Checking In

I haven't been doing much (ok any) painting lately. I have a couple of small paintings and some prints listed on ebay but its like their third go around and no one seems interested. I think my style is out of favor right now......if only I could (or rather would want to) paint cats, they seem to be very popular.

 

Anyway.....I haven't been sitting idle, I'm boning up on my knitting skills and I'm learning to make macrame bracelets, I find both crafts very meditative.

I have closed my etsy shop, it never got any attention.  After listing some bracelets a few days ago I did make one sale after announcing on a community post that I was leaving etsy.  The sale was for a box of cards for $15 and after etsy took out for my listing fees, taxes etc I made $2.67, and they've decided to integrate with Paypal and disable peoples stand alone Paypal accounts which means you would have to wait for payment through etsy......ugh.  Doesn't matter, like I said that was the only sale I ever made and I just couldn't compete with 7.2 million other sellers, so many talented artists out there!
So........everything that I create to sell is now listed on my website , I still have prints and cards listed there for sale.

I have a Weebly website that I created a few years ago, they offer a few plans, one free and a couple other 'pay for' options including a way to sell through them.  I decided to keep my free plan and just direct folks to contact me if they want to purchase something.  It's hard to sell online when you can't afford to pay to promote/market stuff and I just can't bring myself to pay a monthly fee to set up a shop through a site provider on the hopes a sale will happen. I'm still in the process of redesigning my website to accommodate the changes and addition of new interests, my craft skills are still at the 'beginner' level, it feels like starting all over again.  I'm not complaining, it feels good to develop other interests, I haven't felt inspired in a really long time and that worried me more.