Meh!
I need to keep my grades up, especially in Japanese and Computer Science...those are the two that have been suffering the most from how busy/distracted I've been. Here I thought I was doing work all day, (mostly on the business) and then I discovered that I haven't really gotten anything done. Well, that's not true. My homework isn't done, that's for sure, but I have plenty of time for most of it...I'm just paranoid enough to do work due Thursday on Monday night. But I did some research, found out more about gemstones, ordered a couple (be careful, Leo...)...And posted up some photos on my new Letterbox Lion Handmade Jewelry facebook page, which you should check out, using the handy new widgety-thing on the side of the page =========>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Though to be fair, this is probably more interesting. Hopefully.
Also, I made some price changes - I lowered my prices for things I was, in retrospect, charging way too much for considering the price of my materials...it pains me that the most effort-intensive and least rewarding things I make are the ones I can sell for the least, though, (while still managing to be the ones I can most reliably sell) and I have to control my tendency to try and make up for it on the higher-end stuff. I DID up my shipping prices though, after finally admitting to myself that charging less for shipping than shipping was costing me was really not an effective strategy. So, lower prices, higher shipping. All in the name of necessity, I assure you.
By the way, add craftywillows (or littlebitcrafting on blogspot) after Fantasian to the list of people I absolutely want to BE. Her blog is old stuff about how she's getting started wire-wrapping, trying tutorials, etc..."we'll see how it goes"...and her shop stuff is absolutely amazing, so far beyond those tutorials as a beginning, and so unique. It's really (REALLY) encouraging to know that from where I am right now, I can get to where she is ...with luck and perseverance and enthusiasm and experimentation...and, in this business, some capital.
We'll see how it goes! I'm getting a few cabachons, and I'm about to order some wire. I want to see what I can come up with if I actually try wire-wrapping, for real this time, legit, this is not a drill.
(HAHA GET IT. CAUSE THEY'RE NOT DRILLED. HA. Oh man, I just got that. *wipes tear*)
Wish me luck, anyway :)
EDIT: OH AND BY THE WAY. I've been meaning to post up more things throughout today and yesterday, but somehow I managed not to pull it off. With my crazy schedule (and my computer losing its internet connection, resulting in an IT visit today that ate up some time) it's been tough to find a chunk where I can just sit down and write descriptions with any personality...not to mention that etsy has no save function, what's with that? Anyway, I'm going to go post something right now.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Yay, photographs! And a paragraph of bragging.
It's been so long since I've managed to take good photographs. Thank goodness for vacations...they are the times I can go to buildings that are well-lit. And be back to them in time. Since I moved to New England, the weirdest part of adjusting has been how early it gets dark here...Michigan is my home town, and it's as far west as you can go in the Eastern time zone, so where in Boston it gets dark at 4:30, (FOUR-THIRTY. AHHHHH.) it waits for another few hours back home. Oh, man, I need to make a lightbox. Oh dear boyfriend sitting next to me, want to make me one for Christmas?
Juuuust kidding. I'll get around to it. Life is oh-so-scattered and OH LOOK I HAVE A FOLLOWER. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN oh never mind I know you. I love you anyway! :)
So, the advice I've been reading is basically all "you need to re-do everything you've been doing." I'm working on adjusting my shop announcement to be more google-search friendly...and I have to do the same to EVERY SINGLE POST that I have made, and every one I make from now on.
The main thing, too, is "have a product that people want"...I'm sure they want jewelry. They definitely want origami jewelry.
AND ON THAT NOTE I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A MOMENT TO BRAG. I am, as far as I could tell either by googling OR by searching on etsy, the ONLY PERSON who will make you earrings with more than one crane on them. They're BIRDS! Did seriously nobody else think of a flock? Man, now that I've cornered the market, I wish I could patent the idea. I think that's considered cheating in the art world. But I've been making them for a few years now, without ever realizing I was making something so unique, nobody else is doing it at all.
(Of course, maybe it's because my main materials are so light - the really, really nice handmade washi chiyogami paper is thin and lightweight, but the yuzen paper (not handmade or as expensive) is normal-to-really-thick paper thickness, and it would be harder to make flocks of. I've been using starburst wrappers, which are really thin, light paper, so I've had an advantage...to easily make a flock I have to either use the really cheap materials, or the really expensive ones. Now that's odd.)
Oh and also, advice says, post photographs everywhere. Facebook. Flickr. HERE. So I'm posting photographs. HERE.
Everybody (EVERYBODY) says "don't post all your listings at once. Space them throughout the day, because you'll get a bazillion times more exposure that way." It makes sense. If you only post once, but you post a bunch of stuff, if the people who happen to be on at that time don't like your stuff, they'll pass over it for stuff more up their alley in the just-posted box. So by posting every few hours, maybe, you can get all the crowd that shops on etsy at various times of the day, even if your post is only visible for a few seconds, let's be honest...those are important seconds.
SO, here are some photographs, and they are so new not even Etsy has seen most of them yet. Let me know if you like.
A gold wire-wrapped "apples and honeybees" set I made for a custom order.
A glittery green "bamboo forest" pair accented by swarovski crystals - so much green! - on wire-wrapped silver flowers.
A sodalite and green pair I've been thinking of privately as "the whole world round" and connecting with the earth...gemstone, metal, circles, green, it all fits, right? Add to that that the sodalite ironically looks like the sky, and I'm really happy with how these work.
A palm-leaf-inspired pair that fan out. Have I been focusing on green too much?
And a pair that I love oh, so much...I've been getting all poetic about them, it's almost embarrassing. They have a lot of dark blue, and sodalite in general looks like the sky, no matter what shade it comes in...it just always manages to look like some form of weather, or clouds...and the dark, glittery blue shines like stars, and so does the star-flower wire-wrapping in sterling silver, and the matte beads are the spaces between the stars, right? So the dark blue glittery ribbons dangle down from the silver flower, just as the night sky hangs from stars. That's the way I think of it, anyway. Poetic, am I right? But I'm not even kidding, I love them dearly. I'm tempted to keep them, but I only ever wear one earring of a kind at a time. These ones are posted on etsy already, I could not resist
Juuuust kidding. I'll get around to it. Life is oh-so-scattered and OH LOOK I HAVE A FOLLOWER. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN oh never mind I know you. I love you anyway! :)
So, the advice I've been reading is basically all "you need to re-do everything you've been doing." I'm working on adjusting my shop announcement to be more google-search friendly...and I have to do the same to EVERY SINGLE POST that I have made, and every one I make from now on.
The main thing, too, is "have a product that people want"...I'm sure they want jewelry. They definitely want origami jewelry.
AND ON THAT NOTE I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A MOMENT TO BRAG. I am, as far as I could tell either by googling OR by searching on etsy, the ONLY PERSON who will make you earrings with more than one crane on them. They're BIRDS! Did seriously nobody else think of a flock? Man, now that I've cornered the market, I wish I could patent the idea. I think that's considered cheating in the art world. But I've been making them for a few years now, without ever realizing I was making something so unique, nobody else is doing it at all.
(Of course, maybe it's because my main materials are so light - the really, really nice handmade washi chiyogami paper is thin and lightweight, but the yuzen paper (not handmade or as expensive) is normal-to-really-thick paper thickness, and it would be harder to make flocks of. I've been using starburst wrappers, which are really thin, light paper, so I've had an advantage...to easily make a flock I have to either use the really cheap materials, or the really expensive ones. Now that's odd.)
Oh and also, advice says, post photographs everywhere. Facebook. Flickr. HERE. So I'm posting photographs. HERE.
Everybody (EVERYBODY) says "don't post all your listings at once. Space them throughout the day, because you'll get a bazillion times more exposure that way." It makes sense. If you only post once, but you post a bunch of stuff, if the people who happen to be on at that time don't like your stuff, they'll pass over it for stuff more up their alley in the just-posted box. So by posting every few hours, maybe, you can get all the crowd that shops on etsy at various times of the day, even if your post is only visible for a few seconds, let's be honest...those are important seconds.
SO, here are some photographs, and they are so new not even Etsy has seen most of them yet. Let me know if you like.
A gold wire-wrapped "apples and honeybees" set I made for a custom order.
A glittery green "bamboo forest" pair accented by swarovski crystals - so much green! - on wire-wrapped silver flowers.
A sodalite and green pair I've been thinking of privately as "the whole world round" and connecting with the earth...gemstone, metal, circles, green, it all fits, right? Add to that that the sodalite ironically looks like the sky, and I'm really happy with how these work.
A palm-leaf-inspired pair that fan out. Have I been focusing on green too much?
And a pair that I love oh, so much...I've been getting all poetic about them, it's almost embarrassing. They have a lot of dark blue, and sodalite in general looks like the sky, no matter what shade it comes in...it just always manages to look like some form of weather, or clouds...and the dark, glittery blue shines like stars, and so does the star-flower wire-wrapping in sterling silver, and the matte beads are the spaces between the stars, right? So the dark blue glittery ribbons dangle down from the silver flower, just as the night sky hangs from stars. That's the way I think of it, anyway. Poetic, am I right? But I'm not even kidding, I love them dearly. I'm tempted to keep them, but I only ever wear one earring of a kind at a time. These ones are posted on etsy already, I could not resist
Saturday, November 20, 2010
A New Obsession
I have fallen victim to the plague that besets (suddenly and violently) pretty much anyone who ever even thinks of learning to wire-wrap jewelry. That is, I can't stop looking up gemstones. To buy them, maybe. To scout them out, to find places that sell them for the cheapest prices at the best quality, yadda yadda. Mostly just to stare at them. Soooooo prettyyyyyy.
Old favorite: labradorite, still high up there. New favorite, seraphinite. It looks like feathers! Me and my fascination with anything related to flight. I've gathered from reading, though, that I can expect to have a new favorite at least weekly from now on.
I'm in kind of a strange position, I think. There are a lot of blogs written by Etsy sellers of things similar to those that I either make or want to make. However, I think most of them were, at my age and level of experience, not yet selling, probably at least not selling online, or at least not yet blogging. I'm starting out with a good deal more resources and practical advice from people who have already done it at my fingertips. I have contrariwise, a lovely and so-useful blog about selling jewelry online, telling me that my pictures have to have better backgrounds, and I have various other blogs bookmarked (from back when I didn't have a blog to use to "follow" them) telling me how to drill holes in shells without breaking them, posting up wire-wrapping tutorials, recommending this and that and you should get business cards if you're serious about this, Leo, and I know you are.
Long story short: I'm finding fewer things out the hard way, I think. I'm lucky that way. But I'll look back on these posts and cringe at what I didn't know. Ought I to get business cards when I'm barely selling enough to call it a source of income, let alone a business? I'm pretty sure I can't afford business cards at the moment. I think I'll make some stuff to take to that gallery - what's it called? That's near here. But for now, focusing on Christmas/Chanukah gifts =)
A side-effect of being in this strange position is that if people who have already done this stumble upon my blog, it will probably look rather familiar to them, just in a more electronic format - I'm having the same struggles that they were, once upon a time. I can't afford a cabachon or wire to learn to wire-wrap that cabachon and sell it for money to buy more cabachons and get better at wire-wrapping and oh, capital, capital. If only everything were free, I could just make art all the time. Silly reality, getting in the way. Mostly, the problem is that I can't count on selling things (or even being successful at them the first time around) - I expect a few catastrophic wire-wrapping failures, wire-tangled-like-a-bird's-nest-start-over type of failures, and when that happens I need to have the wire to pick up and try again. If that wire is all I have (and the money I put into it is money I need to get back), that puts some limits on my ability to experiment. How strange to think that I am not at all unique in being here, having to think about these things...I'm just here NOW, able to blog about it, while my predecessors look back on it semi-fondly in THEIR new blogs.
I did read some good advice, though, put here for action later (2:13?! How is it late so early?):
Get a flickr account, and start posting up photos! ....Aaaas soon as I take some.
Put a little personality into my blog? Don't just post new stuff I've made? Well hopefully I've got that down.
Get my "business" a facebook page - sorry, contrariwise, but I'm going to forget myspace for now. I don't know anyone who uses it anymore. I'm tempted to get a Diaspora account for it, actually :D
Make blogger friends, etsy seller friends, and absolutely STALK the etsy forums for advice. Talk to people, get involved.
Umm, POST MORE. Roughly translated as MAKE MORE STUFF. If I were less lazy/gemstone-research-obsessed with my time, I could make plenty of jewelry, and take lots of pictures. Okay, true, it gets dark really early here. Which leads me to:
Make a lightbox, and take some better pictures
Business cards??!?
By the way, if anyone's reading this, fantasian's etsy shop really doesn't have enough sales. She's got awesome skill, amazing talent, her works are unique and beautiful and so inspiring.
(And much cheaper than the guy who makes the Twisted Crystal jewelry, bless him, his stuff is so unique...birch bark? (Larimar?) Oh, yes, I would love a wire-wrapped birch bark necklace...but I could never afford his. Far out of my range. Still, though, those are my two sources of wire-wrapping inspiration at the moment.)
Old favorite: labradorite, still high up there. New favorite, seraphinite. It looks like feathers! Me and my fascination with anything related to flight. I've gathered from reading, though, that I can expect to have a new favorite at least weekly from now on.
I'm in kind of a strange position, I think. There are a lot of blogs written by Etsy sellers of things similar to those that I either make or want to make. However, I think most of them were, at my age and level of experience, not yet selling, probably at least not selling online, or at least not yet blogging. I'm starting out with a good deal more resources and practical advice from people who have already done it at my fingertips. I have contrariwise, a lovely and so-useful blog about selling jewelry online, telling me that my pictures have to have better backgrounds, and I have various other blogs bookmarked (from back when I didn't have a blog to use to "follow" them) telling me how to drill holes in shells without breaking them, posting up wire-wrapping tutorials, recommending this and that and you should get business cards if you're serious about this, Leo, and I know you are.
Long story short: I'm finding fewer things out the hard way, I think. I'm lucky that way. But I'll look back on these posts and cringe at what I didn't know. Ought I to get business cards when I'm barely selling enough to call it a source of income, let alone a business? I'm pretty sure I can't afford business cards at the moment. I think I'll make some stuff to take to that gallery - what's it called? That's near here. But for now, focusing on Christmas/Chanukah gifts =)
A side-effect of being in this strange position is that if people who have already done this stumble upon my blog, it will probably look rather familiar to them, just in a more electronic format - I'm having the same struggles that they were, once upon a time. I can't afford a cabachon or wire to learn to wire-wrap that cabachon and sell it for money to buy more cabachons and get better at wire-wrapping and oh, capital, capital. If only everything were free, I could just make art all the time. Silly reality, getting in the way. Mostly, the problem is that I can't count on selling things (or even being successful at them the first time around) - I expect a few catastrophic wire-wrapping failures, wire-tangled-like-a-bird's-nest-start-over type of failures, and when that happens I need to have the wire to pick up and try again. If that wire is all I have (and the money I put into it is money I need to get back), that puts some limits on my ability to experiment. How strange to think that I am not at all unique in being here, having to think about these things...I'm just here NOW, able to blog about it, while my predecessors look back on it semi-fondly in THEIR new blogs.
I did read some good advice, though, put here for action later (2:13?! How is it late so early?):
Get a flickr account, and start posting up photos! ....Aaaas soon as I take some.
Put a little personality into my blog? Don't just post new stuff I've made? Well hopefully I've got that down.
Get my "business" a facebook page - sorry, contrariwise, but I'm going to forget myspace for now. I don't know anyone who uses it anymore. I'm tempted to get a Diaspora account for it, actually :D
Make blogger friends, etsy seller friends, and absolutely STALK the etsy forums for advice. Talk to people, get involved.
Umm, POST MORE. Roughly translated as MAKE MORE STUFF. If I were less lazy/gemstone-research-obsessed with my time, I could make plenty of jewelry, and take lots of pictures. Okay, true, it gets dark really early here. Which leads me to:
Make a lightbox, and take some better pictures
Business cards??!?
By the way, if anyone's reading this, fantasian's etsy shop really doesn't have enough sales. She's got awesome skill, amazing talent, her works are unique and beautiful and so inspiring.
(And much cheaper than the guy who makes the Twisted Crystal jewelry, bless him, his stuff is so unique...birch bark? (Larimar?) Oh, yes, I would love a wire-wrapped birch bark necklace...but I could never afford his. Far out of my range. Still, though, those are my two sources of wire-wrapping inspiration at the moment.)
Monday, November 8, 2010
A very late first post
...You know how it is. I have class. I have homework. I am struck by sudden beading inspiration and nothing else counts until I'm done. I'm doing this because I managed to put "blogging" in the same category as "beading" in my mind. Let's hope it stays there.
So, exciting things have been happening on the Letterbox Lion front. Today was a landmark day in lots of ways, which is probably why I have such an urge to blog about it. I mailed my tenth online sale - of course, it's not my tenth sale, only the tenth that happened over etsy, but still. I started experimenting today, too. This was the first time I have worked with gold (!) ever (!), and since it wasn't as snobbish to work with as I'd imagined, I'd like to put it out there that I'm more than willing to do it again. I don't have much, since for my first ever gold project I didn't order much, but I'd be happy to have an excuse to acquire more, and use up the rest. ALSO TODAY I got my first gemstones.
Okay, let me stop to talk about that. I've always been wary of using gemstones, in the way of a little girl in awe of horses. Swarovski crystals are so consistent, and I shouldn't buy gemstones, I won't know what to do with them, they don't come catered to my order, they won't match with anything I have, blah blah excuses blah. If I want crystal, I can get it in practically any plausible (and some not-so-plausible) combination of color and tint and shade and coating and sparkle and opacity that I could POSSIBLY want. Gemstones, however, do what they want. They are all different. They are whatever color the earth formed them in. It's intimidating. It's exhilarating. I am having SO much fun.
I don't know why fusionbeads.com is discontinuing sodalite beads. They are gorgeous. I am so glad I bought them, even if it was because I wanted to try gemstones and those were the ones on clearance sale. If I had been updating this regularly, you'd already know that I have a weird fixation on dark blue beads...most of my inventory is some form of dark blue or something to complement dark blue. While I have been trying to branch out, I thought when I ordered them, hey, I lucked out - sodalite is blue, too.
Shockingly, though, it is ACTUAL blue. It's not some subtly purpley green shade of off-blue. It's not metallic or matte-coated iris shiny whatsitcalled. It's blue. It's unadulterated, I think I'll be light blue! I think I'll have a white band! I think I'll be this awesome stormy dark grey with blue flecks! Ooh, ooh, and I'll be deep ocean never-seen-light-before blue. (Spoken by individual 6mm beads). That kind of blue. I've already got big plans for these beads, not only because my crazy metallic-shiny-and-or-matte-possibly-sandbblasted-slightly-purple-or-green-or-both blue beads often go well with blue, but because I also have green. And honey-colored, and dark red, and more green, and amber. I have crystals and spacer beads. I have not enough spacer beads, as I discovered only halfway through my sodalite-induced beading delirium. I made a sweet earring with a design I'm very proud of, incorporating a lot of dark blue symmetry and silvery sparkle, and oh, I'm so happy with it. I am 6 spacer beads short of making the other one in the pair. And off to order more!
And here is a sad note, to explain my near-total lack of activity, as though anyone out there on the internet knew about it:
So, almost all of the pieces I have sold so far have been my flocks of cranes. I'm all right with that. They are excellent. They are my babies. They are cheap to make and cheap to sell. They are cute and rather awesome, they get lots of compliments, everyone likes them. I have a pair for every mood, and somebody comments almost every day. I was the only person on the whole internet (!!!) that I could find who would sell more than one crane on a single earring - nobody else seems to have thought of a flock. Too bad I can't patent the idea.
But they are a LOT of work. Like I said, they are cheap, but they take a very long time to make, and then I have to seal them with varnish because, come on, I'm not the kind of person to sell something that I would expect to fall apart immediately. They're made of paper, they're not in it for the long haul, but I still want to give them an advantage, and so I double- or triple-coat them in whatever the best varnish is that I can find. It takes FOREVER.
See: Even at five minutes per crane (a lowwwww estimate) 8 cranes per pair makes it 45 minutes JUST TO FOLD THEM. Forget measuring and cutting the paper into neat little squares, forget measuring the head pins and eye pins and making them all hang together. THEN the varnishing, which in itself takes a huge chunk of time because they need to dry between coats. And then, as if that's not enough, I have to photograph them in attractive poses (cranes are not meant to lie down) and resize those pictures and make them square and post descriptions...
I guess I've made my point. The whole process bogs me down. I feel the pain of poor Tessa Stone, the writer of the most excellent comic in the world, who just got absolutely killed by con season. It's all the extraneous stuff that takes you away from your art that ends up killing your inspiration. I really don't want that to happen to me...but since I lost my job, this is my sole source of income at the moment.
I am actually losing money on making those...that is, they do not get me enough money for all the time they take. If I didn't like making them and enjoy seeing other people like them so much, I couldn't do it anymore. I end up folding them in class, at lunch, in the middle of social events. Add to that the fact that I am losing money on shipping, too, since I've been needing to buy boxes in which to mail them, and I really don't make anything on this. I am praying that the word gets out that my work is good, and that soon I'll be able to start selling my higher-class items, the ones that cost me more and are triggered by artistic inspiration, not by ooh-that's-neat impulse. Not that I am expecting to make a living on Letterbox Lion just yet...but I need another job! So sad that what you're good at, what you like to do, and what make enough money to pay off your college loans don't always coincide.
END SAD NOTE. This has been a very good day.
And a big thank you to my boyfriend who gives me encouragement by sitting there and saying "I like it" when I hold things up at him.
So, exciting things have been happening on the Letterbox Lion front. Today was a landmark day in lots of ways, which is probably why I have such an urge to blog about it. I mailed my tenth online sale - of course, it's not my tenth sale, only the tenth that happened over etsy, but still. I started experimenting today, too. This was the first time I have worked with gold (!) ever (!), and since it wasn't as snobbish to work with as I'd imagined, I'd like to put it out there that I'm more than willing to do it again. I don't have much, since for my first ever gold project I didn't order much, but I'd be happy to have an excuse to acquire more, and use up the rest. ALSO TODAY I got my first gemstones.
Okay, let me stop to talk about that. I've always been wary of using gemstones, in the way of a little girl in awe of horses. Swarovski crystals are so consistent, and I shouldn't buy gemstones, I won't know what to do with them, they don't come catered to my order, they won't match with anything I have, blah blah excuses blah. If I want crystal, I can get it in practically any plausible (and some not-so-plausible) combination of color and tint and shade and coating and sparkle and opacity that I could POSSIBLY want. Gemstones, however, do what they want. They are all different. They are whatever color the earth formed them in. It's intimidating. It's exhilarating. I am having SO much fun.
I don't know why fusionbeads.com is discontinuing sodalite beads. They are gorgeous. I am so glad I bought them, even if it was because I wanted to try gemstones and those were the ones on clearance sale. If I had been updating this regularly, you'd already know that I have a weird fixation on dark blue beads...most of my inventory is some form of dark blue or something to complement dark blue. While I have been trying to branch out, I thought when I ordered them, hey, I lucked out - sodalite is blue, too.
Shockingly, though, it is ACTUAL blue. It's not some subtly purpley green shade of off-blue. It's not metallic or matte-coated iris shiny whatsitcalled. It's blue. It's unadulterated, I think I'll be light blue! I think I'll have a white band! I think I'll be this awesome stormy dark grey with blue flecks! Ooh, ooh, and I'll be deep ocean never-seen-light-before blue. (Spoken by individual 6mm beads). That kind of blue. I've already got big plans for these beads, not only because my crazy metallic-shiny-and-or-matte-possibly-sandbblasted-slightly-purple-or-green-or-both blue beads often go well with blue, but because I also have green. And honey-colored, and dark red, and more green, and amber. I have crystals and spacer beads. I have not enough spacer beads, as I discovered only halfway through my sodalite-induced beading delirium. I made a sweet earring with a design I'm very proud of, incorporating a lot of dark blue symmetry and silvery sparkle, and oh, I'm so happy with it. I am 6 spacer beads short of making the other one in the pair. And off to order more!
And here is a sad note, to explain my near-total lack of activity, as though anyone out there on the internet knew about it:
So, almost all of the pieces I have sold so far have been my flocks of cranes. I'm all right with that. They are excellent. They are my babies. They are cheap to make and cheap to sell. They are cute and rather awesome, they get lots of compliments, everyone likes them. I have a pair for every mood, and somebody comments almost every day. I was the only person on the whole internet (!!!) that I could find who would sell more than one crane on a single earring - nobody else seems to have thought of a flock. Too bad I can't patent the idea.
But they are a LOT of work. Like I said, they are cheap, but they take a very long time to make, and then I have to seal them with varnish because, come on, I'm not the kind of person to sell something that I would expect to fall apart immediately. They're made of paper, they're not in it for the long haul, but I still want to give them an advantage, and so I double- or triple-coat them in whatever the best varnish is that I can find. It takes FOREVER.
See: Even at five minutes per crane (a lowwwww estimate) 8 cranes per pair makes it 45 minutes JUST TO FOLD THEM. Forget measuring and cutting the paper into neat little squares, forget measuring the head pins and eye pins and making them all hang together. THEN the varnishing, which in itself takes a huge chunk of time because they need to dry between coats. And then, as if that's not enough, I have to photograph them in attractive poses (cranes are not meant to lie down) and resize those pictures and make them square and post descriptions...
I guess I've made my point. The whole process bogs me down. I feel the pain of poor Tessa Stone, the writer of the most excellent comic in the world, who just got absolutely killed by con season. It's all the extraneous stuff that takes you away from your art that ends up killing your inspiration. I really don't want that to happen to me...but since I lost my job, this is my sole source of income at the moment.
I am actually losing money on making those...that is, they do not get me enough money for all the time they take. If I didn't like making them and enjoy seeing other people like them so much, I couldn't do it anymore. I end up folding them in class, at lunch, in the middle of social events. Add to that the fact that I am losing money on shipping, too, since I've been needing to buy boxes in which to mail them, and I really don't make anything on this. I am praying that the word gets out that my work is good, and that soon I'll be able to start selling my higher-class items, the ones that cost me more and are triggered by artistic inspiration, not by ooh-that's-neat impulse. Not that I am expecting to make a living on Letterbox Lion just yet...but I need another job! So sad that what you're good at, what you like to do, and what make enough money to pay off your college loans don't always coincide.
END SAD NOTE. This has been a very good day.
And a big thank you to my boyfriend who gives me encouragement by sitting there and saying "I like it" when I hold things up at him.
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