No Doilies for Dollhead

By zendotstudio 

I've been hanging out in a place where people have names like Dollhead and CrayonMonster or there's my lovely friends Pogo and Crazypillow.  It's a place where your age or what you're wearing (or if you're wearing anything), or if you're cool or where you live or if you have ketchup on your chin doesn't really matter.  People there sometimes address me as "Zen",which I quite like and find flattering, or if they're being formal they might call me Zendot.  And to get there I don't need to ingest anything or bang my head on anything disorienting.  It's Etsy, kids, whatever the heck that stands for.  Your guess is as good as mine.

It's an online market with a nice cachet (no doilies) well maybe a few but they're called vintage now.  It's cheap, it's easy to set up and there's an interesting community aspect to it.  I won't say it's the best place to sell your art online (I haven't found that spot yet, let me know if you have)  but if you want to put on the book keepers visor and little rubber thimble thing, it's a pretty cost efficient arrangement.   And there are some amazingly talented souls cruising around out there in Etsy land.  I've seen some really impressive work.

It's grassroots, so there's no gallery snobbery crap going on there, no pretension, just people trying to make a living doing what they love and customers who'd rather shop for unique hand made things than Mallwart shlock.  It's kind of fun because people are out there trying to help each other out.  There's a thing that's called a "Sneak Attack".  Sounded kind of ominous when I first heard about it.  Oh no I better put on my flack jacket while I sit at my computer.  It's a swarming of the nicest kind where a bunch of Etsians descend  on a shop that has only a few sales and swarm them with purchases!  How cool is that!  And the cynic in me loves the Etsy Bitch Website where people get to complain about the admin stuff that goes on at Etsy.  I don't go there much, but I like the name and the idea that it exists.

And if I had to say a couple of  "other" things about Etsy I would say that visual art is the hardest sell out  there in the Etsysphere, but who's surprised there, it's just the internet mimicking real life.  A lot of trade goes on in jewellery  and silk screened Tshirts.  That being said art sells some and hey for 20 cents a listing who's complaining.  My other glass half empty observation is that there is an "Etsy look" which seems to sell.   I thought I was just being old and crabby and cynical but I saw someone banging the same stick on Etsy Bitch (see I do fit in somewhere, mom). 

So I really prefer to be zendotstudio and I like hanging out with people who call themselves Wry&Ginger or lotuseater.  Come visit me in my strange little world, you might even want to buy yourself a felt moustache or a soap from "Shineyourhiney"