Closing my Parlour Duck Crafts Etsy store

Etsy sent out an email last week announcing that sellers had until the 17th of May to switch to Etsy Payments and the option to be a Paypal only seller was going to disappear.  While I did consider doing so for a few hours, overnight reflection has led to this decision. I will be closing my shop Parlour Duck Crafts on the 10th of May, and having a closing down sale with the code CLOSING15 for 15% off. I've also made almost all items available for shipping everywhere in the world rather than just Australia.

Except this Charlie One Horse hat, as I don't want to have to ship it overseas. 

The truth is, I wasn't happy trying to run the store and have crafts as a business. I wasn't committing to it in the way that I needed to, and I was displaying classic avoidance and procrastination behaviour when it came to my plans for the store. I am absolutely glad that I have tried it and indeed I suspect I needed to try it - I may well have spent years wondering "what if" otherwise. It was an experience I am glad to have had, if only so it could teach me that I'm much happier for crafts to be a hobby. I started because I wanted a flexible income that came from something I did well and enjoyed. Perhaps I also had a sense that because I enjoyed crafts I had an obligation to try to make it into a career rather than just a hobby. I was attracted by the idea of having a creative business.   Maybe if the other paid work I was doing was awful or exploitative or soulless or was making me miserable, I would have tried harder. But it isn't. I love my freelance indexing and proofing and my casual employment supporting various academics. I'm excited by the projects I've worked on in the past year and the ones I'm starting now.

This zinnia hat is a recent creation and I've had so much fun taking photos of it.

I'm keeping it open for a few weeks rather than closing right away to try to sell my remaining listings, which include some lovely crochet and vintage items, several of which have been pictured throughout this post.

This cross-stitch book qualifies as vintage by Etsy's rules and that fact makes me feel old.

The blog will still continue though, under the same name, and will still be a place where I talk about what I'm crafting, what I'm learning and what I'm enjoying. I have some exciting plans for a blog feature starting in July and I'm also eager to push on with my fabric stashbusting and show you what I've managed to create.  And I'm not saying goodbye 100% to making for others - I will still be open to the occasional commissioned piece of work as a freelance contract. But as of the 10th of May, my Etsy store closes.