My Newest Treasury

In honor of the day...

Pay It Forward - Leave A Comment, Get A Goodie!

I'm taking part in a great idea in blog world called Pay It Forward 2011. I read about it on CJ's blog, and now I'm lucky enough to get to continue the fun here.

So here's the idea: be one of the first five people to leave a comment on this post, and I'll send you something made by my own busy hands. Fun!

Then you share the idea of Pay It Forward on your blog, and promise to send the first five people who make a comment on your post a handmade goodie that you've created. More fun!

You don't have to send something the very next day, but to play fair, you do need to send something as soon as you can. It's not the size of the item that's important -- it's that it comes from you and carries a bit of your creative spirit on to five people somewhere across the world.

It's the spirit of sharing a good thing by paying it forward. And seriously, who couldn't use a little extra joy and beauty brightening their world?

One act of random creativity can have a great ripple effect. I did a happy dance when I found out I had been one of the first five to respond to CJ - come on and join the dance!

Heartsy=Groupon for Etsy

Ok, so I discovered Heartsy through the Handmadeology Team.  What it is is like a groupon, exclusively for Etsy.  If you want to be a featured seller, you submit some pictures and your "deal", meaning Heartsy will buy 25 gift certificates at half price and then turn around and re-sell them.  So you'd pay $20 for a $40 gift certificate.  From what I've read, you'll get paid in full. 

Anyway, to even be considered to be a featured seller, you have to get 30 votes of "yes definitely" in 72 hours.

I need 20 votes in the next 39 hours.

C'mon, help a fellow blogger out.

http://heartsy.me/deals/486/like

Goodness, What am I getting myself into??

lol.. I don't mean that in a bad way.  Partly in a fun way, partly in a good for my shop way.  

The fun part is the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbooks.  This is the brain-child of Stephanie Corder of Dragonfly Design Studios and Jaime Haney of artsyfartsyme.  Rather than have me explain it poorly, you should read about it on Jaime's blog.  I'm quite excited.  It's going to be a year-long project that promises to be tons of fun.

There are a couple of "good for my shop" parts.  I've joined several teams who's sole purpose is to promote one another and help increase everyone's exposure.  One team , the Night Owls of Etsy, has quite a few BNR's, which I only recently discovered.  These  fall into the "fun" category.  However, they also fall into a new category: the "Bad for my Wallet"  category, lol.

Then there's the Bluebird team.  This is a twitter tree that works to promote each other by re-tweeting each others' feature items for the day.  Check out Christie Cottage for more info.

I'm in the process of opening up a second shop on Artfire.  I'm going to try my hand at scrabble tile type pendants and try my luck there.

Finally, I think, I'm trying out Heartsy, which is like groupon for Etsy.  I'll blog seperately about that, because I need to draw attention to it to get the votes I need to be considered for a featured artist.

Like I said, what am I getting myself into?  I'm gonna be a busy woman.. not that I'm not already ;)

Only the cutest treasuries EVER

Here are a couple of treasuries compiled from item made by members of the Etsy Owl Lovers Team.  The first is by team captain MaskedRabbitCrafts:

Be sure to check out her blog.
The second is my own compilation:

They're amazingly cute, aren't they?
Wanna see more? Come join our team.

Been kind of busy the past couple of days.  Several new pieces.  Unfortunately, I cannot take pics* or list them because my "studio" is in North Carolina and I am in Maryland,  But, I've been busy with other things too.

I set up a "Welcome" page on my Facebook page for non-fans that will hopefully entice some to "like" my page.  Periodically I'll put up exclusive discounts that only my fans will ba able to see.  When I get a little bit of money built up, I'm going to run an ad to attract more followers.

I must also catch up on the Bead Soup blog list.  I admit that I have fallen behind, but I've also had a lot of stuff going on.  I hope my fellow partiers will forgive me.

*update I have taken some pictures.  They are not good pictures and so won't be listed until I'm back home where I can use a non-mac machine.  They desperately need some touching up before listing.  But here's the link if your interested https://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.jngordon/Mar7201102#

Thinking...

I've been doing a lot of it lately.  I'm still determined as ever, but it's getting hard not to get discouraged.  

I'm thinking of adding other things to my shop, or maybe opening up a second shop, but I'm at a point right now where I can't afford to spend the money to get some of the things I want in order to make it happen.  

I want to take classes at the local bead shops to learn things I don't already know how to do.  I want to try different things.

I want to be able to work with wire with something approximating proficiency.  I want to try my hand at making those ultra cute scrabble tile charms.

But none of that will come until the sales come.  That's the discouraging part.  It's not happening for me.  I never expected it to happen over night, but it's real hard.  I'm doing everything I can think of, and I'm getting the views, but not the sales.

It will happen.  I refuse to give up.

DC Bound

On my way to our nation's capital for a vacation of sorts. Call it a working vacation, cause that's mostly what I'll be doing.

My stones are done tumbling. The outcome was not to my satisfaction, but, being a geologist, I should have known better. I mean, well, I don't know what the hardness of zoisite is, but I do know that corundum (i.e. ruby and sapphire) is a 9 on the hardness scale. Only thing harder is diamond. I'll add pics when I have internet for the laptop.

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