Production Artist

You remember the guy from the movie Xanadu, you know the sensitive artist, stuck in the creatively castrating job of replicating album covers for record stores. His coworkers were wont to remind him that he was just lucky to be a working artist. Well not all of us have a muse in roller skates and feathered hair to solve our creative versus income dilemmas. I am currently finding myself in a similar quandary. My shop has been selling well recently, well enough anyway, and this has left me remaking sold items more often than creating new designs. I have even less time and energy to make one of a kind items either.

So what is one to do at this juncture? I still enjoy making my existing designs, so I could concentrate on that and keep my store well stocked, but I'm afraid I would eventually want my own roller disco to engage my creative side again. While thinking about this topic, I began thinking about fashion or jewelry collections. While I have no idea if it really works like this or not, I assume that they design for a period, produce the line, stop production to design for the next season and repeat the process. This may be a solution though it might be a little too structured for me. Imagine I spend a month creating new designs then simply make those designs over and over for a few months. Then take a break from production to go into design mode again. I don't know that I have the discipline for that process, what if i come up with an amazing idea during production phase. Can I put the idea on ice and not return to it for months?

Of course this raises other issues as well. Am I a sell out, if I simply remake a popular design repeatedly to get sales? Do other artisans lose respect for a production artist or is it a simple case of jealously over success? I am in no way implying that I've become popular enough to inspire said jealously, but I do wonder about these things. Should I even bother worrying about what others might think of my creative process if it still makes me happy? I guess I should just go with the flow and not worry about it so much. I figure I'll know when remaking a design is draining the life out of me and that's when I'll stop in favor of creation, but if you see me complaining and not stopping, feel free to beat some sense into me.