Finishing and disseminating your art around the world
In this unit, we will start by looking at how to protect your pieces with a suitable varnish and how to assemble your necklaces. If you want to work with polymer clay in a more professional way, I will give you some tips on the material you may need to send your pieces to potential customers.
Then, I will tell you about the potential of social media to spread your pieces around the world and I will teach you how to optimize your Instagram to have more visibility on that platform.
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Varnish and chain
I will now finish our pieces. In this class, I’ll teach you when and how to use varnishes to protect your pieces in polymer clay and I’ll assemble the necklaces.
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Conservation and shipping of parts
Now that the pieces are finished, I'm going to give you some tips on how to keep your necklaces in polymer clay. If you want to go to the higher level and sell your art, I will show you some materials that you can use as a package for sending your pieces.
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Publishing your art on social networks
This class will be dedicated to the potential of social networks to promote your art. I will tell you about the different platforms that you will have at your disposal and, in a second part, I will focus more on Instagram, which is for me the best platform for this purpose. Using Instagram to promote your art may seem very easy. In fact, mastering this marketing tool and getting good results is much more difficult than it looks, especially if you don't have a strategy for that purpose. To help you in this arduous task, I will teach you what are the key aspects to take into account to be successful on Instagram.
Tasks
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Protect and finish your pieces
Apply a varnish to protect your work. If you want to apply several layers of shiny varnish, be sure to let it dry well between layers. Once finished, it was time to apply a chain and mount the necklaces.
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Share your final project with us
Share with us, in "Final Project", several photos of your process and your final piece, varnished and with chain. To do so, in the next unit, you will find the button "Create your project" to share your process and final result. Try to take good photos to enhance your pieces ;) I will also leave my creations there.
Also, I would like to share some of my student's projects on my Instagram in order to help you gain more visibility! For that, if you are on social networks, you just have to post your Final project with the hashtag #TheFolkyFoxDomestika. That way, I will be able to see it and feature it. :)
You can also use the hashtag #domestika so that the rest of Domestika's creative community can see your work.
U5 Frequently asked questions
Additional Resource Translations - Unit 5
Dear French-speaking and Germanic Hispanic students. As you may have noticed, the Additional Resources available for download are not translated into your languages. In order that this does not impede the progress of your learning, you can find in this topic the texts of the Additional Resources of Unit 5 so that you have...
Keep readingAdditional resources
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My social networks and store
I'll leave you my social media accounts here so you can follow my work and get to know me better:
Domestika
Creative community that we all belong to and our communication channel in this course.Instagram
This is my main account where I am most regular and interact with my followers. I post several publications a week, such as photos of work in progress, my finished pieces, behind the scenes, some tips and announcements about my online store.Twitter
Recently created. In this account, I present my content in a more relaxed and personal way.Pinterest
On this platform, I have a folder with all my creations that I add regularly. You can also find several mood boards with images that I like and that inspire me, such as pictures of animals and plants that I use as a reference to make my pieces. You can choose to follow only the folder with my pieces, or my entire account, in case you are interested in discovering my inspirations.My website and online store - The Folky Fox
Where I sell my creations in polymer clay and in ceramics. -
More ideas to enrich your packaging
In "Additional resources" you can find a document with several tips on how to organize your packaging and examples of materials that you can use to decorate and enrich your packages.
Packaging Ideas
However, nothing better than seeing these examples in image! In that sense, I created for you a mood board on my Pinterest with several fantastic wrapping ideas to inspire you, created especially for this course. -
Instagram Insight Section
In the class when I talk about Instagram, I told you about the importance of tracking the success of your account thanks to the Insight section of the App. There you can see the performance of your posts, your account activity and more information about your audience. This tool is very powerful and you must explore it very well. I leave you with two examples of analyzes that you can perform with this data:
▪ You can see your most successful posts and try to understand why they were so successful. You can try to identify a pattern that works: for example some type of content, the appearance of the photos or some used hashtags that work best. In the same way, you can identify the types of posts that don't work as well. By knowing which of your publications have the best reach, you can focus on themes, photo styles or content most likely to reach more followers.
▪ You will be able to identify what time your followers are most likely to be present on Instagram. Thus, you will be able to plan the time of your publications in order to coincide with the time of day when your followers start to appear more in the App, in order to get more "likes" and comments on your posts in the first hours after publication. . This will give the signal to the algorithm that your post is of interest and that it should be more publicized.
To access your Instagram Insight Section, you will need to convert your personal account into a Business or Creator account (a new feature recently implemented by Instagram). While the Business account is aimed at companies and people who want to sell products or services, the Creator account is more targeted at influencers , celebrities and artists. For an artist looking to sell his art, the choice may not be so obvious. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these two types of accounts.
"What is the Difference Between the 3 Instagram Profile Types"
You can consult this article with the pros and cons of each option to help you with this decision."Set up a business account on Instagram"
Instructions for converting your account to a Business account."Set up a creator account"
Instructions for converting your account to a Creator's account.
Additional resources
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ZIP
Aspects to consider to make your art a business
Would you like to turn your hobby into a business? Without a plan, it can be tricky to figure out where to start. To help you in this task, I have organized and detailed the main aspects that you will have to take into account to reach that goal.
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ZIP
Brief presentation of the main social networks
In case you are not very familiar with social networks, I have compiled the main characteristics of the most used platforms today.
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ZIP
Tips to enrich your packaging
In this document, I present you with several tips to create and enrich your packages for sending your pieces in order to provide a good unboxing to your customers.