Meet Anakiz, Artist, Craftsperson, and Etsy Seller

With her two friends Zeynep and Meltem, Anakiz runs the Etsy shop Nakkashe. They make and sell a variety of crochet jewelry and accessories for ladies. The Etsy shop allows them to make money while doing what they love. Anakiz and her friends live in Turkey.

1. How did you decide to start an Etsy shop?

Four or five years ago, I resigned from my day job. It was very stressful, and I was working late hours. Then we moved to another city where my husband's family live (Mersin). Being alone in a new city pushed me to do something. In the past, I had always earned my own money, and just being a housewife did not make me happy. I took sewing and needle lace classes and developed my crocheting skills. Then I started to design and make crocheted jewelry. While searching the internet to find out "handmade" bazaars, I found Etsy and opened a shop, with limited items at first.

2. How do you choose the designs, yarns, and fabrics to make for your shop?

Crocheting is an art in my culture, and there are many supplies made specially for this. I buy lots of "oya crochet" threads in almost every color, and I buy any fabric I like if it is suitable to make a scarf or neck scarf. Regarding designs, I'm inspired by cultural motifs and nature (especially flowers).

3. What is your process when it comes to working collaboratively with your friends to create items for your shop?

I was alone when I started my Etsy shop. Then Zeynep , my best friend, joined me. Finally Meltem joined the team and we are now three crochet-loving ladies. Sometimes we all together make a design and choose the colors, materials, etc. Other times we do our own pieces. We are a nice team and good friends.

4. What have been some of your best-selling items so far, and how do you hope to grow your shop in the future?

Thread crochet necklaces are our best seller. We hope to open a small brick and mortar shop and take wholesale orders from different countries.

5. Is your work influenced by traditional Turkish arts and crafts?

Absolutely yes! Thread crochet and needle (sewing needle) crochet and scarves are very famous in our country. And our moms taught us crocheting at very early ages.

Thanks, Anakiz!

Meet Laura Dufresne, Artist and Craftsperson

Laura Dufresne is an artist in Montreal, Canada who creates unique handmade items. She currently specializes in fabric bow ties and coin purses / cell phone cases. If you like work with a geeky-cool aesthetic, be sure to check out Laura's creations. Learn more about Laura and her work on her website called Retroactive Legacy and in her Etsy shop.

1. What inspired you to start making handmade bow ties?

That's kind of a strange story. My boyfriend and I both have an affinity for geeky items and are both aficionados of the creative process. As my sewing skills grew, I found that smaller accessories with bold or interesting themes or characters became more important than the overall look. As a result, I tested a bow tie. I made a simple, Spiderman-themed bow tie for an event we attended. I received a number of responses--and to my surprise, excitement, and horror, people wanted to order them from me.

The experience blindsided me; I had no clue what to charge, how to proceed, and whether selling handmade bow ties made any sense at all. It turns out it does make complete sense because current mass-produced bow ties are poorly made, kind of boring, and mostly are pre-ties, which detracts from the allure of self-tied knot.

So in essence, what inspired me the most was the ideal of a great tradition, brought into modern times, made into something more interesting than the novelty ties our dads would wear once a year.

2. I see you are expanding into coin purses and cell phone cases. How do you get ideas for your products?

The coin purses was first inspired by this awesome fabric I found on Spoonflower featuring cameo skulls. I wanted to really showcase the skulls because the entire look was so well done. I thought it appropriate to create something heart-shaped and it just so happened that I had a batch of purse frames in my crafts stash. I tested patterns until I found one that suited the fabric perfectly and voila.

I think fabrics often inspire my work: I don't want to do what might be obvious with them; I want to do the unthinkable, the out-of-the-box, without over-reaching and not being relatable. There should be some sort of connection, but it won't necessarily be immediately obvious.

3. How do you choose the fabrics to use in your creations?

For one, most of the fabrics I choose are not commercially available. I do sometimes use commercially available fabrics, typically when it involves creating something using a copyrighted character. I think copyright is extremely important and believe that as customers become more and more aware of the issues of copyright, this will become of significant importance in the future.

It is also important to me to support independent artists. I love finding independent designers and creating something that really highlights their work. Bow ties are great for this; all bow-ties have a "window" of sorts, and I look for designs that meet the size requirements for this 1" by 2" space.

My fishing tie is a perfect example. The fish on this fabric are quite large and take up a significant portion of the window. I chose it because it fit the personality of bow ties as the modern replacement to the ubiquitous novelty fishing tie of our fathers, and also because the dimensions that would allow me to showcase the fabric in a way that might otherwise have been overlooked.

4. As an indie artist/craftsperson, what do you feel are the pros and cons when it comes to selling on Etsy?

I'm really not sure about Etsy anymore. I have found that the philosophy that made me jump into the mix has been lost with the refusal to address resellers in the marketplace. It really has torn me apart. I could continue to sell there, and with a little more involvement, I know I would/could be highly successful, but I am still not very sure I want to continue with this medium. This is a discussion for another day and another interview.

In favor of Etsy, there are still numerous independent artists and producers on the website. It is essential we support that as much as possible. In doing so, we solidify the economic sense of maintaining a handmade marketplace. For myself, even if you don't buy my products, I hope you buy things through Etsy that aren't produced in factories.

Cons: often times it is hard to tell what is handmade. :(

5. What do you think that people creating handmade objects can do to make their work stand out online, where buyers are inundated with cheap, pseudo-handmade imports?

I think it is important not to jump on bandwagons. I know it can be hard to resist, but making a bow tie of blue boxes would be stupid-boring, because it's just too common. I don't want to be mean, but if there are a gad-zillion of something, there is just no way to stand out. If you want or need to be on trend, try to get ahead of the curve. Also, you really do need to KNOW your subject.

Research is the key to connecting with your potential customers. One of my most successful bow ties is a Godzilla bow tie, but customers are not directed to my product through the keyword GODZILLA, but through the keyword GOJIRA, the Japanese word for this awesome monster! Know the fans, know the lingo, and that is how you'll reach your key audience.

Thanks, Laura!

Artist Jenn Meuth on Sharing Her Work on Spoonflower

Jenn Meuth contacted me via the Facebook page for With Five Questions, and when she told me about her work, I enjoyed how she has made her work available in unique formats like having her original designs printed on fabric. She wrote up a guest post sharing some of her experiences as an artist--and she gives an honest review about her experiences with Spoonflower, the website which sells her fabric (and other) designs. Thanks for the post, Jenn!

Hello all! My name is Jenn, and I am the owner, designer, and creative mind of the Jennagerie where I am "changing the world of women and girls one piece of art at a time." Mandy asked me to write about my art and the really cool thing I am doing with it: making original fabric designs. As with anything, there is a story of how, when, and why, and I hope you enjoy this tale.

I am and always have been creative; whether it was telling "stories" as a child or crocheting as a teen, I have always been making something. With no formal training to speak of, I decided back in 2005 that I would start trying to express my feelings and the way I see things through visual art. At the time I was in an unhappy marriage and wanted a way to be distracted from the eventual complete breakdown of that relationship. I got an easel and some acrylic paints and started painting. I had friends, family, and co-workers critique my results. A couple of people told me that if I wanted to get better, I needed to draw or sketch. So, I bought a pad of paper and some pencils. It actually served two purposes for me: in some of the things I painted it helped me get a handle on what I wanted to paint and how to paint it, and some of the drawings were so detailed that I decided to start coloring them in and saving them as their own works of art.

After the divorce I fell madly in love with someone, and we tried for four years to make it work. Through it all, the break-ups and get-back-togethers, I drew. I at one point lost a sense of who I was as well as my positive self-image. This guy was shallow and had a perception of what I should have been like in looks particularly. I sat down one day and drew this chubby fairy. She was sitting on a mushroom and her mass was causing her to sink a little into the cap of the toadstool, but nonetheless she had her face turned up and was enjoying the breeze in the sun--confident, happy, and embracing all she was. I drew another and another and finally a fourth one that very day--each different, each unique but each with the same happiness and acceptance I once felt for myself. I named the series the "Fat Fairies." I just kept drawing and over the years drew all kinds of things. I continue to draw, and I recently drew Edgar Allen Poe and Albert Einstein, both men whom I admire because of their talents.

So now, I have these spiral books full of colorful drawings and depictions of things both from real life and my own imagination. I found healing, hope, and most of all peace with not only myself but in the world in general. I understand now how a writer can get lost in their own words as they are writing a story and how they can say that the story actually wrote itself. That is how drawing is for me. I have so many images in my mind, and all I have to do is pick up my pencil and paper and off I go. I have decided that sharing my art, my message, and my imagination with the world might give someone hope--it might heal someone else, too. So I am selling prints currently.

I am also turning these designs into original fabric. I discovered a website called Spoonflower.com through another creative friend. I went on their website and read about and saw how easy it was to design fabric, wallpaper, gift wrap and decals. Best of all it's free, and all the images and designs I make are mine. I have made a sample of each and every original fabric and have sold some yardages to other creative types for projects unknown to me. I can only hope that the person gets joy out of the material they bought and that they think about the joy it brought to me to design it.

For anyone who wants to use Spoonflower to design their own fabrics, let me give you both the positive and the negative (after all, everything has a little of both, right?).

Positives:

1) It's free and easy to sign up. You don't have to be a designer or have a degree in textiles to do this.

2) Like I said previously, the designs you make are yours. Spoonflower gladly watermarks all of your creations for you, too!

3) They have a free image editor that is really cool. You just upload your images and begin designing!

4) There are discounts: 10% off anything you yourself order for being a member of the website, and 20% off for orders of 20 yds or more of fabric.

5) The fabric types and weights are various (you can order a sample booklet for $1), so the types of projects folks make can also be endless.

6) The fabrics are organic, and the dye process is water-based.

7) You can also turn your designs into wallpaper, gift wrap, and wall decals.

8) They give out credits/money when someone orders one of your designs.

9) They also have weekly design contests; the prize for having the best design (voted on by the other designers) wins $100 in credit (spoondollars).

Are you ready for the less than positives?:

1) You must order a sample of your design before you can sell it. The samples are $5 for one swatch, or if you order multiple swatches they discount them some. For example, I ordered 15 swatches and paid $30 for them.

2) You only earn 10% of the total dollars purchased. So far I have made $10, but it has gotten my name out there in the realm of folks who sew, and it also has brought more attention to my art as I have links to the original work in the descriptions of the design.

3) Some folks who are not into this type of creative medium (don't sew or wrap gifts for anyone) might say that the yardage/gift-wrap is too expensive. (Fabric yardage starts at $18/yd for basic organic cotton, and $15 is what you will pay for a roll of gift wrap that wraps four medium gifts); however, for the seasoned pro who knows the cost of quality and eco-friendly things, this is a deal, and they won't blink when they order 5 yards of organic cotton canvas at $27/yd.

I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy creating on this website, and as my drawing portfolio grows, I will include fabrics in the selling of my work. I hope this has been informative for other artists, and thanks to Mandy for letting me share what I am doing with you all. If you want to know more about me and the vision I have for my work please visit my web page at http://jennmeuth2013.wix.com/thejennagerie.