How great is blogging!? Watching my friends online and in real life crafting their own careers, learning how to turn their passions into businesses and doing it with so much authenticity is awe inspiring. Thanks to the Internet you can bring home the bacon and be frying it up in the pan at the same time. I see working moms who can spend time with their families, getting to spend extra time with their children whilst at the same time providing for them and helping with the family income. I see women who, given the flexibility of setting your own working schedule are taking over the world.
The Internet can be such an empowering place especially for my sisters from other misters (yeah, I went there) who are absolutely killing it! Watching all this makes me want to encourage more and more women to start doing what they really love online. In fact all of my girlfriends have sat through a long, blogging pep talk from me. I think everyone should do it!
That said I do have to admit it’s not as effortless and whimsical as I might sometimes have the tendency to make out. Actually making a living takes time and a lot of different revenue streams and each of those trickles needs tons of energy put into them to make them flow (Anyone else needing to go to the bathroom now?) That is until we heard the term passive income. Sounds like the dream – making money in your sleep? Give me some of that! But as much as I see the term banded about I rarely see it used in a creative capacity.
So how is it done? How do you stay creative and spend your time designing and creating rather than writing ecourses on well, how to do just that? How can you create without investing money on products and/or spending most of your time queuing at the post office? It’s an area I’ve been looking into as a strategy for my business and one of the best and most passive ideas I’ve had has been staring me in the face all this time!
I created my own Zazzle shop.
I’ve worked with Zazzle a couple of times before on both this DIY Motivational Banner and this Watercolour Print Fabric Bauble tutorial. Both times I was just so pleased with the quality of the product I had printed from Zazzle. So after working on the lots of natural dyed Shibori designs for our latest We Make Collective kit I though I would try out some of these designs and make my own products!
Full disclosure, this is not a get rich quick answer. It will still take some work to get started (like most good passive income streams) and you won’t be making millions over night, but it gives you the chance to create a product range. You can transform your design into hundreds of different products and as well as testing out how it will work (the online editor is scarily life like) you can also test your audience. It’s worldwide market research with out any of the risk. See what works, see what needs tweaking and make money at the same time – all for free!
I’ve definitely got a little bit of work to do honing my designs and working out how to translate my ideas into fantastic products, but I’m really enjoying the process of designing with no pressure, no deadlines and no mistakes. If I change my mind I can just alter the design as and when I want! So much flexibility!
Currently I’m loving this Ne-Maki Shibori cushion that is available in my shop at the moment and I’m going to show you exactly how I did it!
I usually use photoshop to edit my images but don’t worry if you don’t have access to an Adobe suite. Picmonkey is free and really easy to use and I’m going to go through a few simple editing techniques on this platform now to get your designs looking amazing! You want to start with a large image for the best results. If you can take the photo with a DSLR, but even a phone photo will work for the smaller products and to prove it I’ll show you below:
Now you have your photo let’s start editing!
Here’s my original, totally unedited snap of my fabric taken on the floor of my studio on a nice sunny day. Not looking that great yet is it?
So the first thing I want to do is click on that ‘exposure’ button on the left hand side to bring up the controls.
Play around with these dials until you’re happy with your image. Each photo will be different so these aren’t necessarily the right settings for your picture, but generally you will want to increase the brightness and contrast and bump the shadows down a little to create nice colour variations.
Speaking of colour, it’s looking a little bit off. You can see that the white areas of the fabric look blue. Let’s fix that. Click on the ‘colors’ button and then the Neutral picker. Now click around the image picking out the areas that should be white until you feel the image represents the true colours. I then bumped up the saturation – just for good measure.
We’re looking pretty good now but for one final tweak I just sharpened and clarified the image just a touch to really define those patterns. All that’s left to do is crop and save!
See, that wasn’t painful at all was it! Now the image is ready to make into everything!! Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself right here :D
Now that we know how to take and edit your photos for use on any of the products, plus how to create products and sell them for free it’s time for a giveaway! We’re just the gift that keeps on giving! If you complete the following requirements you could win a £100 Zazzle gift certificate and have your products featured on the Zazzle home page getting you plenty of views!
– Entrants must have set up a Zazzle store and provide that store name in the form below.
– A store must have at least 10 public Zazzle products posted for sale to qualify, with a royalty rate of no more than 15%. The store must include at least one cushion design.
– All entrants will be featured onsite for at least one month.
– The overall winner will receive a £100 gift certificate to use on www.zazzle.co.uk. There is no cash alternative.
Click here for full terms and conditions.
**This post is sponsored by Zazzle. All opinions are my own.
francesca says
so interesting!
xx
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Marwa | Enthralling Gumption says
That’s awesome, congrats on your new online shop! You’ve got some nice designs up for a grab.
claireabellemakes says
Loving the shibori stuff in your shop. Hope it brings you lots of passive income so you can make sales while you sleep :)
Ima says
Such a fine site tou have Lady. I found it thanx to pinterest and now I love fallfordiy!!!
Aino says
Your designs are beautiful! I’ve been thinking about selling products but haven’t found the right place for it yet – Zazzle looks pretty awesome, so I’ll have to look into it more. Thank you so much for sharing!
Selina says
Thank you so much for this post, Fran! I am looking for passive income options and Zazzle looks very interesting. I will definitely try it…
fran says
Thanks Selina!
I hope you do try it (and make lots of money too :D)! I’ve just updated this post with a competition to win a £100 voucher and your products promoted on the front page of Zazzle! If you set up a shop make sure you come back and let me know!
Fran
Ann says
Hi, I got hooked reading this blog post, but as a newly, I think I’ve missed the point. I hope you can explain. I was interested in blogging on craft stuff and earning a passive income, somehow, but I don’t understand where the passive income comes in. Is it from advertising? Is it from selling the items like the cushion? I make lots of different things but I don’t sell any because eBay didn’t work for me. Help me understand! I want to do this! Ta!
fran says
Hey Ann,
Thanks for your comment. There are lots of different ways to make an income from blogging and this is just one of them. You design the products, link to your “shop” from your blog and then make a percentage of all the sales. Zazzle create, pack and send out all the products so you don’t have to do a thing! That’s where the passive comes in! Once you’re set up you never have to do anything again!
I hope that helps explain it. Pop over to Zazzle and take a look!
Fran
Bridgid Gallagher says
Thanks for the post & giveaway! This is something I’ve thought about doing, but I simply haven’t taken the time to look into it. Your post and the tutorial definitely help make it look less intimidating. Thank you!
Alexandra Comnenos says
Love this post! I’ve shopped on Zazzle before, but your post has made me consider selling through it. Thank you!
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Clare says
What a great idea! I love your designs. I think I need to get creative and get making again!
Clare x
Tanya says
As an artist, this makes me sad that the integrity of art is being downgraded and compromised for money. Shibori dying is such a diligent process and shouldn’t be cheated for quick money.
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I’m curious. Was this your original fabric design or did you just take a photo of fabric you purchased and then edited it?
fran says
Hey Joanna,
Thanks for your question! I created the print using a shibori technique. I then photographed the fabric to edit. Hope that answers your question :)
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