Everything Else

16 July, 2025

Adapting to a New Spoonflower Color Profile (Argh!)

beckarahn2025-07-16T10:02:32-05:00Everything Else, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|0 Comments

If you follow me over on Instagram you might have seen a series of photos I posted about Spoonflower’s new color profile that they adopted earlier this spring. It was a complete surprise to me when I got an order of fabric in designs that I print all of the time to see that some of the colors in my designs shifted dramatically. Here’s what I mean. The colors I expected are on the top; the new fabric is the colors on the bottom.

For some designs this might not really matter, but when I sell these zip bags in my Etsy shop, my customers expect to get a pink bag when they choose a pink bag, not one that’s the color of grape candy.

I spent a lot of time talking to Spoonflower’s tech support and their philosophy behind making the color shift is to make the colors that print better match the colors that show on your screen. I think this is an impossible task because everyone’s screens are completely different. This is a photo I use in classes a lot when I teach about fabric design. It’s the same exact file pulled up on my laptop screen and my phone screen. They look wildly different. If I have everyone in class open this same file and if we step to the back of the room, we see 15 different shades of aqua on 15 different screens. So I think what they are trying to do is an impossible task, but I totally understand that it’s important to their average customer. You want to get fabric that looks like it does on the screen when you order it. So I don’t have an argument with what they are trying to accomplish, but rather how they went about it.

I don’t expect this shift again any time soon, and I totally understand that with print-on-demand that there is going to be some variation. But some of the colors I was working with were more than just a “little variation”.

I decided that the best (and certainly not easiest) solution for me was to re-color my designs. Some of these zip bag designs I have been making for years, so they “should” be a certain color. So I got a new colormap so I would have a physical copy of what the new colors looked like when printed and I could easily compare to the colors I was used to.

I started by making a spreadsheet and recorded the main color for each of the designs. For example, the “Be-ewe-tiful friendsheep” design below is #7473BE in my original design file. That’s a lilac purple color. But instead of printing as a lilac color, the new fabric I got was cornflower blue. You can see the old and new versions on the left in this picture. Those are the same HEX code but printed before and after Spoonflower’s software update.

Next, I put my old and new colormaps side by side. That’s what you see at the top of this post. I found the original color (#7473BE) and then found a new color on the new colormap that I thought best matched the original one. In this case, that was #9777D0. Then I changed the color in my file to the new HEX code. Repeat this for about 40 different designs.

Then I uploaded new versions and re-printed all of my re-colored designs. On the right above, you can see the original color version and underneath is the new color version. The new lilac is slightly warmer, but it’s perfectly acceptable to me as a little variation. Most of my new colors worked out great. I have a few I need to try again. It has taken me about 15 hours so far, 6 weeks of diagnosing the problem and waiting for samples, and 4 yards of re-printed fabrics to get most of them back to printing the colors I expect them to.

The thing that’s the most frustrating about this whole situation is that in the end it is going to probably be about 20 hours worth of work that no one but me is ever going to know about or benefit from, that I certainly wasn’t planning for in my schedule and that I am not getting paid for. My Etsy shop is super low on inventory because I had to do all this work behind the scenes. Today I am sewing up some of the successful samples so I can re-stock a few things in my shop, re-photograph a few that I couldn’t get a color match, and then I’ll sit down to revise again on a few others. In my last newsletter, I talked about ripple effects and this is certainly a great example.

If you haven’t printed anything with Spoonflower in a while I recommend you get a new colormap and order a swatch of a few designs, especially if you have ones that are predominantly pink, purple, or cool blues.

30 June, 2025

Ask me anything: Bright spots in your work day

beckarahn2025-07-02T12:16:49-05:00Ask Me Anything, Everything Else|Comments Off on Ask me anything: Bright spots in your work day

In an “Ask Me Anything” post, I pull out a card from a conversation starter deck and answer it. Today’s question is “What is something that happens at work that makes your whole day better?”

I work a pretty unusual kind of job. I don’t have co-workers; there’s no water cooler. Usually it’s just me and my computer and that can feel pretty lonely some days. So the thing that absolutely makes my day is when someone takes the time to comment on something I’m doing. Whether it’s a comment on Instagram, a reply to an email newsletter or a note with an Etsy order, I LOVE those little micro conversations.

Last week I filmed some video as part of Etsy’s 20th birthday celebration. One of the questions they asked was a favorite memory about having an Etsy shop and I said it was absolutely the customer conversations in the notes with orders. It makes running a business so much more like a community! They didn’t use that video clip yet, but here’s the first one they put together and mine is the very first intro.

30 May, 2025

Ask me anything: Animals!

beckarahn2025-05-30T09:28:46-05:00An Artist's Life, Ask Me Anything, Everything Else|4 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with something to talk about when I sit down to update my blog and I really don’t want to write a tutorial for something every week. So this week I got a deck of cards called “Delve Deck” that are conversation starter questions and I picked out the “Joy edition” because that was one of my themes for 2025: bring more joy. So when I need something to talk about, I am going to pull out a card and answer the question.

This week’s question is about my favorite animal. I love making art with animals, which you might have noticed if you have been following my socials lately and seeing the eye glasses cases I’ve been working on. (They are going to eventually be part of an animal alphabet book!)

My favorite animal: leafy sea dragons!

Leafy sea dragons are a kind of seahorse. If you’ve never seen one, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has some great videos. I love how peaceful they are. I love that they are so delicate and etheral-looking with their leafy appendages. I’ve always loved anything dragon related since I was a kid, so when I discovered sea dragons, I was absolutely smitten. Any chance I have to go to an aquarium that might have them, I head right to the seahorse exhibit.

I have designed a great leafy sea dragon fabric, which you can find at Spoonflower:

What’s your favorite animal? Have you ever seen a leafy seadragon?

20 March, 2025

How do I Start to Learn Hand Embroidery?

beckarahn2025-03-20T17:19:48-05:00Embroidery, Everything Else|1 Comment

I had a great email question a few days ago from a person who wanted to know how to get started learning to do hand embroidery. A friend of hers had taken several of my classes and said “Talk to Becka!” but she didn’t know what to choose. So I thought it would be helpful to write a post to help everyone find the right place for you to get started learning to embroider with me. I teach in a whole bunch of different formats so it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you like to learn in-person, online, from a book, from a pattern, or one-on-one, I’ve got everything broken down so you can find the right fit for you.

Beginners start here.

Check my Classes & Events page for upcoming Zoom and in-person classes. These class projects usually feature 1-3 different stitches so you can get an idea if you like to embroider and all of the materials are included so you don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of tools and materials.
If you like to work from written instructions, then check out the patterns in my Etsy shop. The Sheep, Cat and Dog are especially great for beginners. These patterns need just basic materials like scissors, needle, thread, and some felt and they have a QR code link to demo videos of each stitch.
If you like to work from videos, then look on my Online Classes page. The Tropical Fish Bag or Sashiko Inspired Squares are great beginner classes. These each have a printed fabric panel with guidelines on it to help you make your stitches. You can order these from my Spoonflower shop and use any embroidery threads you have already.

Then try…

In my Etsy shop, the patterns for the Toad, Owl and Elephant are great for adventurous beginners. They make a great second project.
On my classes page, try out the Cactus Garden or Strawberry Needlebooks classes for a little more challenge. They are slightly more complex stitches that incorporate sequins and layered pieces. The Cactus Garden also has a printed panel to follow where the Strawberry Needlebooks class uses a washaway stabilizer that you can stitch through.
If you have a Skillshare membership, you can find my Candy Canes Two Ways class, Ice Cream Cones, and some bookbinding classes that also incorporate embroidery with paper.
I also offer private lessons booked through Skillshare. You can choose a specific stitch or project that you are trying to do and I will customize a lesson just for you. Just check out my Skillshare profile to see the details.

Ready for a challenge…

Try the Parakeet and Dinosaur in a Sweater patterns in my Etsy shop. They have more kinds of stitches and pieces to assemble.
Sparkling Snowflakes on my classes page is the most complex design to stitch. It only uses one color of thread, but many many more stitches since you repeat the rays of the snowflake 6 times. It has a printed panel to help you keep the snowflake symmetrical.
On Skillshare, I have three Advanced Embroidery classes that focus on a single complex stitch. You can check out Oyster Stitch, Lattice Stitch and Buttonhole Cable Chain.
If you like to learn from books instead, here are a couple of my favorites:
- Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery by Sharon Boggon Sharon includes photos for both right and left handed stitchers, which is so great!
- The Embroiderer’s Handbook by Margie Bauer
- Beaded Embroidery Stitching by Christen Brown (I have a slightly different edition, but this looks similar)

5 March, 2025

Embroidery Tutorial: Tying a Knot

beckarahn2025-03-05T11:52:46-06:00Everything Else|Comments Off on Embroidery Tutorial: Tying a Knot

A few posts back, I wrote a tutorial about how to prevent and untie knots in your embroidery, but sometimes you need a knot to finish off a row of stitches. This is the way I tie knots in thicker fabrics like felt or fleece where you can stitch just part way through the fabric without it showing on the front side. Here’s a video showing a short demonstration.

The step where you put the fabric down on the table and hold it with your fingers is actually more important than you might think. It’s easy, especially with felt, to pull or stretch the fabric as you pull on the thread. Holding it against the table, helps stabilize it so you are less likely to pull it apart.

If you have a thinner fabric, you can tie a knot the same way but you need to make that first anchor stitch a little differently, by stitching into the back of another stitch nearby or in a way that you can hide it under another stitch.

6 January, 2025

A Handmade Business Looking Back at 2024

beckarahn2025-01-06T14:02:43-06:00An Artist's Life, Everything Else|1 Comment

I haven’t done an annual wrap up of my art practice in a few years and I thought it might be time. For the very first time in 2024, I sat down and wrote a spreadsheet of goals for my art business. I don’t know why I had never done it before but I thought it would be interesting to try it.

I participated in a webinar about goal setting with a group of other craft business owners and even though they recommended it, I didn’t assign numbers to anything, but instead made a list of things I would like to accomplish and assigned them to months throughout the year. Why no numbers? Because I really feel like saying “I am going to increase my Etsy sales by 10%” is really something that has too many factors outside of my control. I don’t know what the economy is going to do, I don’t know what Etsy is going to change about how people interact with my shop, I don’t know what sourcing my materials is going to be like and none of those things have anything to do with what I am doing for my business. So instead I focused on the things I can control, like how many new classes I was going to design and release and what projects (like adding a press page to my website) that I wanted to finish.

My theme for 2024 was “Use what you have. Do it better.”

Classes & Teaching

I started my goals with what classes I wanted to teach. My spreadsheet had a goal of teaching about 40 different new classes between online and in-person offerings. That is about 3-4 every month, one released to my website or Skillshare as an online class and the others as in-person or Zoom classes. I am really delighted that I completely blew this goal out of the water. Last year I taught 88 classes. I was actually a little astounded when I tallied it up and counted it a second time. They didn’t fit into my calendar the way I thought they would and I didn’t quite get as many online classes up as I hoped to, but overall I hit the goal and then some.

The classes offered on my website as on-demand classes are definitely the least “successful” of the options. It is so hard to get these in front of the right audience and it feels like a failure; I’ll be totally honest. This is definitely something I am going to take some time to think about in 2025. I have a lot of feedback that people want to take on-demand classes but something there isn’t connecting. And I have had some comments that people don’t want to take classes through Skillshare because of the membership fee, but I have about 50 students there for every 1 that comes to my website.

I also had a Projects goal to create a refreshed “Proposal package” to send out to potential new class partners like fiber art guilds, conferences, and art centers with descriptions, prices, photos etc. I did not get that done, but actually ended up accomplishing what I wanted to with that project which was to get set up teaching with some new organizations. I have 3 brand new partners for 2025 and I reconnected with a couple that I haven’t worked with in a few years. So success, but just not in the way I envisioned it.

Online & In-person Sales

Last year I did a check-in on my best selling items because I felt like something was off. I revisited that and added the data for 2024.

The good news is that the totals in 2024 were a lot like 2023. These stats don’t include my Etsy shop, but my Etsy sales were within 4% of the year before. Interestingly my visits went down and conversion rate nearly doubled. Which means more of the right customers are finding my shop. I’d love to see it grow more, but holding steady is great.

A big difference I see here is that the kind of in-person shows I did changed a lot. I am thinking pretty seriously that I am going to phase out the wearables/accessories/scarves that I have been making for many years. They aren’t all included on this chart. They were very popular at shows prior to 2020 but customers and shows have changed and they just aren’t selling any more. I don’t want to make more because they aren’t really selling and the inventory I have starts to then feel stale. I am so sad about this, because I LOVE designing fabrics and making things from them.

One thing that’s not reflected in this chart is the number of shows it represents. From 2017-2023, I did about 4 in-person shows a year. In 2024, I did 8. Four were shows I do annually, 4 were new. That means that I did roughly the same in sales spread across twice as many events. When an artist tells you that their sales were low this year, that’s what they are talking about. I love doing in-person events and talking to people, but that was discouraging. (A big thank you shout out to everyone who did come to one of my in-person events!!)

I didn’t have any sales related goals in my 2024 spreadsheet because I don’t have a lot of control over that, but I did have some Projects. I cleaned up my Etsy shop, phasing out some things that weren’t selling or were more hassle than they were worth (embroidery kits, stickers) and adding some new items (books, large project bags). I bought a thermal label printer which has made packing orders quicker and having run the online shop for nearly 20 years that was a great little boost of positive energy, making the boring tasks seem a little more fun. I didn’t have it on my list of goals, but I converted 6 kits over to be .pdf patterns instead and those have been selling great in my Etsy shop. So even though people have told me they love the design and asked for kits, patterns are what they are really interested in buying. More of those for next year!

How I balance my business

Most of my goals relate to the way I balance my business. I realized early on in this adventure that relying solely on selling or teaching or exhibiting my art wasn’t going to work for me. I’ve made charts like this in years past and they always vary a little. I like to include grants as part of my balance, but in order to write a grant as an artist, you really have to have a big new project to apply. Right now they are all looking for you to create something new and engage people with that new thing and I really just didn’t have a big new project I wanted to do. I burned out a little on the last one I took on. So right now, this is how I balance. I added those 4 new in-person events to fill in that gap from grants and as I mentioned before I did a lot of new teaching. The “design” category includes things like graphic design contract work & website help that I do for other artists and non-profits.

Use what you have. Do it better.

My theme for 2024 really had to do with a lot of setbacks I’d had the year before. I had to switch up my classes & website hosting unexpectedly. Sales on bestsellers were unpredictable. So I decided to focus on using the tools I had more effectively versus adding a bunch of new things. This had mixed results.

My email service had a complete meltdown and I ended up moving my newsletter/email server to a different service. My emails were blacklisted and that caused ripples for months. I had goals about promoting my newsletter better and I just couldn’t do it because it was all in flux.

I took a bunch of classes on Skillshare about Pinterest marketing and tried to implement a lot of those suggestions. (Complete flop.) I took a couple of classes mostly for fun and skill building. I watched webinars about several different business topics that were mostly either too vague/basic or downright horrifying (ie using AI in your art.) I did meet my goals for learning & improving those areas but I didn’t really get the results I was hoping for in every case.

A couple of big-projects-that-I-can’t-share fizzled out because of circumstances beyond my control. I had time blocked out for them and they didn’t happen. On a super positive note, I got asked to do a couple of other fabric design projects completely unexpectedly and that was fantastic.

The biggest goal that I completely didn’t meet was to write here on my blog more. It just kept getting pushed to the bottom of the to-do list and I didn’t do it. This is definitely going to the top of the list for 2025 and I am going to try to structure the goal a little better. Maybe I need to assign myself topics ahead of time.

My top 3 designs sold for 2024

Other numbers of the year: I showed work in 4 exhibitions, sold 118 yards of fabric on Spoonflower & 25 rolls of wallpaper.

I looked carefully at all of the other print-on-demand services where my work was sold and decided to close all of them at the end of 2024. It ends up that the commissions I made there were not enough to pay for the time it took me to do the admin (updates, bookkeeping) on them. So goodbye to shops at Zazzle, RedBubble and Michaels MakerSpace. That might not sound like a lot of sales on Spoonflower, but I really only sell about half of what I design there. I have kept many designs for my own use; printing and selling finished products with my designs. Maybe it’s time to think about that too and make some more of those available. I’m not sure.

Wrap Up

Overall I am pretty happy with how the year ended up. My business and practice didn’t grow much “on paper”, but I think I learned a lot and I definitely feel a tipping point for letting go of some things and finding new ones. Now that I’ve looked at the year, I am going to spend some time figuring out what the goals for 2025 should be. I think having a spreadsheet was a great exercise and I have ideas of how to make it work better for me this coming year. I don’t know what my theme for the year is yet, but I was really struck by something Jon Chu (director of Wicked) said last night at the Golden Globes: “Making art that is a radical act of optimism”. That will definitely be a part of what I am thinking about in the coming year.

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