Resin is not for me

No pictures in this post because I'm annoyed. I found something in the craft world that I absolutely hate working with. RESIN. I only worked with UV resin and only one brand, but from what I experienced, I can confidently say, I won't work with resin ever again. 

It smells, it's messy, it's STICKY and just not my favorite thing. This is something I have zero patience for. I'm so impressed by the people who make it look easy because, crafty people...it is not. 

My first attempt was keychains. Those weren't too bad, I used glitter with them and only did one side. My UV light wasn't adequate so I ended up upgrading but that was another issue. I had also tried badge reels but I couldn't get them to lay flat after curing and they were a mess. I guess my feeling is I have so many other projects that I have going at once and this one in particular was causing me stress and anxitey and frankly wasn't worth my time anymore. I would sit in my craft room for hours wanting to create something but had a block about it because the resin was sitting there taunting me. 

Recently I have been doing a lot of cleaning out of my supplies and decided that they ( and 11 garbage bags of yarn) needed to go. As of now July 2021, there is a lot of supplies available. Contact me through my Facebook page if you are interested. Once they are gone I will update the post. I normally will take longer to see if something is for me or not, but after the last two attempts and getting frustrated I just decided it's best to walk away from it. 

I will still be doing work with vinyl, still be sewing, knitting and crocheting. But as far as making keychains or anything with Resin, if you have something I've made that's going to be it. Mercifully, for my wallet, this is one hobby I won't be going any further into.

Digital Art and Procreate

 Because I am the luckiest woman ever, and because he’s pretty awesome, my husband recently got me a brand new iPad Pro with 2nd gen Apple Pencil. I knew I wanted to start designing using my iPad so I downloaded Procreate. It isn’t free, it’s $9.99 but that’s it, it’s a one time purchase and all of the amazing features and tools are yours. No in-app purchases are required. I mostly plan on using it to make design elements for sublimation and other online design mediums. It is a lot of fun to play with and there is so much to learn. 

To overly simplify it, procreate is a digital medium to create pretty much anything you want. I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks so I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do. But I have watched a few tutorials and videos on YouTube and am excited to dive in further. These are two of the projects I've made so far with very limited drawing experience. I would highly recommend this app if you are thinking of trying digital art. 

Bye Bye Printful

 If anyone has been wondering how the Printful experiment went, well, it was ok. I have to say I had zero issues with the products themselves, they were very good quality and the print quality was also great. 

My issue was, and maybe it was just because of the kind of Etsy store I have, is that it didn't really fit in what I was looking for. My profit margin just wasn't there and I know I'm not alone. If you start off with a shirt that costs $13 and add in shipping, that shirt is costing you at minimum $17, say you are selling the shirt for $22-$25, your profit is less than $10 per shirt. Where as I can get a blank shirt from All Day Shirts for less than $2 each, cut out my own design from my vinyl stash for less than $1 and all of the profit is mine.

I don't sell a lot of shirts or physical products anymore anyway so losing the POD (Print on Demand) part of my Etsy won't hurt my sales much. In fact, my plan is to take the designs that I did have on Printful, redo and revamp some of them so they are SVG's and sell those. That way I can share my designs with other crafters and not have any of the overhead once the design is complete.

 

Blog Redesign!

 It's been a long time, but I finally redesigned the blog! I have wanted to do it for years, but like anything that is for myself I was being too picky and indecisive so I just put it off. And finally after the dumpster fire of a year that was 2020, I decided that I wouldn't put it off any longer and did the redesign for this year.

I used elements I downloaded from Creative Fabrica for the font and the graphic elements. I ended up making some adjustments but overall I'm really happy with the new, simple, elegant look. I will be uploading new designs to the shop soon, but my design time has been cut down with having the kids home doing virtual school.