Eventually

Well, the mask did not beat me. We are, however, still at odds. I solved the biggest problem with my little epiphany. That is, I absolutely needed wire around the eyes for this to work and I added a simple border in the negative space between the diamonds. This gave me the look I was going for, but I still need to make the center motif smaller or market the design for men only because that center is far too big for my face. Still, I think it's a marked improvement and I'm confident that eventually this will see a final design that I can feel good about selling.

Speaking of selling, I've gotten a few more requests for my tatted mask patterns and I felt like I needed to make a formal statement on them as well as my other patterns. First, the tatted mask patterns haven't even been written down yet, yes I know that I should do that, but I just haven't yet. Right now I'm debating whether I should offer the patterns individually or whether I should just save them up and actually try at that pattern book idea I'm toying with. I'd like to figure out how to draw up visual patterns before I attempt that though. I'm afraid if I put them out before the fictional book, I will be shooting myself in the foot. I guess the short answer is, it's gonna be a while, definitely not before the beginning of the year.

Over the weekend I visited the Atwater Fall Festival. It's one of two small festivals in the park one town over from us each year. We've gone to these events every year for quite some time, mostly because it's simply something different to do. Since I began on etsy it has taken on a new meaning for me. I search through the booths for the etsy address to see how many people I actually have this in common with. When I started, it was just me and now I get to find a few people who have this experience as well.

Why am I not selling at these events you might ask, well there are a few reasons. My go-to excuse is that I have two small kids, one who is still nursing, so it's too much hassle. While that is true the more telling reasons are, I am a wuss. I have a hard time trying out new things without someone to goad me into it and since I have no local crafty friends, there is no one to convince me to try. The other reason is, I simply don't like doing them. I don't like convincing people to buy my stuff, its awkward and uncomfortable and it seems like way too much work for the little I might be able to make. I'm not particularly social, so I don't get any real networking done and I worked in retail way too long to want to go back to the front lines in foreign territory.