Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Myers.
Lisa, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My mother taught me how to cross stitch when I was a young girl but I didn’t quite have the patience for it then. When my husband (then fiancé) went to Afghanistan in 2011 I wanted to pick up a hobby to make the year go by faster. That’s when I got back into cross stitching. I bought some kits to stitch for friends and family and then started creating my own patterns for friends with the help of cross stitch books and computer programs. I had a friend from college who was selling a few of her cross stitch patterns online introduce me to Etsy and that’s when my Etsy shop was born.
Most of my early designs were curse words. Mixing crass ideas with an art form you’d expect little old ladies to be into was fun. The “my cats are assholes” pattern I originally made for a friend became the best selling design for the early years of my shop. Later on, my first “please don’t do coke in the bathroom” pattern quickly surpassed the cat pattern and is one of my best selling patterns to this day.
At first, my Etsy shop was just something fun to do in my free time but once I hit 500 sales it really hit me that my shop was successful and could be a steady source of some income. Currently I work a retail job part time and then work on my Etsy shop part time. My goal is to get my shop to a level where I can work on it full time. Because of all my health problems it would be great to be able to work from home.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
My fibromyalgia can get in the way of my stitching sometimes. As much as the constant movement of stitching can actually help my hand pain it can cause pain in my wrist from holding an embroidery hoop, or, stiffness in my back, hips, and knees if I sit in the same position for too long.
My fibro fog can make it hard to be able to come up with new pattern ideas. This year I decided to work toward putting out a new pattern every week. I’m pushing myself to use new fonts, flowers, borders, etc. So far I’ve kept up with this goal. Not every pattern has been a hit but you never know what is going to sell well until you list it.
It has also been a struggle to see how often patterns can be stolen/copied online. Several times I’ve had to confront people who are selling stitched out patterns of mine and trying to pass them off as their own. Most of the time I, as well as fellow stitchers, get the “well, I found it on Pinterest so that makes it free” excuse. It can be very disheartening. This year I took the time to copyright my original “please don’t do coke in the bathroom” pattern and I plan on applying for more copyrights soon.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
My Etsy shop consists mostly of cross stitch patterns and kits but I also sell some finished cross stitch pieces and embroideries. A lot of my designs have to do with the bathroom which actually wasn’t intentional. It started with “please don’t do coke in the bathroom” and “have a nice poop’” and quickly grew from there as friends, family and customers shared other funny bathroom sayings with me that they wanted stitched.
One thing that sets me apart is that I’m not afraid to stitch crass and “inappropriate” things. I’ve had a lot of custom orders for song lyrics or sayings that wouldn’t be things I would hang up in my home but I am all for helping others to have the art they want to have hanging in their homes.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
My mother deserves the most credit even though she passed away before I opened my Etsy shop. My mom was always doing crafts when I was growing up so I wanted to do them with her, although, I didn’t always see them through. But she taught me how to crochet, do beadwork, cross stitch and a lot more. My love of crafting definitely came from her. I don’t remember what the design actually was but I remember my first cross stitch project. I was doing good at first but then put it down for a couple weeks. When I picked it back up I forgot to separate the floss into strands so I was stitching with too much floss and it kept knotting. After trying to get out several knots I gave it up cross stitching for probably two decades.
Contact Info:
- Website: starkissedjade.etsy.com
- Email: starkissedjade@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starkissedjade/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StarkissedJadeOnEtsy/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/starkissedjade
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