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The Shop: On the way
Maybe Spring is in the air. I know that it influenced my cane making choice the last couple of weeks – pansy canes and now pansy beads. But I’m wondering if the cat has gone nuts.
Sam the Siamese is 16 or 17 years old. He spends most of his days like this:
Yesterday morning around 6 am he was skittering and darting around the house and even jumping a little. For long enough that I got up early to check what he was up to, wondering if we had a mouse or something. Because he was hell-bent on catching SOMETHING.
The terrible something turned out to be a vicious, feral hair scrunchie. The cat is crazy. End of story. But it was a fun start to my day.
My bead shop has a couple new pieces this week, including some cute rounds with my pansy canes:
You can pick the canes up in my Claychicks shop or both beads and canes all in one go from my ArtFire shop.
The Shop: Focal Beads
The best part about canes and beads? You get to collage and make pictures to your heart’s content. The larger, focal sized beads give you a bigger canvas so I like making them. The most recent batch just got posted to my Etsy shop:
For those following along on my new camera odyssey, these were taken with my old camera setup. I hate to ditch something that works while I experiment if it fools with my bottom line. Especially since the old one is fine or has the same issues it always has: it eats batteries and is very slow. Not so helpful when you’re chasing a moving child with it but beads for the most part stay* where you put them.
* Ignore the runaway rolling ones.
The Shop: Swirlies!
This week we have the What’s New in ArtFire shop. And that would be some new canes and some more swirlies in my fave colours, turquoise and coffee brown.
Of course, this is just a few of the items in my ArtFire shop and you can find most of these in my Etsy bead or cane shop as well. Not all of them but most of them.
Craft Fair Lessons
It seems like each show teaches me something new. This weekend I did my favourite little show in my old neighbourhood – Marlborough in Calgary, Alberta.
I borrowed a friends little foam cones that she’d whipped up to showcase her jewelry sets and put my bracelets out on those. The result? I sold bracelets. Since they’re usually lumped on a fairly unstable t-bar they don’t usually sell well but I bring them because they’re quite pretty. The instructions to make the cones are right here, along with a wealth of other information and you can bet I’ll be making some of my own!
Of course, last year at the same show I learned you sell earrings if you raise the display high enough so people do not have to bend over. Did I do that this year? No. Oops.
On a plus note, I now have several new display fixtures including proper, stable earring and necklace stands. I have to wait for the spring to USE them of course but hey, I can’t wait now!
The Shop: Black Friday Cyber Monday
Sometimes I wonder just where time goes. It’s the end of the fall already! Etsy has this big promotional holiday sale on for the American Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend and I figured I’d take part by offering Free Shipping in my shops.
I loaded up my latest colour scheme this week – winterflower – which is a navy base with blue flowers. You can see it on a few of the beads in the bead shop or in the flowers in the cane shop:
And as always I’ve loaded everything up in my ArtFire shop just the same and it’s also got Free Shipping. ArtFire allows you to purchase without first creating an account so if you just want to zip in and scoop up some beads or canes, no fuss, no muss, it’s the place to go.
Local and need some other good deals? My teammates on the Alberta Team (which should really be the western Canada team by this point) are also offering some great holiday deals this weekend. You can check the list out on the team blog at:
http://etsyalberta.blogspot.com/2009/11/etsy-holiday-sale.html
Now, back to the last minute fixing for my show. I’m doing my regular show in Marlborough Community Hall in Calgary. The hitch? I’m not in Calgary! So I’ll be spending a day of my visit to the city doing the show because it’s my sentimental favourite. Come visit and I’ll give you free beads!
The Shop: I Love Beads
Bet that comes as a shock huh? That I love beads I mean.
So have a gander, check out the new latte ones. Also available on my Artfire site.
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).
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.
The Shop: Canes on ArtFire
Here’s the cane of the little snowmen beads from the other days and a couple of simple daisies. Now I’m back to my bead making after a word about ArtFire.
ArtFire is the upstart and primary competition for Etsy in North America. Which means they’re working on building features and traffic and buzz as quickly as they can. While sometimes I’m not exactly sure they’re avoiding the errors Etsy makes they certainly crank out lovely tools and features regularly and try to talk to the citizens of ArtFire land about it.
