Pillow Comparison

Hi guys – 2 1/2 years later LOL Sorry about that. I think I’m spread too thin sometimes. My friends and family are always saying – “You should do Patreon or Redit too” or “Why not make this or that craft project too” Then they feel rejected when I try to explain that I just can’t  do more, that I need to focus on fewer things….but anyway…

Today I am going to compare the same art on 3 different pod sites, specifically the throw pillow. I am comparing them as a seller. I have not actually purchased these pillows. I just got curious about the different prices and wondering if it was apples to oranges.

I know these look different. The repeat options and file size requirements are different on each site.

We will compare price on the square throw pillow, just to keep it somewhat consistent. Since Society6 does NOT offer an option without the insert, these prices will be with the insert. However, Spoonflower and Redbubble offer the pillow covers separately as well, which seems to me, might be cheaper shipping.

AS of  4/16/2020

Spoonflower

$45.77 – $50.02  Depending on which style (knife edged or flanged) and which of 5 fabrics are selected – The size of this isn’t on here anywhere! Wow!

Celosia Velvet
Cypress Cotton Canvas
Linen Cotton Canvas
Organic Cotton Sateen
Silky Faille

Variations –

Lumbae – Flanged

Square – Flanged

Lumbar – Knife Edged

Redbubble

$28.36 – $51.50 Depending on 5 sizes. One fabric available – 100% spun polyester. One style available – knife edged.

16 x 16
18 x 18
20 x 20
24 x 24
26 x 26

Variations –

Floor Pillow

Society6

$29.99 – $44.99 Depending on size and indoor or outdoor. Available in 100% polyester twill fabric for indoor, and 100% spun polyester poplin fabric for outdoor.

16 x 16
18 x 18
20 x 20
24 x 24

Variations –

Roound Floor Pillow

Square Floor Pillow

Rectangular Pillow

Well – that makes everything as clear as mud!

I guess I like some aspects of each site better and some aspects worse. The fabric selection at Spoonflower is awesome. Since they sell fabric that makes sense. If I were doing up my living room, I might like my pillows to be velvet or sateen!

I dislike the fact that you can not just buy a cover at Society6 – Good Lord! How much will that floor pillow cost to ship?? If it’s not heavy – is it a good floor pillow? However, S6 is the only one offering a round floor pillow and I like that shape. I also like the fact that they have outdoor pillows.

Redbubble has more sizes and the uploading of art is so much easier – but that’s not important to a customer is it?

So there it is.

See ya in another few years … or days, who knows?

 

 

 

I fell for an ad on FaceBook…

So, I usually pass these things by. You know how it goes, The ad sounds wonderful but then you listen to 30 minutes of sales pitch with possibly 3% actual information. Or else you get your email spammed forever, 15 times a day. It basically steals 10 minutes of your time every day deleting stuff… You unsubscribe and curse the greedy b@$+@rd$. We’ve all been there right?

But in a weak moment I clicked on an ad for a free webinar about the art world by Brainard Carey. It said free, so why not?

I was SO pleasantly surprised! I am telling you this as a real person – I don’t know this guy from Adam. I am not getting a kick-back or anything.

Firstly, at the webinar time, I was sound asleep on my sofa. I had been up since 3AM working on releasing 2 new fabric designs and making some new album covers for my FB and Pinterest, so 1PM started to feel like 5PM and I crashed hard. I woke up at around 4, totally forgetting I signed up for the dang thing.

I rolled over to the computer to get back to work and saw the reminder in my email…Damn! I missed it! Oh well. But there, in the email, was a link to the whole webinar on YouTube! Awesome! I settled in to watch, fully expecting it to give little drips and drabs of actual information between some hard sell…it WASN’T.  It was a full hour of really GOOD information with a sales pitch for his classes at the end. I don’t fault the guy for trying to sell something. We all need to make a living. He’s not Mother Theresa. But it was proportional. It was a reasonable amount, and the sales pitch was interspersed with a Q & A from the audience.

And yeah, he did that thing where they say it normally costs 20 million dollars, but for a limited time… I don’t fault him that either, I guess that’s some tried and true sales technique, even though I roll my eyes a little.

But the information was real and very good. It went into how to approach art galleries and I could immediately see why I have been failing. I am going to go out and try a new way tomorrow. It talked about the dreaded “Artist Statement” and I am rewriting mine tomorrow too.

He talked about museums and it all rang true, going by the experience I have been having with the folks at SAM. He talked about how to approach a museum and it was very much like how my exhibit idea went down with those SAM folks…To me it’s about building relationships.

So, basically, to all the struggling artists out there, I think it’s worth it to check this out, even If, like me, you can’t afford the classes at the end. It’s informative and painless.

 

Updates

Hi folks. I was aghast when I saw that I haven’t blogged since June – sorry about that. (don’t you just love that word “aghast”?)

Well, a lot’s going on and I am running as fast as I can but still getting nowhere. Well, kinda nowhere. Nowhere with income, but a little somewhere with establishing myself as an artist. I guess being an artist is my heart’s desire, but the income part wouldn’t SUCK! I just got overdrawn at BofA for $3 and they charged me $70, the rat b@$+@rd$.

The GeoBulb has been a very satisfactory experience and it’s doing well – good response. In October there’s going to be a choice awards and I have lots of delicious hope about that. The votes are all cast, so we will see what we will see. This experience has made me much more gung ho to apply for competitions.

I just did the Flat Out Under Pressure competition run by the Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville. It was fun. The gist is – the art must be created in 24 hours! They stamp the blank canvas one morning and it’s due back finished the next.

I went to an exhibit at SAM last Thursday and I finally got to meet some of the folks I only knew through our email correspondence. That was great. The exhibit was “Paper Worlds” and I enjoyed it very much. If you are in the area I recommend this show.

So that’s what’s going on in the local art world in real life. It’s all encouraging. Little steps…but forward!

Meanwhile, #SAGE has been wonderful too. Honestly, folks, joining #SAGE was one of the best things I have ever done. Ya know, we have private pages in FaceBook as well as that public one. That public one is our storefront, basically. We also have a chat page and a color palette page.  The main idea of the group was about cross promoting each other. (here’s our public photo albums) With over 350K designs in Spoonflower, it’s really hard to be SEEN. Now there are 32 of us and we all promote each other. But it got to be so much more than that…

In the chat page we all encourage each other so much. We discuss designs we are working on. We discuss problems about the design functions at SF and other social media. We chat about other things going on in our lives. Folks post when they get a sale and we all cheer. This really means so much to me. I can’t even express it.

The color palettes FB page is where we work on palettes. One of the gals got the idea to make a common palette (by hex code). Once we agree/decide on one, the final work goes into the public page. We started with #SAGE Beach Colors – and the sewing patterns. The idea was, if we all designed fabrics with the identical colors, crafters and decorators would have an easy time with this palette because it’s all guaranteed to match! Now we have several, #SAGE WOD (World Oceans Day) – and the sewing patterns; #SAGE Summer Solstice – and the sewing patterns.; and #SAGE tea Party. (but that album isn’t up in FB yet – this is a partial collection in SF)

Meanwhile, back on my own social media, I have been working hard on making album covers for my biz FB, Chinaberries Central and my Pinterest Chinaberriespin. I wanted to have them look more professional and also to match each other.

 

I haven’t finished them all yet but I keep plugging. I would really value feedback on this idea. Does it look more professional? Do they look good? Will it make navigation of my pages easier? More inviting?

Another thing I tried was, I made a gif  to promote my fabrics, you know, hoping it would go viral and get 10,000,000 hits in an hour and make me famous LOL In my dreams, but here it is…

 

So that’s some of the stuff that’s going on with me as I try to “Build Chinaberries” Are there any other struggling artists out there that are on a similar journey?

Newest Fabric Designs

Here are my latest Fabric Designs:

https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/chinaberries_studio?sort=new