I am great at highjacking my own posts! On being an expert in my field....

A previous post spawned the thoughts in this one, so I figured I better divide and conquer!

I have some things I would like to do- this year is my year to get published. Ilysa and I are writing a book about polyclay artists around the world. It's a look into their studios and minds, and we are excited about it. After that, I plan to submit to the magazines. Here's the most important fact about the Polymer Clay World that no one will "tell" you, but everyone knows- if you're not published, you're no one. Even though I demo for my local guild once a month and everyone consistently gushes over how "talented" I am, what a "good teacher" I am, and how "knowledgeable" I am, they still say they want a "Real" polymer clay teacher. What am I, liver and onions? So, it's obviously time to sell my soul to Art Beads, Bead & Button, Belle Armoire, and PolymerCafe. Otherwise, I am obviously just an untalented hack not worth paying for my expertise :)

Is Artfire catching up to Etsy?

I really like my Artfire shop, although I havent' sold anything there yet. I admit, I haven't really been trying very hard. But, I LOVE the way Artfire is doing things. It's a snap to upload things straight out of my etsy shop, so I don't have to spend a bunch of time reposting a listing. If I really wanted to, I could import my whole etsy store straight into artfire! But, I've been seriously contemplating my future online, so I've been holding off.
Back to why I like Artfire- there's a great Bio feature, that shows a pic of me, selected Gallery pics of my work, and has space for 4 website links. So I get to say a little something about myself and direct traffic to other sites, like Polymer Clay Podcast and the PCAGOE.
Then, there's the market hub feature- this has links to EVERYTHING I do online! Etsy, here, twitter, facebook, even IndiePublic. I am thinking about switching kiraslye.com to point to my Artfire account just because of this! At this point, kiraslye.com is just a hub flashpage anyway, that points to my online doings. Now I can utilize a place where I actually attempt to sell, as a hub! All at no extra cost, since I signed on with Artfire in the beginning and my shop is only $7 a month for life as long as I don't cancel. I like how Artfire assumes that you are a working artisan, and doesn't limit you from promoting the heck out of yourself. Etsy limits you- you can't point users away from it and god-forbid that you suggest people go check you out somewhere else on the web. Plus Etsy doesn't do flat fees, so I already like Artfire's fee structure better. And with automatic listings on googlebase, that's great too! I just hope traffic catches up. Etsy is older, so it gets more traffic.

No-Freckle me

Being a Graphic Design teacher, I spend a lot of time teaching kids how to use the Adobe CS3 software. But it's been a while since I've invested time in my own creative pursuits. I have some products planned that need a model, so I was thinking about photographing one of my beautiful sisters to do the job. After all, I am dark, freckly, speckly. Sometimes I don't feel "pretty" enough to model my own creations. So here I am, de-freckled. I think I may invest in some makeup to do my photoshoots- the even skintone looks fantastic, and in this photo, taken simply with my iSight camera on my Mac, in the dark, no less! and poorly edited in about 5 mintues, actually looks pretty nice. Imagine what I could do if I actually invested myself! Since my new creations glow in the dark, the dark-gypsy look is going to do the trick.