When you are trying to think of what you want to sell on Etsy, for me the ideal product was something I could make once and then sell it over and over again without effort each time the product sold. I love working with my hands and painting is such a wonderful form of relaxation for me. If you are an artisan like me you crave the physical act of creating! A great example of this, “create it once and then sell it over and over again strategy” is my carrot onesie which I originally made for my son Beck and the you are my sunshine shirt I painted my daughter Layla. I painted an image and then got it printed on a onesie. I then listed the onesie in my Etsy Shop. I use a production parter to print and ship the onesie so there’s little effort for me when this item sells! This is what’s called passive income, the amount of revenue you can make while you sleep on this type of product still blows my mind.

Here are the steps that I took! 

First, I took out my amazing Winsor & Newton watercolors. They are the best quality watercolors I’ve found that are easily accessible on amazon or even Michaels or hobby lobby. I can’t tell you how many watercolor brands I’ve tried and these paints beat out any other brand I’ve tried. I’ve wasted quite a bit of money on cheaper watercolors that were just so grainy and didn’t have the same vibrance and flow on water as the Winsor and Newton! Buy the paint on Amazon HERE.

Step One: Create

1. I searched on Pinterest for a great looking carrot, I always seem to have to have a visual of the object I’m painting. I sketched the outline of the carrot with pencil, sometimes I’ll free hand and sometimes I’ll even place my watercolor paper directly on the screen of my computer, let the light shine through and trace an object. 

Once I’ve sketched out the outline I take an eraser and erase the pencil so I can barely see the outline. Then I’m ready to paint! I saturate the carrot on the watercolor paper with water (essentially you are using the outline of the carrot as your boundary and you fill inside the lines with water) and then drop the paint on to the water and let it move throughout the wet area of the carrot. I sometimes move the paper to let the water and ink flow to certain areas. If I get too much water in an area I use a wet paper towel and absorb some of the water off the paper. When I’m happy with the way the carrot looks I’ll let it dry and admire the beauty.

Step Two: Make Digital

2. It’s time to get the watercolor art into a digital format. You can either scan the painting in to your computer or take a straight on picture in natural light with your camera or iPhone. The scan is the safest way but sometimes I feel I can take great pictures with my phone so I do it this way. I’d recommend the high res scan though.

Once your art is uploaded on to your computer you will have to use software to take away the white paper in the image so you can have the carrot be standalone and you can replicate it on to any medium like a onesie. To do this you can use a program like photoshop to erase the background, or this website Remove that you can do it in one click… mind blowing. The worlds your oyster now on what you do with your digital image! For my design I played with multiplying my carrot and making a heart shape and adding some text to the image as well. You can do this in photoshop or a free site that i love Canva.

Step Three: Automatically Make and Ship to Customer

3. Now you can print your art on so many different products! I really like the site Printful they have a large selection of products that you can place your art on and even have mockups you can download to show what your finished product will look like. You have to think about what kind of price markup you want to put on your piece as you list your item. Don’t be afraid to mark your items higher than what you yourself would pay for a product, think about your target customer, they may be willing to pay more for a one of a kind piece. Take advantage of the order sample Printful offers, you can get the product at a discount and this will give you the chance to see your product before you list it online. Having the product in your hard gives you the opportunity to take some great pictures of your product to use for listings! You should also take advantage of Printful’s mock up generator, see what your product looks like and even download the image files and use them in your listings! 

When you think about listing your product on Etsy think about the entire process it took to get to the final product. Take pictures of yourself painting the art! Customer’s love seeing process photos, it’s nice to see the person behind the artistry of products, it connects the customer with the maker. This type of story is what attracts people to buy from Etsy makers. 

You can integrate Printful with Etsy so once an order is placed on your Etsy shop it automatically submits an order to Printful and they ship out your product for you! https://www.printful.com/dashboard/store You are essentially on auto-pilot selling your goods! 

Let me know if you have any questions about this process, it’s one of my favorite ways to make a product and then sell it with little effort each time someone orders. When you hear the sound of an order you don’t have to think about the work that’s to come in creating the product because you’ve already invested the time up front and now it’s time to just receive the money from the sale and automatically ship the product to the customer.