At the beginning of the month, I decided to take my hulking new Epson printer (AKA Bernard) for a test drive. Once we worked out how to stop him biting chunks out of the paper, he started spitting out the most gorgeous prints. The beautiful pigment ink combined with some Canson velvet fine art paper (of a weight and texture similar to that of watercolour paper, only a little more subtle) made it hard to tell apart my hand drawn ink pieces from the prints. Now, you have to remember that, for many of these images, I have only ever seen them on a cold computer screen, so printing them out has suddenly given them a whole new life. It has also given me the confidence to finally start up my Inklining Etsy shop.
Behind the scenes of our photo shoot with its frequent kitten interruptions. Pictured is the Wolf and the Moon A4 print.
I am lucky enough to have my own in-house photographer at my disposal. My partner - the amazingly talented Alex Weltlinger - and I had fun throwing together a little set for my in-situ images. In reality, the image above is our coffee table with some planks propped up behind it.
Whilst Alex worked his magic, my job was to stand on a chair behind him, arms aching as I held up a foul smelling old sheet to block out the light from our back window. This job wasn't made any easier by our not-so-small kitten scaling the sheet and biting my ankles.
Our flat lay composition for the original art from the Blind Tarot. The card pictured here is the Seven of Wands.
As well as the prints, I will be selling the original ink images of some of my earlier cards and artworks. It's a little sad to give them away, but I would rather they find a home than sit rotting in a file. Now my main issues are:
- Listing everything. Hoo boy, that is going to take a while, but I am pacing myself and adding two or three a day to spread the workload and stop myself from becoming permanently cross-eyed.
- Working out prices. I think this is a fairly common problem, but I honestly haven't got a clue. If you think my prices are off, please don't be shy to let me know!
- Photo blur. I can't for the life of me figure out why my photos look blurry. They are fine once you click "zoom" but send me reaching for my reading glasses otherwise. Help.
- Shipping costs. Oh, the bane of being Australian. I sometimes think interplanetary shipping would be cheaper. But I am finding ways absorb this cost wherever I can to make international shipping viable and, with time, I will be able to add more exact shipping for more locations. On the plus side, I am making shipping free for my fellow Australians - it's such a rare treat to pay less for shipping than for the item itself.
I'm hoping I will quickly find my feet in this new venture, but if you have any feedback or if you are an Etsy shop owner with some tips to share, please let me know. And if you just want to have a sticky beak you can go ahead and check out my sparkly new shop for yourself.