Etsy Fun And Games

As you know if you've read my recent posts, I opened my Esty shop! After too many someday moments but that's for another post entirely.
I've been learning as I go and in some ways I've been completely winging it! Not in a bad way though, I am enjoying every moment of this experience, even the awkward mistake moments where I'm having to learn the hard way!
I see myself as a good seller, packaging orders well and nicely and sending them out on time and I hope being a good seller with communications.

But I, like everyone else am also human and I do make silly mistakes when I'm learning something new.
And like the weirdo I am, I want to let the world know of my mistakes! Mainly because I want other people to see that these things happen to everyone and because in some cases it's just damn funny!

So Etsy oops episode one is all about the postage and packaging costs!

To start with I want to highlight that even though I've had artwork sold all over the world in the past year, this has been through Redbubble who deal with the printing and sending themselves and I just take a backseat.
This is the first time that I've been completely involved in the entire process.

So when you put a listing up on Etsy you are asked to give postage and packing costs for the countries you're wanting to deliver to. So far so good right? I spent a good few hours trying to research this and kept seeing a website recommended on lots of forums so, I thought I'd use it to.
The prices were a lot less than I'd been expecting too, too good to be true...
So I listed all the prices and posted my items up for sale. All was good.

My first order came and I spent ages making it look pretty, wrapping it up in tissue paper and tying it with string and adding a nice tag... this was put in an envelope and off I went to the post office to post it when I looked to see if it counted as a small letter I found that due to my pretty packaging it was too big... So that ended in me having to rush home and take half of the packaging out to make it thin enough.
That wasn't so bad and I learned not to get too fancy with my packaging in future!

I then got my first overseas order which was amazing. I was so bouncy when the order came through, to think that my products were going further than my own country was just so incredible. I loved the idea of them flying all that way to make someone smile somewhere.
So again, I carefully packaged it avoiding the extra chunky additions and head off to the post office. Now back to this site with the too good to be true postage prices. I was expecting to pay around £1.40 so I went up to the till, got the packet weighed and was met with a postage cost of £2.25.
I should know not to trust the internet with important things!
So I payed the extra and left laughing to myself at my mistake until I realised that all of my overseas costs would be wrong and then I also realised I wasn't charging for packaging... I haven't laughed so much at myself in ages.

Once I got home I did some proper research and found the correct prices and amended them to include packaging costs (mere pennies but essential if I want to keep going!) and that was when the wackiest mistake popped up. I was scrolling through the prices which were mainly made up of £1.00 until I came to the Netherlands... £100.00 in total for postage. I'm sure I had a double take there until I realised I must've typed awkardly and pressed 0 too many times... Oh how I'm sorry to anyone in the Netherlands that saw that!
Luckily that too has been amended!

So yes. I have made a few hiccups over the past 23 days of owning a shop but I think that's to be expected, you can't expect to be perfect at something from the go after all!
I would also like to point out that my customers didn't suffer, if anything they had a sneaky discount s well done to my first few customers!
Hopefully that will be the last of the P&P hiccups and we can move on to something else... or you know, stop making silly mistakes with Etsy and go back to making them with my artwork... like spilling some extra ink on the page, something much more normal!

Although I'm now off to get address labels designed... lets hope I don't make a typo there!

100!!

Wow, this will be my 100th post on here! What a great way to start 2016 off! I have taken to calling this year the Big Bang year as I plan to create lots of fireworks!

I'm not quite back to work just yet, insomnia/rough night mixed with a very stressful thing to do today has left me feeling like I should actually keep things nice, steady and chill today so instead of throwing myself in to things... I'm spending the morning plotting what's going to happen this year! Or more to the point this month and this week.
I'm actually feeling fairly excited about it... Even the self employment paperwork :P

The big thing this month is finally getting my etsy shop up and running. I've been trying to get this to happen for so long now that it's become one of those annoying challenges. It feels like I keep hitting a mental block with it all but now it's all or nothing.
The worst/best thing right now is how many ideas I have buzzing around my mind, designs, products, projects you name it!
I have one idea that's quite huge, it was extremely intimidating and I was unsure whether I should put so much in to what I guess could be classed as a gamble but after talking to my OH about it he motivated me to just go for it. Hearing someone say you should do it can make all the difference to how you feel so now I really do have a huge project happening.
I have absolutely no idea how long it's going to take me either! But I will be keeping quiet until it actually starts happening or I'll burn out all of my motivation talking about it.

I'm also hoping to attend some art fairs this year if I'm lucky. It seems fairly tough to get in to some places and you have to impress before being accepted so that could be interesting.

There's also the joint project with my OH featuring our fur babies... It will now be a kind of tribute as our ratty people have sadly now passed on but we will never forget our mischiefs and so the mischief book/zine will be born! Basically a fun little book about pet rats and the mischief they cause!

I will also still be taking pet commissions! I'm hoping to expand on this over the course of this year as I really enjoyed working on the commissions I got during 2015. It's always fun drawing people's pets and I love working with the ink and watercolour medium I use.

I must also get organised this year, one of the biggest lessons I learnt in 2015 was how unorganised I am and how much stress that can cause when it comes to work. Commissions were always fine and any work for other people was done on time but when it came to the festive season I left it too late and ended up spending a lot of November and December stressed beyond belief.
So 2016 will also be the year where I don't leave things until the last mintute... Maybe ;)

So it's going to be a big year! Also expect my Redbubble to be updated more often this year, another outlet I need to keep organised. It's slightly daunting to see everything I've plotted but at the same time it's wonderfully invigorating. It's always good to have things planned out so perfectly that you know exactly what needs to be done and when. Being self employed/freelance can make that side of things difficult as you never really know what's coming next so actually having this is like having stable ground to walk on for the first time in months.

So hello 2016! The year of big things and sparkles! Adventures and fun! Of taking chances and being spontaneous! I tend to think way too much about things and plan them out perfectly and sure that does work but sometimes it can also be a disaster when it doesn't go how you plan and you have to wing it. I don't want to over think things this year. It's going to be a very big adventure indeed!

I wish you all a fantastic 2016 and hope the first Monday of the year isn't too horrific.

Little Roan Rat

Little Roan Rat

It's always interesting to see which of my designs prove popular at various moments throughout the year. I've only been selling through Redbubble since April this year! (Gosh it feels like it's been much longer!) but in that time I've seen some of my designs catch the hearts of some people. 

It has mostly revolved around Mama Bear and Foxy Naps but this little guy has managed to wriggle his way in.

I love my rats, whether it's the pets I've owned or the doodles I create, the little fuzzers will always have a special place in my heart even though I am unfortunately highly allergic now. So when somebody likes any of my rat designs it fills me with a different kind of joy than my other designs.

Lately Little Roan Rat, pictured above or as he was better known as 'Rufus' has become popular and seeing that little sales email saying another one of these guys has been loved and is off to a new home fills me with so much happiness!

What people may not know is that all of my rat designs are based on my own or my partners rats. Between us we've owned a good many who we adored. 

I've spent the last ten years sharing my life with these gorgeous creatures, there were ups and downs and many veterinary lessons but I don't regret a moment.

So I thought I would take the time to feature the little guy who inspired the ratty doodles and the rat featured above. I'd like to introduce Rufus.

Rufus was a rather chubby, extremely lazy, food loving Husky/Roan rat who loved his cuddles with mummy... that would be me. 

He was originally my partners rat and lived with him throughout his baby rathood until my partner had to move to a place that unfortunately didn't allow pets. So Rufus and his brother Ghost came to live with me. Amusingly whilst he lived with my partner he hated me. If I held him he'd desperately scrabble to get away from me and was always desperate to get back to his cage or at least my partner.

So when he suddenly became a big softy and became besotted with me I can honestly say I was shocked... but loved every moment. I'm not going to lie, sure I felt a bit bad at kind of stealing my partners pet but... having rat cuddles made the bad feelings disappear.

He was our special boy who bumbled around his cage, perching and wobbling on precarious platforms, eating his way through any fruit, veg or chocolate he could get his paws on, leaving little puddles and snuggling up on our laps. He was also an impressive boggler...

To anyone who doesn't know rats, Boggling is basically... rats bouncing their eyeballs when they get super happy... It sounds horrible but it's actually quite adorable.

Unfortunately we lost Rufus a couple of weeks ago and it's still fairly painful. People think rats are just a pet in a cage in the room, something that eats, pees and needs cleaning. In reality rats are much more like a cat or dog. They are extremely interactive and love attention and in the case of males they just want cuddles and food.

I still find myself going to where his cage was to get him out for cuddles, I didn't realise just how much I loved that rat and how much of an impact he had on my life. My mental state hasn't adjusted just yet.

But I don't want to be morbid and grim. He was a wonderful rat and brought lots of joy and happiness along with much laughter to most people who met him.

So now when I see people liking the Rufus doodle I smile knowing that even now he's still making people smile.

It's also lovely to see how many rat fans are out there. I can't stress more over what amazing creatures they truly are.

I've also found myself wanting to draw more rat designs and maybe focus on them early next year... alongside every other project I have going on! So maybe the rats will take over in January. There's also a ratty project that's ongoing with my partner that is going to be happening soon! Once I get my head in gear and out of birds!

Gosh it's been a crazy December.