More links, inspiration, & ideas!

I am enjoying my free, happy life! collage by Lani

I was wandering on Jen Worden's most marvelous website/blog and of course I followed a link or two because she said I must (Ha, and I always do what I'm told!) and because the topic of Artists' Collectives is so wonderful! Anyway I got lost for hours in the Make + Meaning website and community. The particular blog entry that got my friend Jen all fired up is the one about artists getting paid for their work. Sisterdiane asks how we could pay each other for our work. Artists and creative people like the idea of getting paid to be creative, and in the Darwinian economic model, a few artists get paid for their creative work, but this model might not be the only model going. Interested? Join the discussion on Jen's blog or on Sisterdiane's entry.

The model that the music industry is using now is a good one to consider, downloading the song you want for your mp3 player. Shescrafty and Jen say if it works for the music industry, why not for us artists and crafters? And actually there is a movement in that direction! Have you noticed how many of your favorite artists are now offering eCourses, patterns, eBooks, eZines, and self published books?

For example LK Ludwig has some awesome courses on the go! So you can buy her books at Amazon, and she may get a very tiny royalty, or you can take a course from her and you are paying her alone. Very nice! And there's Christine Mason Miller's self published and totally amazing book (I really want to know who her printer is!!!) Ordinary Sparkling Moments. You can buy it on Amazon or Etsy but the point here is she's self published so she gets paid by you directly. Nice, eh? And then of course there's Journal Girl (Samantha Kira Harding) with her amazing video tutorials, workshops, digital downloads, and yes, even fonts!! Over at 14 Secrets we used several of her tutorials to create our "Wreck This Journal" journals. Lots of fun.

Font by Journal Girl

So this is three (and there are more) examples of artists getting paid by us for their creative work. I love it, don't you? Wouldn't a big cooperative website with lots of ezines and downloads by your favorite artists be awesome?

Collage by Lani, Font by Journal Girl.