Growing, Friends, and Inspiration

I got two more garments done today, as I sewed the buttons on two vests that I will be posting in the next couple of days to my two online vending sights.  Here's a couple pics as a preview:

Interestingly, the way to make sure that more people see your stuff is to not post all of it at once.  A wise online entrepreneur using Etsy and Artfire and other handmade-centric merchant sites won't post all their inventory in the beginning.  One trickles it in, because the merchant sites all have "recently posted" features.  The more you spread out the posting of your items the better it is, because then you show up more often in that mechanism and more people see your post.  If you post everything all at once, you've sort of wasted a lot of opportunity to be seen over an extended period of time.  So I'll be posting these new vests over the next week, but not both together.

I managed to put together a new "Page" to my Facebook profile, which is centered on Relished Artistry, and sent out a mass email to all the people on my friends list (regardless of how I knew them) so they could join as "fans", and not have to be constantly peppered with business-related posts through my own personal profile.  I'm gonna try really hard to keep the two separate and distinct, as I don't like the idea of using my friends to promote my business.  My ethic is this:  I do what I do and I have what I have.  I don't need to push it to within an inch of it's life on all of my friends who don't really care.  That's not cool in my book.  I'll share new stuff once in a while, but I want to keep my friends not lose them to capitalism.  I'm excited about the Page--we'll see what happens.

I was told through my partner that my greenery looks like grape leaves.  I think I'm gonna run with that... I am gonna start practicing bunches of grapes and see how they look on velvet.  We'll see what happens.  I'm also exploring pushing the "medieval" feel of things, and considering using "illustrated manuscripts" as inspiration for artistic expression.  We'll see.  I'd like to figure out something to actually say with that style, not simply decorate stuff.  I'd like to incorporate some kind of statement that's fun and interesting, as well as artistically expressive to wear, but we'll see.  I have some thinking to do about that.

Okay, more later!

Live life with Relish!