Corvink on Storenvy & Etsy

Make sure to hit the "Favorite Shop" and "Favorite" Product buttons. 

You read that right, I've opened up two new stores; one on Etsy and one on Storenvy. My hopes being that with the upcoming holiday season that people will be favoriting my stuff for gift ideas and hopefully spreading the word a bit. That's one really nice thing about having your store on a community, rather than just on your own e-commerce website. There's a catch though. New buyers need to feel comfortable buying from a stranger; they need confidence that my store is legit and worth their attention. Considering my stores are new, I'm having a tough time getting them rolling. This is why I'm writing this blog. Hopeful you guys to can help!

I know that money is tight these days, so I'm not asking for you guys to buy anything... I mean unless you want to... but if you have a few moments, there's a few ways you can help in a big way! For instance, if you have an Etsy account, please go favorite my shop and any of my listing that you like! The more favs an item has, the higher they ranked in search feeds. It may seem silly, but it's really that simple! 

Click the "Envy This" button when you hover over a product image.

For Storenvy, its even more simple. All you need to do is click that "Envy This" button when you hover over the item, that or the little heart below it. I'm not really sure what "Collect" does though. If you're into that sort of thing, feel free to do that too. Actually, if you know what it is, let me know! Maybe there's more to it and you can learn me a thing or two. :P haha 

Thanks for your support, and if you have any ideas on how to get the store moving more, please, by all means, clue me in! Also, the Storenvy store has more of my merch than Etsy so if you are looking to buy something in particular I recommend that store.

Splitting Like an Atom

Well, not really. After recent discussions with friends, followers and family, I came to the conclusion that my websites really should be split. My line of thinking when I first merged all my sites was that if I was to put everything I do together into one website, it would make my life easier. This was true, to some extent, but at the cost of confusing new people. For instance, if someone was to find my work via L.A.W.L.S., and they were to click around, most linked brought them to Corvink; a website with no obvious intentions. With poetry, random drawings, comics, commissions, personal blogs, news updates about some company, and so on, it was a huge mess. On a branding standpoint, people didn't particularly know who I was as a creator, rather, they'd find this confusing thing called Corvink that created things and does commissions? I'd like to very seriously pursue commissions in the near future, but I think this endeavor is best suited for a personal website. Also, on the flip side, I'd like Corvink to be a little less personal as the brand grows and I have more people helping me at conventions.  Being able to use the words "us" or "we" feels more logical when you discuss your business to people. It more clear to business contacts that you are in fact that, a business. When approaching potential investors or distributors, having a site that is clearly for art merch (even if it's the art of a particular artist), with a single understandable mission statement, makes it far easier to pitch it's value to them. Also, there is value in not confusing a random newcomer by not overloading them with too much information when first browsing a new store. This allows them to focus on what's important; the things I created and would like them to easilt connect with and hopefully buy.

DenisCaron.com & Corvink.Com Split with similar designs.

After deep consideration of the best way to implement all these ideas, I've decided that Corvink should be a store front, with the tagline "Occult Emporium," a verbal description of my over arching theme of all my current, and future projects. For those of you who don't know what occult is, it's not some creepy cultish thing, it's anything that involves the supernatural, mystical, or magical ideology, practices, or phenomena. I'll go more into this more in future posts, but for now, at least you can get an idea of where I'm going with all this.

Outside of Corvink, what you see here on this new site, is anything from poems, inklings,  as well as my exploration of art (including my occult themed drawings). L.A.W.L.S. (all 3 comics), again, are on their own but can now all be found on their own website! This is something I've wanted to do for years! This has made me really happy, and excited to get back to creating comics! Which, I will have announcements about as well soon.

One final note is the complete overhaul of design and my decisions on this. My websites used to all be dark and black to relay that sense of "goth culture." Taking on the term occult, you'd assume that I'd want to keep the black color scheme, but instead I went a completely new direction. I have two reasons for this:

1. White is clean, easy to view, and removes all connotations of my work being some sort of "dark satanic pit on the internet." I hate that goth is synonymous with satan and evil. Rather, this is now a place to focus on art and creations that explore occult ideas.

2. I didn't feel the need to have a cliche "black" is goth, website anymore. You can get that by exploring the work, without having to make something that visually weighs you down. After spending time on the internet and exploring occult, alchemy, magic related websites... almost all of them take themselves TOO seriously and go with that black theme to oversell the idea. I quickly found myself developing a distaste for that sort of look. 

Thank you all for your patience and support while I've gone through this strange creative journey in the past 2 years! Now go forth, explore the new site, check out the new Corvink store or reread some comics. Don't forget to check out DenisCaron.com and Corvink.com on your phones! They've gone completely mobile! Hopefully one day I can do this with L.A.W.L.S. too; just need to find the right plugin or developer to help me with this. Anyway, I'll talk more with you guys soon! Comment your thoughts, if you have any. :]