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8 January, 2026

A Handmade Business Recap: Looking back at 2025

2026-01-08T18:22:27-06:00An 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.

6 November, 2025

New Cow and Highland Cow Embroidered Felt Ornament Patterns!

2025-11-13T22:00:32-06:00Embroidery, 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.

16 July, 2025

Adapting to a New Spoonflower Color Profile (Argh!)

2025-07-16T10:02:32-05:00Everything Else, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Adapting to a New Spoonflower Color Profile (Argh!)

If you follow me over on Instagram you might have seen a series of photos I posted about Spoonflower’s new color profile that they adopted earlier this spring. It was a complete surprise to me when I got an order of fabric in designs that I print all of the time to see that some of the colors in my designs shifted dramatically. Here’s what I mean. The colors I expected are on the top; the new fabric is the colors on the bottom.

For some designs this might not really matter, but when I sell these zip bags in my Etsy shop, my customers expect to get a pink bag when they choose a pink bag, not one that’s the color of grape candy.

I spent a lot of time talking to Spoonflower’s tech support and their philosophy behind making the color shift is to make the colors that print better match the colors that show on your screen. I think this is an impossible task because everyone’s screens are completely different. This is a photo I use in classes a lot when I teach about fabric design. It’s the same exact file pulled up on my laptop screen and my phone screen. They look wildly different. If I have everyone in class open this same file and if we step to the back of the room, we see 15 different shades of aqua on 15 different screens. So I think what they are trying to do is an impossible task, but I totally understand that it’s important to their average customer. You want to get fabric that looks like it does on the screen when you order it. So I don’t have an argument with what they are trying to accomplish, but rather how they went about it.

I don’t expect this shift again any time soon, and I totally understand that with print-on-demand that there is going to be some variation. But some of the colors I was working with were more than just a “little variation”.

I decided that the best (and certainly not easiest) solution for me was to re-color my designs. Some of these zip bag designs I have been making for years, so they “should” be a certain color. So I got a new colormap so I would have a physical copy of what the new colors looked like when printed and I could easily compare to the colors I was used to.

I started by making a spreadsheet and recorded the main color for each of the designs. For example, the “Be-ewe-tiful friendsheep” design below is #7473BE in my original design file. That’s a lilac purple color. But instead of printing as a lilac color, the new fabric I got was cornflower blue. You can see the old and new versions on the left in this picture. Those are the same HEX code but printed before and after Spoonflower’s software update.

Next, I put my old and new colormaps side by side. That’s what you see at the top of this post. I found the original color (#7473BE) and then found a new color on the new colormap that I thought best matched the original one. In this case, that was #9777D0. Then I changed the color in my file to the new HEX code. Repeat this for about 40 different designs.

Then I uploaded new versions and re-printed all of my re-colored designs. On the right above, you can see the original color version and underneath is the new color version. The new lilac is slightly warmer, but it’s perfectly acceptable to me as a little variation. Most of my new colors worked out great. I have a few I need to try again. It has taken me about 15 hours so far, 6 weeks of diagnosing the problem and waiting for samples, and 4 yards of re-printed fabrics to get most of them back to printing the colors I expect them to.

The thing that’s the most frustrating about this whole situation is that in the end it is going to probably be about 20 hours worth of work that no one but me is ever going to know about or benefit from, that I certainly wasn’t planning for in my schedule and that I am not getting paid for. My Etsy shop is super low on inventory because I had to do all this work behind the scenes. Today I am sewing up some of the successful samples so I can re-stock a few things in my shop, re-photograph a few that I couldn’t get a color match, and then I’ll sit down to revise again on a few others. In my last newsletter, I talked about ripple effects and this is certainly a great example.

If you haven’t printed anything with Spoonflower in a while I recommend you get a new colormap and order a swatch of a few designs, especially if you have ones that are predominantly pink, purple, or cool blues.

30 June, 2025

Ask me anything: Bright spots in your work day

2025-07-02T12:16:49-05:00Ask Me Anything, Everything Else|Comments Off on Ask me anything: Bright spots in your work day

In an “Ask Me Anything” post, I pull out a card from a conversation starter deck and answer it. Today’s question is “What is something that happens at work that makes your whole day better?”

I work a pretty unusual kind of job. I don’t have co-workers; there’s no water cooler. Usually it’s just me and my computer and that can feel pretty lonely some days. So the thing that absolutely makes my day is when someone takes the time to comment on something I’m doing. Whether it’s a comment on Instagram, a reply to an email newsletter or a note with an Etsy order, I LOVE those little micro conversations.

Last week I filmed some video as part of Etsy’s 20th birthday celebration. One of the questions they asked was a favorite memory about having an Etsy shop and I said it was absolutely the customer conversations in the notes with orders. It makes running a business so much more like a community! They didn’t use that video clip yet, but here’s the first one they put together and mine is the very first intro.

30 May, 2025

Ask me anything: Animals!

2025-05-30T09:28:46-05:00An Artist's Life, Ask Me Anything, Everything Else|4 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with something to talk about when I sit down to update my blog and I really don’t want to write a tutorial for something every week. So this week I got a deck of cards called “Delve Deck” that are conversation starter questions and I picked out the “Joy edition” because that was one of my themes for 2025: bring more joy. So when I need something to talk about, I am going to pull out a card and answer the question.

This week’s question is about my favorite animal. I love making art with animals, which you might have noticed if you have been following my socials lately and seeing the eye glasses cases I’ve been working on. (They are going to eventually be part of an animal alphabet book!)

My favorite animal: leafy sea dragons!

Leafy sea dragons are a kind of seahorse. If you’ve never seen one, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has some great videos. I love how peaceful they are. I love that they are so delicate and etheral-looking with their leafy appendages. I’ve always loved anything dragon related since I was a kid, so when I discovered sea dragons, I was absolutely smitten. Any chance I have to go to an aquarium that might have them, I head right to the seahorse exhibit.

I have designed a great leafy sea dragon fabric, which you can find at Spoonflower:

What’s your favorite animal? Have you ever seen a leafy seadragon?

20 March, 2025

How do I Start to Learn Hand Embroidery?

2025-03-20T17:19:48-05:00Embroidery, Everything Else|1 Comment

I had a great email question a few days ago from a person who wanted to know how to get started learning to do hand embroidery. A friend of hers had taken several of my classes and said “Talk to Becka!” but she didn’t know what to choose. So I thought it would be helpful to write a post to help everyone find the right place for you to get started learning to embroider with me. I teach in a whole bunch of different formats so it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you like to learn in-person, online, from a book, from a pattern, or one-on-one, I’ve got everything broken down so you can find the right fit for you.

Beginners start here.

  • Check my Classes & Events page for upcoming Zoom and in-person classes. These class projects usually feature 1-3 different stitches so you can get an idea if you like to embroider and all of the materials are included so you don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of tools and materials.
  • If you like to work from written instructions, then check out the patterns in my Etsy shop. The Sheep, Cat and Dog are especially great for beginners. These patterns need just basic materials like scissors, needle, thread, and some felt and they have a QR code link to demo videos of each stitch.
  • If you like to work from videos, then look on my Online Classes page. The Tropical Fish Bag or Sashiko Inspired Squares are great beginner classes. These each have a printed fabric panel with guidelines on it to help you make your stitches. You can order these from my Spoonflower shop and use any embroidery threads you have already.

Then try…

Ready for a challenge…

About me

Becka Rahn

Fabric designer • Spoonflower Handbook co-author • Teaches classes in Photoshop, fabric design, Spoonflower, hand embroidery, artist business skills, book arts, surface design • Etsy seller • Artist • NO AI

Minneapolis, MN

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