Colors of Silk

More thoughts on buying from small American businesses and local artisans

2011-12-04T15:52:00.000-08:00

I just had some more thoughts about supporting artisans and small businesses, both online and offline. If everyone who does Christmas shopping this year, buy from at least one small business or artisan, it could have a positive effect on the American economy. There was a segment on ABC news last week about people buying American made products. If every American shopper spent at least 10% on American made goods, handcrafted or otherwise, it would provide close to 200,000 new jobs. I thought that was an amazing figure. If everyone in the US who does gift shopping for the holidays spent at least 10 to 20 percent of their shopping money on handmade, artisan goods or American made products, it could help the US economy a lot. For example, more of us struggling artisans could purchase more and better supplies, spend more time on creating new work, expand our markets and maybe even hire a few employees. It would certainly help us in paying some of our bills too.

This lovely scarf was purchased a few years ago by a very smart customer from Artisanstreet. I may make another one like this in 2012. It is made of 100% crepe de chine silk and dyed with French silk dyes.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Buying handmade and supporting small businesses

2011-11-26T16:43:00.000-08:00

After hearing the awful news about customers fighting, robbing, and beating each other during the Black Friday specials, I really have become disgusted on low our society has sunk. I'm sure you all heard about the woman in Los Angeles using pepper spray at Walmart to fend off other customers for some Xbox toy. It's really sad that people would go to such extremes.

This is why I think it is very wise to support small businesses and buy handmade items as much as possible. I have noticed that over the years that the people who buy handmade, handcrafted items tend to be of a different caliber than the people who shop at Walmart.

I have been busy making new scarves for my ecrater site and for Artisanstreet. I sold 4 items so far this holiday weekend. I even sold one of the cotton sarongs that I had on my ecrater site.
I do have some imported sarongs on my site, but they are good quality and have different patterns that are not seen everywhere. With the price of silk and silk dyes going up, I couldn't afford to make the large silk sarongs this year.

Hopefully, in 2012 I will be back to making my own hand painted silk sarongs. I could use any money that I earn this season to buy more supplies. I hope that all 30 of my followers had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

New Items for the Upcoming Holiday season

2011-10-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.
Sorry that I haven't posted since August. I was on vacation to Delray Beach, Florida in early October . I have also been working on new scarves for my ecrater store. I am also adding a small number of mass produced sarongs on my site. I like doing the hand painted silk sarongs, but since the price of silk has gone up tremendously, I cannot afford to do as many silk sarongs like I have in the past. These new sarongs that I have on my site are imported and made of cotton and polyester. They are very reasonably priced between $25 and $40, which includes shipping and handling.

I hope that everyone is having a great Fall season. I had a nice time in Florida. I wish I was there now, as it is starting to get cold here in Ohio. I have some photos of some of the new imported sarongs that are available at my ecrater store, http://colorsofsilk.ecrater.com.

Social networking sites Pros and Cons

2011-08-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to post some thoughts about certain social networking sites, such as Facebook, Ning, etc.

These sites all have some very good qualities and can offer people all sorts of opportunities to make friends, expand their business, and showcase their talents.

Some of these social networking sites can also be a pain in the rear. One site that I used to be a member of is the Ning network. When it first started, it used to be free to join and they didn't have very strict rules on what types of photos that you could post. Now they charge a fee and also restrict the types of photos that are allowed to post. On some ning sites, they also want you to put links back to your website, ecrater store. etc.

I decided to cancel my membership to all ning sites because they are too much of a bother for me to post links of every photo back to my website or ecrater store. etc. Some of these sites can be very cliquish and I hate cliques!

I believe that the Internet should be an open forum, with few rules, except in the case of pornography, racist, sexist, antisemitic or anti-gay stuff. I don't believe that the internet should be used to hurt and demean people who have different racial, ethnic, sexual, religious, and other backgrounds.

Getting back to my art, I finally sold a sarong on Artisanstreet. I had to mark down the price, but someone finally bought it back in June.

New Silk Paintings

2011-08-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give an update to all of my followers about my artwork. I live in the Midwest and it has been very hot here throughout the entire summer. I hope that all of you are having a great summer.

I just wanted to post a picture of the new painting that I just completed a few days ago. It is inspired by Paul Gauguin, but I did add my own touches to it.
Once I can get some better quality hi resolution photos of it, it will be reproduced on my zazzle site.

Also this month, on August 25th, I will turn 49. Next year I will officially be middle-aged at 50!

Have a great summer!

New items in my zazzle store

2011-04-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I am so happy that spring is finally here and all the snow is gone! I just wanted to update all of my followers about new items and images at my zazzle store. I have some small art prints, mugs, tote bags and other items for sale. Here is the direct link to my zazzle store: http://www.zazzle.com/tropicsilkdesigns

I have a new painting that is available as reproductions on my zazzle site. It is titled "Island Man". I originally made this painting for my brother but had a very difficult time trying to frame a silk painting. I plan to make a nice print of this and give the print to my brother as a gift for his birthday or Christmas.
I hope that you all like it. The idea for this painting came mostly from my imagination.

Happy New Year

2011-01-30T17:50:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to say Happy New Year to all of my 25 followers. I hope that 2011 will be a very good and prosperous year for all of us. I am working on some new paintings and a photobook.

I will keep you all updated in the next post.

Take care and Happy 2011!

Holiday sales

2010-12-12T08:58:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to keep you all updated on whats going on with me and my art. I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Scarf sales have really picked up for me since late November. Almost all of my scarf orders have been coming through Artisanstreet.com. Artisanstreet is a site that sells the work of various artists in many different mediums. It is based in San Francisco and has been around since 2002 or 2003. I am happy for the orders that I have been getting from this site, but it would be even better if I got some sales from my own ecrater site.

I have been making a lot of new scarves to keep up with the orders from Artisanstreet. I also have some new things planned for 2011. I will keep you posted. Happy Holidays!

New store at Zazzle now open!

2010-10-01T12:54:00.002-07:00

Hello everyone. I just wanted to announce that my new online shop at zazzle.com is now officially open for business. My new store is called Tropicsilkdesigns. To go directly to my zazzle shop, please click on the link, www.zazzle.com/tropicsilkdesigns. I have a variety of merchandise, such as magnets, key chains, postcards, postage stamps, mugs, and mouse pads. As soon as I can get more high quality photos of my other silk paintings, I will be adding more items to the site. Please go to my zazzle shop and feel free to browse and look around. I hope that you'll enjoy my new shop.

New things going on for the Fall season

2010-08-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I had some household matters to take care of a few weeks ago. I am still working on my silk paintings for the upcoming Zazzle.com store. I signed up with an account with Zazzle.com and my new store will be called Tropicsilkdesigns. Once the site is up and running, I will have my paintings reproduced on a variety of merchandise. I am looking forward to having a store with Zazzle.com and being able to offer my artwork on a variety of items.

I realize that not everyone wears silk scarves, but some may like things like art prints, mugs, keychains, t-shirts, etc. I just want to be able to offer my artwork on a wide variety of items to as many people as possible. I hope that all of you had a great summer this year. It has been very hot here in central Ohio and I am looking forward to cooler weather in the Fall. I now see that I have 23 followers now! Thanks to all of you for following my blog and I will keep you all posted on the upcoming Zazzle.com store.

New silk paintings and other things

2010-06-27T10:44:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures of two of my newest silk paintings that will be used for my future Zazzle store. I also want to let everyone know that I appreciate all 19 of you who subscribed to my blog. The retail venture in Salerno, Italy went very well. The store owner told me that she sold all of my sarongs in less than a week! I was pleasantly surprised. She also told me that her customers are wearing them as large wrap scarves instead of beach sarongs because they felt my silks were too nice to wear on the beach!

Anyway, my 2 newest paintings pictured here were inspired by Paul Gauguin. I really like his paintings of Tahitian women with the bright colors.

As soon as I complete more silk paintings, I will be posting photos of them in future articles. I think it is going to be exciting once my Zazzle store is up and running.

I also have been busy with doing repairs around my home. I wish that I had time to blog and paint more, but that is not possible with all of the other things that I have to do. Hopefully, in 2011 and 2012 my finances should be better and I will have more time and money to spend on silk painting and maybe even do some traveling to the tropics!

Colors of Silk goes to Italy!

2010-05-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

Well, sort of. I recently received an offer from a lady in Italy that owns a Tramontano leather goods store. Her shop is located in Salerno, Italy. She saw my sarongs on my ecrater site and wanted to purchase them wholesale to resell in her shop. She said that she needed some beachwear items to sell for the summer months. At first, when she contacted me, I thought it was a scam, but I later found out that she is legitimate. I have never heard of Tramontano leather, but they are a high-end line of handcrafted leather bags and purses made in Italy.

I was so excited about this offer. She wanted to purchase 5 sarongs. I had 3 already made up and had to create 2 more sarongs. When I completed the work on the other 2 sarongs, I emailed her again with some photos. I told her what my prices were and offered to accept payment by Paypal.

She paid me within a few days and then I prepared to ship the items to her. I used FedEx because you cannot ship clothing items to Italy by regular mail. I stopped by my local FedEx/Kinko's office in downtown Columbus. I did have to go online to the FedEx site to print the label but then I had to stop at the FedEx office to send the package.

The shop owner is bilingual and plans to translate my care instructions in Italian. I am really excited and anxious about this new opportunity. I hope that the shop owner in Italy will have some success in selling my sarongs. She also mentioned about buying some of my scarves later for the Christmas season.

New retail ventures

2010-04-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give some updates on my silk wearable art business. I will have some of my scarves and pillows in a retail gift shop called Hens Teeth Rare Gifts located in Doylestown, PA.

The shop owner's name is Lisa Schwartz and she contacted me by email when she came across my ecrater store back in February. Her store will feature work by a variety of artisans and craftspeople. I hope that this is a good sign for the economy. Even though unemployment is still high, I really do believe that many people are tired of mass-produced, cookie-cutter items and cheap, low quality imported goods. I think that many consumers are looking for high quality one of a kind items that aren't priced too high.

Within the next few weeks, I will have a small selection of my scarves and pillows in the Doylestown store. I am looking forward to this new venture and hopefully it will open up more retail opportunities for my work.

In the meantime, I will be very busy creating new scarves, pillows and wraps this year.

New things going on for 2010

2010-03-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone:

I am really sorry about not posting for the last 2 months. I hope that everyone's New Year was great.I have been busy working extra hours at my regular "day job" and doing things around my house. I have been working on some new scarves and will have them on my ecrater store sometime in April. I did work on a commissioned scarf for a customer in Florida last month. She requested that I make a scarf with butterflies on it.

I have also been working on some scarves for 2 gift shops. They were interested in purchasing my work at wholesale. I am sort of new to wholesaling. I hope that this new venture will work out OK for me. Anyway, I will post a picture of the butterfly scarf and will post any updates on my silk paintings and scarves as soon as possible.

Holiday sales

2009-12-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to post a short note about my holiday sales. Unfortunately, I didn't get any sales on cyberMonday, but a week later I received a bunch of sales, mostly on my ecrater site. I also have my scarves listed on Artisantreet.com where I normally receive the bulk of my holiday sales.

I got three orders last week at my ecrater store and one woman ordered 2 scarves! I am so happy that I signed up with ecrater back in December 2007. I have done fairly well with ecrater and got much more sales with them than with Etsy. I like ecrater a lot better because you do not have to pay to list all of your items and you can sell almost anything with them. Even though ecrater is not an arts and crafts only site, it makes it very easy for you to start an online business for very little to no upfront cost. Please go to ecrater.com to learn more about this wonderful site.

I also added a few new scarves to my site. You can check them out at colorsofsilk.ecrater.com

Happy Holidays and happy shopping!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

2009-11-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. I hope that everyone got the chance to spend time with family and loved ones and had plenty of good food to eat. I also just wanted to share some updates about my ecrater store, http://colorsofsilk.ecrater.com. I am having my own version of "Black Friday and cyber Monday" sale on a few of my items. These select items will be on sale until December 7th. I will also be adding some more new scarves to the site in the upcoming weeks. I hope that all of us artists who sell retail will have a good holiday season with great sales.

New silk paintings

2009-09-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

During the months of August and September, I have been working on some silk paintings for the art licensing market. I hope to have around 8 or 9 paintings completed by the end of this year and would like to have 12 finished by Spring of 2010. I also plan to open up a store with Zazzle.com. I thought about opening up a store with Cafepress as well, but I heard that zazzle had less problems associated with it. I also did not want to operate two different stores selling the same products.

New silk pillows and tank tops

2009-07-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

I just posted some new items at my ecrater store. I recently made this silk throw pillow and silk tank top. The pillow came out really nice. On the front, it has an image of a bird of paradise flower. This pillow comes with a side zipper and measures 16x16 inches square. The silk cover is made of 10mm china silk and the pillow insert is made of poly-fiberfill. I took this photo in my bedroom after putting some new sheets that I purchased from the Linensource catalog.

The tank top is made of 100% silk charmeuse and can be either hand washed or dry cleaned. This top is very soft and luxurious and feels really good against your skin. These silk tank tops can be either hand washed or dry cleaned. Please click on the link to my ecrater store for more information about these 2 items. http://colorsofsilk.ecrater.com/

Happy 4th of July!

2009-07-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy 4th of July. I hope that all of my followers and fellow artists will have a productive summer creating beautiful artwork.

I am still working on my silk paintings and hope to have some more photos of new paintings to put up on my blog later on this year.

I finally sold 2 pillows!

2009-06-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

I finally sold 2 pillows to a woman in Virginia on Thursday June 18th! It was really nice to get a pillow order from both the Artisanstreet site and my ecrater store, especially during this slow economy. I had seriously thought about giving these pillows to a nice high-end thrift store or consignment shop, but then decided to hold on to them for a while longer. I sold this lime green and royal blue pillow to a customer in Virginia. I actually have to make a second one for her because I only had one pillow listed on both web sites. Green and blue color combinations seem to be very popular. I also sell a lot of scarves in these 2 color combos. It is one of my personal favorite color schemes too.

I am still working on the fine art silk paintings for the licensing market and will provide some updates in another post.

Sale on my hand painted silk pillows

2009-04-27T08:01:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to post some new information about my hand painted silk pillows. I am having a sale on pillows at my ecrater site. I will no longer be doing pillows on a regular basis, but only as commissioned pieces. For example, if a customer contacts me and wants me to make a silk pillow for them, I will do that. I just won't be making pillows for the general market any longer. My pillows are 50% off. Please check them out at colorsofsilk.ecrater.com. Please be sure to click on the section that says "clearance and sale items".

I am still working on the silk paintings for the art licensing market and I will keep everyone posted on the progress. I also just wanted to mention that I found another good site that reproduces artists work on prints, tshirts and calenders. It is called redbubble.com. It looks like a pretty decent site and there is a lot of nice artwork displayed there. Also check out the cafepress.com site too. There is a lot of great art on this site.

Silk painting and Art licensing

2009-04-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

April is here and the flowers are in bloom here in Columbus, Ohio where I live. I did get some good sales at the end of March and early April so I guess that some people have already received their income tax refunds. I have been doing a lot of research on art licensing and I have noticed that there are very few silk painters that produce work for this market. Silk painting is such a wonderful medium and there are a lot of very talented silk painters out there whose work would be perfect for licensing on various products. I realize that many artists dislike the commercial aspects of art and may not want to see their work reproduced on a lot of products. I also go to gift shops and other stores to check out the greeting card and gift designs. I noticed that most artwork on these gift items look almost alike, as if a few artists created the designs for all of the cards and giftware products. It is extremely difficult to find an image of a brightly colored silk painting on a card or paper gift bag. Most of the designs look computer generated or rendered in watercolor or colored pencil.

Art licensing is a very complex field with a lot of competition between artists trying to get a piece of the market. I recently looked at the cafepress.com site and this is a great option for artist who want to have their work reproduced on commercial products without having to spend lots of money. The licensing shows that take place in New York are very expensive to attend and set up a booth. The costs would be very prohibitive for me. I am looking into setting up a shop on cafepress.com later on this year or early 2010. I am currently working on some fine art silk paintings and plan to have at least 8 paintings done by the end of the summer. Cafepress is a great way for silk painters and other artists to have their work reproduced on multiple products. My work consists of tropical scenes with bright colors and I will add some pictures of a few of my paintings in progess in a future post.

Artists and the slow economy

2009-03-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

I have not posted any thing in my blog during the month of February. My silk painting business has been extremely slow due to the very poor economy. More people are losing their jobs and have no money to spend on art and crafts. I do have a "day job" as a data entry operator and have been working extra hours. I normally would get a few orders during the month of February, especially around the week of Valentine's Day. This year has been extremely slow. Right now, I have cut back on making scarves and I am planning to work on some new silk paintings for the art licensing market. It is very tough being an artist when the economy is in a recession. My holiday sales last year were not as good as in previous years, but I did get a nice scarf order through my ecrater site from a woman in North Carolina. She ordered 6 scarves and mailed me a check via Fedex. Once the economy improves, I hope to get more customers like her. I don't plan to give up my art and silk painting because of the slow economy. Creating art fills a void in my life and helps me to keep my sanity.

Happy New year! I got accepted at 1000markets.com!

2009-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

I was recently accepted at the site called www.1000markets.com. This is a new site that sells fine handcrafted work by American artists and craftspeople. Most of the items here seem to cater to a more affluent crowd. It is also a much better looking site than Etsy. I was very happy to get accepted by 1000markets.com. I have already met some wonderful artisans at this site and hope to meet more.

2009 will be an interesting year, with a new President. I hope that there will be improvements in the economy. I plan to do a new line of scarves and add some new items like silk tank tops. I made this silk tank top for my sister and she really loves it. It is shown pictured here. This top is made of silk charmeuse which has a very nice, soft, luxurious feel. It takes dyes really well. I buy the silk top blanks which come with open side seams. These tops come in S,M,L, and XL and fits up to a 41" bustline. I plan to sell these as custom orders only, so I will not be producing these in large quantities. I will put a few of them on my ecrater site and offer customers some color choices.

I hope that 2009 will be a good year for artists, craftspeople and everyone else. Happy New year to everyone and God bless.

Selling fine craft on etsy and other sites

2008-12-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

I hope not to offend any Etsy fans out there, but I just wanted to state my opinion about selling online at Etsy and other places. I used to have a shop on Etsy back in 2007. I closed it in January 2008 due to lack of sales. I opened up a store with Ecrater in late December 2007 and had a sale for some of my pillows in January 2008. A man in Florida bought 2 of my silk pillows and then he had me to make 3 custom made sofa sized silk pillows in the early spring of 2008. I talked to him over the phone and he also emailed me about how he wanted the pillows to be made. I made the 3 pillows for him and mailed them to his home address in Florida by USPS Express mail. He liked them so much and he paid me a nice $300!!!. This was really a nice sale. I asked him how he found my ecrater store, and he said he was looking under Google product search. Even though Ecrater is not an art and fine craft marketplace, but a general e-commerce site where anyone can build their own online store for free. There is no listing fees with ecrater. When I had an etsy shop, I had to pay for listings every 4 months and also pay to be in their showcases. It was a total waste of money for me. I only got one sale the whole time that I had an etsy shop. Etsy caters to a less affluent crowd that doesn't like to pay over $30 for anything. Well, most of my scarves and pillows costs over $30 because they are hand crafted, made of silk and silk dyes. I purchase all of my supplies from specialty fiber-arts suppliers and not from Hobby Lobby and Michael's Arts & Crafts stores.

I also later found out that in order to sell well on Etsy, you have to keep re listing the same item over and over again every day in order to stay on their front page. For example, if you have a $35 silk scarf, in order to sell it, you will have to pay around $6 in listing fees for one month or $24 in listing fees for 4 months. So you actually lose money selling on Etsy! I did not have to pay any listing fees to sell my pillows to the customer in Florida that saw them on ecrater.

I am looking at other sites that would be a better fit for fine artists/craftspeople. One site that looks very promising is 1000Markets.com. It seems to cater to a more affluent crowd and they are more selective of whom they allow to sell on their site. There are no listing fees and they use Amazon for payment processing. They do not use Paypal. (nothing wrong with Paypal. I have a Paypal account myself.) The only fee that 1000markets charges is when you do make a sale, they only deduct 5.5% + 50 cents of the original price. I also noticed that there are more higher priced and higher end items on 1000markets than there is on etsy. Etsy sells some nice things, but there is also a lot of "junk crafts" on there too. Most stuff that is on etsy looks like it is made by amateur artists and hobby crafters. 1000Markets sells the work of true fine artists and professional craftspeople, people who are highly skilled and talented in what they do. You won't see a lot of junk and cheap crafts on 1000Markets.com. I plan to sign up with them in January 2009 and hope to be accepted. If I am accepted by 1000Markets, I will write about it in my next blog post.

Beautiful hand painted silk wearable art

2008-12-20T15:32:00.000-08:00

I am a silk fiber artist and I create beautiful hand painted silks. I create a lot of scarves and wraps, but I also make silk sarongs and pillows. I have been a silk painter since 2000 and I opened an online store with ecrater.com My site is called colorsofsilk.ecrater.com. I have a nice variety of scarves, pillows and sarongs currently for sale. I will be adding some new items in 2009 and hope to have more sales in the near future. The economy is not too great right now but hopefully things will get better. I hope that more people will come to appreciate handmade items and purchase them more often, instead of buying mass-produced imported items. A hand crafted item, whether it is a silk scarf, a glass vase or jewelry, makes a wonderful gift for family, friends, or that special person in one's life.