Over five years ago, I designed and created my own version of magnetic poetry.  It took a full Sunday looking though the dictionary to select the seven hundred words that ended up being  printed and cut into individual words that very same day.

So now, I’m sharing both a 1600×1200 and 1024×768 desktop in honor of that day and this fabulous tutorial on Technical Advisory Service for Images [TASI] that features my photograph of Magnetic Poetry under the Creative Commons license.  The tutorial explains in great detail how to find images on Flickr.  It also provides links to some interesting third party Flickr search sites.  My favorite is Color Fields, which allows you to search simply by selecting a color of interest.  In addition, it featured some color selection tools that limit your search to certain search terms such as flowers, urban decay, and stock images.

Chris Parry, a fellow blogger and Etsy seller, recently posted an extremely useful article on his blog, Chris Parry -Bespoke Jewellery. that features an Excel spreadsheet that you can download for free to assist you in calculating your retail price for your art.

In reviewing the spreadsheet, I was quickly impressed with how user-friendly and organized the format was laid out. While the format is designed for pricing just one item, it really helps break down pricing your artwork into a science and not simply a guessing game.

To give you a brief outline of the comprehensive pricing spreadsheet that Chris has designed, here is a summary of what you’ll find on the individual tabs of the spreadsheet:

• Overview: Assists in calculating your how much money you want to make
• Direct Costs: Has you plug in your raw material costs for the item such as paint brushes and canvas. Then it has you take into consideration your packaging. If you don’t have to take into account packaging or shipping costs, you could also enter the cost of framing your artwork.
• Indirect Costs: This tab has you enter your indirect costs, which include your overhead and marketing. In order to help you lists these costs, Chris clearly outlines detailed examples of what these costs might be. Some examples of the market costs that caught my eye include website costs, printing fees, and Etsy fees.
• Your selling price: This section outlines the reality of pricing by showing you how much you thought you would make and what you can actually make at a wholesale and retail price based on your costs. Leaving you only allowed to adjust your profit margin at this point. But I think it could also get you to re-think your original estimates too.

I have yet to try the spreadsheet out myself. With the holidays coming up, I’m pretty busy, but it’s definitely listed as something to do in the near future. So a big thanks goes out to Chris for sharing this with his fellow artists! Please leave him a comment if you find the spreadsheet useful. I’m sure he’d love to hear your feedback!