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8 January, 2026

A Handmade Business Recap: Looking back at 2025

beckarahn2026-01-08T18:22:27-06:00An Artist's Life, Everything Else|0 Comments

I’ve spent part of this week wrapping up things from 2025 and looking back at the goals I set for the year. My theme for the year was a carry over from 2024: Use what you have. Do it better. I’d say overall, I did use what I have, but the year was really mixed as far as “do it better”.

Online & In Person Sales

It was a discouraging year for selling art. When I looked at the numbers, my non-Etsy income was almost exactly the same, within about $60. But my Etsy sales ended the year down 36%. And I am happy for that number because at some points throughout the year it was down 58% from 2024. I had a really good fall and so that brought those numbers up a little bit.

I track some of the items I sell to see trends year over year. In 2025, I decided to basically discontinue the scarves and other wearables that I had been making. I sold some of my remaining inventory at a couple of small shows this year, but I am not really making any new pieces. I added the animal glasses cases that I have been making to the chart this year because those have turned into a best seller. The cost of the materials on those has gone up because of tariffs, so I am unsure how long I will be able to keep them as a best seller. Nothing really surprised me here. I had about 6 in-person events I participated in; 2 were new, 4 I have done before.

One factor I can point to in the dip in Etsy sales was that I had a really hard time sourcing materials. Tariffs bumped the prices up on a lot of different things I use for my products. I also had a huge setback with Spoonflower printing. I wrote some blog posts about it, but a change in the color profile forced me to re-color my entire product line. This took a huge amount of time and so there were a couple of months when my inventory levels were really low. It’s hard to sell things when you have fewer things listed.

Classes

Classes continued to be the big success of the year for me. This year I taught 96 classes. Of that, 22 were in-person, 67 on Zoom, and 7 pre-recorded video classes. I had 6 classes that were cancelled. I love teaching.

I didn’t meet my goals for teaching more pre-recorded on-demand classes. I had intended to post 6 to my website and 6 to Skillshare and I only managed 4 and 3 respectively. They are all great classes, but I am hoping to get even more up in 2026. Time was a big factor in that goal fail. Recording and editing classes takes a lot of time and I had a couple of unexpected projects come up that took a lot of my time.

I had to migrate my website hosting AGAIN this year. I feel like I say that in every single year end wrap up. The issue this time was caused by AI bots scraping my site and stealing the content. They caused so much extra bandwidth traffic that my web host wanted to bump me up to another tier and charge me 4x what I had been paying previously. They wouldn’t work with me to get the garbage traffic blocked, so I just moved everything to another host. I will admit there were tears and a lot of swearing.

I honestly considered just shutting down my online classes completely. But one of my other themes for this year was a quote from director John Chu about “making art that is a radical act of optimism”. So I decided that I wasn’t going to let the AI bots smother me, so I’m just going to keep moving forward.

Pattern Releases

One of the things I learned in 2024 was that patterns were more in demand than kits for my designs. People *ask* for kits, but they actually buy patterns. I released 6 new patterns in 2025: cows, sea serpents, parakeets, dinosaurs in sweaters, frogs & toads and the Nutcracker Trio. They have all been pretty well received. The sheep continued to be the bestseller overall. I wrote about the great flop of 2025: The Nutcracker Trio. This was probably my biggest disappointment of the year. I had planned to do a couple of classes and another pattern release in the last quarter of the year, but instead I decided to put it all together into this one pattern, releasing it as both a class and a pdf pattern.

I’m not sure what the 2026 designs are going to be. I’m feeling a little like I’m second guessing myself so I am going to take some time to really think about what I want to design and maybe send out a survey in my newsletter to ask for some requests? (If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them!)

How I balance my business

I didn’t make a chart this year but the balance is much the same as I have talked about before. It generally breaks down into about 10% design work, 25% in-person sales, 25% online sales, 40% teaching. This year because online sales were so much lower, the teaching part of my income stream is a little higher. I didn’t have any grant projects this year. The requirements for grant funding have changed so much that there isn’t much that I am interested in applying for.

Budgets are tight for 2026 for a lot of my partner organizations that I work with so I anticipate that I may be teaching fewer classes in 2026 because there isn’t funding. Several organizations have asked for more in-person programs because their organizational goals have emphasis on community building for 2026. I can totally understand that.

Things I tried

I attended the h&h Americas conference in May for craft industry professionals. For me it ended up being a lot of fun, but not a very valuable business experience. A lot of the education offerings I attended were aimed at a much less experienced business owner. I am not planning to attend again in 2026. (Plus I got COVID and had to miss an entire day of another favorite annual event the following week.)

I took a few craft business classes but with one exception I didn’t really learn a lot that I could put into practice or that I wasn’t already doing. That continuing education is always one of my annual goals and I think I need to dig deeper to see if I can find some more in-depth experiences for 2026. I took 3 other art making classes at the beginning of the year (glass mosaics & bookbinding) and then didn’t get any more in after that. I love taking classes and I am hoping to find more more opportunities in 2026. Have you taken a class that you loved? Please tell me about it!

I showed pieces in 5 exhibitions and was rejected from one that I applied to.

I bought a new upgraded sewing machine. The jury is still out; we aren’t best friends yet. I re-learned to spin with a drop spindle that my dad made me. I finished my first skein of yarn that I made into a project.

I had a completely awful December in my personal life and I let go of some annual business tasks that I do. I didn’t get Happy New Year cards mailed out to all of my students & business contacts. I skipped a newsletter. I cancelled a couple of events. I stepped away from social media for several weeks. I think I missed some deadlines to apply for things. I needed to do it, but I know that I will have to do some extra work to make the algorithms find me again. I’ve only just barely started to plan for next year, but the last month has made me decide that one of my themes for 2026 is be kind to yourself.

5 January, 2026

A Nut Un-Cracked: What to do when a pattern flops

beckarahn2026-01-05T14:43:04-06:00An Artist's Life, Etsy, Sewing & Design|0 Comments

I’m going to start this post with a spoiler: I don’t actually know the answer to this one. But I wanted to tell you a story about my big pattern release of 2025.

In about August of 2025, I decided to design a big pattern for the holiday season. I design a lot of ornaments, but I thought it would be fun to do something a little more and a little bigger. I’ve always loved Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. I’ve listened to the music probably hundreds of times and I’ve seen a handful of performances of the ballet. So I decided to do a nutcracker. Nutcrackers are classic and fun. I made this one the size to go on a mantle piece or be part of table decor. It’s a little larger than an ornament. It’s all made from relatively easy to source materials: wool felt, thread, sequins, a popsicle stick. I even put together a sequin kit so you could just buy exactly what you need to make the pattern.

I wrote a little in this post about designing the nutcracker. I decided to make a dog version, because I love anything to do with dogs. Then I created a classic nutcracker face and a cat version that could be swapped out. The body pieces stayed the same and you could make any of the versions you liked; you can see them all in the photo above. So I called it the Nutcracker Trio Pattern.

One of the things I try to do a lot in my practice is to find ways to re-use work. For this project that meant I was going to release this pattern in three ways: as a Zoom class, as a pre-recorded video class and as a .pdf pattern. I could develop all of those at the same time, because so many parts overlapped. The print version of the pattern is about 24 pages long, all illustrated with step-by-step photos. It’s practically a book.

I made samples. I photographed. I teased “making of” and “coming soon” photos and videos on Instagram and Facebook. I took the samples with me to every in-person class and event I did in October and November.

I did a lot of research about best practices for holiday pattern releases. I took registrations for the Zoom class and online class starting in early fall so that people could get theirs finished by Thanksgiving if they were working along in class. I released the pdf pattern on Etsy on October 1.

Then… crickets.

To be fair, I taught the Zoom version of the class to a group of regular class participants. We have done some kind of a holiday ornament pattern together every year for about 4-5 years now so they were ready to sign up as soon as I had it ready. We had a lot of fun in class and everyone made gorgeous custom versions as gifts for all kinds of family members. We even had ones made to look like the family dogs. An absolute joy.

But I didn’t sell a single pattern. Or have a single class registration for the online version. None.

In October, I tried not to get discouraged. It was early. People weren’t thinking about holiday decor yet. I made some promo videos with some dry ice that were Halloween themed. I did a Swifty Showgirl version. I posted clips from videos and talked about the embroidery stitches. I wrote a blog post and wrote about it in my newsletter.

November and still nothing.

I took some new photos and swapped them around in my Etsy listing.
I added photos of nutcrackers made by students to my class page and got some great quotes.
I added finished versions to my Captain Labradork shop thinking maybe people wanted to buy them and not make them. (None sold.)
I brought finished ones to sell at in-person craft shows and made a QR code with links to the class and the pattern. (None sold.)
I expanded the sequins kit I had for sale to include some of the other optional hardware like popsicle sticks to the kit.
I made a new resources sheet that matched the pattern to 4 different pre-set Benzie Design felt color palettes that would work amazingly for this pattern, so you could buy essentially a kit of felt ready to go.
I ran a sale for furloughed government employees.
I ran an ad in a holiday gift guide for the Craft Industry Alliance.
I did market research and poured over similar listings on Etsy looking for comparable patterns/cost/complexity. (Mine was right in line with those.)
I made SO many samples to use in photos and promos.

Etsy ran a whole video campaign about “Nutcracker Core” being a huge holiday trend. I’ve sold on Etsy for 20 years and I sell patterns like this regularly, so I know I had everything set up right and early enough for the algorithm to find it.

But sadly, this pattern turned into the biggest flop of my entire design career so far.

I don’t know why it flopped and that’s probably the most frustrating thing about being a designer. People went crazy for these when I had them at in-person events. Everyone said “you should sell these in the gift shop at —” or “these are going to be so popular” or “I would totally take this class”. They asked me if there would be kits available. They liked the social media posts. All signs pointed to it being a popular pattern/class.

I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve talked to friends in the same sector/industry, other makers, students and teaching colleagues. I don’t know where it missed the mark, but a few ideas that floated to the top:

Maybe it looked to hard or too complicated? It seemed like an advanced project and scared off beginners?
Maybe it looked like it would take too much time? People were looking for quick and easy? (I did sell a lot of simpler patterns on Etsy in the same time frame, especially sheep.)
Maybe the algorithms were just putting my content in a deep dark hole where no one was seeing it?
Maybe I didn’t promote it enough? Or promoted it with the wrong message?
Maybe the economy just held people back from buying? Maybe it was too expensive?
Maybe it’s really terrible and I just can’t see it?

I haven’t decided yet if I am going to retire the pattern on Etsy and relaunch it next holiday season or leave it up and see what happens. Maybe it needs to have fresh eyes look at it. I need to think about it some more.

As I am wrapping up 2025 and looking at my spreadsheet of projects and goals for the year, I made a choice to invest a lot of time and resources into this design and it definitely didn’t work the way I had hoped. That part of my goals chart are not going to be filled in for sure and yet I feel like I still did everything “right”. And who wants to post a rosy “I’ve met all my goals for the year!” post (like I’ve been seeing all around) when you feel like you totally didn’t.

And that’s the reason I decided to write this post, because I KNOW that I am not the only one this has happened to. It’s easy to get discouraged when you put things out there and so I wanted to share this story because I know it helps to know you aren’t the only one.

6 November, 2025

New Cow and Highland Cow Embroidered Felt Ornament Patterns!

beckarahn2025-11-13T22:00:32-06:00Embroidery, Everything Else|Comments Off on New Cow and Highland Cow Embroidered Felt Ornament Patterns!

Today the blog has been invaded by a herd of cows! Cows and Highland Cows have been some of my most requested animal ornament designs. My grandparents had a dairy farm in upstate NY and I have a lot of fond memories of cows and visiting the farm when I was a kid. I decided that the shapes would be so similar that it would be easy to put both a holstein cow and a highland cow in the same pattern so you can make whichever version you love.

I started this design with a sketch. You can see I decided to draw both versions kind of on top of the other so I could see how the pattern could share pieces. I scanned this and took it into Adobe Illustrator to draw the pieces.

I wanted to coordinate it with my other patterns so it’s in the same style and size as the sheep, dog and cat designs.

One of the variations I did was a purple cow. Growing up, we had a family favorite ornament on the Christmas tree that is a purple cow. My grandma sent it to us when I was a little kid and it was a handmade felt ornament probably from a local church craft fair. The thing I remember is that it had rhinestone eyes that were bright red, which made it look a little devilish. There’s a poem by Gelett Burgess (later quoted by Ogden Nash) that my dad recites all the time:

The Purple Cow
(Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least.)

I NEVER saw a Purple Cow;
I never hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I’d rather See than Be One.

It always makes me chuckle and someone in my family would always recite the poem when we hung the ornament on the tree. Maybe your tree needs a purple version too.

3 November, 2025

Halloween 2025: He Slobbered Me

beckarahn2025-11-03T16:18:55-06:00An Artist's Life|Comments Off on Halloween 2025: He Slobbered Me

Almost 20 years ago, I made some Halloween costumes and we staged a photo. We grew up with the tradition of everyone we knew sending holiday cards with a photo of the family with matching sweaters. It’s just what you did. So, I sent greetings to all of our friends and family, but I realized that staged holiday photo just wasn’t us.

So we put our Halloween photo in our holiday cards. People got such a kick out of it that we did it the next year. And soon it was a new family tradition. A few weekends before Halloween every year we transform our basement photo studio for the day into a makeshift set and we come up with a story we can capture in a single shot. The theme is in the works for months and is always top secret. (Many people have tried to get us to spill the beans.)

This was one of the very first we shot.

We have a few rules.

We never have outside help; the scene has to be something we can do with our own equipment and a self timer or a sound-activated shutter.
We try to capture as much as we possibly can in the camera so the Photoshop edits are as minimal as possible.
We never go for “replica” or exact costumes, but always what I can piece together to make it close enough to be instantly recognizable. I reuse pieces all the time.
We don’t use AI.
The scene has to have a story that you can see in a single shot.
There are always Easter Eggs.

If you don’t want to read about the spoilers of “how it’s made” you should just skip over the rest of this post. But I thought I would tell you about some of the Easter Eggs in this year’s photo.

Yellow: Stanley, of course. We shot the photo of Stanley in the living room while we tossed kibbles in his mouth. This was the hardest part of the whole photo! It took us way longer to get a shot because he moves so fast. We realized that none of our cameras had a fast enough shutter to capture that mid-chomp face. We were trying to get something where he was “grinning” but not all teeth. By the time we got done, he curled up and took a really big nap because he worked so hard sitting and waiting for the kibble toss.

Aqua: My “proton stream gun” is a photography light instrument and part of our vacuum cleaner with the end of the hose tucked in to my belt. I was supposed to be wearing a big backpack but the straps blocked the ghost patch and so we just left it out.

Green: Andy’s face is slobbered with about half a bottle of aloe vera gel.

Purple: Our ghost trap is made from a kleenex box covered in duct tape, some official looking warning stickers, the lids to a couple of bottles and some pieces to our outdoor sprinkler system. We felt like this was such an iconic prop that we set up one of our studio lights as a spotlight using some black foil paper to make a focused light.

Blue: This is an extra power pack for one of our lights. It looked techhie so we just popped it into the background. It also helped mark where my back foot should be because I was the one hitting the self-timer button on the camera and running into place.

Orange: The tools on my belt included a knitting needle gauge and an angle marking ruler. Andy has a USB cable.

Red: The costumes in the movie had elbow pads, which we made from elastic bands that were leftover from part of Andy’s gear from his instant replay job.

I found the coveralls online because I wanted ones that matched and Andy is 6’5″ so it’s hard to find things like that which are tall enough for him.

The floor you see is our basement floor. We discovered that the basement walls were too light so there are a whole bunch of black tablecloths that I use for art shows clipped to the floor joists to make a black curtain.

You don’t end up being able to see it in the finished photo but the same foam core door we used for the “Andrew Rahn, Private Detective” photo from a few years ago is also in the background. So I guess we are exterminating the ghosts from the detective’s office. We can see it on our big computer before the photo is all compressed down to share on the social media etc.

The ghost patches are duct taped on because we weren’t exactly sure what angles we would each be at and we needed to be able to move them so they were prominent in the shot. We started with them on the arms like in the movie costumes but they were too hard to see.

We did this whole shot with two photos (one of us and one of Stanley) composited together. Our scene was lit with only two lights which are bright strobe lights very carefully aimed with foil baffles. We did it with a 10 second self timer and I ran into position each time while Andy stayed put. We often use a camera gizmo that is triggered by a sound like a clap but we couldn’t get it working this year so we just did it “old school”. We would shoot the photo, look at it on the back of the camera, adjust our positions or expressions and shoot another. I think there were about 30 photos before this one, which we both looked at and instantly said “That’s the shot.”

(I hope if you are like me, you are hearing that theme song in your head right now.)

21 October, 2025

Art Word of the Week: Bleed

beckarahn2025-10-21T11:52:00-05:00An Artist's Life, Tutorials|Comments Off on Art Word of the Week: Bleed

Bleed seemed like a great Art Word of the Week leading up to Halloween. But don’t worry, it’s nothing too scary. I use the word bleed two ways in my art practice. The first one refers to what happens when dye colors don’t stay where they are supposed to be. The photo above shows a piece of felt I laid on top of a dyed fabric. The dye colors transferred and bled all over my felt which ruined this particular project. Oops.

The second way I use the word “bleed” is when I am printing things like postcards. The bleed is the extra margin around the outside which lets you print all the way to the edges of the paper. That’s where you see the pink line on this photo. Your artwork is just a little larger than the cut size of the paper to make sure that there are no unprinted bits that show when the print is all finished. This was a postcard I made to send New Year greetings last year.

16 October, 2025

Art Word of the Week: Grain

beckarahn2025-10-09T10:57:43-05:00Tutorials|Comments Off on Art Word of the Week: Grain

Another art term I use a lot when I am teaching is grain. Grain is used to describe features of lots of kinds of art materials, but I’ll talk about the ones I use the most: paper and fabric.

In paper, the grain is the direction that the paper folds most easily. Papers like origami paper are made to have very little grain, so they fold easily in any direction. But papers like watercolor paper have a really strong grain which means they fold much more easily in one direction than the other. The image above shows the same piece of colored paper folded against the grain on the left and with the grain on the right. You can see how it springs back on the left side and doesn’t want to make that fold. If you were to force it to fold that way, the paper might crack or wrinkle.

In fabric, the grain is the direction that the fabric was woven. When you cut pieces with the grain they fold and drape differently than if you cut opposite the grain, much like paper. It’s easiest to find the grain in fabric by looking at the selvedge or non-cut edge of the fabric. The grain always goes parallel to the selvedge. The felt fabric shown on the right has no grain because the fibers in felt go in every direction.