Overview 🔎

https://audsoddcreations.wixsite.com/website/instructional-diy-craft-guides

This was the biggest project of my 2021 art collection. I designed 12 unique embroidery patterns that were available for sale as a PDF from my Etsy Shop or a DIY Kit from my farmers market stand. I wrote technical instruction guides for each pattern and made corresponding DIY kits.

This is a perfect example of my writing abilities where I connect with my readers and communicate instructions.

Problem & Solution 🤝

I sold embroidery art on Etsy for 1 year. Through my experience, I realized the most effective use of my time was creating products that could be easily reproduced such as patterns, downloads, and DIY Kits for embroidery instead of selling hand-stitched items. The switch from hand-stitched items required me to draw digital patterns on Procreate and write DIY craft guides on Canva. Though there was a high initial labor cost of designing, and writing the craft guides, the cost of labor significantly went down after they were created because PDF patterns can be sold infinitely, and assembling a DIY kit took significantly less time than hand stitching each design.

This pattern PDF and Embroidery kit idea wasn't original, I studied other successful embroidery art creators and their products. Most of their products were able to be produced at no cost or little cost.

Goals/Requirements: These guides required in-depth knowledge of embroidery, unique patterns, and easy-to-follow instructions.

• Design and test embroidery pattern • Visually illustrate each step • Format and edit the guide

Process 🛣

To compete with other embroidery creators and maximize my revenue, creating instructional DIY craft guides was the first step. I focused on making my products accessible, cheap, and easy to reproduce. A PDF instruction guide was just $2 in comparison to a $60 finished design that I stitched.

I discovered a rhythm in creating these guides. Some text could be repeated across each design and the time it took to create 12 designs decreased with each instruction guide I wrote.

Results 🎁

These guides took time to write, but I only had to write the guide once to collect profit over time. This allowed me to focus on other parts of the art business that I was ignoring. Switching from selling handstitched finshed pieces to patterns saved my collection and allowed me to turn a small profit on my work.

Takeaways 📣

I always wish I had researched more, prepared more, and thought out projects more, but with a short period to create 12 patterns and corresponding instruction guides, I still created visually appealing pages and clearly communicated the instructions. I saw success in this project because I decreased personal labor costs, which helped me keep my art business afloat.