Yes! Artist co-ops sound awesome! There's a few in my city, as well as various societies, guilds, and clubs. I haven't joined any, but I feel I need to just for the benefit of sharing experience and knowledge. Though, lately I've been thinking of turning to Hubski for that. There's a ton of really creative people on here, you included of course. As for selling stuff, I've really, really fallen in love with book binding. I think I made about forty or fifty journals last year just for the joy of making something. For a while I was thinking about starting a business so I could sell them, but eventually came to the conclusion that commodifying them and trying to build a business around them would rob me of that joy. Now I just make them for the pure pleasure of it and I give them as gifts to friends and family. Funny enough, some of the people I gave my first books to I turned around and later gave them some of my more recent books, just because my first few were so flawed I honestly felt bad about them being gifts.
That's awesome! Do you have any pictures of some favorites that you've made? Re: building a business vs. the joy of doing something, I think that a major reason that this is the first of my creative ventures that I am actually attempting to properly monetize is that 3D printing is virtually zero effort, as far as production is concerned. Sure, it takes some time to make good designs, but I can just press "go" on the printer and more or less leave it be for the next 6 hours, and once I have a design I like I can just keep printing it for as long as people keep buying it. The actual labor is pretty much front-loaded. I don't have to worry about a day where I don't have the energy to make a product to sell like I would with sewing, or even music. It's just a matter of making sure the machine works. It's funny, because with sewing or knitting I always enjoy the act of making things so much, but as soon as I have a deadline or a paying customer, it becomes torture and I wish I had a machine that could just do it all for me. And now I do (at least until it falls apart from overuse...)
Hmm. I think I might have one or two I've taken with my flip phone. This may sound weird, but the books I'm really proud of, I don't have anymore. As soon as I made one I really liked, I'd look at it and say "Oh! I bet so and so would love this." Next week though, I'll create a new imgur account and share some pictures of what I have sitting on my shelf and a few text blocks I've put together. There's a project I want to do, that I'll end up documenting to share on Hubski, and that's removing the cover of a paperback, reinforcing the spine using double fan binding with cord reinforcements, and then casing it in a hard cover. Sadly, I have to wait for warmer weather until I can do that though, because my craft room is not insulated and its too cold to work with glue at the moment. I know I've said this before, but I really enjoy your sewing. That quasi-military style jacket you made was super sharp. I love it.