New year, old resolutions!

As always, mine is trying to commit myself to the creation proccess, involving not only the making of new pieces, but discovering alternative techniques, learning to use some tools, exploring new materials, putting effort on the maintenance of the Etsy store, registering, updating and communicating the progress here and in the other channels where I share my work. This is a little exhausting, I'm not very active in social networks but I really want to do it because I feel the feedback and the resulting interaction is worth it. I'm going to talk about this later.

The last year I shutted down the store because I was not sure (I'm not yet) if some changes of rules on Etsy would fit my necesities neither I would fit their new business model, more focused I think on small/medium size companies instead of single artisans or crafters. I'm not in any of this categories, this is mostly a hobby and I like to keep it in this way, a relaxing but productive activity that finances itself. I make things because I want to see if I can, or to treat myself with something nice to wear, or to gift, or to sell, and if I sell something I reinvest it in new materials or tools. When this happens it makes me incredibly happy, but right now I don't want the commitment of make it bigger, or increase my production to try to obtain financial profit. It would be nice someday, maybe, but not right now.

Anyway, after many considerations, I have decided to take the risk of reopening it. I'm still trying to learn how to use the new features of Etsy and hoping this is not going to get me in troubles, but I have to recognize it, is nice to see the pieces exhibited and know people are coming in, sharing it, putting likes or hearts, or saying good job. 

I wanted to do more than reopen the old store, I wanted change some things I realized I made wrong back in 2011 when I first opened it, and I kept  postponing to fix later. I made a new logo (I was not able to find inspiration before and kept putting just a nice picture of a piece every time a page asked me for a banner/profile picture). 

It's not a professional work, but I like it. I hope it helps to keep a consistent visual identification everywhere. 

I updated the appearance of the store and started to make listings for the pieces. Some of this work was just reactivate expired ones, but I made a review of some things in the description. For some pieces I made the past year I had to do the entire process: take the pictures, write a description, choose tags, categorize it, add variations, price, shipping options, translate everything. 

Once it was for sale on Etsy, I started to communicate it to the world in all the sites and related pages I keep (the hard work). 

This post is part of this task and I enjoy writing about all of this, but It's also a little overwhelming to have so much places to fill with information. Sometimes I think that in the benefit of my mental health I have to choose just one, or just two, but every site has a quality I like. It is very simple to share a picture of a piece you have in your hand on Instagram, and Deviantart is a place where I can share a more technical view of the crafting process, and expect criticism from the point of view of other artisans. Here in the blog I can write about how everything is connected, or be really specific sharing a technique step to step. Seams logic to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, but in both cases I'm not so sure of how or why I should do it. I'm going to try to learn by forcing myself to use it and then choose if I'm going to keep it.

In the same way as with the logo, to have a more unified presence, I set a definitive name, Metal y Tinta (metal and ink), for all the sites and pages. Before, I was using my personal pages for this, and it made it very difficult for people to find my work and for me to tell people where to find it. Now I can say here it is:

**EMAIL** **STORE** **DEVIANTART** **INSTAGRAM** **FACEBOOK** **TWITTER**

Some, like the facebook page, are the same ones. Deviantart and twitter are new accounts so pretty much empty for now, but I'm working to fill it with some interesting things soon.

 And the new resolution for this year, I'm going to try to keep this blog in both Spanish and English. Wish me luck!