Zazzle Design Efforts Have Been in High Gear And I Want to Tell You About Them

So then I took The Whole Summer Off, Plus A Few Other Months For Good Measure. Today I'm resuming where I left off attempting to chronicle some of the journey with you here. I've been known to have some challenges with balance but I'm not going to belabor the point of how I should have been marketing all along, even while creating more designs. Instead, I'll tell you that I've learned so much this year, and am as excited as I ever was to have discovered Print on Demand (POD) as a creative outlet that also offers the potential for generating income. Before I move on, I'll show you some of the products I've designed that people have recently purchased. In no particular order:

I'll share even more at the bottom of the page. Since it's daunting to try and fill you in on All That Happened While I Wasn't Maintaining This Site, why don't I dip my toe back in the blogging waters with a few highlights instead?

  1. I streamlined my efforts and, through mountains of trial-and-error, plus countless hours of research, started learning how to create strategies for what I want to spend my time designing. I'm not locked into the strategies, but they're certainly helping.
  2. My last blog post tells you about one weekend in May when I designed nothing but postage stamps with the word "Love" on them. Somebody bought a bunch of one of those designs just yesterday, in fact! I'm still designing postage. It could be a little outrageous, the disproportionate amount of time I've poured into these designs. For some reason, that product has really captured my attention and I continue to be thrilled that I'm able to design my own postage stamps and also postage for other people's special occasions.
  3. Speaking of US Postage Stamps, this is the single product I've chosen to design that requires approval before the products are visible in my store. Months ago I also designed a few Zippo lighters which required approval as well. But I've since opted not to continue down that road. Postage, though? Oh yes. The ideas seem endless and I have much more to tell you, on that front, in upcoming posts here.
  4. Paper products, in general, have gotten much more of my recent design attention than the gift products I spent the first few months of the year designing. I love that I have the option to do either one, on any given day. This mood-driven creative loves Zazzle.
  5. It's been tricky to sort out my preferences where setting royalties is concerned. I'm feeling much more confident choosing the percentage for various products and these days I find myself going back to adjust royalties on pieces I designed in the first few months. Sometimes I go down; usually I go up.

If things go according to plan, I'll be blogging here even more in the coming days, so I'll wrap this up for now. I look forward to sharing some new designs with you as well as elaborating on some of the lessons I've learned while designing through Zazzle. They seem never to stop coming, and many of them, I suspect, are worth putting out there for interested others to find one day, too. For now, I hope you're enjoying some sort of creative endeavor for yourself!

Cheers!

Melody

Red, Abstract Digital, Grungy Art for Unique, Personalized Gifts

poets-fancy-digital-abstract-art-with-yoga-leggings-by-melody-watson-website-preview.jpg

"Poet's Fancy" on Leggings!

Click to read the original post about this design and available merch. Early days. Now more options with Zazzle!

This piece of digital art, which I called "Poet's Fancy" was one of the very first pieces I designed when I first got serious about designing for print-on-demand. I wanted to see what it would look like on leggings, and it did not disappoint. That was when I spent all my waking hours designing leggings and kimono wraps through Art of Where, and there's a blog post about the artwork over on my main website.

Since discovering Zazzle, and falling in love with not only the robust quantity of offerings available but also with their customization-enabling-capabilities, my efforts on this front has grown more exciting. But I have so far to go.

The banner above features my artwork with a nice little badge over it with a label inside. This is just the kind of badge I've begun designing for use on my monogrammed and personalized gift items. But when I was just getting the hang of things, I didn't necessarily design in this manner. And so many of the items you see available ONLY have artwork. Obviously, as She Who Created The Original Art Piece, I would love nothing more than for you to have something with my work on it. But if you could have that something AND get it printed with your name (or other slogan or phrase) perhaps you'd like this even better! That's where I dropped the ball and am frantically working to expand.

Here's a collection of newer items available with this artwork. (The blog post above already shared "right many" you could peruse.) But as you'll see, there are only a few options with personalization set up. Of course, folks comfortable with the Zazzle system, as it were, could definitely go in and customize the items on their own, with no help from me. I'm wondering if I shouldn't do a little "How To Video" one day to teach folks how easy it can be to add a badge and words to an existing design they've fallen in love with. For now, there hasn't been time, but it's on my mind. If you think you'd like to see such a thing, just let me know and maybe it'll move higher on the list!