This is the big week.  I finally opened an Etsy shop and posted some of my paintings for sale.  (Yay!!)  Just about everything in the shop is in note card format for now, even though I could have prints made in a larger format if need be.

So why am I not jumping up and down right now?  That’s an excellent question.

I am excited, I promise.  This is a fantastic chance to try making some cash doing something I love.  But I basically have the heart of a middle school girl in this case, and not a cool, spunky middle school girl.  I just want people to like me. I want the whole world to like me.  A lot.

On some mildly paranoid level, I’m concerned that the people who love me have lied about liking my paintings for years.  Or maybe they’re blinded by their like for me.  I’m sure it wasn’t malicious.

I’ve never worried about these things before, because it wasn’t super important what the general population thought about my taste or my artistic ability.  But now that my art has been transferred to neat stacks of cards and listed for sale, it’s suddenly quite easy to quantify opinions.

That brings us to the present.  I’m checking my shop stats way too often, hoping that random strangers will like my art.  Results have varied.

I want to work harder and harder to make sure I have all of my bases covered, but I think that at least part of this game is waiting.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to paint some things that are A) great and B) not quite my favorite paintings ever, so I’ll be able to part with them.

Want to check it out for yourself?  Feel free: www.smallbutvaluable.etsy.com.  But whatever you do, don’t feel pressured to buy anything.  I absolutely don’t want my shop to be a weird, guilt-laced financial strain on any friends.  I just want you guys to know what I’m up to.  Painting some Alps tonight.  Pretty happy about that.