Tough beginnings on Etsy

I enjoy crafting as far as I remember. So in the midst of middle age crisis I decided to upgrade my hobby and start selling things. The other truth is, I have no more space to decorate my home or to stock my little cuties. I opted for Etsy platform and opened my shop. So far so good. During first two weeks I listed 20 products and had 13 views, no likes and – obviously – no sells.

I have a lot of stamina and will not be defeated right away: I still have to upgrade my photo skills, figure out the CEO thing, start promoting on Facebook (which I do not like) and so on. Lots to do and learn, which is great. And getting out of my introvert comfort zone, which I guess is also ok. But I guess it will take more than this.

I wonder, for average shop owner, what rate of success is there? I mean, I do not expect to make huge money out of it, but at least to cover expenses and have a good feeling about it moving forward. To have some insight I turned to YouTube, where are lots of videos giving tips and telling success stories. But I have a vague feeling that some of them just shifted from selling stuff on Etsy to selling Etsy management knowledge on YouTube.

One video suggested that an option to think about when there are no sells is that the products are no good at all. Reasonable advice, but nevertheless this really stuck my strings of deepest angst I guess a lot of creative people share: of not being good enough.

I guess this will be a very interesting self-development journey as well.

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Meanwhile, I keep going with my stuff. I made a wall decoration out of some old wood board, sewn a little bag to be used as a vase, pencil holder, candy holder or anything smallish holder, made some drawing… et voila, here it is.

P.S. If you like it, let me know 🙂

https://www.etsy.com/listing/559690005/wood-wall-decor-farmhouse-rustic-style?ref=shop_home_active_1

I am back, got some news!

Hi, everybody! I haven’t published anything during last several months. My husband and I are renovating our old house – we are doing almost everything by ourselves – so we were busy all days long. The house is still looking like a building site, but one or two big final pushes and we’ll reach the stage I am really looking forward to – making and buying furniture, decorations, making the porch and so on. From next spring on I hope we’ll have lots of creative projects to share with you.

There is another project that suffered neglect during last months: I opened my Etsy shop (ioKikkaDesign) and only now finally filled it up with some items (I still have lots of work to do, though). I am very curious how it will turn out – the marketplace is huge and lots of shops cannot survive the fierce competition. So, fellow Etsy shop owners and buyers, if you would like to share your experience, give some advice or just let us know about your shop – I would be most grateful and interested to hear from you.

Last but not least, here are some pictures of my little cuties.

And here is my current working space (lots of creative mess on our kitchen table). I am looking forward to have a special “womans cave” at the house once we move in – yey!

 

 

Life suckers

Little children are so easily overwhelmed by too much external stimuli. They hear, observe and smell their surroundings and suddenly it’s just too much for them to bear. My daughter tolerated a total of 5 minutes of first Santa visit at kindergarten and at the age of 5, after her first cinema matinée, burst to cry and then had to eat and take a nap. To eliminate excess stress and recover her forces.

With age we withstand more. But how much more?

There are various types of stresses, but we will keep aside all obviously good or bad stresses, since we usually recognise them easily.

But life suckers – they are worth a word or two.

Life suckers come to our life embodied in nasty persons usually disguised behind pretty smiles, as difficult situations or as oppressing places and in many, many other forms. The worst kind in my opinion are the human ones. They have some common traits: they come, suck as many life juices as they can and usually stick to their prey as much as they can (why leaving a fresh source of blood?), always taking and taking.

Leaving us exhausted and empty – but many times we just don’t recognise it right away. Since we are adults, right? And we won’t cry and take a nap after. We are taught to rather endure, even these silent stresses day by day, burning a lot of energy in vain. Sometimes because of fear, compassion, politeness – who knows?

What about being more aware and learning to recognise our life suckers? And not letting them taking more of our energy than we are consciously willing to give. Allowing ourselves be more child-like again and take a good care of ourselves when we need it.

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Do you recognise your life suckers? How do you cope with them?

Finding perfect career

Today is one of those days. When a bad morning becomes crappy and then evolves to shitty before lunch time. I know for a long time now that the work I am doing does not reflect me anymore (ok, job sucks), but still did not make the next step in other direction (yes, I am procrastinating). Even though the spirits have been dashed for a long time now, leaving behind only restlessness to exit the situation. Where to?

Ok, now let’s be practical.

Very nice people at YouTube know exactly what I need (thanks!), so I was suggested to watch the “To find work you love, don’t follow your passion” TED talk by Benjamin Todd. To summarise: rather than start with things we are passionate about and then hope to reach a fulfilling career out of it, we should focus on what brings value, which will result in passion and fulfilling career.

This is not what we’ve been taught, right? Following the suggested 80000 hours (incredible amount of time we spend at work) website I ended doing their “decision tool”. The nice thing is that it does not give ready answers (“you should be an astronaut” thing), but merely questions to help you think about your career choices from different perspectives.

It turns out, I am concerned most with unfair distribution of wealth and I could therefore pursue career helping people discover their talents (their own source of wealth). Maybe doing crafting workshops or making reviews of innovative handmade items or maybe helping managing small craft shops would be my thing?

I guess there is quite some of you who felt stuck at some point in your lives – can you share which strategies you choose, how did you cope with it, what was helpful? Maybe share a story of your career change? 

I wish you all a very bright day!

 

Inspiration from cultural heritage

We just celebrated the Slovenian Day of culture (which is also a non-working day, yey!) and many cultural institutions held celebrations and other special events for the public. Slovenian cultural heritage is a rich one. The first association I have when trying to picture a typical Slovene imagery in my mind is rustic carnation from Upper Carniola, lots of red hearts and beehive panels. Not sure what I am talking about? Here they are in all their vivid colours, rounded shapes and lots of detail.

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These are so beautiful that just call for reinterpretation. A small detail from these images can be put in all sorts of crafting products. I can already see the detail of carnation from the cloth as a pendant or line with hearts from painted egg as a bracelet pattern. Maybe in different colour or stylised lines… or maybe not.

So I jumped to Museum of Gorenjska, Slovene Ethnographic Museum and other websites for more inspiration. Here are some images with objects that caught my attention.

I will definitely try to include some of the details in my future projects (see the pattern on the furnace doors – great for projects with wire).

To me these are just beautiful and it is amazing how much effort was put in these objects in the old days. They are part of the heritage of my nation – and tell us even today how our ancestors lived, what they liked, what were their values. Amazing, isn’t it?

 

What is your cultural heritage – does it attract you? Are you inspired by it?

Worlds oldest instrument – Neanderthal Flute

Letting go and embracing

I just found a wonderful post by The richness of a simple life about the meaning of life. The keywords that resonate with me, are: gift, embracing, searching, sharing and giving it away. But it is possible to introduce really meaningful things when we let go of all distractions and clutter of everyday life – physical and even more psychological ones. To make space for our vocation.

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. -Pablo Picasso Life is so beautiful when you embrace who you are, and build your life around that.

via The Meaning of Life — The Richness of a Simple Life