Hawaiian Vacation

I'm finally back to working on some new stuff and I'm pretty excited! Here's a little mouse guy I painted tonight. I wish I could just chill out all day just like him.

Changes

I've been talking about this for quite some time now, and at the end of this year it's going happen. On January 1st, 2015 I'm going to shut down my Etsy shop. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop knitting just yet. It just means the shop is moving off Etsy. I'm tired of a lot of the changes Etsy's been making to the site and also (as I mentioned before) their fees. Last December, my Etsy bill was nearly $300 for the month. And most months, my bill ranges from $20-60 depending on how much I sell. That's a pretty hefty chunk of money that could've been used to grow my business or pay bills. I only pay Big Cartel a flat rate of $9.95/month regardless of how much I sell. Since being featured by Frankie, I've been getting a decent number of orders through Big Cartel. That gave me the confidence I needed to grow my business without Etsy. Starting bookmarking it now, because soon the knits will only be available HERE.

Knitting isn't the only thing I'm doing for a living; I've been trying to focus on my illustration career. When I'm not knitting, I'm drawing. It's a much scarier path than graphic design, but it's so much more satisfying to me. I love the challenge & excitement of the unknown. I'm currently trying to work on new pieces and prints to get ready for Renegade Craft's Winter Shows. The application period starts in September and it's only open for a week this year. So I really got to get it together! In the meantime, you can see what's currently available HERE.

Kevin and I decided to skip the Summer shows this year because it's too much work & stress on me for very little profit. Every year, he has to go to Comic Con for work so it leaves me working alone on the Summer shows. It's just too much work on one person. So we've been changing up the shows we do as well as researching some smaller ones to try. I'll be participating in the July Art Walk at The Community in Anaheim. (more about that later). In a couple months, I'll announce the Holiday show schedule so you know where you can find me at a show near you! Til next time!

Renegade LA Recap

This past weekend was Renegade Craft LA and it was the first time doing a summer show and it was also the first time I'd ever done an outdoors one too. All I could say is it was a big learning experience. The biggest factor that affects an outdoor show is the weather. And I feel like the weather played a huge role in whether or not people were in a buying mood. For the first half of Saturday, it was miserably hot and for the second half, it looked like it was going to rain. In fact, it was drizzling. The weather on Sunday was much nicer. It was overcast with a breeze and still a little warm, but it felt good. And I noticed that there were more people out & about and willing to buy.

Here's a little peek at my setup:

And here's Kevin's side of the booth:

Overall, this was the slowest show I had ever done and I probably won't do it again. I might consider doing the LA holiday show just because holiday tends to be busier, but it being outdoors is a bit of a turn-off for me. There was just so much dust in this area that at the end of each day, there was a gross layer of dust on all the products.

So now I'm getting ready for San Francisco which is my favorite show to do. I made a few more pouches, but I didn't really have to make that much more inventory since I still had a lot of leftovers from the LA show. 

And of course, Sebastian wasn't very much help.

The highlight of my day today was meeting up with Debbie Carlos. She came to visit and brought some sweet donuts from Donut Man. We got to hang out over lunch and chatted about our cats. You know, just typical us.

The Weekly Wind Down: 02.10.13

Stracciatella from Pazzo Gelato

I just finished a little over a week's worth of freelancing for Knock Knock. And now I'm trying to decide what to do with myself. I'm probably going to go back to concentrating on the store and working on new products. Speaking of which, I've opened up a new store! And I'm offering 15% Off all orders from now til the end of the month with code: HELLONEWSHOP. My Etsy shop will continue to stay open. I'm going through a process of restructuring my brands and deciding which products will go where. But what this really means is: there's officially a Becausemaybe shop.

What I learned this week is that just because I haven't been able to land a salary job, that doesn't mean that I'm not talented. I just need to find a good fit. I still prefer the "freelance/self-employed" life over the "day job" life. Although I like driving, I don't like having to drive in over an hour's worth of traffic to get to work and then also taking just as long to get home afterwards. All I could think of this past week is how much I haven't been able to concentrate on my shop. I noticed that when I have time to tend to it, sales just somehow come in. I'm still going to keep doing the job hunt, but I'm not going to desperately apply to random jobs that I don't think I'll even like.

I have a few projects I've been thinking about…mostly zines. I'll finally get a chance to photograph the new notebooks this week and add them to the shop soon. Here they are (shot under bad lighting) before they got their rounded corners. So keep an eye out for that this week!

Other things (and thoughts) that are going on right now are debates about the difference between the Quiet Tiger blog and this blog. I do feel that a lot of the content here tends to be more personal. I'm trying to decide if there's a big enough difference between the two for them to live as two separate blogs or if they should just be consolidated into one blog. That's something I'm going to be tinkering with this week and you'll hear all about it next week. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Workplace Companion

Whenever I'm at work, I almost always see this cat whether it be when I'm arriving or when I'm leaving. There's quite a few stray cats who roam the construction yards near our office. But today, I attempted to befriend this little one. It's actually quite a sweet cat although a little camera shy. I've been wanting to get a second cat so that Sebastian can have a friend to hang out with when I'm away at work, but I can't have a second cat just yet. I really wanted to take this one home.

Exercises in Writing

I've been dabbling in the idea of dedicating time to running Quiet Tiger. I think of this as a creative outlet for my writing. As a counter-balance to design. But like all things, it takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work. I have every intention of branding Quiet Tiger. And this week, I came closer to narrowing down what exactly it will be and what it will do. I felt like what happened over summer when I started Quiet Tiger was that I was taking a shot in the dark. I didn't know what I was doing or what I wanted. And unfortunately, that resulted in the failure that is The Fabrication Dept. But now I feel like I'm finally on track. I need Quiet Tiger as much as I need becausemaybe. And with that, I'm going to commit a portion of my time to making this work out.

Vacation? What's That?

no matter how much work i do, i always feel behind. although the semester is over and i'm on winter break, that does not mean vacation for me. i just stopped by Flock Shop yesterday to drop off some more stuff for consignment. i never got around to listing all the leftovers from Co-Lab. in the back of my mind, i know i probably could've made a killing on last minute holiday shoppers and now i have to hope people are looking to gift themselves post-xmas. i'll be spending all of today photographing new items and listing them. as well as making new tags. it seems that i can never have enough tags!

don't even get me started on my portfolio. i'm purposely only taking 6 units next semester to force myself to work hard on my portfolio to get into the BFA for Graphic Design. all-the-while trying to grow my company... well for starters...get to the point where i can deal with the legal stuff and write off yarn purchases on my taxes =)

being a one woman machine gets tough but i wouldn't have it any other way.