I men­tioned a while ago that my friend opened a shop across from the art col­lege we attend­ed, and I was rent­ing some space for my plush… I don’t think I’ve ever showed you pic­tures of my plush in the shop! 

Here they are! :D

 

 

That was back in April. I’ve added more stuff this past weekend.

Fierce octo­pus pins!

 

The pro­to­type had eyes made of beads from the gift pack­age that my friend sent me — they’re extra fierce, bul­gy eyes! So I had to keep it for myself :D

 

Close up of the extra bul­gy eyes…

 

Also made tea rose pins that can also be worn on a necklace.

 

And the updat­ed shop! :D

 

Mike brought the new items to the shop and took this pic­ture for me, because I did­n’t have time to go that day. If you look close­ly you’ll see that one of my snow mush­room lid has been pushed into the jar… I sup­pose a cus­tomer thought it belonged inside the jar rather than sit­ting on top of it. And I sup­pose that’s one of the risks of putting my beloved plush into a pub­lic, phys­i­cal shop. My friend kind­ly fixed it for me afterward. 

I actu­al­ly found it dif­fi­cult to walk away from all my plush­es when I put them into the shop. Felt like I was leav­ing them behind… :’( So I like sell­ing online for this rea­son, I can keep my plush­es with me indef­i­nite­ly, until some­one buys them. At the same time, sales have been extreme­ly slow at my Etsy shop, while quite a few things have gone to good homes at my friend’s shop. So I’ve been con­tem­plat­ing whether to keep the Etsy shop…

Also, I’ve been hear­ing a lot about unfair prac­tices on Etsy late­ly. The lat­est news came from one of my favourite crafters. 

I won’t repeat the sto­ries here (if you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing more please vis­it the above and fol­low­ing links), but I will cer­tain­ly join the protest, because a lot of what has hap­pened is sim­ply not right and our voic­es need to be heard.

Some believe that clos­ing our shops for one day won’t make a dif­fer­ence. My shop, for instance, will like­ly not make any sales on any giv­en day even when it’s open. Thus, its tem­po­rary clo­sure pret­ty much means noth­ing to Etsy in terms of profit. But I sup­pose by join­ing in the protest I can at least let the com­pa­ny know that I’m not okay with its unfair prac­tices toward my fel­low crafters and its inac­tion toward reselling.

Some expressed con­cerns that all the shops that are involved in the protest will be closed down by Etsy. I per­son­al­ly don’t believe that will hap­pen. And if that hap­pens then I will def­i­nite­ly not part­ner with an orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates through dic­ta­tor­ship and sim­ply seeks to elim­i­nate all expres­sions of oppo­si­tion. I sup­pose the stakes for me is not as high as arti­sans who depend on their hand­made busi­ness to make a liv­ing. So that’s all the more rea­son for me to con­tribute my voice to this protest, in the hope that things can change for the bet­ter espe­cial­ly for crafters and arti­sans whose inde­pen­dent busi­ness­es are their main sources of income.

Sup­port handmade!