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So, I have recently become enamored with needle felting. I finally bought a kit and made a little dinosaur dude and then used the kit leftovers to make another slightly different one. These were Mr. Derp and Beatrice.
My boyfriend requested I turn Beatrice into a keychain for him. So I did. He took this to work and I received a text telling me that one of his coworkers thought it was cute and that she thinks I should start an Etsy. My response to this... "ma'am, that's a beginner project and you should maybe look up needle felting on Etsy to see why this little monster-thingy is unimpressive."
I have been unpacking this response to myself all morning.
It really feels like that's a kind of rude response. Or maybe a humble one if you look at it from a certain angle. I'm not sure. But like, I'm also not wrong. But also, I feel like this is a response that a lot of non-crafty people have been giving me my entire life... and also some crafty people, like my mom. But also... I craft specifically for fun and relaxation and I don't really want to get into selling the things I make. I will occasionally make custom Christmas gifts for my family but... not every year because making even that amount of things just starts feeling like a chore after a while. I'm not into crafting for the mass production side of things.
I feel like people whose response to any type of crafting is "You should start an Etsy" think that's a compliment but I feel like it's closer to the "Oh, you'd make such a great mom" kind of thing you get while babysitting. It feels like I'm being threatened with more than I can take on. You don't understand how much goes into things like Etsy stores and it's frankly more than I feel like I can or want to take on. The same way I can be a good babysitter but having my own child is just... no thank you. Do not want. I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but there it is.
I'm also not going to lie, I've also said "You should start an Etsy" to my mom. She's been trying to get me and my sisters into crafting since we were kids. We come from a long line of crafters, so this is not weird. I've done cross-stitch, drawing, painting, and now needle felting. My mom spent most of my childhood cross-stitching and now crochets a lot. And I mean, a lot. She made a friend of mine a plush in the five days I was at her house. We all got crocheted things for Christmas the last couple of years. She made my dad a Granny Bael plush for his in-person author appearances. It makes sense to me that she should start an Etsy with just the sheer amount of stuff she makes. Not a thing, though.
"Etsy takes too much money from crafters. I won't "get an Etsy" or purchase from there." - My Mom
As a person who only occasionally shops on Etsy and isn't actually a part of any crafting communities, I don't know a lot about how Etsy actually works. I know they give you a space to sell your stuff and take some fees off the top. I have been hearing lately, though, that they've been charging too many fees for a lot of makers to continue using the platform. (My mom's quote came after I wrote this paragraph) That and figuring out shipping and things is a big reason for me not to start an Etsy. Again, I have no idea how any of that actually works, but I don't want to sell my stuff anyway so... much shrugging.
That brings me to another point: I craft for me and not for anyone else. Crafting, for me, is strictly a hobby. I don't do it very often and when I do, it's usually either something I wanted or a gift for a family member. Crafting is fun for me. It scratches a creative itch I can't get relief for anywhere else. I really feel like turning it into a side-hustle would leech the fun out of it. I don't want to leech the fun out of me leisure time, thank you. Even making a largish number of gifts for Christmas will often turn me off from doing it. It's just... let it be a damn hobby. We're living in a Capitalist nightmare world of "make money off everything you do" and it really just needs to stop.
I don't even make money off this blog! That's not to say I haven't tried. Google doesn't think my content is "high brow" enough. I don't do sponsorships because a) never been offered and b) I do this blog for fun and c) making it not fun means I stop doing it. I read or play or watch and share my opinions. That's it. For fun in my off hours.
I guess that's really my point with all this: if it's not fun, I'm gonna stop doing it. I put in my 40 hrs a week at an objectively not fun job. That's enough not fun for me. I gotta rest at some point and crafting helps me do that.
So basically: Stop telling crafters to get an Etsy.
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