I'm usually very late with summing up the year gone (or close to it) but this year I'm doing it on time! The last fair is done, the ETSY shop got the last Christmas delivery date (not many items there anyway) and I do not do any felting at the moment and in the nearest future. Getting ready for the family coming to spend holiday time with us...
So let's talk a year 2016!
What was new:
- I started framing my wool watercolours as pictures;
- I exhibited at the art level the first time;
- I applied and took part in many (too many?) craft events/fair/shows, most of them new;
- I started to teach online;
- My fish are on display in the art gallery (the magic word "gallery"!);
- ETSY sales were down comparing to the last year. Quite unpleasant surprise!
- I've tried a couple of new techniques - crazy wool scarves and "wool stencilling" in cushions;
- something else I've forgotten!..
I'm quite pleased with so interesting and intense year, but every of these new developments has positive and negative points and definitely space for improvement!
Try to talk through those above and make some resolutions or even plans for a future year.
- exhibiting as an artist with my felted pictures was a great achievement for me! At least I felt that way at the moment :) ! I was thrilled by kind comments of MarmaladeRose and Sheila Smith, people picked a lot of my business cards, I'd been invited to another event and was asked to give my fish to a local gallery to exhibit there. Fantastic! It was really great to get some recognition from masters who are at such high level of achievements and from just general public. That was July event and I cooled down a little bit since. It seems that being an artist is even more demanding than being just a crafter! And more difficult to sell as well :)! One of the tricky points is that I'm rather confident that I'm a good crafter (OK, reasonable), but I'm quite unsure about myself as an artist. I'm still thinking whether to apply to next year Art in the Pen event, not sure, but there is time to decide still.
- I need to sort through the list of the craft events I took part this year and some which I wanted to do but was not accepted. It'll be Crafts in the Pen definitely, I did well there this year, Masham sheep festival as well, I liked it, but need to work on display more.
- I'm still looking for a local shop to sale those my items which are tricky to sell through ETSY. It's my main priority for the upcoming year.
- ETSY! I was sure that the third year was going to be as good as previous one if not better, but in November and December sales were much slower. Was it Brexit, weak pound, presidential election in USA or just me being busy and neglecting ETSY a little bit? No idea, but I need to sort it out!
All in all I worked really hard. I can't make more than I made this year and I know that all my most popular things such as fish and "watercolour" cases are always in demand, so I need to rethink the priorities and focus on new events and ideas.
Sorry for such a long post without a single picture! I do not expect my readers to get to the end of it, it was mainly thinking aloud for my own benefit!
