actual sales!

This has been something of a red-letter month, in terms of sales (Of course any normal-scaled business would die laughing,) But hey, ten items sold in one month is a LOT, ok?

September 10 was the Arts, Autos, and Antiques event on the Square. Warren organized 5 booths staffed by 10 Oxide artists - I shared with photographer Pam Hughes. Sold six items, one, the silver leaves chain, fairly high-end.
Also Rhonda picked up her sterling bracelet (AND with Chery treated me to a Denton Co Independent Hamburger.)



Then the next morning I discovered I had sold a couple pairs of handmade earring hooks and a bag of jumprings to an Etsian in Nova Scotia, who confirmed to me today that they arrived last week.


And to top it off, Warren sent me an e-mail that my torch-colored spiral bronze earrings sold in the Gallery!


The new Gallery Night is this Saturday, and I have 14 new pieces waiting hopefully.

uncomplicated things

In an attempt to have more nice things at a lower price point for Oxide, I have worked on pendants and earrings with interesting shapes and colors, but not hours and hours of work. I kind of have the trouble Robin McKinley has with short stories. Things just naturally seem to grow into time-consuming necklaces! But I have managed a line of simple spirals, furnace glass beads, and small shapes in earrings and pendants.

Here are the six pendants (Warren accepted the lot!) and several of the earrings. He took half of the ten pairs of earrings, and all the five chains I offered. He didn’t go for the furnace glass for some reason -- maybe looked too much like assembled findings? -- but I’ll get the first of those up on Etsy this afternoon.

new starts

I had a flush of jewelry-making back in May of last year (but not quite in time for the Oxide summer show). Then when the heat moderated in September and I could work on the upstairs screen porch I made a number of things.

Amy’s visit and purchase of the zig-zag earrings from Oxide sparked her order of Christmas presents for Cathy and Janine. The DHS craft fair moved things along, and I also got my Etsy shop reactivated, and sold a bracelet! after just a day or two. Finally just after the new year I dipped back into CWJ, and found a new YOJ just starting up, so I took the plunge and joined in.

I’ve posted twice to YOJ so far, and I have an appointment with Warren Tuesday morning to show new work for the spring show. I have about two dozen pieces, which is probably more than he’ll want or have room for. So all the rest will go up on Etsy, where I have 28 items so far.

I’m excited, though actually, I have had very few actual sales yet. But enough to get me moving. Warren bought my 16-gauge chain in October and Amy got the earrings, Also the rectangular “earrings for Isabel” variation sold, I believe to the same customer who bought my “Verrakaien Pendant” at the DHS sale. Then that Etsy bracelet sale out of the blue, and Amy’s commissions, add up to a fair fall.

Onward!

Chainmaille Contest VOTE

Head right on over to the Etsy Chainmaillers' Guild blog to vote in our first contest, "Linked to the Sea."



I haven't quite got these pics to work right, and I don't have any more time to mess with them. Click the little blue square and you get the picture. Or just head straight on over to the contest, the text link above works fine. There you will see a beautiful display of all 22 candidates. You have to only choose two favorites. VOTE! Then put your contact info in the comments, and you will be entered in a drawing for half a dozen gifts the chainmaillers have made as thank-yous for our voters.

insecta shimmerae treasury

I neglected to note my inclusion in a most impressive treasury by molecularmuse, she of the silver molecule jewelry, a couple of weeks ago. It was my cranefly, honored for the second time, among a whole cast of cool bugs.


Most people seem to like molecularmuse's serotonin, at least it is one of her best sellers. I prefer the playful-looking dopamine earrings here. Lots of cool stuff. (But I bet she doesn't really work at her bench wearing a spaghetti-strap little black dress, as shown in one of her thumbnails!)

a SALE!

I just this afternoon listed this green bracelet, that I finished while I was up at the lake last Friday evening. I was very frustrated that it only got three views in its first hour, I think because the images glitch made it invisible during its thirty seconds of fame on the front page and also in Time Machine.

So then I went off to Petco for catfood, and THE KITTIES HAVE BEEN ADOPTED, HURRAY! And then I browsed around Big Lots, and got home and checked my e-mail, and I had a sale! Red-letter day all oround.

Turned out to be two items sold, this brand new green bracelet, and the 3/4 persian purple one I made back in February 07 on the plane home from Boston.
They are both going to live in Walnut Creek, California. Woo-hoo! Maybe THIS time there really will be some momentum. Time to make some more. Oh, bouncing on air here.

another Etsy treasury! whee!!

Just a few days after I listed my cranefly sculpture (that I have to go collect from the library exhibit today) on Etsy, Ivydee picked it for a treasury! And some of the other pieces she put it in with - WOW. I had just discovered the knitted wire pomegranates myself a couple of days ago. And the copper birdfeeder is a real work of art that Linnie and Bill need in their patio.

Ivydee's shop is encouraging, because she seems to be making a success of combining beadwork, wirework, and paper art all in the same shop. I think I need to take tips from her on the cohesive "shop look" of her backgrounds.

International Mail (preliminary)

I'm working on a digest of the important stuff from the Post Office's International Mailer's Manual ( IMM). I haven't finished it yet. Meanwhile here is the very barest beginning, extracted from the Etsy forum post I made which got me started on the idea.

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Once you start checking the rates, most things have one rate to Canada, one to Mexico, and one to everywhere else. It's a real pain that the P.O. doesn't present it that way, but in separate charts for every country in the world. But that's how it works out.

• Global Express Guaranteed starts at $38.95 for a half pound -- this one does vary, there are some countries, such as Algeria and Lithuania, where it is twice as much
• Express Mail International starts at $25.95 for a half pound
• Priority Mail International starts from $19 to $24 for a pound (flat rate envelope $11.95)
• First Class International starts at $1.40 for one ounce

Everybody has the same size limits of:
42 inches in maximum length and 79 inches in maximum length and girth combined
except for a couple dozen countries that let it be a bit larger.

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More later.

etsy treasuries

Ever since I've been on Etsy I have been hearing about treasuries. Some people make them incessantly, apparently. They are, on the face of it, an altruistic way to show your favorites of others work. If you make lots, and get many people kind of feeling like they owe you (kind of like when they've been asked to dinner several times), then you are likely to be in their treasuries. The real payoff comes if a treasury in which you are displayed catches the eye of an administrator, and you find an item of yours on the front page. I don't look at FP that much, but I gather many people do.

Well, anyway, I gave it a shot. Took me several tries to get the hang of it and to manage to be awake at the opportune moment. But I got this fiesta-colored assortment into Treasury West, and then a day later the gray-greenish page of art from Dentonites into the main Treasury.


It was kind of fun. I guess I'll do it again. Of course, to get them SEEN you either have to blazon your accomplishment all over the forums somehow, or think of a REALLY intriguing title. Sigh. I hate promoting. Sigh.

getting Etsy views

I had an inspiration that worked out well, yesterday — I used some of the iris blooms as easel/backgrounds for new photographs of some lightweight earrings and pendants. Then today I used those pieces as examples in a couple of Etsy Forum discussions, and also showed them off on About.com About Jewelrymaking. I ended up with about 300 new views for today, or 25% added to my total since the views got reset in February.

I posted links to all three pieces on About. That post has 100 or so views, though only 5 or 6 replies. Then the green maille earrings on the gold iris were the start of a lively discussion on Etsy's Site Help Forum, about using as many tags as possible without tag abuse, that had 50-odd posts. I also used both the picture of pearl threaders on a blue flower, and of the peyote cross on an apricot one, to show off the iris technique. Only 20 posts in that thread.

Well, the pearl threaders got 41 new views, the peyote cross got 33, and the green aluminum earrings 128! What's more, a half-dozen other items got 5 or more new views, so there was some spillover once people came to the shop.

On the other hand there were no sales, or item hearts, though I got a shop heart. So how much good does it do to get views from fellow crafters, especially other people who make jewelry? Who knows? Obviously there is a lot of marketing yet to be done.

older beadwork

I've been putting up on Etsy a number of the pieces I did 2 or 3 years ago. Since I migrate through different phases, this means these are media I'm not doing so much now. Right-angle-weave beadwork, for example, with those red, red recycled beads, On a red, white, and blue three-strand necklace with fiber optic accents. I think I made that one soon after the Beads 'n' Things trunk show with the sleet-storm. That was way back when - 2004? '03??? That's when I discovered the faceted fiber optic beads.
These blue striped barrel beads are one of the nicer ones that Hobby Lobby carries. I made a double-row-of-squares bracelet for Shanna on her birthday a few years ago, and then finished up the package with this single one.

So far none have sold, but they are getting views, especially the Red, Red Bracelet. Need to search the stash for other older pieces that are good workmanship, not the experiments that didn't quite work ;-)