With 2012 in the history books, it’s time to evaluate how my year in art went. I started selling my art to benefit St Jude in April of 2011. To date, I’ve raised over $5,000! The day I decided to sell my art and donate the proceeds to St Jude was enlightening. In one day, I figured out how to do something I truly enjoy while realizing another goal of mine, supporting a worthy cause.

So, 2012 is over. How did the year go? I had two big sales events for the year, the Fall Fest at St Francis, and the MEMShop holiday pop up event with ISM. I nearly achieved my goal of $2500 for the year between those two events alone. On top of those two sales events, I had a large custom order for a wedding earlier in the year. Slow but steady orders throughout the year got me to a total of about $2800. This is a little more than last year, but that was my goal. I would love to keep the trend of more raised year over year, we’ll see how this year goes.

What have I learned this year?

• There are items that I would love to make that take too much time, and don’t have enough profit. I keep trying with the picture frames. But they are my lowest profit item, and I didn’t sell that many this year. I’m not sure I’ll keep making them
• I should keep making the things that I like. It is so much easier when it doesn’t feel like work.
• I may not be charging enough for my work.  I keep making things, and I kind of want them gone as soon as I’m done, so I price them fairly low.  This may be working against me.
• Everything doesn’t have to be perfect. That was a shocking moment for me when I made something that didn’t have straight lines, and had other imperfections. This was the painting that changed my view on imperfection:

What happens in 2013?

• I WILL improve my time for the half marathon this year. I plan to lose a bunch of weight so I can walk/run it.  And I’ll raise more money this year than last.
• I may change things up a bit and split my profits between multiple worthy causes.
• Bigger paintings!
• Making the jewelry / mirror wall hangings that keep haunting me.  And charging the right price for them.
• Social marketing (including this blog) to expand my fan base

Let’s see how things go…