Good use of Bandanas: Furoshiki Gift Wrapping

I recently saw a Youtube video from HGTV about Furoshiki Gift Wrapping, which is the Japanese way of wrapping things with fabric instead of paper. It is great because if you are doing this to wrap a present it adds a unique touch, it gives the person you are gifting a bonus little present, plus it is reusable, making it a great way to be eco friendly this christmas.

Bandanas or smaller sized scarves are the perfect size to do this with! It is recommended that you use a 20" x 20" square if you are going to be wrapping a relatively smaller gift, but you could even use a scarf if you want to wrap something even bigger ( plus a nice artsy scarf would make a really great bonus gift!)

Here is the HGTV video, showing two unique ways to wrap a gift Furoshiki style:

Zazzle carries a perfect sized bandana for this project, at 19.5" x 19.5", and there are tons of designs to choose from - I have put some of my favourite designs on these as well! Not only can you choose from a bunch of great designs, they are also customizable, allowing you to add a monogram, name, phrase or even just change the background colour of your bandana. They are made from 100% polyester & are very soft & light. People who have purchased them on Zazzle have given them an average review of 4.8/ 5 stars, they love these bandanas and the print quality is vibrant and beautiful. After using them as a replacement for wrapping paper, the recipient of this unique present can use these as a creative headband, mini scarf, dog neck tie for their pet, or to wrap their own lunches Japanese style!

Here are some of my favourite bandanas from my shop!

Soft Lavender Geometric Star Maze Pattern Bandana by TanyaDraws
Check out Optical illusion Bandana online at zazzle

This is a lovely pattern for any textile - it repeats seamlessly and can be resized to  completely change the look of the pattern. The lavender undertones in this bandana makes this a great choice if you are furoshiki wrapping a lavender or purple themed gift, or gifting this to someone who loves the colour purple. :)

Whimsical Tropical Watercolor Pineapple Pattern Bandana by TanyaDraws
See head kerchiefs online at Zazzle

My watercolour tropical pineapple design is one of the most popular ones in my shop! You can change the background colour to be whatever you want, and even add a name or initial in the corner. This trendy & chic design would make a lovely headband, or a great furoshiki wrapping for a tropical themed gift!

Joyous Green & Purple Jagged Geometric Pattern Bandana by TanyaDraws
Find another do-rag at zazzle.com

This is a super bright & retro pattern that reminds me somehow of video games! The layers of colours in this look really great in bandana form and would give any present wrapped furoshiki style an angular look.

European Robin Elegant Watercolour Pattern Bandana by TanyaDraws
Browse more head kerchiefs at Zazzle

My most recent design is this European Robin design! These robins are very different from the ones we usually see in America, and are so beautiful. I was happy to make them the subject of my pattern! Originally painted in watercolours and then transferred to a digital format to turn into a pattern, these robins are very cute, chic and vintage inspired. Change the background colour of this bandana to personalize it! 

Ornate Hand Drawn Black & White Owl Pattern Bandana by TanyaDraws
Find another kerchief at zazzle.com

This owl drop pattern bandana is contrasty & bold, and is finished off with a circular black and white monogram in the bottom corner! This pattern is perfect for the animal lover, and has a great hand drawn look to it. Personalize the monogram with an initial for whoever you are gifting this to! 

Amount of times I almost wrote banana instead of bandana: 5

Milestone : 100 sales on Zazzle + Zrank thoughts

100th sale!!!

This is an exciting time for my Zazzle shop! Last Monday, on the 7th of December, my Zazzle shop reached 100 sales! I am SO excited. Back when I started my shop last December, I didn't imagine I could have sold this much in a year. My shop grew much faster than I thought it was, and I have my customers and all the referrers on Zazzle to thank for that! I am so glad you enjoy my artwork, & I am excited to continue adding new and exciting designs to my shop in the new year.

This was the 100th item : A cat to be kitten me right meow mug, that went to someone in Canada! That was really exciting because I hardly ever get sales from my home country. 

I hope they enjoy this mug for Christmas!

Cat to be Kitten Me Right Meow Ringer Coffee Mug by TanyaDraws
Browse other Cat to be kitten me Mugs

Zrank

Other than that, I have been working on some new designs, and sprucing up some old ones that are in my Zazzle shop. If you are an artist at Zazzle, you are probably now aware of the "Zrank" changes that were made to the marketplace. Very soon, your Zrank will have a direct effect on where your items show up in the marketplace on Zazzle. Zazzle has stated that on top of deleting old designs to raise your Zrank score, your titles, descriptions and tags must be unique to possibly boost that as well... which is a slightly ridiculous thing for a print on demand who encourages us to add our designs on hundreds of items to demand... but anyways.

I decided to do a little bit of an experiment to see if I can raise my Zrank by changing, adding & removing words in each of my titles, making every single title unique. I have gone through almost all of the 2600 product titles in my shop over the past few weeks, and I have seen no change so far in my Zrank. It has been stuck at 4 since Zrank started! Perhaps unique titles don't play that much of a factor in Zrank scores. While I was going through my titles, however, I did realize that many of them weren't using the full character count, so adding more descriptive words to my titles isn't the worst thing I could be doing, so I am going to continue on, even though it seems like only changing titles will not score me a higher Zrank. I am determined to find a way to increase Zrank without deleting items however, so after I finish up creating unique titles for every item, I will work on descriptions and tags next. I will keep this blog updated if I do see my rank change, maybe finding something that has a positive impact on my score will help others also increase their score without deleting many items from their shop.

Is there anyone else thinking of creating unique titles to possibly help their Zrank? Creating unique titles is difficult. Since I didn't use the full word count in most of my titles, all I had to do was add descriptive words somewhere in each of my titles. Here are some things I brainstormed to create unique titles:

- British spelling vs American spelling of things: Where I could, I would alternate the spelling of Watercolour to watercolour, colours to colors (also used variants of colour, like colourful, coloured, colours, colourized) , symbolised vs symbolized etc. Different spellings of words actually count as separate words in the marketplace, so using both spellings throughout your titles, descriptions & tags might actually get your work seen by more customers from different countries. Here is a list of a bunch of american vs british spellings of things!

- Descriptive words: You might consider adding words to describe the feel or type of artwork you made to the title. I brainstormed over 150 words to go through and place in each of my designs titles. These 150 words can make 5 pages of identical titled items unique. What I did first was find some generic words that I often use to describe my artwork: cute, beautiful, painted, trendy, unique, vintage, etc. Then I went to the thesaurus and found words that could be used in place of these words. I ended up with things like adorable, charming, cutesy, decorative, fabulous, gorgeous, etc. Some of these words might not be words that people type in often, but if you aren't using the full word count on your title anyways it does not make a difference. I found this adjectives list at Moms who think an especially helpful resource when I ran out of words to describe my art.

-Alternate the British spelling & American spelling & pair with descriptive words: From my understanding, Cute Watercolour Bird Pattern and Cute Watercolor Bird Pattern should be unique titles, because of how different spellings don't come up as the same word in the marketplace. Doing this allows you to use the same descriptive word twice on titles where you can have an american and british spelling.

- In some cases where I had over 5 pages of items with the same title, I had to get really creative and started using numbers, in the different ways I could say them.  An example is my turtle design where it is only one turtle on a product, I started using titles like "Uno Green Watercolour Ink Drawn Turtle" "Single Green Watercolour Ink Drawn Turtle" "One Green Watercolor Ink Drawn Turtle" or "A Green Watercolour Ink Drawn Turtle", making them all unique.

Again, I have no clue if this is actually going to help Zrank or not, I am only trying it because Zazzle seems to want us to have unique titles, and I don't think deleting artwork is a good idea. :)

That is all for now, I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season so far!!

Products sold in November

Hey guys, here is a collection of items that sold in my redbubble & zazzle shops this past month! Thank you for buying, & thanks referrers for referring!
Redbubble Sold items: Click here to see my redbubble journal & sold items!

Zazzle Sold items:

Sold in November 2015
by Tanya

This was my biggest seller of the month, when someone bought 23 of these adorable watercolour painted turtle keychains, all customized!

Green Watercolour Ink Drawn Turtle Basic Round Button Keychain by TanyaDraws
Create a unique personalized key ring from zazzle.com.

My Hiatus is over!

Hello everyone! A while ago my life got way busier and I had to drop the blog for a while and stick to very minimal shop updates. Since then, I have had to get used to a very different sort of schedule, but I finally think I have found a balance and am finding that I do actually have spare time at the end of the week, so I am going to use this time to continue updating my shops & this blog :) I plan on starting my monthly stats again for the new year.

Here is what has changed since my last monthly sales update:

Nuvango shops are gone. I liked having Nuvango as my third shop, my first and second shops being Zazzle & Redbubble. In the past few months I have been looking in to different print on demand services.

I tried out CafePress briefly, because upon signup it said you could set your commissions. I uploaded a design and let it sit. When I got bored one day and remembered my CafePress shop, I logged in to see I actually made three sales! But to my dismay, I made equal royalties on the cups and t-shirt that I sold that I do selling stickers on redbubble! It turns out you can't actually set commissions yourself, you have to fill a certain amount of requirements on CafePress before they will consider that... and one of these requirements might be a paid shop, I didn't look too much into it, and also the marketplace and you directing people to your shop give you different royalties.. and there is a hidden royalty ranking system.... Needless to say, I promptly closed my shop there! I didn't appreciate the ultra confusing hidden royalty rate, especially when it says you can set your own prices, and I certainly don't appreciate CafePress getting 95% of the cut for my artwork. So that POD was a no.

I signed up for Zippi a while ago and it seems nice, redbubble style & 20% commissions just like Nuvango, but I haven't seen much activity from Zippi & their marketplace is hard to search, so I think I will be setting that one aside too.

I thought about ArtOfWhere, but they don't have the most active print on demand marketplace... although their beautiful product lines & vast selection make them amazing for drop shipping. That is something I might consider in the future, but for now print on demand suits my needs and I want to focus on that.

Which brought me to DesignByHumans. I looked into DesignByHumans months ago, and submitted my work to be accepted into their marketplace. They accepted me, and let me create an account. And then I didn't have much time, so I let it sit. I checked it out earlier in November again, and after testing the waters with a few new designs, I have decided this is a nice place to set up shop! Royalties are pre set, you don't get to set your own, but the royalty rate is fair. I have already made royalties in my first month of being there, and their product line of wearable items and phone cases is nice. I also like the fact that you can choose colours that work well with your design for the customer to choose from, allowing for some customization. I hope to do a full review of DesignByHumans once I am 100% familiar with it, but I think it is a good one for my 3rd shop!! Find me here: TANYADRAWS ON DESIGNBYHUMANS

Last but not least, I'd like to thank the customers who have purchased things from my shop at RedBubble & Zazzle in these past months, and also the affiliates who have been promoting my shop! I haven't been around much to update, but I appreciate the support and I look forward to being able to add new product lines in the new year for you!! I hope your December is off to a fantastic start !! :)

Here is a collection of funny and punny gift ideas from my Zazzle shop! Enjoy!

Funny & Punny
by Tanya