Meet The Maker - Day 6 - Shop Small

 Today's is the last day of Meet The Maker and the prompt is "Shop Small".

Supporting small businesses whether it's online or local is such a lovely thing and feeling...all of us small makers are just trying to make the world a smidge lovelier with our creativity and goodness knows the world

can use a bit of extra lovely lately!!

Every single order I get, no matter how big or small I do a happy dance

and get a burble of happiness in my tum.

I appreciate every single one so much.

It means the world that someone wants to spend their hard earned money

on my work and it also acknowledges my unique skills, training & hard work too.

Even if you can't buy from small businesses right now,

because let's face it, sometimes that just isn't possible,

there are still great ways that you can help us small indie businesses.

You can like our posts and I always encourage people to not just heart a post but to leave comments too....

....Reposting our work or things that you have bought from us on all or any of your social media platforms is one of the biggest ways you can help us out.

Saving our posts helps us get higher IG rankings which is a tricky beast!

and well just sharing our work & names with your family & friends

is a wonderful way to help us get our work in front of new eyes. 

Also signing up for our newsletters

and encouraging friends and family to check out our work is all super helpful. Any and all of these actions are a wonderful way to help us indie businesses out but are also great reminder to us to that someone out there is indeed paying attention and liking what we're working so hard on and in many ways that is just as important as the sales cause goodness knows we need cheerleaders, especially today in these turbulent uncertain scary & unprecedented times!

Meet The Maker - Day 5 - Community Over Competition

 Todays Meet The Maker Prompt is "COMMUNITY OVER COMPETITION".

My experiences with this has been a mixed bag to be truthful.

I really think finding community instead of competition is a matter of finding and approaching the right people.  You have to approach people you admire but you also have to get lucky in that those you approach are friendly & willing to share.  Alot of people won't actually be able to find the time to converse and connect but don't get too discouraged when someone doesn't respond to you in a positive way, just move on down the line because some people will be happy to connect and answer your questions. It's not always easy to find your own tribe and I admit to still being in the process of seeking out mine!

I personally have been happy to share my knowledge BUT I am careful with my time these days too because simply my chronic pain takes alot of my time in the studio away and my studio time tends to be shorter than a regular artist who isn't chronically sick. I used to respond to every question like 'how did you start your Etsy shop' with sooo much detail & length and then I would often not even get a thank you in return!  So now I am also more careful with whom I spend my time responding too. But yeah, I think it's important to share the knowledge but there's also something said in trying to figuring things out yourself first too!

So whiles I have myself unfortunately experienced way more Competition over Community, I still remain hopeful that that's not always going to be the case & my experiences so far sure have made me appreciate any connections & sharing of knowledge that I do experience, that much more, especially online, the online community can be just as supportive, if not more

than those physically around you....

My advice is take it where you can get it, appreciate it & make sure to give back!

.

Meet The Maker - Day 3 - New For Christmas

 The Meet The Maker Prompt for today is 'New For Christmas'.

I am super excited to get not only my brand new and refreshed website

up in the next couple of weeks

(I hope!)

BUT also my new shop...

It's been slightly overwhelming & confusing to me

to figure out but I am getting there, there's so much to work out!

I have decided to move away from Etsy and have my own shop on my own website AND the first batch of whimsical goodies I will be posting is a bunch of

my limited edition hand-pressed lino cut prints.

I honestly don't really know why I've never listed my linos,

I have always just sold them locally. But I have SO many new designs and people seem super enthused with them so yeah,

I am really anxious to start running the editions off and getting them listed

and then to keep doing so instead of just squirreling them away!

As always, because of my chronic pain life,

I always run slowly and behind everyone else,

but if you bear with me, these will be the first thing I list and I am hoping

it'll be in time for Christmas... I'll do my best! But in the meantime you can order

some of my colourful & whimsical goods from my Society6 shop.