Artfire does a Regretsy, and movin' on up!

An advertisement on one of my ornament listings for a factory-made ornament

(note: this is something that was done by Artfire, not by me!)

(note on 4/27/15: Artfire added an ad-free option a week ago from all of the complaints from sellers about the ads. I took Artfire up on the offer to keep ads out of my shop, and I now feel okay about sending buyers there ... for now. I am still setting up my own e-commerce website, but at least I don't feel rushed, and can do it at my leisure. The rest of what I wrote, below, is the original post)

As many of you know (especially my loyal brick and mortar customers), I have been selling on Artfire for awhile now. The site was looking better than it ever has, it had gotten mobile friendly, and then, wham! Ads!

No, I did not want my listings for my handmade and fine art to be blasted with ads looking like an ad farm! 

And no, I will never put ads with handmade, fine art listings. And believe me, I could make this blog cluttered with ads too, and make good money doing so, but I have never taken that route because I don't believe it is respectful to my customers and it goes against everything small businesses and artists stand for. 

I liken the ads on my listings to this scenerio:

I shop for food primarily from local farms. I actually drive to a lot of farms. I love the drive to the farm where I buy my eggs for three dollars a carton, for instance. They are lovely eggs by the way, all different colors, by all kinds of different breeds of chickens, and some of them even duck eggs, and so much fresher and better tasting than stale grocery store eggs. This farm is a place I love to go to because of the lovely scenery, where I can meet and pet the chickens who produce my eggs, where I chit-chat with the owners and where I can walk around admiring the wildflowers, horses and cows. Sometimes I see herds of deer mingled in with the cows, or off in the distance. You can see at least a hundred miles into the distance on sunny days. Imagine one day I pulled up and there was a big billboard for "cheap eggs, only a dollar, at your local Walmart" stuck to the chicken shack, and many other billboards and signs blocking the scenery, making it confusing about whether I was buying their farm eggs or ones from a factory farm. Ick!

Well, that's how I feel about the ads on my listings.   

I had been planning to move to my own site in the autumn because I needed to offer wholesale and I couldn't do that on Artfire. I had to use it as a kind of e-mail service and explain everything, rather than have it spelled out in a listing (and imagine how much more confusing it is with these ads for wholesale buyers!). Anyway this has precipitated a need for a fast move, hopefully by next month. I spend my evenings copying listings when I am not trying to keep supplies of greeting cards and other art products stocked for brick and mortar shops in my area. So, I will let you know soon where I have moved to. Here are some other ads they plastered to my handmade ornament listing:

 NO THANKS!

As for other movin' on up plans:

I am also busy creating listings for Fine Art America because most of my customers contact me for print sizes I don't have listed, to get a custom size/order. Having a shop on Fine Art America will make it so much easier for ALL of my customers to order a myriad of sizes on different mediums, even huge 40 inch canvas prints. There is so much I can't do in my own home-based printing business; I have had to farm a lot out. This will give everyone a chance to own any size they want, and on any medium from archival canvas prints, to archival fine art paper, to posters for a kid's room, and greeting cards, and other products. This is a shop I was focusing on launching until Artfire distracted me, and now it's almost like a race to see which site gets done first, my e-commerce store or the Fine Art America store. The stores will probably be done in close proximity to each other!

As for Etsy, I am not invested in running any kind of major store there for my handmade or fine art. If you want to know why, this article explains my views. In movin' on up, I am by-passing venues. Etsy is being relegated to tiny experiments for different kinds of themes. Right now I have focused on a handful of owl listings.

Other things I am working on:

I have some Easter listings to show you soon.

I am doing illustrations for a book (someone else is the author). That's all I can share now.

I will be offering a lot more Victorian designs on the new website, but still keeping most products focused on story-book art, Celtic designs and Renaissance inspired art. 

Just because I have been silent does not mean I haven't been working extremely hard!

NO LINKS TO ONLINE STORES FOR NOW

   

fool jester aceo

Jester 

original ACEO 

(an ACEO is a mini 2.5" x 3.5" original drawing) 

© 2014

for sale through my Artfire on-line shop HERE

As stated this is a mini original drawing the size of a baseball card. To find out why artists make mini drawings, go HERE to a Wikipedia article on the subject.

I often start minis to see if I would like to do larger pieces with the same color schemes and subject. This is one of those pieces.

Why do customers buy them? Affordability, as an investment in case the artist gets famous, to frame for a small nook, to put in a book with your other ACEOs, and any other thing you can think of.

I have been drawing and painting fools since I began my art career. It is one of the dominant themes in my work. 

The fool represents wisdom (but it is often wisdom that is not heard or taken seriously). Fools were non-threatening entertainment for kings and queens, even if they poked fun of the royal figures they worked for on a constant basis. They were about the only ones allowed to jest! Many of them were thought to be insane, as they talked in riddles, and the jesters probably smartly played the part of insanity to keep their heads. Therefore, the fool also represents the unconscious. Since the fool is always represented by the numerical number zero in playing cards and in tarot decks, he is not really part of the intrigues and manipulations that go on in court (he has nothing to win or lose), but can sit in or substitute briefly if someone is missing from the deck. The fool in the Tarot represents a figure who is not conventional, who takes wild unpredictable chances, who is non-threatening even if he should talk about things which might normally piss people off. The fool also represents innocence, new experiences, an observer and speaker about matters pertaining to personal growth, a wild leap, a leap into the unknown, rampant untamed creativity and the willingness to forge ahead into new territory.

And by the way, in the midst of continuing in the fantasy art tradition I began many years ago, I am also pursuing an MSW, and taking yet a new direction with my art (for scapegoats, black sheep, for the bullied and abused of our society). More about that new direction HERE. That would be my one leap and leap of faith for the year!

November 2012 sale: horse holiday cards

horse holiday cards on sale only through my Artfire Shop for November

wholesale prices: 25 cards for $25 (excluding shipping costs)

from top to bottom (click to be taken to listing or to buy):
Spirit of Winter

Spirit of Christmas

Christmas Horse

Most of 2012 is the year of the Chinese water dragon, a year marked by sudden and unexpected events and changes. For me, that's an understatement! They haven't been pleasant events and have impacted me and every close family member in my life. It has been overwhelming, a juggling act that it is teetering on failurse at every moment, without a shread of normalcy in anything: work, home, relationships with family and friends, events. Phone calls with my mother often begin with "The water dragon strikes again!"

That's how the Chinese year/astrology is effecting me. Now for those of you into western astrology, I have a Uranus exact square Pluto on my native sun (also exact) most of this year. What does that mean? Well, it means sudden and unexpected events and changes. More of the same, apparently. So, does that mean I get a double whammy since both eastern and western seem to match in this case? It would seem so.

Anyway, since I am unable to get much work accomplished, I thought I'd have a sale of some designs from the past. Enjoy!

WEBSITE

ARTFIRE ON-LINE STORE (largest selection)

ETSY ON-LINE STORE (seasonal selection)

and oh, yes, I launched a facebook professional site recently:

FACEBOOK SITE  

Be Lucky

Be Lucky!
© 2012
new St. Patrick's Day card

I laughed when I made this design. It's SO conventional! My partner says that means it'll probably sell!

Available in season in my Etsy shop or year-round in my Artfire shop.

WEBSITE

MY ART IN ON-LINE STORES:

Artfire
Etsy

MY MUSIC LINKS (hear clips):
Music MYSPACE
My band, Saratoga Faire’s MYSPACE
My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort

MY MUSIC IN ON-LINE STORES:
CD Baby

Amazon
InandOutRecords (Europe)
My band, Saratoga Faire, on CD Baby

Holiday Art Shows

It’s been all business since last time I blogged with no time for practice or painting.

I have been working from 7:30 in the morning until midnight preparing for my holiday art shop at Lower Adirondack Regional Art Center (Glens Falls, NY). This is a photo of the set-up. The opening is this Friday eve (I think the hours are 6 – 8).

I also prepared a much more truncated version for Valley Artisans Market (Cambridge, NY).

I don’t know how I managed 6 – 10 holiday art shows in past years as the 2 have totally exhausted me (and for this reason, I am keeping it to just the 2 this year).

One of the reasons why it took so much time out of me is that at the last moment I discovered that I had sold a lot of inventory & needed to make more. This meant days & days of printing out small prints and cards. Then there was the pricing, writing inventory lists and the shop set-up all in the midst of some major house catastrophes. This is the third year in a row where house issues put a serious wrench in holiday art show preparation. And I hope it is the last!

On another note, I was featured (along with one of my designs) briefly in a blog by Michelle of "Nature Manipulated". It is in her Saturday, November 7, 2009 blog (if you can no longer scroll to it, you can still look up the date). Her blog is located here.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby