Exploring Visual Art

Posted on by
3

I begin to explore visual arts: watercolor painting, drawing, and linocut printing.

In my previous post, I shared a lot of info about how I’ve been moving from creating with words to creating with my hands. In a quick review of that post, I realized that I didn’t share much about the art I’ve been exploring.

Painting

Bob at Easel
A publicity photo of Bob Ross.

It started with Bob Ross. You know — the white guy with the afro and soothing voice from the PBS The Joy of Painting series? I don’t recall when I started watching his videos, but I must have seen at least half of them. They’re all on YouTube and if you want something to calm you down or put you to sleep, I highly recommend them.

I wanted to try what he was doing. It looked so easy. But I had no artistic skills. I knew that if I wanted to follow along, I’d need the exact materials and tools he had. But the idea of working with (and cleaning up) oil paints was daunting, especially with so much time spent traveling every year. So I never hunted them down or bought any.

And then I started thinking about watercolor and how easy it was to clean up and how it didn’t matter if the paint dried in your palette. And I started watching YouTube videos about that, starting with videos by Jenna Rainey. I bought her book (as I’m prone to do), Everyday Watercolor, and started following along with her exercises, using her suggestions on brand and colors of paints, brand and sizes of brushes, and brands and types of paper. That’s how I wound up using Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor paint in tubes, Princeton Heritage Series 4050 Synthetic Sable Brushes, and mostly 100% cotton cold press paper. Not the cheap stuff, but not crazy expensive, either.

It worked out well for a while — until I got bored painting leaves and flowers, which is apparently what she mostly paints. Around this time, I also saw a change in her videos. She’d obviously made the YouTube big time and had money to burn. She had a new studio and new camera set ups and was extremely self-promotional. As a YouTube creator — you know I have a YouTube channel of helicopter videos, right? — I know how they push us to bring in more subscribers, viewers, and money. I find it a turnoff when it goes beyond a certain level. She had gone beyond that level. So I stopped watching her videos.

(I’m so sick of YouTube creators caving to the demands of YouTube and video sponsors.)

I started watching other videos and reading other books and learning from other watercolor artists. Here’s a list if you’re interested:

YouTube Channels

I watch more YouTube than any other “television.” There is so much to learn online there if you are careful about what channels you watch for good info. Some are just plain crap. And I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but if you watch a lot of video, subscribe to Premium. It’s worth it just to get rid of those f*cking mid-roll ads that YouTube demands creators include. You can always fast-forward through the sponsor messages, which are prevalent on popular channels.

Anyway, here are the watercolor artists I watch most on YouTube these days.

  • Paul Clark
    Paul Clark looks like a nice guy, no?

    Paul Clark is a Brit who does a lot of line and wash painting, which I like. He explores other styles, too. He’s got a nice sense of humor and I enjoy watching him paint.

  • Karen Rice Art features another Brit who does a lot of abstract watercolor painting, which I like. She’s very down to earth, with a good attitude.
  • Erin Eno is a watercolor artist with lots of beginner and otherwise very easy tutorials. My only gripe with her is that she has a tendency to overwork her paintings — it’s like she can’t finish. I’ve also seen evidence that she experiments while she records video and has no idea how something will turn out. This occasionally leads her down a bad path, so beware if you follow along!
  • The Mind of Watercolor is Steve Mitchell’s channel. I think it’s more advanced than some of the others, but it does include beginner videos. I like his style, mostly because he’s just explaining things one artist to another.

  • Diane Antone
    Diane Antone. Not sure about the hat.

    Diane Antone Studio is an ambitious channel with lots of new videos every week — she promises a new one every day. These days, many of her videos seem to be the obligatory video created solely to reward a sponsor for sending her product. To make matters worse, I’m pretty sure she’s the one who gets preachy once in a while. (After a while, they all blur together in my mind.)

  • Paul’s Watercolor Studio (which is a new name for that channel) features another Brit named Paul. I don’t like his videos quite as much as Paul Clark’s and I noticed that he’s been doing a lot more promotional stuff than he used to. But he’s still a good resource.

There are a few more I watch once in a while, but I can’t really recommend any of them. So many of them are the same stuff over and over. Or “artists” talking about their life while they put blobs of paint on wet watercolor paper and then doodle on the result with permanent markers. Not something I can really learn from.

Books

I already mentioned one book. Here are a few others I like:

  • Watercolour Book Cover
    Paul Clark’s watercolor book. I bought the ebook version, which is easy enough to consult while I’m painting.

    Watercolour: Techniques and Tutorials for the Complete Beginner by Paul Clark. Yes, the same Paul Clark as the videos. It’s full of practical exercises that build on each other and are not limited to leaves and flowers. I’m working my way through them slowly in a watercolor notebook I have. Oddly, I can hear his voice in my head as I read the text.

  • Watercolor Workbook: 30-Minute Beginner Botanical Projects on Premium Watercolor Paper by Sarah Simon. The best thing about this book is the color mixing recipes with places to paing your own version beside or beneath a sample. It’s challenging to get it just right. The exercises are pretty much the same, requiring you to outline a drawing and then color it in with the colors you mixed for the exercise. The paper is not “premium watercolor paper” by any stretch of the imagination. It’s thick and rough (like cold press) but is definitely not cotton and does not handle water well. I’m about 1/3 done with the exercises but I’m bored with them. Too much like a coloring book.
  • The Complete Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook: A Treasury of Watercolor Secrets Discovered Through Decades of Painting and Experimentation by Gordon MacKenzie is basically a tips book, with a few exercises to illustrate each tip. It’s extremely thorough and has the kind of tips that it could indeed take decades to come up with. It’s the kind of thing I dip into once in a while to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.

The trouble is, watching videos and reading books is not the same as practicing what’s in those videos and books. I got immersed in other things in my life — traveling on my own boat, organizing my last season of flying work, prepping my house and packing for a prolonged trip (with a new house sitter to hold down the fort). I didn’t practice much and, when I did, I didn’t like the results. I was getting seriously discouraged no matter how many videos and books I consumed.

Drawing

And then there’s the simple fact that I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag.

I would never be able to make anything more interesting than blobs of color resembling flowers and trees viewed with my contact lenses out unless I learned how to draw the things I wanted to paint. I love the concept of line and wash — where you take a rough drawing done in permanent ink and add watercolor washes for color, highlights, and shadows — but the only way I could do such a thing was to start with someone else’s picture. That’s fine for practice, but I should be able to do better.

So I started watching videos and reading books about drawing. Here’s what I found helpful so far.

YouTube Videos

Artisto Videos
The Artisto Sketching Course on YouTube covers all the basics.

I’ve only seen one series of videos so far and I admit that I fell asleep watching them so I need to watch them again. It’s the Artisto Sketching Course on YouTube, which I discovered on a slip of paper that came in an Artisto notebook I bought. I can’t say much about it other than the fact that it’s a good primer that covers all the basics. Next time I watch them, I won’t be sitting on the sofa at the end of a long day. I’ll be sitting at a table with a sketchbook and sharp pencils in front of me.

Books

I’ve also looked at a few books, two of which I really like.

Again, watching videos and reading books isn’t enough. I have to practice all this stuff.

Enter Linocut Printing

As if I didn’t have enough art-related hobby stuff to neglect, I got interested in another type of artwork: linocut printing. It started when I watched a YouTube video suggested by The Algorithm: Artist Demonstrating Picasso’s Reduction Linocut Technique. I was fascinated.

Linocut is a method of block printing where you carve a picture or design into a piece of linoleum (or something similar). You then apply ink to the cut surface, put a piece of paper on top of the cut, and rub the paper into the ink (or put it through a press) to transfer the image onto paper. Whatever you carve away has no ink on it so the paper stays white. Whatever remains raised is inked and creates the image. In a reduction linocut, the original linoleum carving is carved away before each color is applied. If you’re having trouble understanding this, do watch the video. It’s very good.

Speedball Kit
The Speedball kit I bought. The only thing missing was drawing skills and paper. I had one of those things.

I probably wouldn’t have gone any farther with this, but I happened to be in Hobby Lobby — which I honestly do hate with a passion but it’s the only art supply store in town now — and they had a Speedball Water-Based Block Printing Starter Set on sale for just $19.99. It had everything I needed (except drawing skills; I wish they came in the box) to create and print a linocut image. I bought it. I carved a simple seascape drawing with a lighthouse and ocean and waves and a crescent moon. It printed okay. (Not good enough to take a picture of since I don’t seem to have any pictures of it and now it’s packed away so I can’t take a picture.)

I was hooked.

Watercolor of Berries

First Berry Print

Colored Berry Print
The inspiration for my berry linocut print (top), my first print with chatter (middle), and my first colored in print (bottom).

What I wanted to do was create single color linocut prints and then use my watercolors to apply color and shading. It would be a line and wash, but the line would be a block print.

But I had a problem. The kit came with water-based ink. Even after it dried, it smeared when it got wet. It would definitely not work with watercolor paints. I needed oil-based ink. That wasn’t available locally, so I bought some online at Dick Blick. I bought Speedball Oil-based Relief Ink because that was the only brand I knew.

Meanwhile, I saw a simple watercolor painting on Mastodon that inspired me. I printed a copy of it and traced it onto Speedball Speedy Carve Block. Since the oil-based ink hadn’t arrived yet — Dick Blick has a great selection, but shipping takes over a week — I printed it with my water-based ink. It came out ok, although there was more “chatter” than I wanted. I’d need to do more carving to get rid of it, but that could wait until the next print, with the oil-based ink.

Although I knew I couldn’t use my watercolor paints to color my print in, I did have oil pastels — we called them “cray-pas” when I was in elementary school and I loved them. I used them to color in the berries as blueberries and apply a gradient background over the chatter. I was pleased with the results. It wasn’t perfect, but at least I liked it. (Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that I’m my worse critic.)

Of course, I needed to learn more. So I started watching more videos and reading more books. And I started learning about more interesting techniques to apply the colors, like chine collé. There was so much to explore!

YouTube Channels

Here are a few very good channels with linocut content worth watching:

  • Handprinted has all kinds of videos about all kinds of printmaking. Very approachable.
  • Laura Boswell Printmaker has more advanced tutorials and demonstrations that really show off what you can do with printmaking.
  • Linocut Elina Artist is wonderful for demonstrations of reduction printing, although she focuses on the actual printing part and not the cutting part. The videos I’ve seen on this channel are not narrated, but they’re fun to watch. I especially like the “Red Rooster” demonstration.

Books

Block Print Magic Book Cover
I absolutely love this book and can’t wait to work through all the exercises.

I only have one book about linocut printing (so far) and I love it. It’s Block Print Magic: The Essential Guide to Designing, Carving, and Taking Your Artwork Further with Relief Printing by Emily Louise Howard. It covers all the basics about tools and materials, explains how to keep cutting tools sharp, and then launches right into several projects, with lots of illustrations and step-by-step instructions.

I’m looking at a few other books online, but I think I’ll hold off until I get to Dick Blick in Washington DC next month where I hope to be able to browse better.

It’s All Packed and Shipped

I can’t do any artwork right now because I’ve packed and shipped all my materials and tools to my boat. After a long, dull summer at home, I’m finally heading back to Do It Now next week. I’m spending these last few days packing and cleaning and getting the house ready for its live-in house sitter. I barely had time to write this blog post, which I started this morning and then finished after a long day mowing my lawn, taking my trash on its 2-mile drive to “the curb,” and prepping my garden for winter.

It’ll take a few days to unpack everything I’ve shipped to the boat — I’m thinking there should be about 20 packages waiting for me when I arrive — and reprovision for the first leg of my trip south for the winter. I’ll be spending more nights at anchorages and should have plenty of time to get some practice in. With luck, I’ll be able to show off more work in a few weeks, assuming there’s work to show. I’ve also decided to do block printed holiday cards this year and will be working on those.

In the meantime, if you have any insight into any of this and want to share some of your favorite resources, please take a moment to leave a comment on this post. I’m really interesting in learning as much as I can from as many good sources as I can. Can you help? Don’t be shy! Leave a comment!

Making

Posted on by
2

Going from working with words to working with my hands.

For years, my creativity has always centered around writing. I started writing in my early teens — fiction, back then — and managed to turn my writing skills into a career starting in the early 1990s. I wrote books and articles, mostly about how to use computers. Later, I wrote about flying and, most recently, about boating. And, of course, I’ve had this blog for nearly 20 years.

Building Solutions

But it was around 2014 that I started branching out into other creative endeavors — actually making things with my hands. It started when the building that would become my home was under construction and I had a need to make things for it. I think the first thing I might have made for the inside of my shop was my workbench, a sturdy affair made of 2×4 lengths and plywood. It’s ugly, but it’s sturdy as hell, mostly because it weighs a ton.

Shelves
This is the first set of garage shelves I built. It’s 8 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and two feet deep. I put Penny the Tiny Dog on a shelf for scale. I built this on the garage floor and needed help getting it upright.

Since then, I’ve built various other solutions for needs I’ve had, including a number of other work surfaces, storage shelves for my garage and garden shed, and three chicken coops. (It was the third coop, a 4 x 8 foot building with a metal roof that’s large enough to walk into and has four perches, six nests, and a brooding area, that finally did the trick.)

I did a bunch of the work necessary to build or finish my home, too. I wired the whole place, laid down Pergo laminate flooring and tile, built stub walls and a shower stall, constructed deck rails for my outside deck and inside loft, put down the Trex decking on my 600 square foot deck, and added trim around doors and walls. More recently, I worked on a bathroom project that required me to lay out plumbing drains and vents, install insulation, and put up paneling. Although none of these activities called for much creativity, they still involved making things with my hands.

Along the way, I’ve accumulated a pretty respectable collection of power tools — certainly more than my father, stepfather, or wasband ever had. I have a chop saw and a table saw. I have an impact driver, three drills, and a pair of battery operated screwdrivers. I have a circular saw, a reciprocating saw, and a jig saw. I have an angle grinder and a Dremmel. I have two nail guns and a big compressor with enough hose to reach anywhere in my home or garage from the garage. And hand tools! I have just about everything I need. As my wasband used to say, “Any job is easy when you have the right tool.” Hell, yes!

And I’ve come to realize, after nearly 10 years of doing this kind of work, that I like it.

Making Jewelry

Elsewhere in this blog, I’ve already discussed how I got started making jewelry so I don’t want to rehash that here. Instead, I want to talk about how making jewelry makes me feel and why it has become a part of my life.

I look at jewelry making as a combination of challenges:

  • The engineering challenge is to come up with a design that physically works. For example, a pendant that includes a stone must have the features necessary to hold the stone securely in place. It must have a bail to hang it from a chain or other necklace. It must be balanced so it doesn’t hang awkwardly from its bail.
  • The aesthetic challenge is to come up with a design that looks good. What design elements can I include? Which stone will I work with? How will the overall design complement the stone?

  • Ruby In Zoisite
    This piece on includes two ruby in zoisite stones. It was entirely handmade from sterling silver sheet, bezel strip, and wire. The skills I used to make it include cutting, piercing, filling, stamping, shaping, and soldering the metal. As for tools — well, it took a lot more tools than I could take with me in my travels.

    The skills challenge is to be able to create the piece of jewelry I’ve designed using the silversmithing skills I have or am building. Those skills include cutting, filing, texturing, and soldering metal. My skills improve with every piece of jewelry I make, but they’re limited, in part, by the tools I have available. (I have a full set of jewelry making tools in my home-based studio, but I’m very limited when I travel.)

It’s these three challenges that make jewelry making a rewarding activity for me. There’s always something new to try. There’s aways a skill to build or hone. I will never be an expert, although I will get better and better at what I do just by doing it.

Making Jewelry for Sale

When my seasonal flying work was earning enough income to support me, making and selling jewelry was a “side gig” and it didn’t matter much whether I made more money than I spent on materials and equipment. But with my retirement this year, that has changed. I’m now treating my jewelry business more seriously as source of income. That means making more (and selling more) jewelry.

I’m fortunate in that I have several avenues for selling and they’re all pretty good. Some are better than others. About a month ago, one of my wholesale clients pretty much cleaned out my inventory of pendants, leaving me with slim pickings for my online shop and a lot of work to do before my next art show. That show is coming up in about 10 days, so, as you might imagine, I’m hustling to make more inventory.

The challenge now is to keep my creativity level up and not just make different versions of the same item. I do that, too — it’s quick to be able to make certain designs in “batch mode” — but it also takes a bit of the fun out of making. (See the second bullet point above.)

Lately, I’ve been very busy with garage projects, but for the next 10 days, I’ll try to spend 4 to 8 hours a day in my studio. (Fortunately, it has an air conditioner, which I’ll definitely need with temperatures getting into the 100s for the next few days.) I’ll work primarily on pendants, which I’m so short on, but will also try to get some earrings made. In the evening, while I’m relaxing with my pups upstairs, I’ve been making the beaded necklaces that coordinate with the pendants; I’ve made four in the past three days.

I have two back-to-back shows in Leavenworth, WA, including a five-day show for Labor Day weekend. Then I might do a half-day show in Twisp before taking whatever inventory is left to my wholesale customer in Winthrop and a gallery in Twisp. By then, it’ll be pretty close to the end of my stay at home and the start of my travels.

On the Road

Will I make jewelry while I’m away?

It was easy when I traveled with the cargo trailer I turned into a mobile jewelry studio. I could camp out in the desert all winter and spend as much time as I liked inside it with just about every tool I needed within reach. But I’m not traveling with the cargo trailer anymore. These days, I’m on a boat and space is very limited.

Ruby In Zoisite
Another ruby in zoisite piece, but wire-framed. I can make this kind of pendant anywhere and it still sells well, but I’m bored with it.

The main challenge will be to put together a set of tools and materials that’ll keep me producing without taking up too much space. The wire work I used to focus on is extremely portable, but I’m kind of sick of doing that. Beading is also something I can do anywhere, but even the beads take up a surprising amount of space so I’ll need to limit what I bring along.

I’d like to be able to keep fulfilling online shop orders as I travel, but that means taking all of my inventory with me. That’s not a huge deal since jewelry is relatively small and I have a good storage case to keep it all in. I’d also like to be able to set up new wholesale accounts along the way — but that means having enough inventory to sell. And that means making while I travel.

So the answer is yes, I will make jewelry as I travel. I just don’t know how much. The next 12 months should be quite a challenge.

Why I’m Leaving Etsy — and Maybe You Should, Too?

Posted on by
Comment

For years, I had an online shop on Etsy to sell my jewelry. Not anymore.

I’ve made some changes in my online shop and I thought I’d take a moment to explain why and what I changed. But let me start with an explanation of how I sell my handmade jewelry.

How I Sell My Work

Most of my sales are either directly to buyers at art shows, via consignment sales at two Washington State galleries, or wholesale to a variety of gift shop owners. Each method has its own pros and cons:

  • Art shows take a lot of time and effort. I’ve got to get to the show, set up my booth, and then sit in it for the duration of the show. At the end, I have to pack it all up and get it home. Those are the cons. On the plus side, however, is that I have complete control over my inventory and sell at retail price. So I have the potential to make more money per item sold.
  • Consignment is a different ball game. I drop off inventory that the consignment place may or may not put on display immediately. When I drop it off, I lose control of it and can’t sell it. But I also have to keep track of it. If and when it sells, I get a check for 60% to 65% of the retail price. Ouch. If it doesn’t sell, I get it back, usually in serious need of cleaning before it can go back into my inventory. Those are the cons. On the plus side, it doesn’t take much effort to sell and my work eventually appears in a shop with other gallery quality items. I generally get checks every single month, year-round. Still, I’d rather not do any more consignment selling, especially for high ticket items.
  • Wholesale is pretty much the same as retail with the main benefit being that I get paid up front, don’t have to keep track of what’s sitting out there, and I never see it again. It’s the same as selling to a retail buyer, but at a deep discount. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

I’d like to do a lot more wholesale selling and a lot less art show selling. Part of that is that art show success is so dependent on the venue and the weather. I usually turn a decent profit at each art show I attend, but I did lose money at a Christmas Show in Spokane last year and that hurt.

When I sell wholesale, I know my cost of sales right up front: the amount of the discount I have to offer and the cost of getting the merchandise to the buyer. When I sell at art shows, I have a lot of costs to cover before I can start seeing profits: jury fees, entrance fees, transportation costs, lodging costs, etc. — and that doesn’t even include the cost of my booth tent, tables, table coverings, displays, etc. It’s possible to pay $400 for a booth at an outdoor show 50 miles away and have weather so miserable that no one comes out to the show. Or pay $500 for an indoor show 150 miles away and be stuck in a back room none of the shoppers walk back to. This has happened to me and it sucks.

Selling Online

Of course, selling online is probably the best of all worlds. I keep control of my inventory and sell it at retail price (or maybe a slight discount with a coupon or sale). The online shop calculates and collects the money and sends my share — more on that in a moment — right to my bank account. I package the merchandise — which is easy because I’m selling small items — and ship it out. I don’t have to set up, sit in, or tear down a show booth. I don’t have to sell at deep discounts or wait until an item out of my control is sold. When an item is sold online, it’s gone and I never have to think about it again.

Lots of folks think this is the only way to sell. They think it’s as easy as setting up an online shop and ringing in the sales. But what they don’t understand is that people not only have to want what you sell, but they have to be able to find it.

And that’s where Etsy comes in.

Etsy — Then and Now

Etsy started as a marketplace for handmade goods — items created by crafters and artists. It built a reputation as a place where you could buy unique things while supporting makers. And, for some people who don’t know any better, it probably still has that reputation.

Mastodon Toot
A response to my toot this morning about my switch from Etsy to Square for online selling. I giggle at the word “tat,” which is apparently UK English for “junk.”

But it’s a farce. Etsy is now full of manufactured junk, much of it made overseas and passed off as “handmade” by people trying to cash in on Etsy’s reputation. As a web designer on Mastodon commented to me today, “I was looking at selling on Etsy lately and was dismayed to see it now sells all the same tat as eBay/Amazon, and appears that the only way to actually sell anything is to pay them to boost listings.”

And that brings up another one of Etsy’s ploys. If you search Etsy for an item — say “silver jewelry” — it will bring up search results with Etsy sellers who paid to have their posts boosted before any other sellers. Sometimes, the search results don’t even match the search phrase. In so many cases, the results that come up are cheap crap that you know isn’t handmade.

Etsy Search Results
My search for “Silver Jewelry” brought up this collection of garbage. Are we expected to believe that someone will make you a personalized name necklace for only $16? And how much of this stuff looks like silver to you? The whole second row is paid advertising. Scrolling down (beyond this screenshot) displays more of the same. As a seller, do you think anyone will find what you make in this mess?

White Buffalo Pendant
While this might not be your taste in jewelry, it’s solid sterling silver, hand formed from sheet, strip, and wire with a genuine White Buffalo Turquoise cabochon in it that was hand polished by a lapidary friend just for me. Even the beaded necklace has sterling silver beads, although the white beads are howlite.

So I’m making quality sterling and fine silver jewelry with gemstones using a wide variety of silversmithing tools and techniques and I’m competing on Etsy with this crap?

But wait, there’s more!

Recently, Etsy decided, out of the blue, that it was going to hold back 70% of my payment as a “reserve.” No real explanation of why. It just had to wait an extra week or two to get my money.

Add that to Etsy’s fees:

  • 20¢ for each listing, including automatic re-listing of an item that didn’t sell in 60 days and automatic listing of multiple quantity items when one sells. So, in other words, you’re going to pay 20¢ per item just to be able to show it on Etsy.
  • 6.5% of the order total, including shipping and gift wrapping fees, if charged.
  • 3% + 25¢ for payment processing fees.
  • 15% of the order total for sales made through the use of Etsy’s offsite advertising. Yes, if Etsy puts an ad on Google and someone clicks that ad and it takes them to your shop and they buy something, you pay Etsy an extra 15%. This is an opt-in feature and I’m pretty sure the fee used to be 20%. I opted out when I realized what it was costing me; somehow all of my sales were being hit with this fee.

And this doesn’t even begin to cover the optional monthly fees you can pay for shop customization options or the optional marketing fees you can pay to boost listings and get them at the top of search results.

So, in all, we’re looking at roughly 10% to 25% of the listing price to sell it. And that’s if it sells the first time it lists. You’ll pay an extra 20¢ every time it’s relisted.

Yes, I know this is less than the cost of selling by consignment or wholesale and even less than the cost of selling directly to buyers at art shows given the cost of doing art shows. But I think it’s a bit outrageous when you consider that I’m not getting my money immediately and my work is pooled in with so much other crap.

Sellers Revolt

Etsy sellers are not taking this sitting down. Or at least some of them aren’t. The withholding of money has gotten Etsy sellers up in arms enough that they’re threatening to strike. And that has resulted in Etsy backpedaling to reduce the amount it withholds. I got an email telling me that they were only going to withhold 30% of my sales.

Too little, too late. For the reasons listed above, I’m outta there.

I set up my shop to be “on vacation” with a vacation notice that says my shop is permanently closed and they can find my new shop on Square. Of course I included a link. I also turned off all automatic listing renewals for everything still listed in my shop. One by one they’ll disappear. When they’re all gone, I’ll delete the shop. Unless Etsy deletes it first.

The Square Solution

I use Square for credit card processing. I have been using it since it first appeared as a credit card acceptance option, back when its target market was garage sale runners and babysitters.

Back then, I set it up for my flying business. I was tired of using a credit card acceptance system that charged me a minimum monthly fee, statement fees, and a relatively high credit card processing fee. It was costing me more than $50 a month, even when I didn’t accept any credit cards.

Square was different. It used a smartphone app, charged a reasonable processing fee, and that was it. No monthly fees, no minimum fees. The only catch (back then) was that they wouldn’t pay out more than $1,000 per week. They weren’t expecting folks like me who sold service that often started at $1,000. But I was able to get around that with them by providing documentation that proved I was legit and had other credit card processing service in the past. The upped my weekly limit to $5,000, which was fine. (There isn’t any limit anymore.)

So when I started doing art shows, it made sense to set up a Square account for my jewelry business. While people might whine and complain that the rate is too high — seriously? — or they have some other imagined gripe about it, I have no complaints about Square, at least not yet.

One of the things Square now offers is the ability to sell online. While they didn’t implement this in a user friendly way, I have enough tech knowledge that I was able to figure it out. I started building my online store more than a month ago and now have most of my inventory in it. You can find it at MLJewelryDesigns.square.site.

It’s simple, but that’s okay. I think it looks professional — certainly a lot better than Etsy ever looked. It works.

Best of all, it’s free. No listing fees, no selling fees. All I pay is the cost of credit card processing, which I would if I were selling at an art show. It even has a built in shipping calculator that lets me buy discounted postage to ship items out. Just like Etsy.

Yes, there are upgrades available for a monthly fee. One of them would let me use a custom domain name, which I’m considering. Others offer better marketing options or shop analytics — most of which I don’t need and certainly don’t want to pay for. I’m not fooling myself here: I don’t sell much online and don’t think I ever will. But I want the option. I want to be able to send folks to a place where they can buy what I make 24/7.

And that brings me to marketing.

Promoting My Online Shop

I remember the early days of the worldwide web — you do know that’s what the WWW stands for, right? Back in the day, everyone wanted an online shop. They thought that all you had to do was set up a website and people would just buy, buy, buy whatever you were selling. No one seemed to realize that people had to want what you sell and find your shop before you could maybe sell to them.

And that’s where marketing comes in.

Yes, I have an online shop. Yes, there are features built into Square’s online shops to be found by Google in searches. But I’m not dumb enough to think that I can just sit back and let those two things bring me sales.

If Facebook is your business’s website, you’re doing it wrong.

Serious business owners have real websites for their businesses, not Facebook pages.

You might think it’s enough to just put your business on Facebook and steer folks to your page, but it isn’t. First of all, it’s alienating people like me who wouldn’t open a Facebook page to follow a friend, let alone get more information about a business. Second, as discussed in this blog post by UK web designer Nick (who also authored the Mastodon toot above), you’re at the mercy of Facebook’s algorithms to determine whether what you post on Facebook will even appear for the folks who follow you.

You can do better than that without breaking the bank. Heck, even my WordPress-based sites have the ability to forward all of my posts to the folks who want to see them. No algorithm will block that.

No. I have to send people to my shop. And I do that several ways:

  • Maintain a website. I use the ML Jewelry Designs website as way to share news with visitors, including folks who actually subscribe to get that news. And yes, I get a bump in website hits and even a few online sales after every art show I attend. Also note that I used the word “maintain.” That means adding fresh content regularly. No one wants to visit an out-of-date website more than once.
  • Distribute business cards at art shows. My cards have a photo of one of my pieces of jewelry and a link to the ML Jewelry Designs website. The website is not my shop, but it does have links to my shop and links to specific pieces of jewelry. Those cards are not only available in multiple places in my booth, but I also slip them into the packaging for every single item I sell.
  • Post about new work on social media. The website does this for me. I use WordPress which posts to Mastodon for me. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter (or X, the dead bird site) anymore. I do have an Instagram account and I try (but mostly fail) to post there. Any social media post I make has a link to either my website or the actual listing in my online shop for the jewelry I’m showing off.
  • Link where appropriate. I link to the ML Jewelry Designs website wherever appropriate, including this blog and from the organizations that sponsor the shows I do.

No More Etsy for Me

While I know that several of my artist friends have had some success with Etsy and haven’t seemed too bothered with the reserve or fees, I can’t say the same. If you’re like them and Etsy is working for you, stick with it. But if, like me, you’re tired of your work being hidden away among so much manufactured crap, maybe it’s time to find another solution.

I’m done.