More and More About Prints!!

Alright... For now, I've concluded that I don't quite have the means to produce prints on my own. But, for those who would like, I am making them available through Deviantart. If you go to http://rhiahna.deviantart.com/prints/?utm_source=deviantart&utm_medium=userpage&utm_campaign=printstab, you can find the photos I've made available to buy. I do get a small portion of the cost of the prints, but please don't feel obligated or anything, I'm mostly curious to see if it generates any interest.

Prior Planning Predicts Pitiful Results

Some things really just don't turn out like you plan.

I settled in last night after I got home from work, with the idea that I would try to update some of the photos of my pieces listed on Etsy, after reading a couple of articles the previous night on how to photograph crafts for sale. With this in mind, did I tear apart my mother's dining room, removing everything from the table and pushing it up against the wall, removing the mirror that stood in my way so I would have a nice, flat and smooth, unassuming neutral background.

Upon inspection of the sheet I had laid across the table, I decided that the wrinkles might be too distracting, so chose to iron it. Everything looked pretty nice once I was done, the lighting wasn't great but it seemed like it would do.... Only I found it took me about an hour and a half to settle on the right camera settings.

And that's when the fun started.
I managed to spill a glass of red wine across my nice clean white sheet-turned-tablecloth, followed by knocking off-balance the large collection of wine bottles on the bottle stand, which bounced off the glass table top and shattered it. My mom graciously helped me clean up the mess of glass (after observing the at-wits-end look on my face, I'd wager.) I gave up on the ironing the second time around, abandoned the first piece I was trying to photograph (it wasn't cooperating anyway--something about not being in the mood, and I could find it in it's trailer, I'm not sure.) Instead I made a nice little collection of four tea bowls of relatively similar size and coloring... when, I got about 2 shots in, and my battery promptly died.

I have, in fact, concluded at this point, that all the days in which I set out with a predetermined plan to take photographs, are instantly doomed to failure. Unlike my spontaneous grabbing of the camera for some perfect shots, the days or hours I set aside specifically for this purpose, seem to consistently yield few, if any, usable photographs. I have to say it's very annoying.

You see, this morning when I managed to get up a little earlier than necessary for work, and went back to the previous night's project, I managed to find some wonderful inspiration over a cup of coffee and some biscuits. I guess it's just funny like that. Ha ha ha.

(I actually prefer mine with cream and sugar. But shhh.)

Printing Green

Well... I'm sort of bummed. I was really hoping I could print my own business cards and things for ETH, and was looking for some more Eco-friendly ways of doing so. I was even thinking how great it would be if all of my packing slips and shipping papers could be on recycled paper, and if they made inks & paper suitable for Prints (as mentioned in my previous post), and was getting really excited about this whole idea... But after searching around all over the net for the past hour and a half, I have discovered.....

They don't make soy-based ink cartridges for home-use yet. Bah. I could probably find a printer to do my business cards on recycled paper with soy-ink, but it would cost me a lot more.

I hope the industry catches up soon, because I want to be able to use it! Petroleum-based ink sucks, not to mention the fact that soy-based has much brighter colors!

In other news... I now have a Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/photos/earthtreesandheather/

I took a whole bunch of pictures yesterday in a huge flurry of inspiration, and decided I should probably set up a separate account specifically for things connected to ETH. I'm thinking of taking a small sampling and testing how they look as Prints (even in despite my disappointment about printing in general). They'll probably need a little retouching, I'd like at least a couple in black & white, and we'll see how it goes!

Prints

Now, this is just a random, stray thought I've been toying with... but I'm considering offering up some of my amateur photography as prints for sale on Etsy. I have been obsessed for the past few weeks with photographing the barren, winter trees that I see on my drives to and from work everyday, and I think that the subjects would definitely fit in with my "Earth, Trees, and Heather" image. I guess I'll have to play around with printing methods first to see whether it's a viable option.

Thoughts?

Pitfalls and Shortcomings, Part 3: Brand-Image

On Brand-Image:
I've known for a long time the value of a Brand-Image and fitting a 'niche', as they say... but in looking through my work, it mostly looks disorganized. One of the biggest things I want to work on this year, is creating a cohesive presentation, both in the studio and online, so that all of my work... more or less looks like it all goes together.

I currently have a signature stamp using the emblem of a wolf on the bottom of some of my stuff, my initials on others, and a star on still others. I really like my wolf... but it doesn't go with the store name/image. (On a side note, apparently nobody recognizes it as a wolf anyway. Bahumbug.) If I ditch the wolf, I could switch to a tree, and/or the actual store name... Or, a branch of Heather. That could work. Using my own name sort of causes problems, what with the last name thing (which is why I don't much like using my initials, plus they're sort of ambiguous. "Who is this HB person?")

I also really want to move away from using class-glazes, and producing my own instead, so that I have a uniform palette to choose from, which will help with things looking like my work, specifically, rather than just anybody's. I know that it does to some extent, but there's room for a lot of improvement. When I look through my store at what's for sale, it's kind of all over the place, and I don't really like that. I want it to all tie in together and be mine. Part of that includes hunting down what glazes my high school pottery teacher had, because I really liked some of them. I did work on some loosely-associated 'themes' during the second half of the semester, with the two bowls and plate that have leaves pressed into them... And I would like to continue with that direction, as well as others.

And... I'm not sure I like the way some (a lot) of my pieces are photographed. Sadly, my camera is out of commission at the moment, but when it's fixed, there are some I need to re-take because they came out a little blurry, and also I find the use of mom's couch (yes, that's what it is, cheap scenery) a bit distracting.. The ones with the all-black backgrounds look much crisper. I think I need to find some sort of backdrop to put behind them, just a black or a gray sheet, and then do that for EVERYTHING, so it looks more professional. I've browsed around other shops on etsy, and noticed a lot of them have used a gradient black-to-white background, which I think is a photography backdrop. It seems to work pretty well, so that's also something to think about.

Pitfalls and Shortcomings, Part 2: Finances

On Finances:
It seems I either misplaced, or forgot to order, a debit card for the separate checking account... Whoops! Made paying for shipping rather inconvenient! I have to remedy that. I also need to look at a unified way of examining cash flow, and including extraneous costs, since the transaction fees from both Etsy & Paypal, though small, are not something I had previously figured into my prices. Etsy does have a downloadable something-or-other, I think, or I could buy some software... But I also need to sit down and make a list of all my real expenses, line by line, both in production, and in distribution... and of course, I need to start allocating for some advertising.

Speaking of which, I really need a more accurate assessment of appropriate cost to manufacture a piece, including actual time spent on production and materials. My clay comes in 25 lb. bags (I think), and it only really costs me about $12-$13 per bag, so 2 - 3 lbs of clay doesn't cost all that much... but time and studio space cost money.

I can be in class for about 4 hours, and produce maybe 6 - 8 pieces. (More like 12 if they are smaller.) It takes another 2 - 3 hours to trim them all, and after bisque another 1 1/2 to glaze everything. Which comes out to 8 1/2 cumulative hours for about 8 pieces, or 1.0625 hours per piece. Since not everything that comes out of the last step, the glaze firing, is actually sellable, my success rate is more like 60-70%. Which means I just spent $8 on clay, and $127.50 on time consumed (if I assume I cost about $15/hour when I could be doing other things with my time), to produce ~5 sellable pieces. Which gives me around $27.10 per item, of pure cost to produce. And that's not including the cost of access to the studio itself, and the fact that I only used class-glazes, which are free.

...A bit of an eye-opener, when I have things for sale at $8-12.

Hope Floats

I want to take a break from the sequence of reviewing and reflection, to talk about something I just found yesterday.

For a while now, I've been wanting to set up my own studio that I could control myself, that I would have access to whenever I wanted, as opposed to relying on school or a public studio that is only open during certain hours. But I was pretty much resigned to the fact that it would probably be a while before I had the funds to do that, since it requires a lot of large machinery. I had done some looking online at different wheels and done some pricing on kilns a while back, but it looked pretty expensive.

However, in browsing around Craigslist (which is an awesome resource, by the way), I found not one, but TWO listings for used pottery wheels! One even listed the possibility of some kilns for sale as well. I am a little short on cash at the moment, but I think at around $350 - 500 for a wheel, that's not something I can really afford to pass up, even if I have to store it in the garage for a little while.

I'm hopeful!

Pitfalls and Shortcomings, Part 1: Shipping

So... the year is over, a new one has begun... and being that I officially own my own store (albeit, online), I have reviews to do.
Last year, I had some of my first sales, and experienced my first couple attempts at trying to ship merchandise out-of-state. It was... an interesting experience.

On Shipping:
My goal was to be able to ship within two business days of payment, however I have found that difficult to maintain. Although in theory, if I got up early enough I could ship any day, including days I work, in practice it's proven very hard for me to actually do this. I may have to reconsider limiting my shipping to Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days I usually have off of my normal job. Or, I could extend it to 3 - 5 business days, on the theory that I will at some point have time off in there somewhere. I really prefer a 2 - 3 day schedule though, because any longer than that feels sort of... excessive. And as a customer myself, I'm usually impatient for stuff!

Another thing I found out, was that packing materials are sort of at a premium without actually, you know, purchasing them. In the very beginning, my shipping estimates were not even close to accurate, and I had to swallow the difference of about 5 dollars on the first few that went out... and then after raising them, I found they were a little excessive when sending multiple items in one box, so I've adjusted them again. I think it's pretty close now, but the cost for the packing materials themselves may change that.
Also, note to self: Never pay for UPS to pack stuff, it's way too expensive, and it's my OWN artwork, so it's not like I don't have incentive to pack it securely.
In the near future, I need to get a postage scale so that I can have everything all printed and packed for drop-offs, instead of taking 30 minutes every trip to the UPS store. (Yuck.)

I should really formulate one, uniform and consistent packing formula, so that I'm not scrambling around anymore. I like the idea of using recycled packaging as much as possible, I could easily get a shredder to shred up old newspapers for filler instead of using Styrofoam peanuts, but the raku items may require some bubble-wrapping. I still need to solve my boxes problem though. I also like the idea of offering gift wrapping, but that is going to require some additional thought for pricing.