November + December in Ragonia 2020 (Patreon)

Hello Patrons and friends!! I hope you're having a cozy and happy December! I'm writing to you from the studio in my parent's basement, with a lovely candle lit and the fake fireplace spacy heater buzzing with warmth. It's rainy, icy, and grey outside, and it makes it that much comfier in the studio.

I'd love to share a big welcome to our new patron friends for November and December, HELLO and WELCOME to Amanda, Anika, Ariana, Pandora, Vanessa, Dan, Cora, Maria, Mackenzie, Katie, Gabriella, and Kelsey! Feel free to comment on any posts, introduce yourself in the Community tab, or shoot me a message any time! I hope you love it here!

You might be able to guess it's been a pretty crazy month, but I wanted to pop in with a slightly shorter update on the goings-on with my arty career this season. I've added the photos as a gallery at the top rather than throughout the post and I'll try to be brief with the updates! Hopefully you still enjoy the update, and maybe even enjoy the shorter format? 

+ HP Magic Made Printable! My second highest paying client project yet (after the book advance) was completed last month and I'm so excited about the results! HP (or rather a sub-contracted marketing agency working for HP) hired me to make a set of seven illustrated printable activities for a campaign for the printer company. I think most of them came out awesome (some feel just okay, but that's the way it goes!) and feels like a push forward for my style and technique. 

Feel free to click this link if you'd like to print them for yourself, and be sure to check out the other awesome artists who were part of the campaign (Susann Hoffmann, Apple Cheeks, Have a Nice Dayy!)

I'm hoping for many more client projects like this in the future, they give you so much freedom for your designs and pay very well. The only downside is they can have tight turnarounds (one day/one week) and can be slow with correspondence, but if you factor that into your charge they're absolutely worth it.

+ Kotn Sweatshirt Collaboration! As mentioned last month and all over my Instagram, I was offered a collaboration with a Canadian ethical clothing manufacturer called Kotn. I provided a design, they manufactured a sample and sent it to me, I photograph it and advertise a week long pre-sale, and then they handle manufacturing and distribution, and I get 25% of the sales.

I asked on my Instagram stories for feedback on what to put on the shirt and how, and the feedback really helped me quickly decide what to make! In the end we sold about 45 sweatshirts, with a profit of around $3000, and I get to keep around $800. It was a fun experiment for me, with okay pay for a large amount of advertising work. It would be more worth for me it in the future to order my own printed clothing items and keep all of the profit, but it was great to learn that there was demand from my customers for items like this!

+ Holiday Portraits! This year I had about 25-ish orders for holiday portraits! Although simplifying the style and increasing the price to $100-$200 helped make offering portraits a little more worth the work, I still feel like the price for the time is too low. Next year I may experiment with either simplifying them further and keeping the price or simply increasing my price by a lot. Or not doing portraits at all! We'll see!

That said I still have a great time making these portraits, and most of the customers were SO sweet and enthusiastic and lovely. (If you commissioned a portrait, THANK YOU!) 

+ Black Friday 2020! I had my annual holiday sale! I had a peak of 50 sales that week, and about 30 orders per week since. Not a huge increase from last year, but sales this year have been much steadier. I can feel self-conscious when I see other artists with hundreds of sales, but I'm okay with it. I've come far and there's still room to grow. 

+ Moving back to Washington! We've been very fortunate to be able to stay in my parents basement in my hometown of Fredericksburg, Virginia since September. We've gotten to spend time with my parents during the pandemic, work in a lovely studio space, and enjoy long walks in the woods. In January we'll be making the drive back to Washington again and finding a new apartment before we both have work deadlines in late February. The work of moving begins again!

+ H O L I D A Y   P A R T Y !

To celebrate the holidays, my 27th birthday, AND to say THANK YOU for your continued support this year this Friday we'll have the second annual Patron Holiday Party!

But this time, it'll be hosted on Discord and we'll have activities!!

I'll send the invitation out right after this update, but if you're really excited you can go ahead and join the Private Discord now!

I hope you can make it to the party, I'm so excited to hang out again!

+ That's all! Things are wrapping up in the next week or two, I'm excited to take some time off to relax with my family before jumping back in to moving and moving prep. 

If I don't get to see you at the Holiday Party this Friday, then I hope you have a wonderful and safe remainder of your December and beginning of January. The next time I post I'll have driven back across the country to Washington, and I'll have my annual Year in Review for you to read!

See you then, friends. Stay safe and cozy, and happy holidays!