I’ve got a little question and answer session today, don’t worry it’s not terribly long!

First I’ll answer a question that came in over the transom from Lakshmi…. “Are you still glad you quit crafting?”
Second – what’s the Honey scandal and how does it affect artists??
Third – what on earth is up with Meta???

Also yes I need to trim my bangs.

If you prefer reading to my silly vlogging (which includes rollerskating so stick around for the end!), the approximate text is in this post; I didn’t want to ramble so I tried writing it down, some bits got chopped and others reworded, but the gist is here.

“Are you still glad you quit crafting?”

Well Lakshmi, first off, I haven’t quit crafting. But a few years back I swapped my focus; I used to do about 98% cardmaking and crafts, and 2% sharing the art I really was passionate about. I had slowly tried to swap those percentages, and when it hit the tipping point and now I pushed to 98% of my passions — because you get no rewards in this day and age for being halfsies. I struggle enough with being all over the place with mediums! I do still privately make cards and send out hundreds a year to patrons, to students – so though you dont see much on my youtube or social media, it doesn’t mean I’ve quit. But that brings me to a question that’s behind Lakshmi’s: Was it worth it to make the change? And I would have to say yes, but for some reasons that you might not expect. Lets count down the top 5 benefits i found: 5. It’s far less expensive and less complex to create now. I can grab a piece of paper and a medium and just go to town. I don’t have to figure out what stamps, which paper and ink to go with them, will it fit on a card? No more constraints – and I’m not going broke on stamps. 4. I create what I want when I want. I had been going into a mental health crisis over trying to keep up with what everyone demanded of me. I wasn’t creating things *I* wanted to make. I had lost my desire to make art at all. ANd now? theres not enough hours in the day to create all I want to. 3. There’s no more panic when I head into my studio. I had become exhausted with the monthly mad rush of product releases from dozens of stamp companies. Everyone had flowers, bears, foxes, and unicorns, and they were all looking the same. You might remember I had to put a halt to being on distribution lists because I felt guilty when I didn’t like products,but that I was expected to use them and say they were the best just like every other influencer. It was better when I got off those insane lists, and people started trusting my recommendations as honest more after I was purchasing my own supplies. But still, I don’t miss that monthly rat race one iota. 2. A more mixed community is developing.I once only had cardmakers who only wanted to talk about supplies and tools. If I didn’t show a new release or have a giveaway, not many people cared about what i was doing. The change in focus meant I lost some folks in the cardmaker camp, but now – most everyone’s more interested in the artmaking process and the USING of tools, not just collecting them in rainbow colors because they’re new and so and so said they had to have them. We’re all different types of artists but we’re finding more of what we have in common. And I love that. 1. I’m really growing as an artist. While I did a lot of drawing scenes “around” stamps, it wasn’t just pick-up-a-pencil-and-go drawing. It wasn’t challenging me. And I do best when I’m pushed and learning! Im in a weekly life drawing group and rocking it. i’m even drafting a drawing book with my patrons, and that’s giving me more clarity about what I want to teach and how, than I expected. Link below if you want to see what that’s all about. While I’m sad for the lost friendships of ppl who left when I made the shift, I’m mostly heartbroken for what they’re missing. I’ve seen enough of you who’ve started to learn, to grow – and have put down the stamps long enough to realise you can make paintings and drawings on your own! That is INSANELY more satisfying than just handing people a step by step shopping list and tutorial to replicate me exactly. Now I get to watch yall soar like birds taking flight out of a nest you thought you were stuck in forever. And THAT is what I call satisfying work. So Lakshmi, I’m glad I did make that transition, as hard as it was. There was loss, but I’ve come to where I think the gains are only growing.

The Honey scandal

Now lets get to the scam…. affiliate links are as much a mess as I had screamed into the abyss yearrrrrs ago. the short gist – Affiliate or commision sales are when an artist posts a link with a code embedded in it, and when you shop, the retailer pays a commission for referring the sale. I’d watched those commisions TANK back in the late teens before I had made the transition,so it wasn’t just losing the stamp sales that caused the drop. What’s been happening is a giant scam. There are these apps/browser add ons or extensions, and they tell you it’ll find the best coupon code price for you when you’re ready to hit the CHECKOUT button. But it turns out there’s shenanigans. Typically “last click” before checkout gets the commission. So you fill your cart from various recommendations, and whichever is the LAST link you clicked before hitting the checkout gets credit for the whole sale. And the Honey app, along w similar ones out there, figured out how to scam everyone. Right when you tell the app to go find a coupon, they secretly change the affiliate code and put in their own/ So rather than getting my normal commissions,my income fell to about 10% of what I once had made each month. And its not like yall stopped shopping! These browser extensions also don’t always give you the best price either – the store can tell it which code NOT to show you. So all around it’s a scam. A guy on the megalag channel did his own private investigatoin and details how this is done in the video link below. And go uninstall those browser apps because really, in addition to not wanting to get scammed or to enable them to steal from other artists – you do NOT want to volunteer ALL YOUR ONLINE SHOPPING INFO to any company do you? Yes theres a compnany behind these apps, its not just a little function on your browser. Google for coupons yourself.

Meta’s terrible meltdown

And then….we have Zuckerberg promising to make instagram and facebook even worse than they are right now. I mean, getting rid of the fact checkers is getting more attention but honestly they were pretty useless the way they were implemented anyway….but the things they’re now going to allow in discourse on Meta platforms are atrocious. The new list of permitted terms referring to women, disabled children, immigrants, other races, anyone you don’t like and want to demean – all kinds of classes of people can now be called names usingh words our mamas taught us not to utter because they are SLURS! I mean to call disabled kids the R word again!??? I gotta peace out of that mess.

So I’ll be mostly leaving Meta. My stance right now is that I’ll post 2x a week on fb and ig on the days I have a video going live.But I’m no longer going to do my daily creative posts, reels, or teaching there. Just not feeding that beast. I’ll share those in other places, I will continue my daily sketches subscriptions, and posting even more regularly on Artventure, and some other platforms I’ve been experimenting with.

The Artventure alternative!

But honestly do head over to my community at Artventure. Get the app on your phone, plop it on your home screen so you remember to visit. I’ll be doing more teaching there, experimenting with live demos, and on January 25th our first open studio zoom of the year will experiment with easygoing critiques of student homework if youd like to submit a piece for that or a question i can answer, I may tackle one on wc brushes. And one of my local art buddies is going to bring one of her oil painitings in progress to get some feedback on it; she and I do that all the time in person but she said she’d happily be a guinea pig at open studio since she loves my critiques.

Artventure is free to join, and it’s got no ads, no algorithm, art from all kinds of artists in the community, all levels, all mediums. It’s kinda like social media used to be, but better.

Hope to see y’all there – and then back here on Monday morning because there’s something special going on with Olo markers next week, so we’ll talk about that then.