Yesterday my oldest daughter and I went to Seward. She has been itching to get out and go somewhere, and I needed to make a trip down to Seward sooner than later, so this was a great opportunity. I picked Saturday because the weather was supposed to be beautiful, and it did not disappoint. We had beautiful weather, mostly clear roads, and not a lot of traffic. It was a perfectly unusual trip because of the lack of people on the road and the beautiful weather the entire way down and back. My daughter is a photographer, she has taken a number of pictures that have become my paintings over the year, and she took many, many pictures this trip. I will share 3 of my favorites here, although I should probably let her pick. She took over 3,000 pictures and pared them down to 1,000, with 98 favorites. I am grateful she is willing to share her talent with me!
Now on to the adjustments. The reason I needed to go to Seward sooner than later was because the shop that I have sold my art in for the last 2 years was closing. The woman who owns it had some medical things that needed to be taken care of and needed to close the shop for an indefinite amount of time. I am so grateful for her willingness to display my art and sell it for me, it was a good location and my art did well in her shop. I pray for her speedy recovery and a healthy future. This loss of revenue as well as several other things has really gotten me thinking about how to sell my art more productively, and what direction I want to go in. Last year I was going to redesign my website, but wasn’t really sure which direction to go, so I didn’t change anything. But as I continue forward, I think I will be changing quite a bit.
I recently decided to open an Etsy shop with a number of art pieces to test the waters, and will hopefully have that up and running by the end of this coming week. Earlier today I was doing an unrelated internet search looking at the most searched subjects on the internet, and Etsy is in the top 50 for the world as well as the United States. Even though that was not what I was looking for, it caught my attention and helped me be more motivated to get that going sooner than later. I have also been debating on the price of my website. Because it is an ecommerce website, it does cost money. I have debated on whether to keep it that way, or just make it informational with links to my various other content, like Etsy and YouTube. I have not ever recouped the cost of the website with sales in any one given year. Just a side note, WordPress has been a great platform, easy to set up, lots of help videos for anything and everything on their website, and the price has not been astronomical. I was set up with a different hosting site and paid almost double what I pay for WordPress. Just in case you’re looking at opening an ecommerce site.
When I first started to sell my art I thought that more was better. I tried putting my art on everything from bags to lampshades, puzzles and playing cards as well as key chains and stickers and so on. Not everything was as productive as I thought it might be, and I lost money on several of those items. But, just like I wrote about minimizing my home last week, I have decided to minimize my art as well. I love painting and want to spend more time painting. I’ve decided I want to just sell my art, not all the other products with it. So I have decided to pare down to a couple of items. I will sell fine art prints on paper and canvas as well as my notecards. I am working on writing another book but don’t have a timeframe at this point for that, and my other books are available on a number of different platforms already so I might link to them but won’t sell them here either.
I’m not sure where I will be going with everything exactly, but I am going to take a step out into the dark and see where it leads, know that my Heavenly Father will light the path in front of me each step of the way, or see when I need to change directions when need be as well. I will still be writing my blog on Wednesday’s and Sunday’s. If you have any suggestions for website design, Etsy shop suggestions, or blog post topics you’d like me to write about, I’d love to hear your suggestions!
Stephanie Richey Art 
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