I am kind of on the fence about this, mainly because I have very little product to sell. Right now if I were to set up a shop on Etsy, I think it is .20 per listing (for 4 months?) and something like 3.5% of the sale – if it sells. I think I figured, just based on the listing price alone, to get my money’s worth at Art Fire, I would have to list at least 35 items. Obviously this does not take into consideration the fees that are charged at Etsy, but considering I have only had two sales of my current product at my ecommerce store, I am just basing my comparison on the same lack of sales (what great confidence I have, eh?).

So for now, since I do not even have an Etsy store yet, and don’t yet have enough product to list 35 items at Art Fire to make it worth the $7, I will be carefully watching their site to observe the number of accounts remaining… if it starts to drop like wildfire I may just buck up and pay the $7 to reserve myself a spot at that price, as it is certainly better than being left in the cold and having to pay $20 a month later on if I miss the boat. But for now I will just bide my time and try to build up some inventory.

(please note this is not a sponsored post – I just wanted to pass the info along to any crafty blogger looking for another place to sell their wares)

When I first got into polymer clay, I tried making a few beads but found that I didn’t have much interest in it.  Now that I know how to actually make jewelry, I have revisited the idea of making beads, even if I don’t use any in my own jewelry, although I probably would.

I am still undecided though.  I spent a good deal of time over the weekend looking at polymer clay beads on Etsy, and decided that I like the boutique style of beads, since it combines both scuplting (in a way) and beads together.  The problem is, when I started sculpting dragons, I had it in my head that I was going to make “cutesy” dragons, but the closest I was able to get to that was with a bunch that I made as tree ornaments one Christmas, since we were pretty poor and couldn’t afford to buy gifts, so those ornaments were our gifts that year.  Beyond that, my dragons tended to drift more toward the realistic side (well, as real as a dragon can be I guess, since they are mythical creatures).

So, I don’t know if I could even MAKE cutesy boutique beads. LOL  I’ve always been a realistic artist – in school it was very difficult for me to draw things with a cartoonish look to them.  My brain kept me drawing and painting things as realistic as my hands could handle.  (I’ll post some examples later so you see what I mean)

Coupled with the fact that I can’t stand to waste art supplies, I tend to not experiment a whole lot.  Oddly I would rather see a supply sit unused for a length of time than risk a disasterous result in an experiment.  Which is ironic, since some supplies, like paint, will eventually dry out and become useless – and that is why I never really got into acrylic painting.  The tubes of paint would dry out and become completely unusable because I couldn’t bring myself to try them out on a canvas for fear that it would look like crap.   I stuck mostly to watercolors and pencil.

Anyway, I suppose in order to get into making beads with polymer clay I am going to have to accept the fact that there may be some disasters as I try my hand at them and shake that fear of waste.  Mainly because beads, being small, could also satisfy my deep rooted need for instant gratification, whereas sculpting, while fun, can take me hours and hours – which turn into weeks which turn into months, you get the idea – and in turn I have several works in progress sitting around waiting to be finished.  So not only am I a perfectionist when it comes to my art, I also get bored quickly if it takes too long to complete and I end up moving on to something different.

That explains why I have so many different types of crafts that I have tried out: cross stitch – takes too long; knitting and crochet – has potential to take too long if the project is big, but this one is easy to adapt for car rides and in front of the t.v.; web design – another one with potential to take too long, but I still dabble now and then; painting ornaments – can be a quick project, but morphs into a big one if I buy too many ornaments; creating cards – potentially a quick project, but for some reason my creativity falls flat on these; making hairbows – another one that could potentially be quick, but strangely I still got bored with it; polymer clay sculpting – already explained about that one; and jewelry making – still has potential but I have become a bit discouraged with it.

So anyway.  I have this innate need to create, but I just need to find something that will be relatively quick from start to finish, and as an added bonus, perhaps help earn some money, too.  Yep, when it comes down to it, in the end I’m looking for a way to make money with what I create.  Pretty much half of the examples above, I may have started out with just the intention of doing it for fun or for gift giving, but they morphed into “hey, maybe I can make some money out of this”.  And the reason?  Because I so badly want to be able to quit my job and stay at home, but I would need to either a) win a jackpot lottery, or because the chances of that are nil, b) find a way to make money from home.

I know that a lot of people are making money with blogging, too, and that is another thing I am trying my hand at, but it is very slow going so far, but, because I can sometimes take the time to do that while I am at work, which I cannot do with my other hobbies, I am going to try to stick with it.  And many crafters combine blogging for $ along with their crafting for $, so it certainly can’t hurt if I try as well.

Now to just dust off the clay and start creating… The Fear is large and looming, but I need to defeat it if I want to see if making beads will be something I can even do, and continue doing.

I have a general idea of what I may be getting for hubby and the Kiddo, but that is about it.  Oh, and maybe for my parents too, since there is a company that is giving employees at my workplace a pretty good discount, and they have stuff my parents (especially my dad) like.  So I may do my shopping for them thru this place for the 25% discount.

Otherwise, I do kind of know what I will probably get for my siblings.  Let’s see… for my sister, I will probably get her family a W@l-M@rt gift card so she’s restricted to getting groceries and such (rather than a Visa card she can use to blow the money anywhere).  And maybe some handmade soaps.

For my brother… probably handmade soaps, and a visa card (he is a bit more responsible).

My other brother… I may think about finishing a scarf I was *going* to give him last Christmas until he landed his butt in jail for a domestic fight with my mom & dad.  And some soap.

Yeah, I’m probably going to do soaps again this year (buying them, not making them myself).  Everyone on my side of the family seemed to like them, and handmade soap is supposed to be better for you anyway since it doesn’t have all the harsh chemicals that manufactured soap has.   I did most of my shopping for the soaps on Etsy.

As for my husband’s side of the family… I have no idea yet.  I originally thought I may make the ladies some jewelry again, but I have few – if any – ideas of what to make just using the supplies I have on hand, and I don’t want to spend the money just getting supplies for jewelry just for them.  I think last year I spent right around $200 just on supplies, which isn’t that bad I guess for six people, but I don’t know if I want to do it again this year.  I may stick to their lists this year and go off-list next year.

So anyway.. how’s your shopping coming?