the painting, letting the first layer dry a bit before adding the next.

It's a bit hard to see in the photos but I'm actually super proud of the texture of my tree trunk.  Also nearly impossible to capture (at least with my lack of photography skills) there is sparkly glitter in those clouds. 😉

The leafing went fairly well, although the tree came out better than the bush, the bush kind of looks like a blob at this point. 😖

I used the flower to cover the tear and the attaching of the flower to stitch the hole up. 😁 It totally worked the tear is repaired and with the puffiness of the flowers you can't even see the dip/dent. I thought the flowers were a bit over-sized at first, but let's face it scale is not my forte`.  LOL  

I used some "holly" berries from some leftovers of Christmas wreath decorations and made it an "apple" tree. 😇  I think it's awesome it adds great texture and color. The rest of this is me mentally debating how much is enough and how much is too much.

I had to do something about that bush and the ribbon embroidery of leaves really seemed to do the trick, definition and texture at the same time and with 2 colors of leaves I think it really helped.  I also did a second vine of flowers along the hilltop to try to define the hills some so it didn't look so flat. 

My husband convinced me that the tree needed some leaves too. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm done with it or not, the tree may get some more fluffing, I'm also considering more flowers or maybe so "rain".  Not sure but it was late last night when I took the final photo so the lighting is bad, but you get the idea. 😛

Photography, the bane of my Etsy existence. . .

The title is a joke, sort of  😏  although not really.  I have always liked the idea of photography and I've taken a lot of photos in my lifetime.  However, I've never been that good at photography, in spite of having taken a class in high school and continuing to take photos for a bloody lifetime, I still stink at it.  😩

Many years ago before digital, I used to use a real camera which was all kinds of adjustable and real film which back in the high school days I developed myself.  I understand the basics of camera settings but I was never a pro and now with digital cameras and auto-adjust everything the damn camera never adjusts the way I want.  😕  Reading the manual and trying to dig into the settings and adjust the way I want is proving to be a pain in the A$$ and not that effective.

I have been battling my lousy photography skills for many years now.  My old business had different products and they were not as hard to photograph as the chainmaille or heavens help me art.  The jewelry has always been tricky, tiny details, every thing is shiny and reflective by nature.  My solution has been to just take tons of photos with variance in lighting and settings and then pick the ones that turn out best, it's time consuming to shoot 30-50 photos to get a handful to use in a listings. 

But I do get lucky and manage to get a few really good ones every now and then.  I generally don't do a lot of adjusting or editing of the photos I use except cropping, straightening, maybe a little light adjusting but I really do try to not "over-edit" my photos.  I want the colors to be accurate, I want the items to match the photos, I don't mind the items looking better than the photos.  Honestly, I'm a crafter, an artisan not a photographer, this is a difficult admission to put out into the world but there it is.  

One cannot be all things.  I have many talents and skills but sadly photography is not among them.  😢  I fear this will always be detrimental to my business, so much of online sales is the visual and I just can't seem to get that part.  I am not giving up just accepting I am at a disadvantage.  I will continue to try my best to get decent images of all the things I create but I fear I will never be up to par. 

Slow . . .sad and low

I have no idea what the ____ is up with Etsy the last few days. 😖 

I have read about google changes, and etsy search changes, how google was downing etsy with the latest algorithm but I didn't really understand it. I had noticed a slight dip in traffic but at that point I still had traffic at least. 😐 

Now I have not had a single view from "external search" ie google in a flipping week, literally my stats for the last 7 days show a 0. 😒  I have no idea how to counter this, my overall traffic is down 65% from last year in spite of my having a record high number of listings and a wide variety. 

Hell I started listing original paintings and added a whole new category and set of keywords which should have increased traffic not killed it.  😟  

I should be happy my social media traffic has increased but it seems to be the only traffic I have at the moment, exchanging a dozen google shopping views for a handful of facebook views does not seem like a good exchange to me.  😢

Well thanks anyway. . .

Ok, since the whole selling "art" is new to me I decided to ask for a bit of help with my new listings.  

Now I was actually hoping some artist-y types would comment on the content of the descriptions, the keywords that work, just make sure I'm not leaving out any obvious or important details that people may want. 

I specifically asked "Help, advice, critique if you must but please be nice" now in my head this was a sing-song-y rhyme-y bit of a joke, but it lead to the first comment being a bit snarky. 😒   So I clarified "I simply meant advise on the actual listings, info, format, pricing not "hey that's amateurish and no one will pay for it" type stuff." 

Although, I find it a bit ridiculous that I had to clarify this because people use the forums all the time asking for help, and critiques and I have seen many of these people give others really good suggestions, so imagine my disappointment when it didn't work that way with my post.

Now I am aware my photos are not the greatest, I generally speaking suck at photography, but I thought I had gotten some decent photos the other day the colors were accurate, they looked good to me.  

So I was a bit sad when nearly every comment was about how bad my photos suck. 😩😖  Annoyingly the majority of the advice to use better lighting, get some white boards, etc., etc., Well I have news for you those very photos they were all putting down were in fact shot in EXACTLY the manner they were suggesting. 😕                                  

Literally, giant white board on the bench top, giant tri-folding stand up, whole bank of lights, including the fancy professional lights that came with the light box the husband got me, in front a window. Exactly what they were all trying to suggest, as if I'm a total moron and had not done all the obvious standard stuff. 😏

One person suggested a helpful keyword I had not thought of which was great. 👍  A bunch of people are trying to suggest "Staged" photos of it on a wall over a sofa or with a nice table with a vase of flowers, or those awful digital backdrops.  Now I'm all for photos of it hanging on a wall if only I had a decent wall in this house, my living room is 3 walls of windows and a built-in bookcase, my sofa is floating in the middle of the room, my fireplace has incredibly ugly brick wall and it's in a room with zero windows so worst lighting ever, the master bedroom has fugly foil infused busy ass wallpaper.  😡  I really want to take some of these suggestions but they just aren't really an option for me, this a rental house so I don't want to put more holes in the walls, there are only so many rooms and most of them have crap lighting and I can't move my whole bank of lights. ~sigh~  I did some test shots in the guest room but then they complained it was too much space and it made the artwork look small. ~eye roll~  It is small it's only an 8" inch by 10" inch canvas. 

I hate the very idea of digital backdrops they make it too easy confuse and mislead people, it screws up the scale when a small 10"x10" picture looks like it's "sofa" sized, and those fake frames don't get me started, I don't want anyone ever thinking that the painting is already framed.  I've seen so many people in the forums all confused or angry, sellers complaining that buyers don't read descriptions, buyers complaining the photos showed one thing but they got another. Yes they make nice professional looking photos, but here's the thing I'm not a "photographer"and never claimed to be.  😇

One asshat just couldn't resist "I take it you love your cat - but at a glance the image in your avatar is just a black blob."  Because why stick to the topic or be helpful when you can be a dick to a stranger on the internet?  😑  

One guy actually right clicked and stole one of my listing photos, "improved" it in whatever software he uses and convo'd it back to me like he was doing me a favor showing me how "good" they could be if I edited them properly. 😬  Unfortunately, it looked like sh*t, he just jaked up the contrast and over exposed it and made the colors completely wrong. 😐  You know the very reason I do not do such over editing because it changes the colors and makes things look wrong, which leads to unhappy buyers when they open the box and it's a different color than the photo they ordered from, also known as the thing they all bitch about that has NEVER happened to me because I don't fudge my photos, they are what they are.  😎

I may not be setting sales records but I have never once had someone complain that the item they received didn't look like they thought it would, most of the time the response is "the photos don't do it justice" "it's even more gorgeous in person". It's the under-promise/over-deliver concept, that makes for happy people when they open my packages. There is a reason my other business never had a single return in 8 years, and this one has nothing but 5 star reviews.  

So I think I'm just going to keep on doing things my own way.  I will try to get better photos.  I will try to get a few of them hanging somewhere with some stuff for scale and perspective but, I will not use digital backdrops or frames, I will not over edit them to look better than they are.  I'm not photo-shop'ing photos of my paintings to look better than the paintings, there are no super crisp details it is swirly watercolors for f*ck's sake. 😛

Jumping off a cliff. . .

Ok, so it just sort of feels like jumping off a cliff to me.  😯

I decided to go ahead and start listing some of my paintings in the Etsy shop.  I have given it quite a bit of thought and have changed my mind about a hundred times mostly out of fear, fear that no one will like them or buy them, fear that the photos aren't good enough, fear that someone will buy one and then not like it when they get it.  You know random fear and insecurity.  😓

When I post them on instagram they get likes and sometimes even comments. I mailed one to a friend and she loves it, but we all know friends and family are totally bias. 😄

I have started with 4 of the spacescape that I think are the best and I plan to start adding the abstract rainbows next week.  Now I just hope this isn't a total waste of time.  😇