Supporting Etsy is more than supporting artists

Do people realise that when you buy from an artist on Etsy you are doing more than supporting the artist? More than likely you are helping to support a family. In my case I try to use my art to help support my family so I can stay home with my children. Caleb is 7 and Egan is 5. I decided to homeschool them because of a their gifted curse. I call it a gifted curse because I really do not view it is a disability but it is not always a blessing either. See Caleb is Autistic and Egan is Aspergers (high functioning Autistic). They are both extremely intelligent boys but sensory wise have many difficulties. This makes normal school impossible. Did I want to homeschool? NOPE, I was totally against the idea prior to having children.

Because of the stress of not only homeschooling but doing so with kids who have different needs I need an outlet. Without this outlet I would surely go bonkers. I actually have two passions that keep me sane. One is creating beautiful woven soldered jewelry and the second is photography. The problem is in order to create one has to be able to sell. When the economy started going south so did jewelry sales. I had to quit creating which left a huge void in my life. Photography was able to fill a portion of the void but it was not the same. One cannot justify taking money from the family to buy materials if one is not able to sell them right?

This is a dilemma most of us struggling artists face. We have to be able to create but we have to be able to feed the family too. Without the ability to create many artists are left in a depressive slump which benefits nobody in the family.

A buyer must also understand why it is an artist is having a sale. Many buyers think that the artist having a sale means their items were overpriced in the first place. Personally I have sold some jewelry where the sale price was way below the cost of materials I had in it, meaning I lost money. Our time is valuable and so are the materials we use. Example this weave http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=7797084 takes me 20+ hours to make plus materials which means I am working for about $10.00 an hour after deducting cost of materials. Now if times are tough and cut the price by 50% does that mean I was overcharging before? Of course not, it probably means I must put food on the table or pay a past due bill or get a recent rescued animal shots and spayed. Sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures but this does not mean our work was overvalued before. When we have sales this is an opportunity for you to get a really nice piece of art on sale and help an artist out at the same time.

So please understand when you buy from any artist on Etsy or 1000markets you are supporting more than the artist. You are most like supporting children and pets as well. In my case you are supporting our family, our “unofficial dog rescue” currently at 5 dogs and our growing turtle rescue.

Please see the links to the right for links to my shops!