I haven’t done an annual wrap up of my art practice in a few years and I thought it might be time. For the very first time in 2024, I sat down and wrote a spreadsheet of goals for my art business. I don’t know why I had never done it before but I thought it would be interesting to try it.

I participated in a webinar about goal setting with a group of other craft business owners and even though they recommended it, I didn’t assign numbers to anything, but instead made a list of things I would like to accomplish and assigned them to months throughout the year. Why no numbers? Because I really feel like saying “I am going to increase my Etsy sales by 10%” is really something that has too many factors outside of my control. I don’t know what the economy is going to do, I don’t know what Etsy is going to change about how people interact with my shop, I don’t know what sourcing my materials is going to be like and none of those things have anything to do with what I am doing for my business. So instead I focused on the things I can control, like how many new classes I was going to design and release and what projects (like adding a press page to my website) that I wanted to finish.

My theme for 2024 was “Use what you have. Do it better.”

Classes & Teaching

I started my goals with what classes I wanted to teach. My spreadsheet had a goal of teaching about 40 different new classes between online and in-person offerings. That is about 3-4 every month, one released to my website or Skillshare as an online class and the others as in-person or Zoom classes. I am really delighted that I completely blew this goal out of the water. Last year I taught 88 classes. I was actually a little astounded when I tallied it up and counted it a second time. They didn’t fit into my calendar the way I thought they would and I didn’t quite get as many online classes up as I hoped to, but overall I hit the goal and then some.

The classes offered on my website as on-demand classes are definitely the least “successful” of the options. It is so hard to get these in front of the right audience and it feels like a failure; I’ll be totally honest. This is definitely something I am going to take some time to think about in 2025. I have a lot of feedback that people want to take on-demand classes but something there isn’t connecting. And I have had some comments that people don’t want to take classes through Skillshare because of the membership fee, but I have about 50 students there for every 1 that comes to my website.

I also had a Projects goal to create a refreshed “Proposal package” to send out to potential new class partners like fiber art guilds, conferences, and art centers with descriptions, prices, photos etc. I did not get that done, but actually ended up accomplishing what I wanted to with that project which was to get set up teaching with some new organizations. I have 3 brand new partners for 2025 and I reconnected with a couple that I haven’t worked with in a few years. So success, but just not in the way I envisioned it.

Online & In-person Sales

Last year I did a check-in on my best selling items because I felt like something was off. I revisited that and added the data for 2024.

The good news is that the totals in 2024 were a lot like 2023. These stats don’t include my Etsy shop, but my Etsy sales were within 4% of the year before. Interestingly my visits went down and conversion rate nearly doubled. Which means more of the right customers are finding my shop. I’d love to see it grow more, but holding steady is great.

A big difference I see here is that the kind of in-person shows I did changed a lot. I am thinking pretty seriously that I am going to phase out the wearables/accessories/scarves that I have been making for many years. They aren’t all included on this chart.  They were very popular at shows prior to 2020 but customers and shows have changed and they just aren’t selling any more. I don’t want to make more because they aren’t really selling and the inventory I have starts to then feel stale. I am so sad about this, because I LOVE designing fabrics and making things from them.

One thing that’s not reflected in this chart is the number of shows it represents. From 2017-2023, I did about 4 in-person shows a year. In 2024, I did 8. Four were shows I do annually, 4 were new. That means that I did roughly the same in sales spread across twice as many events. When an artist tells you that their sales were low this year, that’s what they are talking about. I love doing in-person events and talking to people, but that was discouraging. (A big thank you shout out to everyone who did come to one of my in-person events!!)

I didn’t have any sales related goals in my 2024 spreadsheet because I don’t have a lot of control over that, but I did have some Projects. I cleaned up my Etsy shop, phasing out some things that weren’t selling or were more hassle than they were worth (embroidery kits, stickers) and adding some new items (books, large project bags). I bought a thermal label printer which has made packing orders quicker and having run the online shop for nearly 20 years that was a great little boost of positive energy, making the boring tasks seem a little more fun. I didn’t have it on my list of goals, but I converted 6 kits over to be .pdf patterns instead and those have been selling great in my Etsy shop. So even though people have told me they love the design and asked for kits, patterns are what they are really interested in buying. More of those for next year!

How I balance my business

Most of my goals relate to the way I balance my business. I realized early on in this adventure that relying solely on selling or teaching or exhibiting my art wasn’t going to work for me. I’ve made charts like this in years past and they always vary a little. I like to include grants as part of my balance, but in order to write a grant as an artist, you really have to have a big new project to apply. Right now they are all looking for you to create something new and engage people with that new thing and I really just didn’t have a big new project I wanted to do. I burned out a little on the last one I took on. So right now, this is how I balance. I added those 4 new in-person events to fill in that gap from grants and as I mentioned before I did a lot of new teaching. The “design” category includes things like graphic design contract work & website help that I do for other artists and non-profits.

Use what you have. Do it better.

My theme for 2024 really had to do with a lot of setbacks I’d had the year before. I had to switch up my classes & website hosting unexpectedly. Sales on bestsellers were unpredictable. So I decided to focus on using the tools I had more effectively versus adding a bunch of new things. This had mixed results.

My email service had a complete meltdown and I ended up moving my newsletter/email server to a different service. My emails were blacklisted and that caused ripples for months. I had goals about promoting my newsletter better and I just couldn’t do it because it was all in flux.

I took a bunch of classes on Skillshare about Pinterest marketing and tried to implement a lot of those suggestions. (Complete flop.) I took a couple of classes mostly for fun and skill building. I watched webinars about several different business topics that were mostly either too vague/basic or downright horrifying (ie using AI in your art.) I did meet my goals for learning & improving those areas but I didn’t really get the results I was hoping for in every case.

A couple of big-projects-that-I-can’t-share fizzled out because of circumstances beyond my control. I had time blocked out for them and they didn’t happen. On a super positive note, I got asked to do a couple of other fabric design projects completely unexpectedly and that was fantastic.

The biggest goal that I completely didn’t meet was to write here on my blog more. It just kept getting pushed to the bottom of the to-do list and I didn’t do it. This is definitely going to the top of the list for 2025 and I am going to try to structure the goal a little better. Maybe I need to assign myself topics ahead of time.

My top 3 designs sold for 2024

Other numbers of the year: I showed work in 4 exhibitions, sold 118 yards of fabric on Spoonflower & 25 rolls of wallpaper.

I looked carefully at all of the other print-on-demand services where my work was sold and decided to close all of them at the end of 2024. It ends up that the commissions I made there were not enough to pay for the time it took me to do the admin (updates, bookkeeping) on them. So goodbye to shops at Zazzle, RedBubble and Michaels MakerSpace. That might not sound like a lot of sales on Spoonflower, but I really only sell about half of what I design there. I have kept many designs for my own use; printing and selling finished products with my designs. Maybe it’s time to think about that too and make some more of those available. I’m not sure.

Wrap Up

Overall I am pretty happy with how the year ended up. My business and practice didn’t grow much “on paper”, but I think I learned a lot and I definitely feel a tipping point for letting go of some things and finding new ones. Now that I’ve looked at the year, I am going to spend some time figuring out what the goals for 2025 should be. I think having a spreadsheet was a great exercise and I have ideas of how to make it work better for me this coming year. I don’t know what my theme for the year is yet, but I was really struck by something Jon Chu (director of Wicked) said last night at the Golden Globes: “Making art that is a radical act of optimism”. That will definitely be a part of what I am thinking about in the coming year.

Friday.

The absolute best part of quitting my job and deciding to work for myself is being able to listen to my brain. Creative work can be exhausting and sometimes I just don’t have it in me. This week has been a lot of brain work: teaching, planning, designing and when I sat down today to figure out what my plan for the day was, I realized that I don’t have the bandwidth for more of that work. So I am going to finish up a little of the website design I was working on yesterday and then spend the day sewing. My boss (aka me) gets to make sure I can do my best work every day by listening to what I need to do that day. That never happened at my previous job.

My Etsy shop is pretty low stock on a number of things so I am going to see how many zipper bags I can make today. I have a stack that I cut out weeks ago, so that step is done, which means I can put on a season of something to watch and binge it while I sew. I get asked a lot who does my sewing and people are always very surprised when I say I do it myself. But sewing days are a much needed mental break from the intensive work of designing and planning. I’ve got a couple of brand new zipper bag designs and so I will probably post to Instagram throughout the day as I get those done. A long time ago I sat down with a stopwatch and timed myself and it took me 7 minutes to make a zipper bag start to finish and I think I’m even a little faster when I do a big batch assembly line style. Why time it? Because that’s the way I work out my prices. I have an hourly rate that I pay myself for sewing (it varies on how complex the item is) and that way I can make a realistic price that covers my time, the materials and a profit to pay for the overhead on my business, like that darn new email provider I have to budget for.

Lunch & art drop off

I grabbed a quick lunch and then I needed to jump in the car to drop off art for an upcoming exhibition. I have a piece that was accepted into an exhibit with a game theme, called “The Art of the Game” and I created a box inspired by the game Chutes & Ladders. You can see a little more about the piece “Likes & Follows” here.

Sewing

And back to the sewing machine and watching some episodes of Star Trek Discovery. I took a walk and mailed a couple of small things. I didn’t get a lot of things *finished* today but I did get a lot of things in progress. And that’s progress!

In March there is a month-long Instagram event called “March Meet the Maker”, started by Joanne Hawker. Each day there is a prompt like “brand” or “product story” or “tasks” and you post something about your small creative business that fits that prompt and tell your story. I have participated for a number of years, but this year I just couldn’t get very excited about it. Maybe the prompts were just too much the same as things I feel like I’ve said before. Maybe it was a little too product focused for me this year and I feel like my maker story is more than products. I’m not sure. So I decided that I would follow that up by doing a series here on my blog of “A Day in the Life” and talk about what my week is like.

One of my goals this year was to write more blog posts and it always seems to fall to the bottom of the priority list, so for the next week I am carving out a little time to check that goal off my list. People ask me very often “how do you do it all?” so here’s a little peek at how that happens.

Tuesday.

I got up and drank a very large cup of tea. Breakfast Assam is my favorite. Then I say “Good Morning” to Stanley, my yellow lab. This is a funny game he invented where he grabs a toy and marches round and round gurgle-growling his happy song while you say “Good Morning Stanley!” and scritch his ears. It’s part of his morning routine.

I then had breakfast and worked out. I never in a million years would have thought that working out would be a regular thing I did, but I have realized that I have hit the age where if I don’t do something with this beautiful body of mine it stages an all-out mutiny. And if I don’t do it right away in the morning, I will procrastinate all day and never get around to it.

Organization & communication

My art day starts by cleaning off my desk. I am messy when I work and I like to work that way. But I have discovered that it helps to start the day with a little less chaos. I do a round of checking and answering quick emails. Today was a solicitation to move my online classes to a new platform (no thanks), an email trying to get me to pay for some kind of marketing program (no thanks), the Zoom link for my class this afternoon and a notice that UPS will be delivering something when I am in the middle of teaching that class live on Zoom (arghh). I also popped in to all of my social media to see if there were comments to respond to or messages.

Class prep

I am teaching a Modern Blackwork embroidery class for Dakota County Libraries this afternoon. We do a virtual class program where I put together materials kits which they mail out and then we all get together on Zoom for the class. I love teaching online classes because people really have so much more flexibility to be able to take it from anywhere and make it work for them. And embroidery is so much better when you can see my hands close up on that overhead camera. I spent about an hour rounding up some photos, video and some other resources for class. I don’t usually do that the day of class, but I had a crazy week last week.

I stitched up the samples for this class a couple of weeks ago while I was listening to another meeting. I love when I can get a couple of things done at once because making samples takes up a lot of my days. When I made class kits, I also make one for myself and so I have a basket I will pull out with my class kit and I’ll be all ready to go.

Making some content

Once I had all of the class prepped, then I started to write this blog post. I also ran some updates on my website. I do all of my website work myself. I’ve taught myself how to do all of it, because I wanted to be able to update it whenever I want or need to. I know so many artists who haven’t updated their websites in literally years because they have to rely on someone “techhie” to do it for them.

Class setup & lunch

I teach many of my classes from my studio on Zoom. I have an articulated arm that is attached to my desk that holds my webcam and my overhead camera. (I wrote a whole blog post about my setup) I have a vinyl mat I put down on my desk surface because it is a bright red and white vintage formica table and it’s distracting on camera. Today is pretty overcast so I will pull out my extra light to make sure my desk surface is brightly lit. I’ll take a few minutes and make some brief class notes about things I don’t want to forget to mention and sketch out a rough timeline so I can make sure we are staying on schedule. I also have a whole checklist of devices to silence, shut down extra apps running on my computer and so on. Today I will put a post-it note on the door to let the UPS guy know that I am in class on camera because there is something I have to sign for.

Teaching class

I love teaching for Dakota County Library because my students are always so awesome. This was a two hour class and I think we had a lot of fun. When I first started teaching virtual classes I was really thrown off by everyone turning their cameras off. It’s really challenging to teach to an entire panel of black rectangles with no feedback. But I have gotten so used to it now that I don’t even really notice anymore. Today’s class was an unusual bit of chaos. My husband and I both work at home usually, but he had a meeting to go to today, so the labrador decided he was lonely and pushed into my studio just before class started. He was a very good boy but he kept scratching and wiggling the table and my whole camera setup. He has allergies and this time of year with spring mold is terrible. I kept poking him under the table with my toe while I was trying to carry on teaching. Then out of nowhere my camera crashed and my video froze. In 4 years of teaching with Dakota County, this is the first time that’s happened! I got it back up and running in about 3 minutes, but it was unexpected. After class I usually take a half an hour to just zone out. I make a cup of tea and read a book. It takes a lot of work to keep up the engagement and energy of a class when you have blank screens on the other side. No complaints! I don’t need anyone to have their video on, but I just know I need a few minutes to recharge after a class. Then I take a few minutes to put away the class pieces; I’m teaching this one again in a couple of weeks so I’ll need the samples and materials again. Then I post a photo and a thank you to my students on Instagram and check any emails that came up while I was teaching.

Drooling

While I was teaching I got two samples of Spoonflower’s new metallic wallpaper delivered; that was the UPS package. I seriously want to drop everything and make a couple of books covered with this new paper. It’s seriously gorgeous. I can’t wait to try it, but I have other things that have deadlines.

Etsy Orders

Next is a check-in on the Etsy shop. I usually make a post office run everyday about 4:00 if I have orders to ship out. Today I was skunked. Nothing to mail.

Class launch

I didn’t have time to get to it earlier today, but the rest of my work day will be spent launching my new Strawberry Needlebooks class on my website. The live Zoom version of the class starts next week, but I also offer an on-demand version on my website that’s pre-recorded. I have it all put together except turning on the registration page, so that’s what I’ll do next. I collected emails from people who wanted to be notified when the class launched so I’ll send that out too.

Sadly, my newsletter got absolutely trashed last week by blacklisting. I use a shared server to send the newsletter email and someone sent a whole bunch of spam from it at some point, which meant that it is blacklisted everywhere and probably more than half of my emails went into spam filters or never made it to inboxes. You should see all of the spam reports and block notifications I got. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do to fix that. I’ll be honest and say it’s pretty devastating when that happens and I am beginning to realize that it’s going to keep happening with this particular email service. I was counting on the newsletter for more class registrations and hardly anyone got the email. So I’ll also make some social media posts and take photos for some more to post later in the week promoting the launch of the on-demand class. Researching a new email provider is on my agenda for later in the week.