My Work for Sale
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Etsy
One Heart One World Winner
Random.org tells me commenter #59 – MissMary of lilliansstitches.blogspot.com – is my winner! Thanks to everyone for visiting and saying sweet things!
The Brother
This summer I moved about 5 hours east to a small town well away from where my family lives. My brother came out to visit for the weekend.
Being a smart man he brought me clay from the latest Michael’s sale. I remember the days when 5lbs of clay was a lot. But now it’s just a nice top up on my box.
The boyfriend and my brother, being men, decided they would get sledgehammers and pry bars and go help demolish the inside of a condemned house. The house was bulldozed today but the guys wanted to see if they could find any interesting oddities inside and there were all sorts of papers and boxes used in the walls that were from the 40s, 50s, 60s.
Of course, part of the reason they get along – or we all do – is the video game hobby thing. Much of the weekend was spent eating yummy treats, playing games, relaxing and just goofing off.
The Move
Just a note to let you all know I’m offline from tomorrow through Monday-ish as we finish picking up and hauling the contents of my world 500 km east of here.
I hope you all have an amazing weekend!
A Week Into Spring
Up here, in Canada, we’re not known for the kind weather. Spring is rarely here by the calendar date and we always get soggy snow well into April or May. It’s just part of the appeal.
My corner neighbour has a little border around her house which is on the way to the bus stop. Chloe and I watch that strip of garden for signs of spring and fall every year. We took friendly wagers as to which week the first tulips would break through and I win: spotted this one today! Chloe, wagered on the week after next.
Perhaps it’s because it’s spring and maybe it’s due to having pretty much the best week ever in my bead shop but I’m going to take the leap and extend my ‘made to order’ status to my Etsy and Artfire shops beginning next week.
In addition to that, I’m going to reorganize by colour in the bead shops since I seem to get customers buying several shapes in one colour way at a time. This would make it easier to shop that way.
Far away from here – well about 300 miles – a nice guy is working on my studio space. It’s coming along just lovely. There is a neat faux oak floor, some bright aqua walls and crisp white panels and little pot lights already. I’ll blog about it a bit more, closer to the move in date, so I can string it together into a more coherent narrative.
Tomorrow from 6 to 10pm the Market Collective is holding a craft fair as a part of a larger fundraiser for Doctors without Border’s efforts in Sudan. I’ll be there as will at least one other of my Etsy Alberta teamies: CheekyNado
Bowl Goals: Belatedly
I realized, belatedly, that I had missed my Bowl Goals post last week (and all the other posts too but there’s another story!). I can only plead distraction as I was busy making Thing-a-Days. Here’s my catch up and it’s been a regular bead making factory around here this week:
As to what was distracting me, there were orders for which some of those beads are, preparing for an oncoming long weekend trip and my upcoming birthday! Valentines Day is my birthday and this year we’ll be in the small town I’m heading to at the end of the school year.
The Sort of Post I like to Make
I still have to sift through all the entries from my giveaway – more than 60! – to collect all the advice and see what I can do with it. Last time I was given some fabulous ideas and suggestions and I implemented them and had my best fall season yet.
The random number picker however gave me a number and I scrolled down to find that it was Hazel who won!
Hazel made a good suggestion about my photos – using a more contrasting background – and it’s true, too. I’ve begun trying it for some of my beads but I will have to give it a shot with some of the canes as well.
And I won a weekly giveaway on Art Bead Scene’s blog! These guys give away something *each week* – one of the editors gives away an art bead each time. How incredibly cool! The format is to read the Saturday Studio post and answer the writer’s question. The post for this week is right here so make sure and give it a shot.
Motivate Me!
I’m just like a lot other people. Sometimes the motivation to reach big goals goes right out the window. Last year, as I was putting my online craft selling self together, I stumbled across Thing-A-Day. The premise is to make something every day for the month of February. I did it last year, more or less, and signed back up this year! You can see what I did in Feburary of 2008 by looking at my entries on TAD from then.
The picture has nothing to do with the post, really, except that it’s one of the things I made this week. A customer asked for a cane of her graphic which was a simple triskellian. I quite like it.
Anyways, if you need a kickstart to meet your productivity goals come join us on Thing-A-Day 2009! It’s a good way to start a new and positive habit.
Winter 2009 Giveaway
Bloggy Giveaways is doing it again – it’s regular, it’s quarterly, it’s fabulous – so I am too. Pretty much the same terms as last time, too! I’ll just format it better this time.
The Giveaway:
- $20 in any of my venues: my Etsy bead shop, my Etsy clay cane shop, my ArtFire shop or my web shop
- Free shipping of course! And that includes international. Everyone is welcome.
To Enter:
- Take a look at my shops: my Etsy bead shop, my Etsy clay cane shop, my ArtFire shop or my web shop
- Then come back here and leave me a piece of constructive advice (or even just a comment). Last time I got such good advice, it was incredibly helpful!
- Some ideas are: colour or subject suggestions for my beads or canes, finished jewelry ideas, photography hints, spelling errors, basically anything to let me know you had a look! If you have questions about my work feel free to email me, I am always happy to spread the polymer clay love.
- You do not need to leave your email in the comment. When you fill the form part in, your email is required but will remain private.
To Win:
- After 6pm my time on Friday (that’s 8pm EST) January 30, I’ll pick a random number. The person with the corresponding comment will get an email from me.
- If I don’t get a reply by Monday, I’ll redraw.
How to Have Even More Fun:
- Check out the insane amount of free, cool stuff being offered during the carnival by visiting the carnival often.
Good luck and thanks ahead of time for your help in making this work!
Swirl Your Lentil
As I’m doing shop updates I thought I’d make a note here, too. I plan to offer lentil shapes for all my colour themes but I also plan to offer them as swirl versions. It’s an added interest to a classy looking lentil.
The standard lentils are on the left and the swirl versions on the right. I will add the items as I make batches but feel free to request them if you are ordering lentil beads!
And the store will also offer categories based on colour ways. That way you can find canes, bead examples made with them and jewelry made with those type of beads to use as ideas all in the same section.
Bloggy Giveaways Winner and the Next Giveaway Launch
And according to the wonderful number generator on Random.org the lucky winner for my Bloggy Giveaway is comment #128 which corresponded to Nikki!
While Nikki picks out something lovely from my collections of goodies, please consider my next giveaway which is part of the much larger (one item a day, for a month) giveaway at the Sweet Figments blog. You enter by creating a blog post about the shop of the day (though, feel free to enter a few times every day about a few different shops – just make sure to comment with a link to your post for each entry you want to make saying that you posted about the shop!)
Here’s what’s up for grabs:
