How do you Etsy?

Up until yesterday, I told myself I wasn't going to use Facebook's "Ask Question" polling feature. No way. Most questions I've seen people post are as unimportant to me as Farmville. (Yeah, I said it.)

But I wondered if it's really practical to try selling assemblage works on Etsy. And then I realized I might actually know some people who could help me figure that out.

Sixteen people responded to my oh-so-scientific poll. Some also messaged me about how and why they use these sites. Twelve use Etsy (sometimes with caveats); the rest sell their work on Etsy and their own sites, through galleries or some combination of the above. In a nutshell, this is what I learned about their Etsy experiences:

• My research sample skews heavily toward jewelry designers and 2D artists.
• Etsy's fees vs. eBay's fees: no contest. Etsy wins hands-down.
• People tend to go with Etsy (vs. Artfire, for example) because it's well-known, especially among mixed-media aficionados.
• Networking with other vendors: useful, but word-of-mouth (via FB or a blog) is even more so. That's how some people are able to sell their work before even listing it on Etsy. No listing, no fee! MaryBeth Shaw and her stencils are a perfect example.
• About word-of-mouth: people will hide your feed if you mainly post to sell your stuff. Unfortunately, no one knows the perfect balance between fun posts and sales posts, of course.

About their actual items for sale, I learned:

• Most of their items can be shipped easily (prints of 2D or 3D work, jewelry, jewelry supplies). Pamela Huntington and Laurel Steven's works are the lightest of all -- file transfers of jewelry tutorials and digital collages.
• Many items cost less than $50, and can be made in quantity relatively quickly (maybe a week). (Not really a surprise; Featured Sellers who earn most of their living on Etsy tend to make jewelry or stationery of some sort.)

I also did some general browsing of assemblage pieces, and the vendors with the most sales keep things lightweight and under $250, roughly speaking. Yeah, there are some pieces listed for thousands of dollars. But the only vendor I recognized who actually makes sales like that is Dolan Geiman. And from what I can tell, he's an industry unto himself with his own website as well.

• Speaking of selling work on your own site allows you to avoid Etsy listing fees, but it requires more marketing on your own, and a solid fan base.

Thanks so much to everyone who responded: Pamela, Laurel, MaryBeth, Nona Parry, Sunny Carvalho, Bekah Ash, Regina Lord, Kelly Snelling, Lulu, Phyllis Peterson, Clarissa Callesen, Canace, Stephanie Green, Randi Antonsen, Stefanie Lin, and Delores Taylor.

What's your experience with online sales of your art? Tell me in the comments or email me.

Three shows, two works, one book

I was reading art coach Alyson Stanfield's blog the other day. It said something to the effect of "look back at the previous year and you'll be amazed at what you accomplished." She was right. I'm blogging on the road, so I'm a little limited. But here are the biggies of 2011:
-- three shows, one of them in a Seattle gallery (ICON), another at a brand-new venue (the Schack Art Center), the first at our beloved Artfest
-- two new works inspired by stories about my mother's family ("Our Lady of Georgetown" and "Greener")
-- featured in Rice Freeman-Zachery's new book, "Destination: Creativity -- The Life-Altering Journey of the Art Retreat"
Not to mention meeting so many new people through Twitter and my Facebook friends page... Take a stroll through le blog and read about the Year in Lisa. Happy New Year!

"Greener": third in a series

I'm tentatively calling this work "Greener", as in "the grass is always..."

The focal image is a composite paint-over of my mother as a kid.

My mother was forever looking at what other people had and assuming it had to be better. Even though by the standards of mid-century Lexington's black community, she was practically born with a silver spoon in her mouth. (She's in the front row of her class picture, third from the right.)

At dinner, she used to spear bites off my dad's plate (my brother and I joked for years that her picking at his food was a major reason why my parents split up.) Same food: it just looked better on my dad's plate. I wanted to express that in the colors I used for this piece.

Her favorite color was yellow -- she painted my room that color, and I spent many teenaged hours hating it -- so I gave her a yellow dress with green shadows to comment on her envy.

Envy is a poisonous emotion, but it's also melodramatic. Envy makes you the star of the story. So I used green's direct complement -- red -- to edge the paper and caulk "crags" of her cave. One of my stamp ink colors calls it "Lava Red" and I like the barely-contained churning image that evokes.

I also designed the crags to hang like curtains in a theater, and placed the focal image in its broken-down balcony.  (My mom was still a child when African-American movie-goers were required to sit in balcony seats, furthest from the screen and the white movie-goers.) In her left hand she holds a bucket of grudges.

Her classmates stand below, just barely visible behind the mica "movie screen" showing the house in which she grew up.

In the last class I took with Michael deMeng, he suggested mixing the grungy wash right on the substrate, instead of on a palette, to make it more uneven and random. I tried that, and dry-brushed a little lava black here and there on the yellow-painted caulk.

For this piece, I decided to add metal feet. But as cute as they were in the package, I didn't want them to steal the show. I piled on caulk, then brought back some of the detail with paint washes.

So now it's baroque, but a craggy kind of baroque. And it's done before the new year!

I haven't yet looked into exhibitions to show this piece, but I'm sure something is just waiting around the corner. And that's about as far as I've planned the next year in art. Do you already have plans? Share in the comments or on Facebook.