[Larissa]

Eric says I'm prone to "Look!  A bunny!" behavior.

[MakinTheBestOfIt]

Eric says I'm prone to "Look!  A bunny!" behavior.

Someone once compared me to a crow...oh look...shiny thing

[raedawn]

Those are all so lovely. I was drawn to the cactus, probably due to my 6 year sojourn in NM (I'm now in MA). I miss NM now and then. The orchid photos were great!

[Larissa]

Yeah, I love how the Orchid Show is all delicate flower after delicate flower... and then, Oh!  Cactus!

[PearlieGirl]

Beautiful photos Larissa! Orchids are one of my favorite flowers......but very hard to get them to re-bloom. Don't know what part of the country everyone is in but Trader Joes (a specialty grocery store) always has orchid plants at a great price. Not much more than a bouquet of flowers and you don't feel as if it is money wasted if they don't live past a few months.

[memoriesinmosaics]

Absolutely stunning photos!!

[Larissa]

Thanks!

[downtime]

Eric says I'm prone to "Look!  A bunny!" behavior.

Someone once compared me to a crow...oh look...shiny thing

Lol, we make shirts like that, only it's "I'm not easily distracted, I...hey, look, a {insert item assocated with chosen craft here}".  I made those originally for my husband.  He's like that.  Not that I'm not or anything...lol.

I still have a film SLR but I can't use it.  It needs cleaning and no one will touch it because it's a Miranda and I guess parts are hard to come by.  I actually named my cafepress shop after a line in Kodachrome (but I don't like to talk about CP, so we won't go there).

Really nice orchids.  I like the purple ones!

We haven't sold any prints on etsy, I just started listing a few again.  We do better with the mousepads.  I love selling those, it's fun to print them and see what tehy turn out like each time.  We're going all out listing the mousepads and prints on Zibbet though, since it's a flat rate.  There's more on there than etsy now, photography wise, that we're listed.  If I listed all of them on Etsy, my bill would be scary!

[MakinTheBestOfIt]

Now I want a shirt like that!

Why don't you like CafePress?  I looked at it once and couldn't make heads or tails of it but never heard anything good or bad about their quality.

[Larissa]

Yeah, that's why I don't have an Etsy shop.  I honestly don't get how any soapers have Etsy shops unless they're already well-known & have a following.  If I had to relist a $6 item 20 times, I'd be paying for people to buy my stuff rather than making a profit!  And because we're committed to using all natural ingredients, our soaps are necessarily a little more expensive than what I've seen on average on Etsy, so competition would be tough.

I still have my NJPhotographer account there, but it's an empty store.  Photographs are a tough item on Etsy, it seems - there are SO many, I feel like you just get lost.

I could see doing photo items like your mousepads being a much better option because it's different, and not everyone can or will offer it.

And I love that shirt idea too!  I've ordered Cafepress shirts - some other people designed & one I did.  They're really not bad, still holding up well.

[downtime]

If you want one of those shirts, let me know what you want it to say and we'll pop it up in the zibbet shop (no listing fees, ya know).  We have black or white hanes 100% cotton tees from sm-xlg for $13.95.  I have a few up in the Etsy shop now, but we're going to go full bore and add them for every craft we can think of in the Zibbet shop.  We make them ourselves (well, we don't sew them, lol).

As for CP.  I have had shops there since 06, and last year, they made MAJOR changes that really negatively effected a lot of artists/shopkeepers.  I lost 9/10's of my income from there (luckily, I have a dayjob so it wasn't my sole income source-unlike some folks left scrambling).  They decided to set the sell prices on items in their marketplace, and give the artists 10% of that price.  Previously, you could set your own markup.  So, for instance, you used to be able to make whatever you wanted on an item-typically about $6-$10 depending on the item and your comfort zone with markup.  Now, you make about $1-$2.20.  They used to be very artist-centric, very supportive of the shopkeepers.  Within the past few years, that has changed drastically.  Really changed my views of them.  Quality wise, it seems their older stuff was better, except white print on black.  I never got any that didn't look greyish, and most of them I have that are a year or two old look really bad.  I think that's more of a fault of DTG (direct to garment) printing than them though.  It's still pretty new.  Their customer service has really gone away lately too.  I seriously thought they were secretly bought out, but I'm thinking Fred (ceo) has a new partner and money is the only line, not just the bottom one.

The grey print issue on black is one reason we went with vinyl for our shirts, white on black always looks crisp and white!

Sorry for the thread-jacking!

[Larissa]

They decided to set the sell prices on items in their marketplace, and give the artists 10% of that price.  Previously, you could set your own markup.  So, for instance, you used to be able to make whatever you wanted on an item-typically about $6-$10 depending on the item and your comfort zone with markup.  Now, you make about $1-$2.20.  They used to be very artist-centric, very supportive of the shopkeepers.  Within the past few years, that has changed drastically.  Really changed my views of them.

Ouch, that's crazy!  I've never sold there; the shirts I ordered from others were made for a show I was in, and the one I made myself, I just did for me & a friend.  So I didn't have the "back room" knowledge.  That really just sucks.

[MakinTheBestOfIt]

That is insane!  Who is going to sell for that?  I guess some do since they are still in business, but it doesn't seem like it is worth the time.

As for the shirt...I will be talking to you!

[Larissa]

That's the thing... Cafepress is good for a "one-off," where for instance if I want to make a t-shirt for my face painting business and just want 3 of them or something, it makes sense for me to use the site to make them.

But if you've got the capability independently of printing shirts, there's no reason at all to use Cafepress, when you can use the flat-rate or free stores to sell, like HAF, Zibbet, or Artfire.

[raedawn]

What beautiful flower pictures. And I also really like the cactus...reminds me of my six year sojourn in NM.