Friday Feature: Groovy Glass Girl

1. Tell us a bit about yourself. I'm random, yet organized, obsessed with color, I dream of having a bright open studio where I spend all of my free time painting, I love bicycles, beards, tattoos & magazines....and if you must know I was born in the 70's and my real name is Poppy.

2. What first made you want to become an artist? I think being an artist is in my blood. I remember kits my Mom used to buy me to make my own Winnie the Pooh character teddies, hook rugs, sewing my own Barbie clothes and accessories. Even in high school I made my own hats & clothes & painted everything. My friends used to make fun of me because even the way I arranged food on a plate was done creatively!

3. Please describe your creative process. I almost always start from a sketch, read a lot of fashion magazines for inspiration and I often start with a color combination as an inspiration.

4. Name your top five books, movies, musicians, and websites besides Etsy.
Movies: The Royal Tenenbaums, Amelie, Frida. I'm reading a really great book right now called Sacred Balance by David Suzuki, She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb is one of my faves. Music: Matt Good, The Ramones, Sarah Harmer, Bad Religion....I'm really moody about music... song shuffle on my iPod is the best.

5. What advice would you give to artists on Etsy?
Don't expect Etsy to bring sales to you...Etsy is so big now sellers really have to work at bringing in their own customers. I find that the more time I spend on my shop the more sales I get. If I neglect it the only sales I get are from my returning customers.....which are so great by the way.....I love you regular customers.

6. How do you promote your work?
I do some local events, blog a bit, post on Facebook when I list... but mostly it's through word of mouth, friends of friends etc.

Friday Features: Janey Mac Press

1. Tell us a bit about yourself.
We are a mother daughter design team. We work from home in Idaho.

2. What first made you want to become an artist?
I (the daughter) started out with architecture. I really loved design, and once I had kids I felt my creative senses moving into different directions and landed with designing vinyl for home living spaces - but I mostly love to design decals for children's spaces.

3. Please describe your creative process.
I get a lot of my inspiration from fabrics and trends.
I like to keep my design classic looking. I feel like clean and fresh designs are what come naturally to me.

4. Name your top five books, movies, musicians, and websites besides Etsy.
Books: John Adams, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, Gone with the Wind,
The DaVinci Code & Hunger Games
Movies: Steel Magnolias, Gladiator, The Count of Monte Cristo, Gone with the Wind and Any Shrek movie :)
Musicians: Imogen Heap, The Beatles, Enya, Peter Bjorn and John & Sarah Mclachlan
Websites: Shabby Apple, Spearmint Baby, Decor8blog, picnik & Ucreate

5. What advice would you give to artists on Etsy?
Stay true to your style :)
Like Dr Seuss says:
'Today you are you, that is truer that true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.'

6. How do you promote your work?
I advertise on blogs and do local markets.
We also have our own blog where we do weekly giveaways, inspiration, tutorials etc.
www.janeymacpress.blogspot.com

Friday Features: Trendy Knitting

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and 2. What first made you want to become an artist?
I have been knitting and crocheting since I was a little girl. I don’t remember when I exactly started. However when my first daughter was born, I started to spend more time on design so I could knit more creative things for her. Because at that time it was not as easy to find different clothes for babies in Turkey, we didn’t have lots of alternatives. By the way, my first daughter is 30 years old now :). So, I have been a full time mother for about 30 years. I have two daughters and a son. But my daughters were married about 2-3 years ago and my son is in another city at university. So, although I’m a very social person and have lots of friends, it was just two of us at home with only my husband. :) I realized that I had lots of spare time and I need a success story in my life for myself. For a long time, I had forgotten to think about myself.

Meanwhile, my daughter mentioned about Etsy, its potential, system etc. I like the idea of selling my own handmade pieces worldwide. My daughter and I became a team, and opened our shop on Etsy. I’m responsible of all the design and production process of our Etsy shop, Trendy Knitting, and she is responsible of all the communication and listing process on Etsy, since I’m not as good at English. And for about 2 years, I feel very good about myself, happy and successful. Now I have a success story for myself. I design and knit handmade accessories and people from all around the world buy and love my items :). I become so happy when receiving positive feedback and compliments from my customers. Moreover, I have a production team of 5 people, who are full time mothers too. And I provide them the opportunity to make some money by working at home. This makes me so happy too.

3. Please describe your creative process.
Inspiration doesn’t come at the time when I start to think about designing a new item. It comes when I’m dealing with another thing, when I shopping around or observing people on the street, their clothes, their styles etc. Actually, because of this, I love my own inspiration process, having the idea on the time that you don’t expect makes you much happier.

After having the inspiration I start to think about the details of the item, which material and color to use, what differentiates it from substitutes, which details to add to make that accessory unique etc. After having all these in my head, I start to knit or crochet my new accessory. If my first draft wins approval from my daughters :), then it’s my team’s turn. They make this new item in 3-4 different colors; we list the item on Etsy and wait for its buyers.

4. Name your top five books, movies, musicians, and websites besides Etsy.
For books, my favorite is all Dan Brown books and Lord of the Kings and Harry Potter series. While it is not a movie, I love the LOST however I did not like the ending. :) My favorite musician is Bon Jovi and the website is Craftopolis :)

5. What advice would you give to artists on Etsy?
Actually I do not have a specific piece of advice for the Etsy Sellers, but I’m a very social and positive person. I try to get all the pleasure of every second of my life, and by this way I’m so happy. I suggest to everyone to try to be happy and have a success story for you as well :).

6. How do you promote your work?
Well I have a loyalty card for my customers. Each of my customers gets the loyalty card and I give them special offers for their future orders. This special offers are not only for my customers, but also for their friends :)

Friday Feature: Kreativ Link

1. Tell us a bit about yourself.
I'm a homebody. Apart from traveling to new countries, I'm happy spending my time in our messy little house here in Austria. The only room I like to clean and organize is my studio. Yes. It's becoming a real problem. Thankfully, I have a very understanding husband!

I'm self-employed and have been working from home since 1996. I'm so used to doing things my way, I don't think I could ever go back into a "real" job. And well, I'm also rather unsocial I have to say. I'm not the one you would find at parties or things like that. Most people I find rather ... boring. Yep. There. Now I said it! :D

The Internet is just my thing. I can communicate with people all over the world, have fun chats on Twitter and the like, but I can as easily step away and be my grumpy, solitary self.

2. What first made you want to become an artist?
I don't know. I never planned or dreamed about becoming an artist. It's just what happened in my life. Somehow.

3. Please describe your creative process.
That's another question I always have a hard time answering. There is no "process". I just do what feels right. All the wonderful forms that there are in nature fascinate me. And, I can't get enough of ancient and mysterious cultures. I often think about how it was living in old times. Or how it will be living in the future. When I'm in a deep forest I can't help but keep an eye out to see if I see a fairy. Not that I really believe they exist, but wouldn't it be nice if they did? I can spend hours just daydreaming ... and all the crazy things in my head somehow find a way into my work. But if that is a process, I don't know :)

4. Name your top five books, movies, musicians, and websites besides Etsy.
Ack sorry, can't do that either. I love to read Science Fiction and Fantasy for fun (surprise, right?) with the occasional tough stuff in between. I like old baroque music and smooth jazz and blues. The movies I love most are the ones that make you forget about the here and now. And websites, well, I don't think I know about any cool ones that aren't already well known.

5. What advice would you give to artists on Etsy?

If you are lucky and don't have to earn money with it - just enjoy and have fun!
If you have to rely on the income - prepare for long hours and lots of work. Success on Etsy doesn't come easy. There are thousands of artists who are offering amazing work. It's not enough to make something "nice". You can only survive if you make something that makes people feel "ahhh... I WANT/NEED that". And it needs to stand up to your customer’s expectations when they open your package at home. Your product is the first and most important thing. All other things - like taking good photos, giving great customer service and such - come after that.

6. How do you promote your work?
I do have a website http://www.kreativlink.at and a blog http:///www.kreativling.at
I post photos on my flickr account, on deviantART, and I twitter about it.

A little bit of a change...

There is a change in my normal weekly formatting. I found that most of the shops I go to and look at have so many wonderful items. I always have a hard time trying to pare down my choices to one option. Many of the times I will switch one item out for the next. So I have decided to make Friday Favorites focus more on the shop owners and not just the items for a little while. I am going to call it Friday Feature. If you would like to be featured let me know. I am going to make a list of questions that will help us better get to know you. If you want to go ahead and answer them, here are the ones I have right now. I am letting you know I am borrowing these questions from the Etsy Featured Seller.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself.
2. What first made you want to become an artist?
3. Please describe your creative process.
4. Name your top five books, movies, musicians, and websites besides Etsy.
5. What advice would you give to artists on Etsy?
6. How do you promote your work?