Etsy Love

Whhoooo whoooo I got my 100th heart today!!! Granted I think more than half are bead shops promoting themselves and I can't wrong them for that. I ve actually hearted some of those shops selling interesting beads. Its only taken me 3 months to make it to the hundred(sarcasm) I think its a little slow but i can't expect the world, being stuck in my little mountain town getting bus cards out is a bit tricky. Doh! That reminds me I forgot to put one in with my electricity bill. Ah well there will be another one...unfortunately.

I'm off on my jollies tomorrow (holidays) so I have to go and pack my beading supplies because if my hubbie, bless him, thinks I'm going to be learnng how to kite surf for the whole week he's got to be kidding. So here's a little photo of my latest creation, I'm in love with this one, she's so photogenic and I've used the oxidized clasp that I spoke about last time.

See you again with more of a tan.

latest commission

So my buddy from work gave me carte blanche to make his girlfriend a necklace and earrings for her birthday. "I'll leave it entirely up to you" he says. "excellent" I think as the ideas come pouring in. His Girlfriend is a very stylish and trendy thang that wears a lot of bold colours, so I thought red. I ran the red idea past my buddy and he was happy with the choice.

I ordered a selection of beads really cool frosted glass and some chain I wanted to make her something a little more edgy. I had a month to get it together. So after a few weeks I thought I'd better show him some samples. At which point he decides that what he wants is a pendant that will encourage his girlfriend to show off her cleavage a little more." Ok" I thought and promptly went home to find all that i could. Then he decides that he would quite like turquoise...But on seeing the turquoise things I had wasn't too keen.

So I returned to the red idea and made a dangly pendant type thing in red, sure that he would love it. Three days before her birthday he reveals "she doensn't wear earrings" Not a problem. I showed him the final piece. I was waiting for the look of "Oh yeah baby thats it" What i got was " Didn't we decide to go for turquoise?"

So I ran home at lunch and brought him everything I had in turquoise or blue. You know what he pointed at the one I was wearing and said "I like that one can I have that one?"

As you can se from the photos, no red, no pendant, no dangly things. I didn't of course give him the one I was swearing coz that would have been cheating. But the next time a man tells you how women can never make up their minds you tell him to go wash his mouth out with soap.

oxidizing copper

So This is what happens when you oxidize copper using two hard boiled eggs and a zip lock bag. I did these at the weekend and i thought you might like to see the actual results. So simple.

oxidizing sterling silver

So it's been a while since i left school but I felt like I was doing a science experiment the other day when I oxidized some silver myself. I was getting rather frustrated not being able to find all the supplies I need in the dark grey oxidized silver finish so I googled "oxidizing silver" and low and behold there was an article about how to do it. I thought that the silver needed to be heated to a high temperature but how wrong was I? (in fact i still don't know if heating to a hight temp works or not) All you need is a zip lock plastic bag and a couple of eggs.

Here's what I did.

1/ boiled two eggs for 15mins

2/ put silver in plastic bag making sure no metal is touching ( not sure why)

3/ put eggs in with the silver and closed the bag leaving a small space for the air to escape when you smash the eggs

4\ smash the eggs and close the bag

5/ leave for 30mins or till your silver has turned black, flipping the bag from time to time to get an even patina

Try it it's cool.

Though it's great i can't do it too often because i feel guilty about using and throwing away perfectly good food.

So the Olympics finishes this weekend and I'll be able to get back to a bit of normality. I have been obsessed and boy has it been a good games.

A break for the Olympics and visitors

If i had my choice i would be in front of the telly for 16 days non stop with match sticks keeping my eyelids open to grasp every minute of the Olympic games. ( except for the football and beach volley ball) But work and sleep has been getting in the way some what. The first ever visit from two of my bestest friends collided with the first few days of the games too but i forgave them quite quickly.


Lucy unfortunately for her has vertigo but did really well going up the highest cable car in europe to look over the wonderful Mer de Glace glacier (sea of ice) She even almost got to the barrier to look over the edge but I could ask too much. So even though i ve been neglecting my blog and etsy a bit this past week I still managed to fit in a bit of twiddling making birthday presents for my girlies while they were asleep on the sofa after tiring altitude walks( wimps).


We were very lucky with the weather and i had lots of time off from work to be with them and we managed to eat a fair amount of cake and we fit in a couple of nice alpine strolls.

I am absolutely most certainly the olympics biggest fan I get very excited, i love watching sport and i love to see my countrymen winning medals. So I have had a little break from crafting for a week or so but it seems like an eternity. I also had two of my bestest friends in the world come visit me for the first time in 9 years!!! I moved to Chamonix in the French alps when i was 23 so it was nice to have them on my turf for a change.

Etsy statistics

I was thinking today whilst riding to work about how nice it would be to have some really serious meaty etsy statistics. I know there is and but neither of these (as far as i'm aware ) come directly from the all seeing eye that is etsy. I do use both of these quite a lot mind when i'm obsessing about how i can generate more traffic to my shop, blog, flickr etc.

I had a look at some past forums and i found out about something called "etsy" tools which apparently doesn't exist anymore, which is a shame.

But would it have been enough for me my thirst for knowledge and my obsessiveness? I think not. So I thought about writing in the forums and asking etsy for some stats but i often get ignored in the forums and i sometimes feel like I'm invisible (paranoia again) More to the point I think the post would have been to long and everyone would fall asleep before the punch line.

So here's my theoretical proposal you never know who might read this or who i might send it to when 'm drunk. In my perfect world of etsy I would love to have:

1/ A monthly, 3 monthly or 6 monthly report (which etsy could charge for say 1$) which would include...

2/number of etsy members total, number of shops, number of members registered to buy at the beginning of the month.

3/ Number of new members since the last report, how many shops how many buyers.

4/ A breakdown of catagories, how many shops in each catagory and how many new shops in each catagory.

5/ Sales figures for that period broken down into catagories, maybe listing the top 5 shops in each.

6/ If sales are up or down broken down into catagories.

7/ What day of the week gets more traffic and what time of day.

Then i started getting really into this idea and my ride to work takes at least 15 mins. I started to think about what i would like to know at any given moment whilst on etsy. You know like how if you are looking at treasuries you can see how many people are looking at them too.I would love to know how many people are logged in, how many non shop owners are logged in, I would love a hit counter on my shop to see how many people swing by because some people might look at pages but not particular items. You know i think this coulld create a full time job for a couple of people.

Well it's my dinner time but i would love to know what you think. Hell lets push the boat out, leave comments with your ideas and let's see how silly we can get our etsy stat report.

Trunkt rejection

Yeah it's true. But funnily enough i truly am not bitter and this from me is an achievment i mean no one likes being rejecte from anything right?

I wasn't even sure i was going to submit to trunkt after having a look around the site and after reading some old etsy forum posts about it. At least i have the comfort of knowing i'm not alone out there. I think a lot of people think it to be a little pretentious. I'm inclined to sit on the fence on this one. I totally understand why I was rejected, i believe it was for the very same reason i was hesitating to submit in the fist place. They require artists to have a tight focused collection with impeccable photography. Now i had already been critisized about my photography earlier in the week so what was i thinking? So then I got to thinking and this is something that has been on my mind for ages and i would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

FOCUSED COLLECTION V'S VARIETY

After my last jewellery party a lot of my customers commented that there was almost too much choice therefore in fear of making the wrong choice they made no choice at all and didn't buy anything. I vowed then to try and focus my self and limit what i put on display which i will do for my next party.

But my question is does a focused collection mean that everything looks the same just with slightly different colours or dangly bits?

I love exploring and experimenting and seeing what new stuff my suppliers have got. I'm afriad that focusing too much will lead to stagnation and boredom and variety is the spice of life after all. I don't really like making lots of the same thing. I guess the plain truth is i can't help myself when I'm buying beads and then once i've got them i can't seem to stop myself from making something and before you know it it's in my etsy shop. So for the Trunkt people i understand, I'll not send out the hit men just yet.

But what do you think?? Please comment i really would like some input