Fresh from the desk: Plan for the weekend

I have a plan for the weekend.  I’m going to bead.  A lot.  I watched a little of a webinar yesterday on Etsy critiquing a few shops and a couple of things really hit me: Don’t just list a few things and wait for them to sell before listing more.  That’s like opening a clothing store and only having one rack of shirts out… people want to browse through your selection, see your variety, and if they see what they need they’ll get it, and if they get inspired they’ll contact you further.  Keeping only a few listings up, while it’s cheaper, doesn’t help a beginner’s shop to only show a small sampling of the work.  People want to see a lot of variety to get an idea of what you can do for them or they’ll just browse on by.  That’s my goal now, I have plenty of beads to get it done and the listing fees aren’t bad at all so I just need to get to work.  Maybe that will help my booth business too, but in both cases, I just need to get down to some serious beading.

The other thing that struck me is that I need a new banner for my Etsy shop.  I have a dear friend who designed my logo who can do that for me so I asked for her help again.  We’ll probably spruce up the logo too, make it look more professional and reflect my art style. 

Dad and I got Mom a new camera for her birthday/Mother’s Day so maybe I can borrow it to get some better photos too.  Certainly can’t hurt to try, right?

However, I can’t sit on my butt all weekend.  Depending on how the weather cooperates, I need to finish digging for the terrace.  We have an idea for that also, using the frames from Mom’s old garden beds for the retaining wall instead of buying new bricks for it.  Mom thinks it’ll be super easy to just take the wood up and plop it down into place, but I suspect it’ll be a little more complicated than that.  At any rate, we need to take apart her old beds (some of them are so terribly overgrown I’m not sure how we’ll get to them…), which will take a while, but a couple are already in pieces so I could theoretically take them up the hill and try to make them fit.  I’m sure I’ll need to move some more dirt to make the corners square enough for something like that.  The tractor still needs some wiring work, but at least the problem was identified and the solution is in the works so I’m not worried about that much anymore.

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Fresh from the Desk: New pieces listed on Etsy!

My Etsy Shop now has double the listings it had before!  Go check it out and see if there's anything that needs to go home with you! :)

Among the new pieces is this one, a slightly tribal carved bone pendant on Sterling Silver memory wire.  I had a little trouble with what to do with this pendant.  It's quite a statement piece, isn't it?  My boyfriend looooooooooooooooves it.  I love the nautilus spiral, but when I got it home I was at a loss for what to do with it.  It sits slightly off-center just because of the shape and the placement of the drilled hole and I didn't have anything that would really complement it on a beaded or hemp necklace like I've been working with previously.  I figured it was time to get the memory wire out again and I'm glad I did.  This slightly tribal pendant needed a stronger treatment than hemp or a beaded chain, but I didn't want to go wild with colors either because it is such a strong piece on its own.  I started looking through my black beads to see what I could come up with and came across my black iridescent Czech glass dagger drop beads that I haven't used in far too long.  The fire polishing gives them a distinct green-blue iridescent shine on one side so it's been a little difficult for me to find an effective use for them as well.  But, once I paired them with the pendant, it all started to come together.  I got out the green shell spacers I used for the custom turtle necklace a while back, some black resin beads, and some silvery shell beads and strung it all on some memory wire so that it sits just at my collarbones.  It could be stretched out to sit a bit lower, but I won't worry about that.

It's now available for $15 on my Etsy shop so go take a look if you'd like!  Again, Happy Mother's Day to all you lovely Mamas out there!