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Society6 just dropped the announcement they have been hinting at last April : the introduction of paid artist subscription plans. We were all expecting this change, and unlike other PoD who implemented changes in 2023, they have announced it early on. The question on everyone's lips now will be "Is getting started with Society6 still worth it?" A fair question because of all the big PoD introducing measures to flush low quality accounts, Society6 has taken one of the most stringent measure and it could keep many budding artists at bay. But first, let's dive into what those changes are. society6 is no longer a free platform As of October 19th 2023, every new accounts will have to choose one of the 3 subscription plans Society6 has to offer and they each come with a cap of how many designs you can have live in your shop : - The Free plan which as its name suggest is free but comes with MASSIVE restrictions. On this plan you can only have 10 designs in your shop and you will no longer be able to set your margins, so your earnings will be the default 10% of the retail price. Which could have you earn nothing on some sales as they still have the shipping fees announced last April going on. Society6 explains that this plan is ideal for artists just getting started and testing the waters. Bear in mind that even though this plan is free, you will still need to pay a 5$ PayPal verification fee when you sign up to sell with S6. - The Basic plan will cost you 4.99$ a month and your designs limit will be 100 and you'll be able to set your own margins on all products. With this subscription plan, you also will get access to trend reports emails and webinars. This plan is the one to go for the artists who already have some experience and a bigger portfolio of designs and those who have outgrown the free plan (which will happen quick). From my own experience selling on PoD in general as a genuine artist, I say you should be hitting the 100 designs limit after a year or a year and a half, so it's definitely a plan for the intermediate artist. - The Pro plan will set you off 12.99$ a month and you'll get a max limit of designs set to 10'000 which is a lot and will take years for a quality artist to reach, even with color variations on existing designs. I've been selling with Society6 since 2017 and I currently have about 400 designs in my shop if that gives you an indication of how a portfolio grows. The Pro plan of course offers the flexibility of setting your own margins and gives you access to the trend reports emails just like the Basic plan, but it also offers you access to an analytics tool to see which of your designs are selling the best. Then there is the additional perk of being able to purchase your own products at an additional discount. The Free and Basic plans will only get their artist margin taken off the retail price, but Pro account get an additional 20% off the base price taken off, which means they could order some of their products at a huge discount during a sale. Is getting started with Society6 still worth it? The appeal of Society6 and other PoD has always been that it was an easy way for artists to showcase their work, build a portfolio and make sales along the way. The problem was that over time it also attracted a lot of people who thought it was a way to make quick money and all you had to do was upload images. Many of those were pretend artist uploading stolen art, cliparts, and stock photos that weren't original in any ways. This lead to Society6 having to host an enormous amount of low quality designs, often with a low resolution that could potentially lead to dispute with buyers who would question the print quality. Not to mention that genuine, quality SERIOUS artists would often disappear in the mass of low quality cheap-ass designs that came flooding in. The new subscription price is pretty drastic, and it's clear that Society6 is intent on flushing a lot of dead weight with it which I think is a good thing, but it might impact new designers hard and for some, getting started on Society6 might actually not be worth it at all. The 10 designs limit on the free account is going to be really restrictive and I personally think they could have made it 20 or 30 designs and still been able to flush bogus accounts out. More than that, I agree would have been too much of a design allowance. I remember when I started back in April 2017, I did upload about 10 -15 designs in the first month alone, and I made my first sale at the 2 months mark. So if back then I had to decide to pay 4.99$ a month without a proof of sales I might have given up. That said, I also remember falling for the myth of quantity, believing that the more designs I had early on, the higher my chances of sales were going to be and I uploaded a few quite frankly cringy artworks as a results, which I have since then deleted. Society6's move is clear, they want artists who can pace themselves and upload quality over quantity. My advice to get started with society6 Despite all this, I think Society6 is still worth giving it a chance if you are a new artist, but know that the guidelines and advice of "yore" will no longer work on that platform, especially the idea you need a lot of designs early to be able to sell. - Focus on quality and set an upload pace of 1-2 designs a week so that you can go without having to switch to the Basic plan in the first 2 months. - Work on your marketing skills and building your own audience rather than worry about how many designs you need for that first sale. - Don't make selling on Society6 your only presence online. This is one of the common mistake many newbie make. They think they have to pledge allegiance to just one platform and pigeon hole themselves. Open a shop on each of the big PoD platforms out there like Redbubble, Teepublic, Threadless and Zazzle and see which one works best for you. Society6 is for now the only one which has designs restrictions in each tiers, so take advantage of the fact others don't to test your market and niche. - Treat the subscription plan as a business investment. Society6 is setting the tone about wanting a more curated, quality catalogue of designs and would rather work with artists who are in it for the long run and understand the importance of treating their work as a business and not just a hobby. The future of print on demand The fact that not one but THREE big PoD have been setting stricter terms to sell on their platforms in 2023 is no mystery and that was a change that was sure to be coming and will soon affect other platforms as well. What happened in the recent past that is pushing Redbubble, Society6 and Teepublic to introduce fees and membership tiers levels? The threat of AI generated art! It's as simple as that. AI art started making waves in the second half of 2022 and the threat that it will put artists out of business is a real one. On top of it, several text to image AI generators have been trained using stolen content. Then came the question of copyrights. As in who would be getting the rights to the AI image? The debate about intellectual property rights still rages on, for now a US federal judge ruled out that AI art cannot be copyrighted as the human role in the creation of said image is close to none. For PoD companies it is clear that as a result, AI images should not be sold as unique art on their platforms since the owner of the shop who is supposed to be an artist is NOT the owner of the image. Will that change in the future? No idea, but for now I can't blame print on demand platforms for preventing a flood of cheap AI designs on their platform considering the legal issues it could bring. In fact, Redbubble announced in an email to all their artists in December 2022 that they were working on catching stolen and non original images as they are being uploaded. Open AI who brought us Chat GPT and Dall-E is also working on a tool that can spot an AI generated image and it is said it can or will be able to detect these with 99% accuracy. All in all, it means that PoD platforms will have a shot at going back to what they were meant for in the first place : A platform for REAL artists to build a presence and build a business. If it means having to introduce fees, membership tiers and different earning structures to weed out the frauds, then be it. Being an artist is a real job, and starting a business always come up with a few upfront costs, in the case of Society6, they are still less steep than starting your own shop on your own website and having to worry about stock, inventory and shipping.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you must have heard about Generative AI and the world of potential application it can offer. If you are an artist, you probably read about the threat AI poses to creatives and the questionable ethics of some AI art generators out there too as some companies have been training their AI using copyrighted material. Wether we agree about AI or not, like it or hate it, the reality is that it's here to stay and sticking our head in the sand hoping it will vanish is probably not the best idea there is. Sticking to our old ways instead of adapting to the moving times never bode well in the past, and there is no reason to drag our feet when we could just take it as an opportunity to learn new skills that actually could benefit our creative business. It's easy to panic and let the doomsday prophecies eat us alive, but I don't think there is reason to worry too much about Generative AI, at least not yet. I'm all for learning to harness its power so that certain redundant, boring tasks of running my creative business become less daunting. Generative AI tools aren't going to replace artists At least not any time soon! There is a reason why big PoD companies like Society6, Redbubble and Teepublic have been introducing measures like membership tiers, extra fees and working behind the scene on algorithms and programs that can detect stolen pictures quicker. Right now AI art is in that grey area when it comes to copyrights and the general consensus at the moment is that you can't legally pass them as your own work since you technically didn't create the image/art. Those images are in theory free of copyrights as they don't have a human creator and I personally think it's going to take a while before clear laws are drafted around AI art and intellectual property ownership. In this light it makes perfect sense to see big players in the PoD industry wanting to play it safe and clamping down on people uploading nothing but AI generated art. The message is clear, for now at least, you are better off creating art using conventional mediums and hold the pen, pencil, paintbrush or stylus yourself. Harness the power of generative ai in your marketing strategy Every artist selling on print on demand will tell you that the most daunting and annoying task is marketing and building their brand. The process of creating content for Instagram or you portfolio in a way that stays cohesive with your brand identity can be time consuming. And often newbies tend to take the shortcut of posting their product pictures straight from their shop only to realise that half the Redbubble / Society6 shop owner are doing the same thing and lo and behold, it ends up translating into hashtags feeds full of boring products on grey background that never really stand up in the crowd. Until now, there was only a few solutions to that conundrum : Remove the background on those pictures and create a composite image using stock photos Buying some of your products and taking your own pictures (which I think you should still do) Using Photoshop mockup files to create your own mockups (but everyone is using the same free ones...) I still stand firm on the fact that your Instagram feeds should have a mix of everything including work in process and stand alone (watermarked) art images, but thanks to generative AI, I think creating composite from scratch using stock photos can safely go away. A few weeks ago Adobe finally made the Generative fill tools that were previously available only in a beta version of Photoshop available to the general public in their latest version of Photoshop CC. This means that with a little practice, you can remove the background off your PoD pictures like I have done for every single pictures on this blog post and generate a new background with the help of prompts. For example, the pink retro flower water bottle from Society6 in the picture above had a gray background that I removed and then using the generative fill tool, I wrote "mint and pink retro outdoor cafe" and waited for AI to generate 3 possible choices. If you don't like any of the options generated, you simply click on "Generate" again to get more options until you get one you like. I would say that about 95% of the time it comes with solid usable images, and then there are a few goofy ones thrown in the mix where the AI clearly struggled with things like proportions, shapes and perspective like in this picture : Watch it closely and you will see where AI is still no match for the human touch. If you only glimpse at it you would think the image is fine and it would probably just do well as social media content. BUT the generative AI did struggle with coming up with something matching the prompt here. On the left of the bottle, the pink chair is clearly behind the mosaic surface the bottle sits on, suggesting said bottle is indeed sitting on a table. Now, look on the right, and notice it struggled keeping with the idea of the mosaic surface being a table. One of the two pink chairs have two legs standing ON the mosaic surface suggesting that the surface is on the ground. AI also had issues figuring out what the cap of my bottle was, the original from Society6 has a handle and with this particular product, AI struggled constantly with what to do about it. In the photo above it simply turned the cap into a planted full of flowers, probably because it wasn't quite sure if the cap was to be in the foreground or background. It also changed the shape of the whole bottle a bit. But yeah, in general, you are going to get some pretty decent results from the Photoshop generative fill tools and that is going to make creating content for your social media marketing a whole lot easier and a whole lot more personalised, the key being in giving the AI tool the right prompt and be very detailed with what you want it to generate. Generative AI tools have other good applications for your creative business too A few weeks ago I started taking a Skillshare class about using chat GPT to help you come with a marketing strategy for your business. I am yet to finish that class, so can't really comment on it, but this is just one other way to streamline certain aspect of running a business where generative AI can come in handy. I also received a newsletter from another artist I follow who played around with Dall-E to help him come up with designs ideas. The big idea was to see how the AI art generator could turn a concept around and then use those generated images as reference pictures idea to create his own unique work from scratch. I think every artists, myself included can raise their hand when asked if they ever hit a creative block and struggled to find a usable idea to work with. This is possibly a way were relying on Generative AI can help a lot, you know, by just giving you that tiny nudge of an idea to get you going again. All in all, I think Generative AI is a tool, and in the right hand it can do great things. In a way it's like what the electric screwdriver is to the regular screwdriver. It makes certain tasks faster but it doesn't do the work on its own and there is still going to be a couple of idiots who are going to poke their eyes out with it, but you can hardly blame the tool for being dangerous. On the ethical ground, I know Photoshop trained their AI with images that already belonged to them so nothing the AI is using to create the prompt comes from a deliberately stolen source like it is the case with some of the free AI art generators out there.

We are entering the festive season and it's time to remind everyone to support small businesses and artists as the gift shopping season approach. But this year I want to elaborate on it a bit because I feel there is still a LOT of misconception about where to support artists and small businesses. I'm sure all of you believe the myth that Etsy is ethical and Amazon kills small businesses in the name of corporate greed for example. The reality though is that Amazon and Etsy are both market places that levy charges on sellers, and make a big profit, and want to keep investors happy. And, you will find a good number of small businesses on Amazon who take advantage of the fact that unlike Etsy, Amazon offers the option to take over the shipping. So if you still believed this overly simplified narrative of Amazon = evil and Etsy = good, it's time to let it go. I myself ended up shutting down my Etsy shop in 2022 because they hiked the fees and it made no sense for my business anymore. Truth are most big platforms these days have started levying fees for artists. There was Redbubble introducing membership tiers and fees on entry level accounts, and Society6 levying shipping fees. There is also Teepublic differentiating artists in two categories and two different royalty earning structures and I am sure many more will follow suit in the next couple of years. Here is what I as an artist will tell you all who are wondering how to support artists during this festive season : We artists set up shop in various places and it's not fair dismissing us based on where we sell. Some of us find selling on Amazon more convenient, others prefer Etsy, some like me prefer selling on Print on Demand websites like Redbubble, Teepublic and Society6. Others will only sell in county fairs and markets, and there are people who prefer opening a Shopify shop on their own website. Know though that EVERY options means an additional party makes a profit, you can't support a small business without supporting a larger one which helps small biz to get out there...PERIOD! Business is business no matter the scale and us small business owners make decisions that are a right fit for ourselves in order to grow. So please do not think less of us for not selling out of the back of our trunk or in our basement, just because some of us sell with a big entity as production partner doesn't make us any less small and deserving of your patronage. For example, a LOT of artists and surface designers like myself are in the business of creating art that is meant to go on products or be sold as art prints (which is a product too). It makes more sense for us to team with a production partner like Society6 because they take care of shipping, manufacturing and customer care for us. Those tasks are tasks that if we were handling ourselves would eat in the time we have left to create more art and more designs, not to mention have us shell huge amount money on inventory that might not sell. So, those companies take over that burden, as they have the capabilities to manufacture a product on demand because they get volumes on their platform that makes it worthwhile and they just need artists to lease them the designs. PoD platforms like Redbubble and Society6 are in a licensing type of business, where they pay royalties to artists on each sales made. What is important when you buy your Holidays presents and decorations is that you know who gets paid. With a reputed print on demand platform, I can assure you we artists get paid our dues on EVERY SALES, in fact both Society6 and Redbubble let us artist set up our own royalty percentages. There are also companies like Raspberry Creek Fabrics that are a win-win for all of those who really want to support as many small businesses as possible with one purchase. The company itself is a family owned business that is passionate about fabric printing, and they rely on surface pattern designers like myself to build a library of designs for every tastes. When a client of theirs chose my patterns, they get to buy the yardage they need, Raspberry Creek prints it and ships it, and again, I get a royalty on the sale. Fabric buying is a great option for all you you who likes to make your own Christmas presents, home decor and clothes and it is yet another way to support an artist and a small business during the festive season. Plan ahead of time if you want to buy your gifts with small artists. The reason I am writing this lovely PSA blog post is that when you deal with a small business or an artist selling through PoD, you need to factor in time, and sometimes your own budget as well as those products could be priced a lot higher than mass produced stuff available in big box stores. The first hurdle is shipping time, it is something you need to be particularly careful with when it comes to Etsy as not all sellers might live in the same country as you. When I used to sell on Etsy, shipping from India to the US took 3-4 weeks, so check where the seller lives and ships from. Also know that if you are commissioning a custom piece, there will be a lot of time to produce it to factor in. With Print on Demand companies, pay attention to their shipping deadlines to get your gifts delivered before Christmas, they all start people know about it by November or so, and for Society6 the deadline to get things delivered by December 24 always fall around December 12 on US based orders. If you live outside the US, always refer to their international shipping estimates. Budget wise, I am a HUGE fan of spreading gift shopping over several months. I don't have to do it as much here in India where it's really just us, but as a student in Switzerland, you can bet I was starting to plan Christmas shopping as early as October, if not earlier. Gifts shopping can be expensive, so if you have a family member or friend with a specific hobby or interest and you stumble over the perfect artwork, or t-shirt or mug, buy it, even if it's only June. For Holiday themed designs to decorate your home, start looking on PoD sites early too, the beauty of Society6 and Redbubble is that artwork uploaded and made available for sale by artist lives on their server year round. No need to wait until stores in your neighbourhood start selling Christmas decor items anymore. This year my first Christmas themed sale was in August! It was gift wrap paper. Watch for sales campaigns to strike a bargain. Society6 has offers every week on different products, usually offering 30-40% off select items and you will always find something that is at least discounted at 20%. The discounts usually get huge on Black Friday / Cyber week too, so if you have your eyes set on a product, watch the website regularly and sign up for their newsletter so you know when the good deals are coming. Society6 also has interest free financing available for those who prefer buying and paying in instalments. Around the festive season, all print on demand companies tend to run promotions so it pays to keep your eye peeled or subscribe to your favourite artist's newsletter. I usually send an email out when there is a particularly HUGE discount going on. I also announce it on my various social media handles. I also always say that with gift, less is more, in this time and age of mass consumerism, I think it's important to remember that you do not have to get every single items on your kids' wishlist. One quality thoughtful gift is worth 10 mass produced poor quality items that will break after a month. So if your budget for one person is 100$ get them one or two gifts that mean something rather than try to buy a truck load of tiny things. You don't have to make a purchase to help While as an artist, I think I can safely say that all of us in the creative business industry love when you buy our designs and want you to consider supporting us no matter where we sell. We also understand that it's not always possible to support us financially, but that doesn't mean you can't help, far from it, here are things you can do to support artists and small businesses during the festive season : Spread the word! You might not feel like buying a cozy blanket on Society6, but you might know a friend or relative who will be interested, so please tell them we exist. Like our social media posts, in fact share them if you can too, the more active you are with accounts you follow the more our content will be shown Sign up for our mailing list on our website, mine is linked to the members only Freebie page (it's free to become a member). On these wise words I will conclude this blog post saying that as an artist, I would appreciate that you consider my shops (I have several on several platforms) for your Holidays shopping, you have no idea how much it means to me each time I get a sales notification. Most of the PoD I work with ship worldwide too, so don't let location ever stop you.

Do you feel stuck, stagnating, bored or like your life has no sense of direction anymore? It could be that you need to take stock of everything in your life and see what could be holding you back and do some serious decluttering in order to bring in new opportunities. I'm sure you've hear the saying "Out with the old, in with the new" or the French saying "Balai neuf, balaie bien" which translates roughly as "New broom sweeps better" This idea that cleaning brings in a breath of fresh air in our lives exist in many cultures. In the Western world we usually believe in spring cleaning to get the stuffiness and stagnation of long winters out and welcome warmer and more fertile days in. In India, Hindus clean their homes thoroughly before Diwali (in October or November depending the year) to welcome in Laxmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. I'm sure we've all experienced this sense of bliss and renewed energy after purging our wardrobes of all the things that no longer fit, or deep cleaned the kitchen, or updated our living room with new curtains, throw pillows and wall art. decluttering isn't just physical Nor does it only apply to material possession for that matter. Chances are you either read or heard of Marie Kondo's book (Amazon affiliate link) or watched her show on Netflix. This means you are familiar with the concept of her asking people to get rid of belongings that no longer spark joy and only keep what matters. It might seem like a big pile of woo and voodoo to many but the reality is that we form energetic bonds with our belongings, and surroundings and in the end those have the power to elevate us or bring us down, and yes it does affect how we think and perceive the world as well. If you come home every night to a messy home when you only dream of a clean, clutter free space, what you want and what you get aren't in alignment and it will only serve to make you more frustrated and angry and the cycle will repeat. A few years ago, I read both "Lucky bitch" and "Get rich lucky bitch" by Denise Duffield - Thomas. Both explained that concept and how what we do and how we think affects our lives, the author explains that the first step toward a change, any change, is to first know what we REALLY want and write that down, and then see what in our current lifestyle supports that growth and what doesn't and then get rid of what is holding us from reaching our goals. In her webinars and workshops she even says that it can be as simple as shaving your legs. The point is you need to invite the change in for the change to happen. the material purge - aka declutter your home This is the most popular and well known form of decluttering. The results are visible to all, and there is something liberating about getting rid of old stuff. And if you make it a regular habit, your home usually gets to stay clean in the long run. For that type of decluttering, I 100% recommend just getting rid of anything that is worn out, broken or hasn't been used in over a year if there is no emotional attachment to it (what Marie Kondo identify as sparking joy). Don't keep things out of obligation when you conduct a purge. That ugly pudding set you received as a gift from a family member close or not has to go. If questioned about it later, simply be honest about it saying that it's been gathering dust and you have no use for it so it made more sense to donate it so that someone else who has a need could use it. The cute dress that brings back bitter memories of a breakup with an ex? Donate it! The underwear with holes? Trash them and get new ones, you deserve better than that. All the spices and herbs in your kitchen that you rarely use and are probably expired anyway...in the bin they go! Remember, when you purge what doesn't matter, you always make more room for what does. digital decluttering This one is less obvious, and certainly a lot less noticeable but no less important. The amount of digital junk that lives on our device is impressive, can eat GB of storage and can be distracting as well. Do you really need to have all those old emails about the school carnival even that happened 5 years ago in your child's elementary school (when they are currently in high school no less). Or that months old newsletter you forgot to delete? But beyond your mailbox, what about all the pictures on your phone that no longer have any purpose, like the picture of your parking spot at the mall taken 5 months back? Or the 20 pictures, all near identical of your daughter's birthday cake? Pick one or two and delete the rest. Our parents didn't have that problem and knew better than waste an whole film roll on just you blowing the candles on the cake, they had 2-3 of them, pasted them in a photo album and that was it. This fear of missing out we all have is pretty much enabled and pushed to extremes when we no longer have to worry about the cost of developing a film roll, so why not take 300 photos of a birthday on the principle that it's better to have them in excess than be sorry. This is actually an example of how a mindset could hold us back, do we really need to be invested in making sure we have 20 pictures of the cake cutting, living the moment through our phone camera, or just take 2-3 and then enjoy the moment? Digital clean up also applies to social media. Thanks to internet how we network and treat relationships have evolved. But are all the people on your friends list really your friends? Chances are, you probably accepted friends requests from coworkers and random distant acquaintances just to be polite without really wanting them to have access to your life. Aside from learning to set better boundaries, it's also helpful to purge your friends list every now and then and only keep the people who REALLY matter on it. Treat your Facebook account as your digital home, and if you look at a friend on your list that you wouldn't even invite over in your own physical home over for coffee, it's time to let that person go...no hard feeling. The same applies to online groups, you may have been into scrapbooking 10 years ago, but if you aren't anymore, why does that content still needs to pop in your feed? Subscribing to content that no longer serves you might prevent you from seeing content that matters because algorithms do not quite keep up with all your likes and dislikes in real time. mental decluttering All of us are over-thinkers, and there is a lot going on in our heads at all time, and it's not always good. In fact a lot of the habits we have as adults and how we think and operate comes from the patterns our subconscious mind created in our early childhood. Our parents taught us things to keep us safe and operated from what they thought was the most sensible course of action in their time, but chances are your brain and mind is running a whole lot of outdated programs that are holding you back from the life you want to create as an adult. There are several ways to clean up that brain junk out there, some might work, some won't and you might need a combination of several : Therapy with a professional to address deep rooted trauma and mental blocks Reading self-help books to understand where to start digging and when or if you need a therapist Journalling Meditation For me reading self-help books, journalling and meditating has proven to be the winning combo that works right now. Will it work always? No idea, but for now it does and that is what matters. Ultimately, you need to make an habit out of getting rid of anything that is holding you back, brings you down, or no longer serves any purpose to be able to grow. Cleaning your home can kick start your mind into finding new ways and opening it to opportunities, writing down your goals, fears and desires will gradually get you there. Growing up I often found myself in "This or that, you can't have both" situation, thanks to growing up with adults who thought that way. What I found out as an adult, is that it's never all black or white, this AND that is pretty much a thing and you don't have to pigeon hole yourself into just one thing.

So, you decided to take the plunge and put your art out there and start selling it. You've researched all your options and decided to stick with Print on Demand, aka PoD because the initial cost is low to none, but this in turn raise one more question : Which Print on Demand shop should you start with? Many new designers and artist have this idea that they should commit to one and ONLY one shop and want to chose the best there is. After all, don't we all want to be profitable and maximise our chances of sales from the start? Here is the thing though, you DON'T have to sell your soul to just one PoD company, and they certainly do not own you or your designs, so there is no reason to figure out which one is best as if you couldn't pick more than one. None of the Print on Demand company out there owns the rights to your designs and the vast majority of them do not even demand exclusivity rights of licensing. What this means is that you are completely free to upload your designs on as many platforms as you want. But where should you start? Which Print on Demand website is the easiest to get started with as a beginner? How many to start with? Can you expand over time? When I started back in 2017, I opened a Society6 shop first and right after that (as within a week or so) I opened a Redbubble shop as well. Since I live in India, I wanted to find an India based PoD as well in hope my audience from India would find it easier to buy my designs. I joined one called "Cupik" which ended up going bankrupt, and then 3 others that...yup! all went bankrupt without paying me my dues! My advice from this experience : never stick to just one Print on Demand shop/website company because you NEVER know when one will shut down operation. And most certainly NEVER think that just because you live in a specific country you should absolutely have a shop that sells to your local audience. Most of my audience in India never bought anything from any of my shops. What you want to do as a newbie, is stick to websites that are already big and established and have an audience of their own and the traffic. Sure, you will have to drive your own traffic to your shop too, but it helps to be on a platform that is already having their own customer base, as there will be more potential to be found in searches over time. I frankly recommend starting with 2-3 platforms and upload the same thing on all 3 and see what works on each of them in the long run. Then as you expand, open more Print on Demand shops on smaller platforms and start with uploading you clear best sellers there as well. You'll notice fairly quickly that not everything will sell the same on different platforms and that there isn't much logic in why something sells on repeat on Redbubble but not at all on Society6, other than maybe the fact these two websites have different main target audiences to begin with. pros and cons of different pod platforms So, which one should you dive in with first among the reputed ones? My advice is to go with the ones that are a better fit with the type of art you do. If you make art that looks good as art print Society6 is going to be a much wiser choice than Teepublic for example, because S6 kind of specialise in wall art and home decor. If you are making t-shirts with fun typography, Teepublic and Redbubble are probably worth considering before Society6 as they put more focus on apparel. Each PoD has their pros and cons, and each have uploaders that work slightly differently too. All the Print on Demand websites below are platforms I have shop with and have experience with. Society6 They are one of the most well known platform in the PoD industry and while art prints is what they started with, they now have over 90 different products you can upload your designs on. The vast majority of my sales with them has been art prints and soft furnishing items like throw pillows and curtains. This means that if you do stand alone artworks and/or pattern designs, you have a better chance at selling with them. They do t-shirts and mugs too, so your graphic tee designs could sell there as well, but it doesn't seem to be what the vast majority of their own audience is really after. My portfolio has a little of everything and designs with quotes aren't my bestsellers on that platform. Bear in mind that Society6 started levying shipping fees on each sales as of 2023 and hiked the joining fee from 1$ to 5$ in an effort to discourage less sincere and authentic artists. Pros: Wide catalog of products to enable your art on, large audience, and quality printing (I ordered a few items over the years). They let you set your own margins on all products and if you want to make money, you will have to set them at at least 20% to 30% on all products to recover the shipping fees and still make a profit worth your time The platform is regularly scouted by big retail brands too, so if your art is good, this could be a springboard to licensing deals. Deny Designs, their sister site also onboard artists to be on their wholesale platform, so it pays to be consistent, follow trends and produce quality designs. Cons: Society6 is infamous among designers for having one of the most complicated uploader and design studio there is. You will need to create several different files to fit different products and uploading and enabling everything just right can sometimes take over an hour. Redbubble Like Society6 it is one of the big name in the industry and they have been at it for a while, and like S6, they have a catalog of over 90 products to enable your designs on. I can't vouch for the printing quality there as I never ordered anything from them (their shipping fees to India are insane) but I know that unlike Society6, their bestsellers aren't art print or home decor items. The vast majority of my sales comes from stickers and apparel. So if you are more into art that sell as stickers, or t-shirts they are your first choice of platform. Bear in mind a few things though : They started a membership tier program and all new accounts start at "Standard" tier on which hefty fees levied on earnings. They do so to encourage artists to produce quality work to move up to the Premium tier were no fees are charged You ABSOLUTELY need a transparent .png file for your designs as t-shirts and stickers require a transparent background. Pros: Their uploader is one of the easiest, most beginner friendly there is. You are pretty good just uploading a png file and then add a background color on items you do not want as default white and it also has the option to tile a design into a pattern, so you do not have to upload large pattern squares on products you need a repeat design, simply upload the seamless tile and select the tile option. Like Society6 they let you set your own margin, I recommend 20% on everything and 50% on stickers. Cons: As much as I welcome the move to charge fees on entry level accounts to encourage new designers to produce quality, they can be as high as 50% of your earnings if you earn around the minimum payment threshold amount in a month. It's definitely something that could be a deterrent to a lot of genuine artists even if the intent was to flush the spammers and scammer out. Teepublic Like its name suggest, their strength is t-shirts, and that's about 99% of my sales with them, so only upload art that looks good as a t-shirt and comes with a transparent PNG background. I started in 2021 with them and it took me about 5 months to make a sale and within a year they became regular. I actually own one of their t-shirt and it's one of my favourite, it's in the wash almost every week and 2 years later it hasn't lost shape, frayed or even saw the print on it fade or flake. They don't let you set your own margin, but have an account category system that decides how much you earn on each sale. You are either an apprentice or an artisan, the decision is widely based on what type of artwork/designs you produce. If you produce unique, clearly hand drawn quality designs, you will be categorised as Artisan, if you are more into vector graphics you re-use over and over with generic fonts you are going to be an Apprentice. Apprentice earn 2$ per t-shirt sale at full price and 1$ if there is a sale/promotion going. Artisan earn 4$ at full price and 2$ during a sale/promotion. Pros: The uploader is fuss free, and I love their keyword generator. You enter one main keyword that describe your art the best, and then the field for secondary keywords will suggest other keywords similar to the main one. Cons: They have a very limited product range, not surprising considering they are t-shirt specialists, but they could have a few more and I think it wouldn't hurt. They also do not let you upload individual files on specific products. So the main t-shirt file is what goes on everything, even if one item would benefit more from let say a pattern file like maybe the phone case. You can at least put a specific background color on non-apparel items. Threadless Despite the fact that it has quite a few unique products no other PoD seem to be doing like shoes and skateboards, it seems the only thing that consistently sell there are t-shirts. But of all the PoD this is one of my least performing one. They seem to have a system where you can opt to have them manage your margins which I went for, and an option to be included in the Threadless marketplace, where they decide which of your designs to include on their website shop. If you don't enable that feature, you are 100% responsible to drive traffic to your shop in order to get sales. Pros: uploading designs is fairly easy and they have a few very unique products like shoes, and skateboards and a round rug. Cons: It seems to be a lot harder to make sales there, their managed pricing option and being included in the market place option is a bit more complex and if you plan on making that one your main shop, it seems you'll need to pull more weight in marketing than on other platforms. You also will need very specific files using their own templates for some products like shoes, leggings and duffle bags among other, so that is a bit of extra work. Now of course there are more PoD I sell on, but I listed only the ones that are the most beginner friendly. I recommend you regularly keeps yourself in the loop of what's new in the PoD world as you keep going and join new ones regularly and see where it takes you. The advantage of starting early on a new platform is that you will get seen more than on a super saturated platform like Society6, but it also means it might take a lot more time before you make that first sale as fewer people will know about a smaller, newer business, but it's worth tapping into these opportunities.

It's June and along with the printable calendar page, there is a new set of printable stickers for your journaling needs in the freebie zone. May has been a hot month over here, and I for one am looking forward to the monsoon and cool rainy days. I got busy updating my old Contrado shop, worked on a few new designs, and watched as much TV as I read books (it's all about balance people). With my energy levels set on low, thanks to this heat, I'm keeping this blog post short and sweet, it was just a friendly announcement to remind you all that the members only (don't worry it's free to join) gets updated on the 1st of every months with the new calendar page and there are still several sets of stickers to download at any time.

What if I told you that there is a way to change your whole life that is both easy and free and is accessible right away? You'd probably think I'm crazy, and unrealistic at best. It doesn't change the fact that there is indeed a way and that it's easy, but only IF you are willing to give it a fair chance and let go of things you might have believed in until now. This near magic power is called positive thinking and it is available to anyone, anywhere, right about now, or anytime you are willing to tap into it. It opens doors that you didn't know existed before and pretty much changes how you look at the world around you (the world itself was always there). I know some of you are saying things like "Easier said than done" or "It's not possible to be positive ALL the time", or still yet "Being positive doesn't make bad things go away"... But ask yourself this first : Is being negative, or complaining about how everything is going bad helping at all? life is 10% of what happens to you, the other 90% is how you react to it. I heard this quote or one going along those lines in one of the Fearless motivation speeches I keep on my iTunes playlist. I have been practicing positive thinking and the law of attraction since I was a teenager and stumbled upon a set of sophrology audio tapes my parents had at home. For those who don't know, sophrology is a type of dynamic relaxation / guided meditation developed by Alfonso Caycedo, a Columbian neuropsychiatrists back in the 1960's. The core idea is that if you go in a deep state of relaxation and then visualise goals and outcomes, you are more likely to see them through in your everyday, active state because the idea that you can has been planted deeper in your subconscious. I remember playing those tapes on my walkman when I was around 15 and really enjoyed them and actually put all the exercises into practice to help me perform better in school and in my synchronised swimming training. They worked, gave me results and that was the start of a lifelong dedication to adjust my mindset in order to go through life. I think when I was around age 20, I even took a sophrology class in an evening school just to understand it and myself better (some people in my family thought I was nuts) Since then I have read, and still read a lot of self-help books, meditate frequently, practice the art of gratitude and of course I journal. That quote above? 1000000000000% true by the way, I had a friend in high school who was probably a more dedicated student than I was, the type that would pull all nighters to study for an exam persuaded she could always use more studying. I was a bit more laid back in my approach to it and quite frankly in some topics, I bordered on having a "Tourist" approach. Yet, I used get high grades, at time even higher than my friend. The difference was in how we thought to begin with. We had the same classes, same teachers. The difference was in how we approached exams. My friend was a near constant worrywart, persuaded at all time that all the odds were stacked against her at all time and that her only shot at not flunking a class was to study to her possible grave. She was often playing all kind of negative scenarios in her mind, persuaded that if she wasn't ready to face a possible apocalypse, she would fail. Me? I knew my weaknesses, I knew my strength and I knew that the key was to remain calm. rich of my sophrology training and having learnt visualisation techniques, I simply took time out of my studies to go in a deep relaxation state and visualise how I wanted my exams to go, especially the spoken exam where you are one on one with the teacher presenting a random topic. I would go to great length in those visualisation to get as many of the details right, and usually decided before hand what paragraph of a book I wanted to be interrogated on before hand and visualise myself talking about that. It never failed, I ALWAYS picked out the exact topic I wanted in the lucky draw before a spoken exam. In a way it was the first experience of the law of Attraction I had, but to be fair, even if I had picked a topic I was not super prepared for, I would still have pulled through because I was positive I would pull through thanks to visualising how I wanted it to go. I chose before hand to stand tall, keep going even if that meant winging it. My friend frequently got the ONE and ONLY topic she didn't aggressively prepare for and would go in a state of panic in her exam because she had set up her mind from the start for the potentiality of something, anything going wrong, and lo and behold that is exactly what ended up happening and it just confirmed her innate belief that the entire world was out to attack and destroy her. It's easier said than done! Agreed! it actually requires a HUGE leap of faith to see things positively, mostly because it goes against deep rooted self-preserving instincts that are probably coded into our very own DNA. Seeing danger is what kept the human race alive, and it has its merit in plenty of situatio even today. The problem is that this very instinct can also play cruel trick on our mind and what kept your ancestors safe from a trampling herd of mammoth is also preventing you from seeing non life threatening events in a rational way, or pushes you to react in a defeatist way toward a challenge. Of all the self-help books I read, Jen Sincero is the author who explained it the best in her two books : Your are a Badass and You are a Badass at making money (affiliate links). Somehow, we tend to believe that being critical, and afraid of certain things, or buy in the general doom and gloom of the world, we are keeping ourself safe, and that it also keeps things under our control. This is why the comment section of even the cutest baby animal video online will inevitably have a bunch of people pointing out something horrible, or why you can't post a beautiful photo of spring flowers without people trolling you pointing out how inconsiderate of people with allergies you are. Positive thinking doesn't change an even, it changes how you perceive it. We all have crap happening to us, nobody is immune to it. Bad things happen all the time and yes they happen to good people (including me). But deciding for YOURSELF to not collapse on the ground in a big mess and throw a tantrum about it is not living in denial. Deciding to keep looking at what DID WORK out a crappy situation is not naive, it's actually what will get you to find a way around the problem, and keep going. See it that way : If you are on a journey that requires you to cross a deep river and you walk down a path at the end of which a bridge should be there to cross that river, only to find out the bridge has broken down or been washed away, what would you do? Which kind of thinking will get you were you want to be? You have 2 choices there : 1) Scream and throw yourself on the ground cursing the entire universe for being against you, claiming this always happen to you and that it's why you never get good things in life and walk back defeated 2) Look at the situation at hand and say "Okay not what I expected let's figure out something else" and then assess your new options saying things like "Lucky there is enough wood around I could use" or "Hey good thing I know how to swim" or "Maybe there is a better bridge downstream". The person who think that way is also positively certain they will achieve their goal anyway, so they don't see an obstacle as anything but a slight delay. Ultimately, the only thing we are truly in charge of are our emotions and feelings. Thinking negatively is as free as thinking positively, we all have that choice, but the way we think release different hormones and chemicals in our body and brain. Negative thinking usually triggers an adrenaline release in the body to keep us in constant fight or flight state that over time has huge impact on our health and gives way to long term disorders. Positive thinking triggers endorphins because you are in relaxed, happy place that not only allows you to see things more clearly in the moment, but takes out the stress in the long term and safeguard your health. Faced with these two options, the incentive to work toward positive thinking as a natural state of mind should be a no brainer. How to get started? It may sound cliché, but meditation, just 5 minutes a day at first, is a good place to start. You can do that with just observing your breath for 5 minutes and see how it affects you. You can also join a guided meditation class if you aren't confident being able to do it alone at first, we all start somewhere. Then of course there is journalling about your experience, I even have a blog post with journaling prompt to get you started. You can also, and in fact you SHOULD read a few self-help books along the way. They all more or less will teach you the same thing, but in different formats and words, reading a few will help you resonate with the same ideas better. Aside from the two Jen Sincero books I mentioned above, some of my other favourites are "Lucky Bitch" and "Get rich Lucky Bitch" by Denise Duffield-Thomas. And of course there is "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne which qhite frankly is good but not as good as her other book "The Power". All the books link above are Amazon affiliate links by the way. If reading isn't your thing, I suggest you listen to podcasts, just search for "manifesting", or "Positive thinking" and you should get quite a few results as they are very popular topics nowadays. You can also find guided meditation on iTunes and Spotify. Just don't expect to be a master at it overnight, it takes time to change your mindset, especially if you are an habitual worrywart. Treat yourself with kindness and love and keep going. None of the techniques you will read about or hear about in books and podcasts give instant results, just keep going at it everyday and build a habit of being grateful and positive into your daily life, it will add up.

The month of May is upon us and it's time for you to head to the freebie zone and download this month's printable calendar page. I don't know about you, but I found April to be quite brutal and I am looking forward to a month that is a bet more laid back. April was a month of entirely too much going on between my daughter's ballet show rehearsal, said ballet show, study time for school exam, more study time for a ballet exam, a spring break, many social engagement both mine and my daughter's....This introvert needs a break, and quite expectedly, my creativity entirely went on the back burner. Thankfully, I know what to expect and do when a creative block hits. For a start, I have a big reserve of unpublished patterns and artworks to fall back on to keep the ball rolling, and it helps a ton. I seem to follow a pattern with creativity and energy, and every year the biggest slump occurs in March-April, I know I can expect a rebound around mid-May and that is comforting. So anyway, how are things going on with all of you?

Redbubble wasn't the only one to drop some massive news this April. In fact Society6 was the first to announce some changes in their artist earnings payments with the introduction of shipping fees on ALL artists account and this got the artist community talking and debating the move. Along with the introduction of shipping fees starting on May 4th, Society6 also announced they would roll out a member's subscription plan later this year but so far there haven't been more details on it other than it's likely to roll out around September 2023. What do the shipping fees mean? Society6 explained that in the recent years, their shipping cost has drastically increased and that in order to keep them from being a burden on the customer alone, they took in some profit cuts themselves, but it's no longer enough and they decided to also put some of that burden on artists by levying a flat rate that can go from 0.30 $ to 8$ depending the product. You can find the complete shipping fees list on their help page. All the basic items like art prints, t-shirts, mugs and phone cases are under 1$ and a vast majority of the products will attract a shipping fee that is under 2$. The big tickets items like the credenza and other furnitures are the ones with the biggest shipping fee, but most will stay under 5$ the only item that will attract a 8$ shipping fee is the credenza. What should you do about it? The gut reaction of many artists was to shut down their shop immediately in disgust. But I think this isn't really the first option one should consider because those fees are NOT going to put you out of pocket, they are levied on your sale's earnings and the new earning structure goes like this : Artist markup on the retail price - shipping fee = finalised earning This means that if you let's say have an art print that is selling for 10$ and your markup was 10% your earning would be 1$ before fee deduction. Art prints have a flat shipping fee of 0.80$ meaning your actual earnings on that sale would be 20 cents. BUT!!!!!!!!!! If you left your markup at 10% you made a poor business decision. Society6 introduced custom markup on all products back in 2021, this means your first move should be to check if your margins are still making your earnings worth your time with the new shipping fee. Unlike Redbubble with their tiers fees, Society6 is not levying their fees as a percentage but as a flat rate. This means that no matter what your markup is, the flat rate for Art prints is going to be 0.80$ and 30% of 10$ means 3$ which means your earning after the deduction is going to be 2.20$ which is still quite fair if you ask me. I started selling on Society6 back in 2017 when back then, the only products you could set your own margins on were art prints, I set it up at 30% from the get go and it has NEVER been a deterrent to sales. Art prints are the items I sell the most frequently on Society6. I sell most of everything else at a 20% markup too and have increased a few products with bigger shipping rates to a 30% markup as well. understanding the logic behind their move Most artists flamed the decision and blamed it on corporate greed which I think is way too simple as far as reasoning go. Shipping costs have been rising in the retail world since the pandemic hit. On top of that, Society6 and Redbubble are the two biggest player in the PoD industry which has been attracting a lot of scammer looking to make a quick buck. Just head to Quora and see how many questions there is just for Redbubble alone on how to crack the SEO code to quick sales or people looking for the magic formula to overnight success on the platform, not to mention the amount of people stuffing their shop links in questions and comment hoping to drive traffic to a shop that inevitably contains a lot of stock photos, clipart and graphics if not stolen ones. Hosting high resolution artworks and designs cost money to begin with, and I can't blame PoD for wanting to raise the bar in term of quality. Too many poor designs that do not align with their brand is also going to cost them potential customers. My opinion on the matter I said it already when I wrote the blog post about Redbubble's tiers and I'll say it again now : I think it's a great move. In the case of Society6 I hope the introduction of subscription tiers will not leave Indian artists out of it as the RBI guidelines regarding recurring transaction has made taking international subscriptions challenging at times and I got contacted by a few people on Instagram about how the verification fee charged by Society6 via PayPal is not going through depending which cards you use. Ultimately it's more of a PayPal issue than a Society6 issue, but it could potentially impact how some people could access the paid subscription model that will roll out later this year. Personally, I am not going to worry about it too much until then and will then reassess how I go about it all. My opinion on it all pretty much echoes Cat Coq's view on the matter of fees and PoD. These fees is the price of being in business and it wasn't unexpected. There are a lot of changes happening in the art world, one of them being the introduction of AI art, which is a gray area still when it comes to copyrights, and unfortunately it has become quite easy to generate AI art in the first place and then open an account on a PoD platform in hope of selling these computer generated designs. There is no denying that setting up shop on any PoD platform is frankly way too easy, with minimal verification processes in place, so it should really come as no surprise that these companies are tightening up in order to maintain a certain level of quality going. In the end, PoD are running a business too, they aren't running a charity, non-profit program to support small artists. Just like Cat's, my advice is to DIVERSIFY you income streams as much as possible. Again, I see too many questions on Quora that are about "Which PoD is best" as if it was ever a "This or That" situation. It never was a this or that choice, the truth is you 100% SHOULD open a shop on several platforms all at once, as long as those platforms do not demand exclusivity over a design, you can upload the same one on several PoD website. The truth is that some designs will sell on repeat on one platform and not at all on another, and you could be missing on a massive amount of sales by deciding to stick just to one platform. There are also new PoD coming up all the time, the earlier you join one, the more likely you'll make sale when that PoD will peak and become popular, so you will need to stick around to find out. And, yes, it's a big gamble too, because some of these small PoD platform will go bankrupt before you can cash in, or some will change their business model in a way that will no longer make it worth your time, or they will cancel the licensing model to become more like Vistaprint. I've had a presence on 5 PoD that either ended up shutting down without paying me my dues or changed the direction of how they do business. It's a risk worth taking, and it's very much part of business. I think the wise thing to expect right now is that all major PoD will start introducing some fees or a curating process. Redbubble and Society6 weren't the first ones to do so to be fair, and they won't be the last ones either. Spoonflower has had that policy about surface pattern designer BUYING a proofing sample before they are allowed to put their designs up for sale and Zazzle has had an inactivity fee going on past earnings if a designer didn't upload new work at least once a month.

The wind is turning for several print on demand companies these days and while the designer world was all talking about a set of new fees Society6 is rolling out (I'll write about it later), one of the other big change that just dropped is coming from Redbubble and its introduction of account tiers and account fees. The change is due to roll out on June 1st but if you are an existing user, you can already view which tier you made it to on your account dashboard. Proud to announce that Home Cyn Home made it to a premium account for now and I'm really stoke about it. but hang on! what does it mean? From now on, it seems that all account, new or existing will get allotted to a tier with certain perks and benefits associated with each. Those tiers are : Redbubble Standard, Redbubble Premium and Redbubble Pro and from what they have explained on their website, people would be eligible for a standard account after opening shop with Redbubble and be able to move up in rank if they meet certain activity and sales thresholds. Redbubble Standard accounts are the only one who are going to be subjected to an account fee, which according to Redbubble will be levied on sales, as no artists should be out of pocket. The fee will be calculated based on your monthly earnings if they qualify for payout and the amount will be deducted from said earnings at that time. To know more if you belong to the Standard tier, Redbubble has put together an article page for your to read. You do not pay any fees if you are at the Premium or Pro tier. probably an unpopular opinion but... I more than welcome that move from Redbubble, this platform, more than others have been attracting frauds by the dozen and Quora has no shortage of questions along the line of "How can I make money on Redbubble" and "How can I get more views" or "Why am I not getting any sales". I've answered many of these over the years, reminding people that just because you upload the artwork once doesn't mean you can just sit back and relax and wait for the money to come in. What shocked me too is several wannabe "artists" contacting me on Instagram in hope to get my secret formula for success and the ultimate way to crack their algorithm. It never failed, these people had shops filled with designs that were stock graphics they didn't even create themselves. I've also encountered blatant theft of my designs on the platform (and reported it). Some people will resort to anything in hope of a quick and easy payout. Redbubble is the one paying to host all those designs, and victim of their success I bet those hosting fees amount to a LOT and it must be annoying them to know many of the designs on their servers are bogus, fraudulent ones, or from accounts that have gone quiet. The tier system is a way of flushing out the people that are just trying to crack the system and make money and encourage serious artists to upload consistently and build a brand on their platform. Society6 has been hinting at rolling out a subscription model later this year as well, probably for the same reasons. pay your dues and move up in rank This new system will have all newbie artist start at the bottom, and the more consistent and active you get on the platform without violating community guidelines, the faster you'll get to move to the free, fee-less Premium tier. Still on their website, here is what they say about moving up in ranks : To give your account the best chance moving into the Premium or Pro tier we recommend the following: Creating based on trends or themes your customers are searching for Increasing the commercial success of your designs Driving direct high quality traffic to your Redbubble store Uploading designs that showcase your unique creative skills Uploading your best work with attention to image resolution and product formatting Completing your bio and adding links to your social profiles This is something I have been saying for years on Quora by the way, the only way to make more sales and show up in searches on Redbubble is to look beyond the SEO, relevant tags and keywords is something everyone is doing. Their algorithm rewards people who are ACTIVE on the platform. I'm hopeful that those changes on Redbubble will really improve the visibility of artists who are putting in the work and get all the "I want to get rich quick" people who aren't even designers to give the platform a miss.

If you didn't catch the announcement on Facebook, the April printable calendar page is up for download in the freebies zone. I'm going to keep this post shot and sweet because quite frankly I am still recovering from the month of March being exhausting and taxing. Do any of you have a month during the year that keeps feeling off year after year? A month where you feel like your energy levels are low and you constantly fall short of expectations and deadlines? For my that's March, it's not even that it really throws huge curve balls at me (well except in 2020 and 2021), it's just that I personally just don't have the energy to deal with anything crazy in March. I really need to start putting warnings in my planner each year about taking it easy in March, because each year, without a fail, I find myself wanting to "do all the things" and ending up not achieving much of anything anyway. This is the reason why the blog was ridiculously silent in March, and to be fair, I still wonder what topics to cover, if you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

We dusted another month on our mad spin around the sun and are embracing the last month of the 1st quarter already! This means only one thing : the printable calendar page for the month of March is up for grab in the Freebie zone! If your brand new to Home Cyn Home, the Freebie zone is this cool, member only area where you get to download cool printables every month. Don't worry, joining as a member is 100% free and you can quit anytime you want. Speaking of printable, this month I also uploaded a super cute little cacti stickers set in the member area, so if you click on the Freebie page, you'll find it there as well. In my synesthetic mind, March is green, and by extension, it's the month of all things plants. I can't seem to move past the plant theme, I always gravitate toward it, year after years. The irony? I'm probably the biggest brown thumb in the history of brown thumbs. I kid you not, I can kill snake plants! That's my super power people! We found out back in 2020 that I'm better off not even watering the plants at home, when I do, they die, when hubby does it, they thrive, even though he just pours water the same way I do, I think he just has the kind of calming energy plants love. March is also the first month of intense heat over here in Mumbai, and climate change oblige, it has already started in February this year (not happy about it). The only positive about the return of the heat is that I can go back to swimming regularly. On the artsy/design front, I am going to work on putting a lot of designs in my pipeline before the heat send me into a creative rest phase. Those of you making a living out of their creativity probably know it better as "creative block" but I no longer really want to associate it to a negative term, and if you haven't read about it yet, I wrote a blog post about coping and getting over that phase. Hint hint, it involves being kind to yourself.