I'm trying not to read too much into my first sale. Also YAY!

I had my first sale since my store re-design. I'm happy! I also noticed that I sold the one thing in my store that looks different than the rest of my merchandise. It was the "You're Amazing! Hope your birthday is just like you" card. It has a different color scheme than anything else I have done. It has been viewed one time (7 days after listing it for sale) and the first person to see it bought it.

 Nothing in my store is getting that many views, which is exactly as I would expect at this time. It takes a lot of work and consistency to build up an audience and to show up in search engines. I haven't been at it that long. At this point, statistics about what sold are pretty meaningless.

 Still, it was encouraging that I sold that card. It was one that I designed because I thought other people would like it, and at least one of them did. So I remixed it, and made it a friendship/any occasion/congratulations sort of card.

You're Amazing super bright happy stars card
by MelskyArt

I like this one better than the original card. The black space around the text makes it stand out.

Plain and simple

I've been experimenting with more unusual wedding invitations. But today I decided to make something a little different - a very simple wedding invitation. It has a light gray background and white lace.

I designed the lace myself.

Plain simple traditional lace gray wedding invitation
by MelskyArt

Not meeting goals is good sometimes

Yesterday I had the goal of finishing the wedding invitation I was working on. Then I would go make more tapestries, which is kind of silly fun as opposed to the invite, which is more serious.

I'm really happy with the way it's turning out. It has the feel I wanted - the contrast of the pink on a dusty blue, almost gray background reminds me of spring storms in California when the fruit trees blossomed against the backdrop of a storm colored sky and the air was charged with electricity.

I know that sounds like marketing fluff, but that's the way it makes me feel.

It reminds me of a book cover. That makes me happy for a couple of different reasons, the first being that I am also designing book covers. That project has been on hold only because I am working on the wedding stuff and other product designs. Looking at this makes me want to get back to working on the book covers!

Secondly and more importantly, I think a lot of people see a wedding as a production. I think the fact that it has a book cover/film vibe to it will appeal to people who see themselves as wedding producers - producing an experience for their friends and family.

I finally finished it, two days after my self imposed due date. But I think it was worth it.

I had a hard time with the bottom of the card, so I designed a bird and a branch. I was going to put the date information on the bird, but once I started laying it out it turned out this way.

whimsical Pink Tulip Bird artistic wedding Invitation
by MelskyArt

A banner day to tap the tapestry market

One of the problems with Zazzle is they have a lot of interesting products and I keep spending a lot of time seeing how my art would look on various items.

I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. I do look at my designs on many more products than I actually list for sale. It would be better if I spent that time actually listing the products. There are so many choices that it is almost paralyzing. That is actually a real thing that I learned about in marketing classes. Sometimes it is better to have too few variations of a product rather than too many because considering a vast array of options slows consumers down. If there are just a few decisions to make, people will buy something quickly and move onto the next thing. (I know this is true for me!)

It seems kind of uneven to have some designs just on certain things and not on others. It is hard to tell if it's better to put out more individual images, or if I should be concentrating on building a product line.

It's good to see how things look on various products, and that gives me ideas about better ways to work from the starting sketch so that the art I make can be best applied to a wide variety of items.

My favorite discovery so far is tapestries, which are basically cloth wall-hangings. These give a lot art for a low price as far as having a big, impactful piece of art on the wall. I'm planning on doing an article about them soon.

Also, I keep calling them banners, but they are tapestries for indoor use as opposed to banners for outdoor use.  

Giant Mushroom wall hanging red black white banner Tapestry
by MelskyArt

I wanted to put up several more tapestries with this post, but I went in another direction and that was the right thing to do. I'm saving the rest for my next blog post.

This house belongs to Luna

humorous gray cat art sign black blue
by MelskyArt

Luna is one of my cats. She and her mother are terrible. They are always hungry and lying about being fed. They are very assertive around food and I usually put them out of the room. They are also two of the best cats ever so I don't mind.

Oliver the cat

Oliver the Cat faux canvas sunflower painting art
by MelskyArt

I decided to make paintings that are portraits of cats I have known. This cat is named Oliver. People can also add their own cat's name. It's kind of weird doing customizable digital paintings where you can change the images around and add text. When I sold art before, even though I was selling it on the internet it was mostly just original paintings. I prefer selling art like this so I can keep coming up with new designs and not have to paint the same thing over and over again.

Developing a Design Workflow and Schedule

One of the most important things in running a store is to keep it constantly updated with new merchandise and activity.  This was true when running and offline store, and especially true online. When new items are added, it 

There are other things to be done daily as well. I write down ideas and sketches for new designs and post in my blog as much a

s possible.

I also have to be careful because making art is not physically active. I've enjoyed a lot of success with my art in the last several months, but it lost its glow a little bit when I discovered I couldn't fit into some of my summer clothing.

So an important part of my planning is to put the time in for taking a daily walk and planning household projects to give me some exercise. I'm setting a timer to remind myself to get up and walk around.

I lost a lot of weight and got in much better health in the last couple of years, and I don't want to lose that progress.

My routine is to get up very early in the morning and work on creating new designs first, and then on uploading them and filling out the information. Then when it becomes light I go on my walk.

That is my ideal routine anyway! I do it a lot of the time.

Today I made this black cat card:

Black cat red feed me card

by MelskyArt

and also put it on a clock:

Time To Feed Me Cat Clock
by MelskyArt

You're Amazing

I wanted to make a very bright and happy card, and I think this met my goal!

I'm not sure if I should put pre-written messages in the cards. I prefer blank cards, even if there is a message on the front. But I'm a person who makes their own cards, so what do I know!

I've read that most people like cards that already have writing inside, so they don't have to worry about what to say.

You're Awesome! bright colorful birthday card
by MelskyArt

I wrote Happy Birthday Superstar on the inside, and put some more stars.

I've been working on a lot of art. It has been frustrating because it seems things don't always turn into something I can use in my designs. But I'm trying new techniques and I look at it as a learning process. 

I took a day off (well, mostly)

I have had a tendency to set ambitious goals for myself. Then I would get burned out, stop meeting the goals, and feel bad about not meeting the goals. That isn't good for productivity.

Now I have adopted a new method. I've started out slow, and then added daily goals one by one.

I also use what I call a buckshot method of goal attainment. That means that on most of the days, I meet most of my goals. If I don't meet a certain goal on a certain day, that is ok. It wasn't a failure.

Right now my daily goals are:
Make art
Post in my blog
Upload finished artwork and list it for sale
Re-organize a small part of my house
Walk/run 5k

How did I do yesterday?

Make art
I drew a few things and sketched some ideas
I scanned some drawings I had done before
Not what I'm aiming for, but some progress.

Post in my blog
Didn't do it. I worked on a blog post that I've been working on for several days. This is an area I need to improve on, and I am. (right now actually) :)

Upload finished artwork and list it for sale
I uploaded something I finished the day before yesterday but didn't list anything for sale.

Reorganize part of my house
I did some reorganizing, but not everything I had planned.
When I say reorganizing part of my house, I mean a part of a room or a cupboard or dresser. I had planned on tidying up the rest of my office/studio, but I only did part of it.

Walk/run 5k
I did it! I didn't feel like it but I made myself do it and I felt better for it.

Unlike before when I had an absolutist attitude, I feel like the day was a success.

Making more art this morning

I'm putting more items in my store every day. It's interesting to experiment with different designs on various products. It's fascinating to see things arranged in a bunch of different color combinations and patterns.  I have to be careful because I can end up spending a lot of time playing around with it but not actually creating anything that I can put in the store.

These are some of the new things I made today. 

Chicken flowers black yellow whimsical floral card
by MelskyArt

Folded Invitation
by MelskyArt

When I started working as an artist again, one of the things I wanted to do was make unusual wedding invitations. I thought it would be cool to have wedding invites that had dark backgrounds and bold graphics. This is the first one. It is going on invitations, save the date magnets, table cards, and a bunch of other wedding accessories. I think it would look really nice for an elegant autumn wedding, maybe with black tablecloths and arrangements of fall leaves.

All of this can be customized by the wedding couple, so it's easy to change to a different background color that conveys the atmosphere they want for their reception.

But it's not even Summer yet, why are you working on Autumn leaves?

For the past few days, my goal has been to make a bunch of Fall leaf and floral motifs. I'm working on wedding invitations and other wedding-related stationery and customizable items.

I was planning on doing a wedding line with the tulips I've been working on. Well, I still am. But I realized that people order wedding stuff far in advance. So I thought the first actual wedding product line I develop will be in fall colors with dark backgrounds.

It is really a joy to be producing art again. I've missed it so much in the past few years.

I've decided to start making these posters for myself every time I make a collection of design elements because it will be interesting to look at them in a few years and see how my art changes and improves.