Lemon Tree Needleworks & Ann Elizabeth Scott Art
January 2022 Update
We want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2022. I know there is a lot to be grateful for as we have made it to another year with so much potential!
Where have we been:
In 2019, Michael was the president of an art gallery and Elizabeth was creating art. A discussion had taken place during a board meeting which eventually gave Elizabeth an opportunity to be a solo artist at Sammamish City Hall in Sammamish Washington. In the four months prior to the show which started in October 2019, 16 new pieces were created. The show which displayed 22 items was a success and we sold six paintings while it was displayed. Having the most people at an opening event in the history of this gallery, she also recorded the most sales. As this exhibit closed, the COVID pandemic began, and everything ground to a halt. There was little art movement in 2020 as galleries and other exhibits remain closed and Elizabeth sold ten paintings and prints.
With Michael’s experience in the business world and time as a non-profit president, he took over as the business manager early in 2021 and rebuilt the online presence for Elizabeth. As we closed out 2021, thirty-eight paintings were sold in a pandemic year. At this point, only one small painting is available from that Sammamish show.
In the summer of 2021, a discussion resulted in Michael reopening Lemon Tree Needleworks as a new avenue to sell Elizabeth’s art. Up from nothing, a website was built, an Etsy page, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages were created to support the business. As we closed out 2021, twenty items have been sold just based on an idea a few months prior.
Combining our talents has been the juggernaut to making our business models successful.
Where are we going:
From a business viewpoint, we have a lot of growth potential. We quickly realized selling greeting cards is not worth the effort and those have been pulled from the Etsy site. Although, we have looked at a lot of different sites, we decided we would build this part of the business out under Fine Art America (FAA). Profit is about the same and there is no effort on our part. In addition, FAA has a host of other items that can be sold on the same design as totes, prints, phone cases, puzzles, and even shower curtains. Expect this website to be functional during the first quarter of 2022.
Secondly, we have reopened the old Pinterest account. It was a headache trying to get a password reset on an account which had not been used since the summer of 2015. Expect this to be operational in the first quarter as well.
Dedicating resources toward newsletters, blogs, and press releases has contributed to our quick success. Expect this to accelerate.
With Etsy and our website, we have two shopping sites. Once Fine Art America and our associated Pixel site are completed, our online channels will double. In addition, we are building out the shopping sites for both our Facebook and Instagram page which will be operational by end of first quarter. The trials of dealing with Facebook have begun. It seems adding Green Fairy to our shop, it immediately got rejected as being “Alcohol”. It was fixed on appeal, but not the first time we had paintings being rejected.
All social media and other campaigns are driving worldwide traffic to our sales sites. Over twenty thousand potential customers have been driven to different sales channels with over one thousand likes. Surprisingly, we had more sales outside the United States than in. We expect this trend to continue as our websites are set to convert to the customers browser language settings.
New Items:
Winter Raven is our latest finished oil painting. This is available as both an oil painting and cross stitch and soon on our FAA. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1156888671
Where is the art heading:
We are intending to create five paintings on The Witcher series from Netflix. The first will be available soon and is called: Yennifer’s Transformation. These will also be available as a cross stitch design and other items available through FAA.