Shop Launch Day Coming and the Etsy Spring Market!

I finally picked a day! The launch day for the Tooaquarius shop will be Saturday May 27 around noon MST. I’ll have a bunch of my Etsy catalogue up there including some stuff that has gone inactive on Etsy, offered at a discount. There’s a few brand new beads and canes that will debut on my site shop before getting listed on Etsy a few days later. And I’ll list some of my regular finished items on my site before offering a few on Etsy. Maybe a piece of ceramics or two. Phew! I’m excited!

I also fully expect the whole thing to be a mess because shipping settings and localization settings and all the other fun toys that I’m going to try out on Shopify! I did finally figure out the proper subdomain settings so the shop is now at https://shop.tooaquarius.com and I’ll be tinkering with themes to get the blog site and the shop site closer to each other in appearance. But it’ll be a mess.

Since I’m used to having an open shop it’ll probably just stay open with my regular inventory in it and then get occasional new product drops. We’ll see how balancing Etsy inventory and shop inventory goes since I don’t yet want to sync the two.

The week after I’ll be in Saskatoon – June 4th! – for the Etsy SK Spring Market. Last year was a most excellent market day and I hope the weather is decent and we repeat that whole success. We will be at the same spot, just off Broadway Ave on 11th street E. You can spread the good word on Facebook with our event page.

Expos and Spring

I’m around, honest! It just seems that long form blogging ends up on the backburner and so here we are! Making The Post apologizing for being out of touch which, I’m told, you are not supposed to do.

Doing it anyways.

I live in a place that has a real winter and some years it seems to go on much too long. This was one such year! Spring finally hit mid April for real and we are now in the headlong rush towards complaining about how hot it is rather than about how cold it is! My studio will finally be warm – and occasionally too warm – for a few months before we restart the cycle. I am looking forward to doing pottery in my ceramics corner when I don’t have to layer up to stay toasty while getting mud EVERYWHERE.

Spring is also the season for whatever spring shows I signed up for! The last few years (except the COVID YEARS) that’s been the Calgary Fan Expo and the Etsy Spring Market. This year the Saskatoon Expo is right after the Calgary one – this weekend in fact! – and I’ll be off to that tomorrow with my little polymer clay goods and my new ceramic pieces. The show is in the second year under new management so I’m looking forward to giving it a try. It used to be as good a show, for me, as the much larger Calgary one and a fraction of the cost. The new management is obviously unused to running this sort of event so it’s having some growing pains but I’m hoping it’ll get back to it’s heyday. It’s nice to get these big, fun, events to sell at comparatively close by. I’ll be in booth 605 in the artist alley if you’re around! Come visit!

To wrap up my spring show season I’ll be back in Saskatoon for the Etsy team spring market on June 4th. I’m part of the organizing crew for this one and it’s outside so it’s always exciting to see what obstacles we’ll have. As a rule, it goes well and we recover from the insanity fairly quickly.

booth place at sask entertainment expo

There’s a Shop Now and New Year’s Updates

I’ve gone and done it. The latest incarnation of my web site shop is going to be a Shopify one. I’m sticking it in as a subdomain or a linked outside page (whatever I get to work). It’s going to be a bit different looking than the primary site but I’ll nerd that one out over time.

The plan is to release new items to my own site first then the remains to Etsy. And my non cane, non bead art will be on my personal site (that’s this one!). I love Etsy and will continue using them but they are becoming as expensive and tedious to use as other options and they’re no longer the friendly fluffy folks I joined up with. Which is FINE. It’s work. It does make for less guilt in exploring other options 🙂

So, check out the shop, let me know if you find weird glitches or if there’s stuff you KNOW I make but isn’t listed, yet. And, as always, thanks so much for being fans of the stuff I make!

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Other notes: I’ll be removing some of the hard core discounts Etsy sort of forces vendors into, most notably the free shipping for US orders over $35. Etsy is going to ding me for it but this way I can keep from bumping prices up nearly as much and continue to do occasional sales for everyone.