My Work for Sale
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Etsy
Great Big Mushy Thanks
The Alberta Street Team is a pretty awesome street team and one of the very awesome things it does, week in, week out, is to do a thorough critique of member shops. Yesterday was my turn. Most of the critiques are of newer members but we managed to find a nice little stack of polishing tasks for my bead shop on Etsy.
So my great big mushy thanks of the week has to go out to Joan of ASecondTime who is the host and ringmaster of the weekly circus.
What sort of items did I get suggested? Add a little bit of personality to my shop announcement, a bit about my years of experience to my profile, more navigation links in my descriptions and to include additional photos, perhaps using completed pieces to show scale and examples. We discussed advertising, promotions and how to market better. It really is easier with a little help from your friends.
The Shop: Canes on Etsy
I am on a cane making kick – probably as avoidance for the bead making kick I should be on – and was pretty proud of the latest batch of blue morpho butterfly. Find these all in my Etsy shop or soon (tomorrow morning I’m betting) in my ArtFire shop.
Stocking Stuffers
Everyone wants beads in their stockings right? I mean, I can’t really think of many better stocking stuffers for myself – pretty, inexpensive, small and low calorie.
So why the heck did I have so much trouble figuring out how to photograph it for the IndieNorth gift guide? Geez. In the end I used this and one other image for my first toe-dip into paid online advertising. The first picture is a mass of beads and the second is a restrained, monochromatic pair of beads (the picture on this listing in fact).
Productivity
It seems that posting often – for me that would be most days – is good for my productivity. And since I like taking photos and talking about what I’m working on, we have that rare double bonus.
Today being Saturday we had the usual errands but I got some sweet, solid time in at the clay table as well. First up were a few blends – the one that will be a lavender rose and daisy, the one that became the blue to white of that butterfly-in-progress and the white to off-white one that is in the already reduced white daisy on the right.
A friend popped in and helped process and roll out the bead bases for the next few days so I’m all set!
How’s the creative production going for you?
My Bowl Overflowed
I meant to bake these and photo for yesterday but time got away from! So here we go before noon today, on their way to the tumbler:
There are some new designs in that which I will snap some better pictures of once they’ve gotten their pampering done. It seems the best way for me to get fresh, fun, new ideas is when I am crazy busy cranking out the regular stuff in a big production run. It never fails.
I did make sure to stop and do them though. I’ve learned not to ignore ideas because sometimes the little idea bunnies hop on to friendlier places.
Warm Colours
The current projects on my table need some warm toned canes that I was running low on. I bit the bullet and made a few and more leaf since I was out of that again. The first is a tiger lily I’m happy with. Getting the petals offset like a lily’s are (in two rows of 3 vs 6 petals all around a center) has always been a challenge and this finally came together as a solution.
I took a picture of it before filling the background and reducing for posterity sake (and in case it reduced so poorly that I needed better times to remember it by).
As it turns out I didn’t have to worry much. I got two daisies with white-ecru to warm tones, a try at a poppy for upcoming Remembrance Day beads the lily and a leaf. My hands are sore!
My Clay Table
Indulge me in a little creative procrastination. Or productive avoidance. Anyways. I’m avoiding a bead order I should be working on by taking pictures of the clay table in my office. It’s a 5 foot by 2 foot counter top on trestle legs. I’m hoping to have it be white soon because the blue of it is harsh on colour picking.
If you click the picture, I have notes on the Flickr image. But mostly it’s crowded on the one end because that end is where my chair and computer desk are. So I tend to work where I can swivel back and forth. The far end has my shelves, organizer and my pasta machine. If I shove the chair I can roll right there.
These are the projects on the go: beads in progress for the order and for my shop. Beads that need holes made from the last of a cane by the fabulous Kathi Gose.
And some clay that needs to be tucked back in it’s home and blends that need to be caned ASAP.
These are over the far end of the table and are currently in a sort of ‘See if it works’ arrangement. The very top shelf will hold jewelrymaking supplies as I use those less often. The two below have tubs of cane pieces, various clays, tools, wraps, tiles, glass, cutters… you name it. We see my little Atlas and the green rolling cart in the lower right. The cart has the sort of random additions you can’t live without: more cutters, molds, stencils, sandpaper, pointy things, paints, inks, chalk, brushes, glitter, mica and general chaos.
OK, confessing to this insanity has cured my absent motivation. I now want to go hide and finish the dang beads.
Canada Post and the Slot of Doom
One of the challenges of selling online for Canadian vendors is the Slot of Doom, the term of endearment given to Canada Post’s requirement that packages be 2cm or thinner in order to get the best rates to destinations. If you can fit it through the slot of doom, you can get your small, light item to the US for $2.11, to Canadian destinations for $1.18.
If it doesn’t fit, you are looking at $6.50 or more to the US for the next best air mail option and a similar price for Canadian mail! Bit of a jump there.
Most of my items happily go through the slot of doom. My beads generally get tucked in a poly bag, several layers of tissue paper and an envelope. The canes were more of an issue.
Canes SQUISH. So I needed boxes that fit. At the time that I originally bought boxes no one I found had small, jewelry sized boxes under 2cm(13/16″ or so) at a price even in the ballpark of standard boxes. And so I bought a couple cartons of jewelry boxes and my boyfriend trimmed them down to 5/8″ (15-16mm) for me.
Voila! It works. And I use it for sending jewelry or more delicate beads as well. It only chafes a bit that I have to gear what I offer online to Canada Post’s restrictions in order to remain competitive with an international market.
Bring on the Beige
I know, it’s beige and white. But let me take you back a few days.
Despite the fact that I work in a medium that is full of impressively eye popping colours I am not a very colour brave person. So the house here, which had lots of yellow green semi gloss paint on it’s walls always intimidated me a bit. I mean what goes with that?
Next: the living room. And then I can start putting things on the wall and adding items back to the rooms. This is what they call editing and it’s nice to know that it works just the same in rooms as it does in clay. Give yourself a nice base and work from there.
And that is how I make most of my beads, too. Go figure.
Misty Morning
It looks a bit dreary but believe it or not the day is shaping up bright, sunny and pretty much the last hurrah before winter sets in. It was just a pretty, misty subdued looking scene.
The bright orange, green, teal, fuschia and gold of these hearts is pretty much the category opposite of the soft, foggy colours of my early morning snapshot. What can I say? I like the contrasts sometimes.
