Re-inventing Tisetas

Since day one at Tisetas I have chosen to use a simple, colourful aesthetic with prominent black strokes . I don't use many gradients -except on backgrounds - , or shadows and highlights to create volume as I was taught during my 5 year Fine Art degree -at least not at the moment. I wanted to go for this look which might look childish, and pair it up with more "serious stuff"  like quotes. Because I am combining text and images I prefer them to be equals on the result , supporting each other, rather than the picture being an accessory to the text or viceversa. My palette has a lot of oranges, yellows, browns, reds... mostly autumn related colours that have a warm feel. I also use bright blues ,purples and violets - I love yellow and purple combinations! When I looked into my color palette for this renewal project I am immersed into, I studied different ideas and researched a bit about color psychology. I asked myself  what did I want people to feel when they lo...

Once I have decided my main goal , I need little stepping stones to reach it. There are many things who have to be done in order to have a shop or live from my work. Specially when I have a regular payed job, no savings , I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and I like to go to concerts, musicals, eating out or short trips every now and then. Since I don't think I will get a big lump sum so I can leave my job for some time and have a go at it, these are the steps I have in mind : Renew designs. Create new products with its packaging.  Increase online presence . Produce a catalogue and send to shops. Look up about trade shows or events. See if I can go to bigger markets. See if I can rent a space in a shop for some time or a pop up shop for 2 weeks. I would need some steady income from my online shop, equal to at least over £500 a month in order to continue from here to: Drop days at my current job. Rent office space so I can store my things be...

Although I always say "I would like to live from my creations", I need to put down a more concrete and specific goal. If you are specific, you are more likely to focus on it and work towards it . If it's too broad or disperse, you might not get there because you will get lost on your way. So sometime ago I sat down and asked myself: "What do I want to achieve?" My aim is to get enough money to live comfortably from selling my items .👍 Ideally,  I would have a  small shop with 3 to 4 employees so I can take days off or focus on designing and travelling. [ That´s the "realistic" dream. There are smaller and bigger versions. For example, I could just sell online and have a casual-part time job on the side. Or work entirely from home. Or have shops all over the world. Move over, Cathy Kidston!] In order to achieve this, I could choose many path or products to sell/produce. But I want to earn my living designing and selling small, portable or g...

In order to find your own space in a very busy market place such as the internet, or a saturated market like stationery, you need to make yourself stand out in some way so people buy your products. That's what's called the USP, or unique selling point. It seems pretty obvious but thinking about  it has been giving me headaches for a while. Having a "unique style" is great, however I wouldn't really advertise my creations with that tagline since there are thousands of unique styles from different artists. "Positive quotes" is again another popular and oversaturated tag. I was pondering about " self care " and working around my journey discovering and growing my awareness regarding mental health. Still, I can't see myself confident enough to use my basic knowledge since the USP should be something I have an expertise on . Why an expertise? Because only when the maker is confident about what they do and how they do it is when we ...

How  to start?It is easy to access to information these days. Lots of tricks, tips, advices, free and payed for. Ideas, stories...It can be overwhelming -it is for me!. I get easily distracted, I can find that I want to do everything at once and have no patience for the process. Last  year I was using DPD (Dream Plan Do) and doing lists to try to organize myself. And sort out my priorities. It helped me but also I think I overdid it , so in the end I didn't cross many items of those lists, I forgot to look at them, I got stressed because I seemed to be stuck... I am still terrible at it at having a full time job is quite limiting. This time I will keep on working with DPD and lists but I am also trying to take one thing at a time and create solid foundations for what I want to do. I won't be rushing myself, as long as I keep on working on it with some kind of regularity. Here's my list: Basic foundations : values, mission, colors, look and feel, objective...

Most of what I've been doing has been without previous planning and on the go, or as we say in Spain " sobre la marcha ". I have been dipping in and out from different websites, social media, blogs, free talks, videos but quite scattered and never really sat down to put all the pieces together - I am a bit like that myself. These are some of the books I am going to use to start with: Dream Plan Do journal . In January 2018 I went to Top Drawer, one of those trade shows about stationery and came across a lady who was giving a chat which I found quite revealing. I bought her book, which is a journal that helps you work on all areas of your business or the ones you lack the most. It made me think about certain things for the first time and was quite an eye opener. I didn't pass from Month 4 but I am planning to re-take it in 2019 - I've erased all my scribbles already! Stand Out online . I've got this for Christmas  and I believe it is just what...

Having an online shop is not as easy as it sounds. It involves quite a lot of work , and it can be daunting if you are a 'solopreneur' like me. Things I have to do include: Doing the illustrations. Adapting those illustrations to the objects they are going to be printed on. Research prices, times and production of those objects -and order them. Deciding on packaging, and packing them!Also stocking up envelopes ,bubble wrap, tape, pens and labels. Keep track of finances (I am terrible at this). Manage social media accounts on Twitter(I don't), Facebook (barely), Instagram (most days). I am also the one who ends up deciding on content, producing it, researching hashtags, trying to interact with other users... Uploading listings on Etsy , writing descriptions, finding the right keywords. Photography : sometimes my friend helps me with the Etsy photos and some social media ones. She does some editing as well! Search for ideas for more illustrations. Customer serv...

I can find overwhelming to look at all the things I have to do -and I keep on adding more and more! So what I do is to break the tasks into smaller ones that I can fit anywhere . I have some different tasks ready in case on a particular moment I don't feel like doing a particular thing. So if I don't feel like drawing, I could do some hashtag research, for example. Or I can prepare posts for Instagram instead of looking for new products. I am a big fan of 'To do' lists even though sometimes those lists stress me a bit more because I can see I am not ticking things off. However they work for me, specially if they are somewhere visible. That's why, when I decided to do this huge renewal, I had to tell myself it will take time and that's ok. I am breaking the enormous task into little and achievable ones and I am not really setting a deadline since I am more focused on having a really solid foundation this time, instead of working over things I did in th...

One of the tasks I set myself to do was to do a swipe over the internet . I searched my name and shop's name on Google, Bing and social media sites -including YouTube - and found old accounts I wasn't aware were still there.🙈 So now, in order to make them look more as a part of a whole, I am : Deleting the ones I won't use ( Flickr ,anyone?) Updating profile photos/cover photos  of the ones I don't use but could potentially do in the future. Deleting tweets ,followers that are no relevant and likes from both my personal and shop Twitter accounts  ( I am so grateful I have never been too active on Twitter! Even though that needs to change...) Look/delete into saved links or posts on Instagram and Facebook accounts. Check pins on my Pinterest boards and delete the ones that are not appropriate. Delete the majority the photos and posts on my  Facebook like Page . It might look easy but it's tedious and time consuming. Many of these tasks are. That is why...

Tisetas is a  weird word , don't you think? It doesn't have a meaning in any language I know. Actually it comes as the result of a fusion of two words: T-shirts and camisetas ( the Spanish word for T-shirts).I liked it and after a thought or two added the &Co. For me it is important to be open to other possibilities and to work with other people. It all started because I was tired of going to shops and not finding cool messages on t-shirts aimed for ladies . They were all "I love Justin/Brad/Tom/You Name It" glittery-starry-flowery-stuff (which I don't have anything against). However all  male ones had great, quirky and funny  slogans . I didn't think that was fair so I wondered if I could design witty slogans for female t-shirts.  I did it some on online patforms like Spreadshirt where you can upload your designs and people can order things with it without you having  the physical product or investing any money on production, even though I didn´t do ...

Hello and welcome. This is probably the 3rd of 4th time I've tried to go for a blog. I was never sure if anyone would be interested on me or my journey. And I can get easily distracted and forget about it. But I thought I could give it another go.  My name is Felicidad, I am from Spain and I've been living in London for a bit over 10 years. I have a full time job in a tourist hotspot. However I like drawing, illustrating , stationery and gifts and that is why I opened my Etsy shop some years ago with positive quotes and postcards amongst other little gifts.  It has been slowly growing but with all these algorithm changes on Etsy , Instagram and company , results dipped a bit. My computer also broke and there were other series of unfortunate events happening that made me rethink everything. So I took the decision to start  -almost- from scratch. In this blog I am going to try to share my journey and my learning process. And my internal debates. And the challenge...