I have the same sort of problem for my handmade books. I've thought that galleries might be a better place than online or retail. How has that worked for you?

If you have time, you might think about home and garden fairs. Get the folx who are looking to beautify their space. You may also look into placing your work at home furnishing and decorating stores, or even particular decorators. If a decorator likes your work, they will create customers for you. You may even get some commission work that way.

Also, check out how other artist's are marketing similar or related work. It's a great way to learn what's working, what isn't, and what the standard practice is so you can improve upon it.

I would also suggest separating your personal site and illustration site from the sites where you market your shades. You want people to focus on the shades and see you as an artist they can trust to complete the sale professionally. I know that your personal writing and kink interests don't say anything about whether you can do this, but some people may think they do. Your illustrations are marketable from your personal site if you plan to stick with the genre you are working in because a lot of your personal stuff is related and of interest to the market you seem to be seeking. I think the lampshades will reach a wider audience if you market them alone. You can certainly link from your personal site to your sales site, if you want, but keep your shade site to sales stuff. It's less confusing, makes a clearer market profile, and opens up your work to niches other than the ones your personal site caters to (i.e. friends of Kat, LJer's, scifi fans, fursuiters, etc). Most people who have the bucks to buy a $100 lampshade only want the info on the shade. Folx who've been hired to buy that shade, even more so. If people want personal info about the artist, they can meet you at a craft fair, home and garden show, or gallery opening. Plus, you'll be able to design your site to cater to those folx without having to sacrifice your personal style in your personal site. I do this myself--professional fetish modeling doesn't relate to book arts for most people, and people are looking for very different sites when looking for a fetish model than when looking for handmade books. On both sides, the client usually doesn' t care about the other side of me and might be put off if they did.