Date joined etsy- 6/6/07
Sales to date - 937
Give us some basic info about you: name, where you live, kids/pets, favorite ice cream flavor, etc.Hi everyone, my name is Evelyn Garcia. I’m a student at San Jose State University working on my BA in Pictorial Arts. I love drawing, character design, painting and learn all types of crafts. I am currently single and I live with my sister and Dad in Northern California. Our last pets were 14 Gold Fishes, the smallest one was like 7” and a few others were close to 1 foot, that be had to give away the last time we moved a few years ago due to the not pets rent agreement :(
-Describe an average day in life of "you".
I usually get up around 6 am, eat breakfast, take a shower and get ready to start the day
8-11am check orders, e-mail and convos, post new items, pack orders (if any) and get all my school’s stuff ready to go.
11-12pm stop by the post office to ship orders and drive to school
12-6:30pm attend classes at SJSU (2 classes/day M-TH, Fridays off and Monday I have an extra class so I stay at school until 9:30pm)
6:30 - 8pm drive back home
8-1am eat dinner, watch TV, do homework, answer convos/e-mails and go to sleep
And I work on my custom orders and new items on Fridays and weekends :)
Were you creative growing up/what did you enjoy doing?
I’ve been creative as long as I can remember. As a child I enjoyed playing with mod to build and make all kinds of things like plates, baskets and other things to play dolls with my friends. I also enjoyed watching my mother making porcelain flowers to use on small floral ornaments. Since then I start loving everything related with handmade art and crafts.
What made you want to start selling on etsy?
I like to learn new crafts and art form and eventually I ended up with too many supplies and creations to keep them all at home. I knew they were decently well made, so why not selling them. I started searching about places to sell my crafts, many local craft fairs that I found were too pricey to join and they were only a few offer throughout the year. So decide it to look for an online place to sell my items. At first I though of selling on ebay but I knew that wouldn’t be the best option for handmade items and opening my own personal web site I will need to expend too much in advertising so people could find me. After a lot of online research and asking on yahoo answers I found etsy. I posted my first item two months after I first signed up.
-How long did it take for you to get your first sale on etsy?
It took about 2-3 weeks and a lot of hours at the etsy forums and chats to finally make my first sale.
At the beginning I made some trades to get to know people and see the quality of their items (I consider it a more research I guess ;) ) I soon figure out that I will needed to make an original product to stand out and make this a successful home-base business and not just an expensive hobby. After my 1st year selling on etsy and lots of researches I started make Owl ornaments around the Holidays. Fortunately they sold well and a few months later I came up with the idea of making owl cases and from then on the rest is history.
-Top 5 favorite foods, TV shows, and bands?Thai food
Pizza
Hamburgers
and home made food
TV shows:
Survivor
Project Runway
Criminal Minds
CSI Las Vegas and NCSI
Music:
30 Seconds to Mars
Linkin Park
Live
Lu
Three Days Grace
-Is there anything you'd like to try your hand at doing? Knitting, baking, soap making, wood working, an instrument, etc.
I love print making and so far I’ve learned Silk-screen and Mono-type printing, so next I will love to learn letter pressing and lithograph print making. I also will like to try glass blowing at some point.
-What would you suggest to new etsy sellers to promote their shops?
Be true to yourself, find something that you love to do and that you are really good at, so that your creativity and high quality standards will show up in your work and help you sell your items faster online. Keep working on your photos, must of us are not professional photographers so is hard to start with great photographs but eventually you will find something that works for you, they may not be the best photos on etsy but they will be good enough to show the quality of your items and make people want to buy them :)
-3 etsy shops you just LOVE?
TheLeatherStore
moop
tippythai
-One year from now...
I hope my number of sold items is 2000+. I already have about 900 sales so why not try to double it :)
--
Have an etsy shop with over 300 sales and want to be a featured seller? Contact me at phletcher@gmail.com
As always, thanks for reading :)
