A few things have been happening...

I have been extremely neglectful of all things Etsy and online selling - I have just been so busy outside of the internet that I haven't really felt like doing anything about it.

But it seems that the world Esty keeps on turning regardless of whether I am making a contribution. Firstly, I made a sale, my first in ages and it's time's like this that I really wish that I knew where the sale came from. The buyer was a relatively new member (a few months) had no feedback, and I wasn't in their favourites. To add to this, I had't listed anything in weeks, so I don't think that they would have found me by simply browsing. I checked the treasuries and treasury west, nothing - so how did it come to be that this lovely buyer found me and made a purchase?

By the way, it was my Simply Elegant Blue Earrings that sold.


In further Etsy related news, I was also featured in a treasury (this was a couple of days after my sale) as a result of being a part of the great Etsybloggers team. Having used the tag "Etsybloggers" on my Hearts of Many Colours Bracelet, it was featured in a treasury made up of fellow Etsybloggers.

I have also noticed that I have still been getting blog hits, and I also wonder how these people find me, my feedjit gives me a little bit of an idea, but apart from that I am in the dark.

It amazes me that all this activity could be happening around my shop when I have been sitting on my lazy behind doing nothing to promote it - yet when it feels like I'm spending a fortune and I spend all my free time on the net promoting promoting promoting, nothing happens?!

Neglected....

That is how my poor blog feels!

I haven't posted in weeks - I feel all my hard work coming undone.

I have a couple of things coming up that I think will stimulate some blogging.

Blog carnivals and feature bloggers are in the pipeline - I am also looking forward to posting about Christmas - this will be my very first Christmas as a blogger - I look forward to heaps of photographing of the festivities.

For now, I will have to leave you happy in the knowledge that I am buying some pretty new wheels for my beautiful new car - I am taking it as my Christmas present to myself!

Storybeader

The Etsybloggers feature blogger for the month of November is Storybeader. I don't know a whole lot about my fellow Etsyblogger, but I have a feeling that each one of her creations has a story behind it - and I'm supposing that this is obviously where her name comes from.

I just took a visit to her blog where I found the most captivating video. After watching the whole thing, enthralled by the music and amazed by the snippets of text which accompanied the pictures of her beautiful creations I found out that the snippets of text were actually haikus - amazing. And having checked out her Etsy profile, it seems that I am somewhat right about my assumptions - each one of her jewellery creations are accompanied by a haiku written by her about that particular piece to help take you on a journey.

As she puts it, " I suppose my haiki poems can float around in your brain as you sashay down the lane, wearing one of my necklaces."

The five drummers beat
Together as the dancers
Went roud in circles

-storybeader

Colorful disks, side

By side, form a long strand that
Matches all your shirts.
- storybeader

So, check out her Etsy shop, where you can grab yourself one of these amazingly thought out creations. And make sure you also head over to her blog so you can check out all the other stuff that she gets up to.

Mama's Magic

The Etsybloggers feature for the month of October is Mama's Magic.


Mama's Magic has 2 Etsy shops: bfbeads where she sells her awesome range of baby friendly beads. Such as this necklace

Which she says will keep baby happy whilst at the breast. It is made from one continuous length of cord and has no clasp. Unlike normal jewellery, it will not break as easily because it has no 'weak links' such as clasps and findings. Baby can happily pull and play with it whilst in your arms. It is also made with an adjustable bead, so that it can be lengthened and shortened as you feel like it.

In her bfbeads shop she also sells these cute reminder bracelets. Which help to remind mum which boob she last used to feed little bub. They come in a range of colours and are made with memory wire - which means they are nearly impossible to break and really easy to change arms, meaning that they meet the principles of their design exactly!

Aside from bfbeads, Mama's Magic also had a second Etsy shop, Mama's Magic Studio, where she focuses on a range of fraternal earrings as well as a couple of other trinkets.

I love these Dragonfly danglers, which I can imagine hanging in a window on a sunny day.

I also think that these fraternal earrings are so cute and different. Who wants matching earrrings anyway?! I really really love these "Hey Diddle Diddle" earrings.



Mama's Magic also had an awesome blog, which focuses a lot on her beautiful family. I particularly liked her recent post, where a picture says a thousand words! Mama's Magic, is most definately a proud SAHM like she says she is. Make sure you check out her blog where there's heapps of other items worth reading. Trust me, I spent quite a while there finding out all about her.

Go Wild for Joey & Aleethea!

How much do we love Joey & Aleethea? Thiiiiiiiiiiisssss Muuuuuchhhhhh!!!!! The lovely person behind this Etsy persona created the EtsyBloggers Street Team. Of course that is not all, she is a mummy to 2 gorgeous children - which you can read lots about on her blog - http://joeyandaleethea.typepad.com/blog/


She is also the owner of a fab Etsy shop, joeyandaleethea - http://joeyandatheelea.etsy.com - where you can find heaps of great stuff for your kiddies!

Such as this cool Monsterlicious hoodie which is custom made in whatever colour you feel like having it - personally I love the pink!

All the monsters have names and personalities - making all the clothes that feature them all the more lovable.

I love this cute Monsterlicious Baby Cuff - bringing the coolness to the babies! You can also get in in bigger sizes, just in case your older kids are feeling a bit outshone by their little brother or sister!

These are just a couple of things on offer in joeyandaleethea's Etsy shop - make sure you check it out, you will be there for ages marvelling at the creativity and cuteness of it all.


After you have had a looksie at joeyandaleethea's shop, you must check out her blog. She is clearly a passionate blogger. You can also find some great personal goings on in her life, which helps to understand how much a great person lies behind the name of joeyandaleethea. I just popped over there for a peep before and just had to share this with you:

Random Happiness

As soon as the Dada walks in the door from work, our 2 year old son Joey says to him:

"Dada, you see her? That's the Mama. And see that Dada? That's the little little little baby. She's so little, she's so cute. Kiss the baby, Dada. (mwah) Ohhh! Good job Dada!!"

How beautiful is that?! This is the kind of stuff you can find everyday on her blog - I love it, I particularly liked reading about the arrival of little Lily.

So, make sure you check out all that this wonderful woman has to offer - both on her blog and in her Etsy shop.

One final thought - THANKS JOEAYANDALEETHEA!!! - for creating the great team that is Etsybloggers!

Where oh where have I been?

It feels like forever since I have posted. I have been getting on the net but have been a bit lazy with my blogging. I think I just ran out of steam a bit. I have been furoiusly applying for new jobs, I am sooooo over my current one and somehow I don't think I'm going to make it big in the world of online selling in the extremely near future. I was dreaming about it the other day though. Chris and I were driving along the road to Nubeena and I said, 'we need to set a lucrative internet business so that we can come and live in the middle of nowhere!' Ah to be able to work from home like that would be heaven.

Something else had been keeping me occupied over the last couple of days also. We have new addition to our family. On Saturday we welcomed Orion the husky pup to our household. Whilst Ghost the big husky pup is rather excited about it he is still a bit overwhelmed.

But here they are looking ever so friendly and cute togther. This was just after thier big walk this afternoon.

What surprised me the most about the whole excercise of bringing home a new pup was that it only took Ghost a short time to decide that rather than kill him it might be better to figure out what he was first. Orion caused more of a problem. The fact that Ghost scared the poop out of Orion when he first arrived meant that Orion wouldn't let Ghost anywhere near him and kept yapping at him and snapping at poor Ghosts nose. Finally, about 4 hours later Orion decided that it might me ok if Ghost had a bit of a sniff and they sat nicely together for the first time. We have had a few times since then where they have been less than friendly but we have figured that it is all part of the process of establishing the pecking order and that as long as we keep an eye on them they will be alright.

With that, I think I will leave with a couple more cute photos.

Tulips Treasure Box - EtsyBloggers Feature

Tulipstreasurebox is the EtsyBloggers feature for the month of August. She is participating in the EtsyBoggers Street Team sale and has some beautiful items to offer.



These items are available for sale in Tulipstreasurebox's Etsy shop located at
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5508373&section_id=5417430

If you hurry there you will get a real bargain, Tulipstreasurebox has really embraced the EtsyBlogger's team sale and has reduce the prices on a huge range of items.

Tulipstreasurebox also has a blog located at: http://TuLipsTalking.blogspot.com

Here you will find some info on her beautiful items - plenty more eyecandy for you to drool over!

Keep On Keeping On

So, I have had my membership approved for EtsyBloggers, very exciting! I am getting ready to dive into writing my feature for this month. I am in the process of checking out previous ones to get an idea of how it all works. I love that the process for EtsyBloggers is so involved - I do hope that I am able to keep up with the requirements.

I have managed to make some more jewelry, so I met one of my goals that I made for myself. These are my latest creations:

I bought some new beads/findings the other day and they came in the mail full of inspiration. So I was pretty happy with that.

In other news, we have a new addition to our family. Well, he's not actually here yet, but he will be soon. We picked out a new puppy on Sunday. Will be posting with updates after he settles into his new home which should be about 2 weeks away.

I will be back to post later on today or tomorrow because I feel I must get this feature article written - I am looking forward to it anyway, it will be an excellent start to the idea that I had to do that myself anyway.

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That....

Over the last few days I have made some progress. I have signed up on Etsy for two teams. DUST (Down Under Street Team) and EtsyBloggers. I am currently waiting for approval from EtsyBloggers.

I have also been trying to promote my blog more, I shamelessly mention it whenever I have he chance! Although I have been seeking out other people's blogs and adding their links to mine. I think this is a really good way of networking. I feel it's likely that they will mention my blog to others if I tell them that I have added their link. Well I would hope so anyway, and if it doesn't then it is a good way for me to bulk up my potential feature article pool.

I have been extremely lazy with my creating of jewelry, I am hoping to get into this today, I have heaps of ideas rollig around in my head and really want to get them out. It has been really cold and this has put me off I think, cold fingers don't like fiddling with wire! Also I like to spread out when I'm building and I don't like to spread out when I'm cold!


Another exciting thing that has happened is that a 'stranger' commented on this bracelet of mine that I have pictured on Facebook.





I have pointed her in the direction of http://flickr.com/photos/tracylacytrinkets due to the fact that it has more and much better photos of my things on there.

This has prompted me to update my Facebook photos now though, as I get alot of exposure to my existing friends through Facebook. I feel like I can get around the issue of feeling like I'm soliciting to my friends.

I am really looking forward to getting involved with EtsyBloggers. Although I already had plans to do feature articles. I was intending on doing this primarily with jewelry makers and suppliers. Now I will hopefully have the chance to look at other creations and creators.

I have decided to up my prices on my items in order to see whether it makes any difference. After reading some article on Etsy I feel like I was previously seriously 'undervaluing my craft' as it is called. I don't seem to have seen a difference as yet, but I haven't added any new items for a while so I haven't expected that I would have any extra exposure recently.

I am currently in the process of searching for a feature artists. Hopefully I will have that finished later today - if I can fit in around everything that I have planned for today.

So, here are my plans:

- search for a feature artist
-dix my Facebook photos
-promote my blog in http://www.beadingforum.com.au/forums/index.php
-MAKE SOME JEWELRY!
-I also plan to look for inspiration outside my normal sources.

Progress So Far.....

Over the last couple of days I have been tinkering away. I have been stamping out a presence on the Etsy forums and in the chat rooms and have found a number of sellers to heart - a few of which have reciprocated. I am beginning to see why the forums are such an important place to network. I have found my self getting more satisfaction out of looking at items for sale by people in the forums than by simply searching.

This leads me to my next endeavour and it is to get more online exposure -in a nutshell I feel like by asking my friends to visit my website they will feel compelled to buy something and I don't like the idea that I might be pushing my craft onto them. This is why I feel gthat I need to make more 'online' friends. I feel that these people will be more interested in what I have to offer in the area of jewelry making because it is likely that they will be visiting my sites because they have a genuine interest rather than having a look because they think thay should just because they are my friends.

I have decided that I want to begin featuring some other jewelry creators website/blogs/shops. This is mostly because I feel that it is likely that I am going to run out of material otherwise - as much as there is that I want to get done - I don't know whether I will be able to keep up with my goal of posting on this blog every couple of days with what I will have achieved.

So hopefully by my next post I will have discovered my first subject.

Over the last couple of days I have been furiously working on designing some new creations - I am beginning to get low on finished pieces. I am finding it easier of late to draw inspiration from others rather than to simply copy like I did when I first started jewelry making. So I will get back to it....