The Maker's Playbook Rebecca Ickes Carra

Living abroad. Sometimes, it sounds like the solution to all of my problems. All I need to do is choose a country with national healthcare and town with relatively low cost of living, and TA DA! Making a living from the things we make is solved, right? Right? It can look incredibly romantic online - strolling through tiny streets seemingly too small for cars, surrounded by historic architecture and the depths of tradition for a craft we all love. But how does it actually work? Is it really th...

Wholesale… The assumption is there’s no way to reasonably make a living, as a maker, by doing wholesale. But is that true? Since I’m generally pretty skeptical of any sweeping statement that says an entire concept doesn’t work for anyone, at all, I jumped at the opportunity chat with Steve Tubbs, an ex-retailer turned potter, when he mentioned his entire business is wholesale. While it might not work for everyone, it’s definitely working for him and the nothing-short-of-brilliant ordering sch...

You’ve taken a few classes at your local community studio and you know you want to make ceramics a larger part of your life. In fact, you want to build your own studio, but what does that even look like? And what might be all the tasks and overhead that community studio has been handling without you even realizing it? What is it actually like to start and run a community studio? While we’re at it, let’s complicate things a bit and open that community studio in one of the most expensive places...

Having a collector buy our work... It sounds… amazing! Awe-inspiring? Relieving? Luxurious. All of the above really. But how does it even happen? During the 2024 NCECA conference, Coalescence, held in Richmond, VA I sat down with Peter Beasecker and Louise Rosenfield to chat about their perspectives as maker and collector on how building relationships with collectors begins and how we might each be able to consider fostering our own. Today’s episode is brought to you by the following sponsors...

“Etsy vs. Your own website. Which is better?” It’s a question I see asked online endlessly. I see the responses fought over just as endlessly. But is it really an either/or? We dig into that on this next installment of our “The Launch” series - where I dig into the firsthand experiences Francesco & I are having in starting our own ceramics business. Spoiler - We’re using both Etsy and our own website, because there are pros and cons to both. And it’s those pros & cons we discuss in th...

I know I'm not the only one who finds social media to be exhausting. The idea of keeping up with trends sounds equivalent to nails on a chalkboard to me. But at the same time, I know there is a huge opportunity on social media. After all, Instagram alone has 2 billion users. Enter Allie Mason. A data-based marketing strategist who understands that us solo-preneurs and small independent businesses don’t necessarily have the time (or the desire) to be spending all of our time keeping up w...