My Work for Sale
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Etsy
Tile Trends
If you have a look on Etsy you’ll see that tile jewelry is hugely popular. Insanely so. Scrabble tile, domino tile, glass tile.. you name it. In clay, you have whole videos and classes on how to make tile bracelets. Granted, my tiles are all clay.
These were fun – just in time for my show on the weekend. I didn’t put them on stretch cord after fighting with it. Instead they use multi-strand fancy clasps. Little bits of findings I’ve accumulated over the years.
Bloggy Giveaways
My very first blog giveaway! Since this is my first time with this, I think I will keep it simple and offer a $20 shopping spree at my Etsy shops (feel free to mix & match between the bead shop and the cane shop) or website shop. There’s all sorts of good stuff! And to make it even sweeter, free shipping, so the shipping is not counted against your spree.
To enter the giveaway, simple post a comment on this post. I’d love to hear any opinions about the blog re-design, any requests for colours, patterns or shapes for my future work or even clay how-to questions! It’s all good! You can even just say ‘Hi’! You do not need to be a blogger to enter, just need to make that post and use a valid email address in the form.
On Friday, after I’m back from taking my little goblin out trick-or-treating, I will close comments and pick a winner. This should be somewhere around 9pm mountain time. I will announce the winner on Saturday, after my show (wish me luck even!).
I’m happy to ship anywhere, so I welcome entrants from around the world. The more the merrier! And don’t forget shipping is free 
For a truly awesome list of other bloggy giveaways check out the Blog Carnival on Bloggy Giveaways. There’s an expected 1000 plus participants this time around! That’s an awful lot of free goodness! Bloggy Giveaways also does regular giveaways even outside of the Carnival and it’s always fun to watch.
* The very fine print: the $20 is face value – you’re welcome to buy from my web shop or my Etsy shop but in the interest of keeping it simple, I am going to consider the $$$ equal. So you could spend $10 on my Etsy and $10 here and that would be the gift certificate.
The Lipstick Effect
With all the economic chaos I’ve started hearing about the lipstick effect again. The theory with this is that as people watch the family budget more closely they are less likely to purchase big ticket goods. Instead, they indulge in small luxuries like lipstick.
Or, I’ve noticed, earrings.
I don’t sell lipstick but I make beads and at shows, I have both beads and earrings. I also carry much more elaborate pieces of jewelry and much larger, more expensive pieces of clay work. The last show, the overall sales were not down much (hurrah!) but I did notice that people bought more of the smaller pieces. Like earrings.
So I have to wonder if this is the lipstick factor coming into play in my little world?
The Blog Giveaway Bandwagon
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I am jumping on the blog giveaway bandwagon next week. Some of the lovely women in the FAM Street Team on Etsy are going to be participating in a blog giveaway and I thought, why not join in! It’ll run next week – October 27-31 – and I will post all about it on Monday! Check back to see what I’m offering
Right after that is the 30 Days of Christmas promotion being organized by the very talented TheTinyFig. Every single day of November there will be a piece of handcrafted goodness available as a giveaway. The contest will be run on the sites and blogs of all the participants with TinyFig’s blog site as the hub. You can win more than once and entries are by making comments on participant’s blog sites. The black and white bangle is my giveaway for the contest! |
7 Things About the Crafty Me
I got tagged by Myrte of Mirthquake (the name is wonderful!) with this meme when I did it not long ago. So this time I am going to do 7 things about the crafty, clayful me.
- Of all the patterns I do, I like the Sea Garden (blue greens) best. My daughter named it that when she was 5.
- My favourite brand of clay is the old Fimo Classic mixed with Premo.
- The most popular canes (sales wise at least) I have are almost all roses.
- I love to make canes best of all my claying activities. Then beads from the canes. Heaven!
- In 2007 I made around 6,000 beads. In 2008, I made that many in the first half year.
- November 20th, I teach my first polymer clay class to the Sheep Creek Weaver’s guild. Very cool.
- The most popular not bead item at craft shows is not my jewelry (alas!) but usually my ring bowls and ornaments. Probably because they are like giant beads!
I’m going to be a spoilsport again and not tag folks but I am always interested in quirky, crafty facts about my favourite artsy folks! So share if you’ve got an urge.
Etsy Goodies
The site updating is going pretty painlessly so far! Yay! There’s a few more changes to be made but here’s a post that might be helpful for my Etsy-using friends:
I’ve been selling on Etsy the last 18 months or so and I like the place. It has it’s issues but overall, the price is right. Here’s a few off-Etsy tools to help with your Etsy experience:
More Info Please
- Unofficial Etsy News – these folks take the headlines at Etsy and put them in one spot instead of requiring you to sift through Etsy’s own chaotic and unreliable news services.
- Majaba.org – this site helps you sort through the somewhat complicated ‘favourites’ system at Etsy. It will count up all your item hearts or views for you and display them in a format that’s usable. This is a way to see what’s popular in your shop.
- Pricing Spreadsheets – by Chris Parry is a great answer to: How much should I price it at? There are other excellent posts on the site but this one’s an eye opener.
Help Me Sell
- Let’s Ets – will actually make the file you need to load up the contents of your Etsy site to Google’s shopping listings. Free, simple and super useful.
- We Love Etsy – is a social network (I know, you need another one of those) that is high traffic and regularly updated. In other words, useful. A way to make contacts, network and promote.
Site Updates
There will be some serious dustmaking the next day or two on here as I swap the theme (the look) of the site out, do version upgrades on the shop and generally make a big mess. The urls for pages in the blog or tutorial sections should not change. The shop will be updated to actually work correctly.
The Shop: Think Pink
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. In a bit of an effort at fundraising, I listed two sets of beads on Etsy. 20% of the proceeds will go to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. The little ribbon beads got a nod in SewingGranny’s treasury.
I have all sorts of other beady goodness in the Tooaquarius shop of course. Things with bumps, things with faces and things with butterflies:
The next two months are the crazy fall show months and I’ve been busily making jewelry items to showcase the beads I make. The most recent of those are listed in my flickr but here’s a current fave:
Here’s hoping your week is full of beady goodness!
Using Those Beads
A long time ago when I first started with clay, I made beads to use in my jewelrymaking. Once clay had me in it’s grip I made jewelry to showcase my clay beads.
I’ve been enjoying a spot of jewelrymaking this month though. Most of it will go to my fall shows and it’s been a fun trip preparing. One of my challenges was figuring out some uses for pillow shaped beads. These are a bead shape I had never really used in my own creations and that I had only begun to make at the request of customers. I’m having fun now though!
There’s other things than pillow bead creations of course – I used a few older beads of mine to make silly cake earrings, bookmarks and some new, sweet roses to make bouquets for your ears and wrist.
And a fellow blogger (and super talented beadmaker) had a very good idea for how to display earrings at shows. Take a peek.
Walk Down Memory Lane
Today I am taking a break from busily making stock for upcoming shows and decided to do much needed tidying of my desk. My desk has developed strata again. As I worked through the stacks I unearthed a baggie of necklaces I’m to repair or restring for my mom and in there is the very first clay necklace I made.
After counting back on my fingers I realized that was 10 years ago this fall! Wow! Time flies. The irony in this is that those first marbled beads are not much different than some of what I’ve made for this years shows – little red and green marbled beads. As I recall, that necklace was pretty much a straight take on a tutorial in a fun beading book: book book. I made a lot of variations that first fall!
I also made a ton of cute little pins with clay characters glued to them and learned one lesson: hot glue does not work with poly clay. Oops. So not all my first efforts are things I am still doing!
