New items in my eBay store & Etsy shop!

I'm thrilled to announce that I have restocked my Laurel Moon eBay store and my Laurel Moon Etsy shop with the new yums!

Find these awesome druzy agate geode slice beads on Etsy:

And these square rhyolite beads:

And in my eBay store, you can find these Norwegian moonstone beads:

and these rutilated quartz beads:

I'm so glad to get the first batch of listings out there! Keep tuned for more druzy slices, rutilated quartz, and many other goodies!

And now...semiprecious stone

I've sold vintage beads and cabs and glass gems on eBay and Etsy for a few years now, and I always hesitated about selling semiprecious stone. I mean, everyone else is selling it, right? You can get everything you want at any time and at rock bottom prices, right?

But then I took a good hard look at the things I can get, and the prices, and I realized that I have access to a lot of funky semiprecious stone that most people will never ever see. Amethyst slices, ammonite beads, gorgeous rhyolite and fossil coral...why not share? Sure, there will always be someone who will have something cheaper. But they won't ever have that exact bead, and if I choose the really standout stones, and I have them for a good price, then it could be something great!

So I went out on a limb and picked up a few strands of yummy beads. Smoky quartz handcarved rounds, rhyolite and fossil coral disks, lodalite quartz, some fantastic ammonites...and guess what? I took them to a couple shows, and they sold! Beaders liked how unique they were, and they liked buying just one or two instead of a whole strand.

Now I've decided to try this in my Laurel Moon eBay store and my Laurel Moon Beads Etsy shop and see how it goes. I've already sold a few lots, which is exciting, and I just put a few new pieces up, including this standout ammonite bead:



Can you see the opalization at the center? Just fabulous. I love sharing these awesome beads!

The new look of my Etsy shop

I'm getting very excited. Laurel Moon on Etsy, my beading supply shop, is undergoing a facelift. This is what the scans looked like:



Here's the beginning of the new look, with pictures instead of scans:



I like the closeup pics. They make it less obvious when Etsy crops them slightly. I think I'm going to try doing that for nearly all the pictures.

Sadly, this translates into more work, of course. But to have a nice look, it's probably worth it.

Pictures, pictures, pictures

I have taken nearly three hundred pictures this week. My camera has been working overtime!

Pictures for eBay and Etsy are important. You're only as good as your pictures, after all, and they must convey everything about your product in a very short period of time. They need to be clean, focused, and interesting, all at the same time. For Etsy, they should also be somewhat unified, so that your shop looks visually cohesive.

I have been thinking about overhauling all of the pictures in my Laurel Moon vintage bead shop on Etsy, and I finally had a block of time this week to do it. So I went through and pulled all merchandise that was still represented by scans, and I've taken new pictures.

Some of the pictures are okay, and some of them are great improvements.

This was my original half-drill bead assortment pic:



It was a scan, as you can tell. It does give the size and shape, but there's just something about a picture that makes me much happier:



I'm now experimenting with glamorous closeup pics for my thumbnails, hoping that they'll entice more people to click:



Well, I guess they're only glamorous if you like beads.

The thing about Etsy is that you have to list or relist things continually in order to be seen in their search results. Because I have such low-cost beads, I am reluctant to relist, and therefore I try to avoid it. But for these new pics, I definitely will. I hope it'll draw some new traffic in. Plus, when it's done I'll have a much more cohesive shop appearance because everything will be on a similar background.

A treasury! My goodness!

The treasuries just keep on coming! WatercolorsNmore featured my Tree of Wisdom set in the Words of Wisdom treasury!



Thank you, WatercolorsNmore!

Wow...the treasuries just keep coming!

The wonderful sarajoseph has featured my starfish necklace in her Into the Deep Blue Sea treasury!



Thank you so much, Sara!! I really appreciate it! What a beautiful treasury!

I'm in two treasuries, this time for supplies!

The kind http://www.etsy.com/shop/LauraBScott has featured my vintage Japanese bumblebee beads in her treasury, Bees and Buttercups.



Thank you, Laura!

The lovely AmiciThai has featured my vintage Italian seed beads in her treasury, Yellow Supplies.



Thank you, !

I'm in a mermaid treasury! Yay!

My favorite mermaid necklace has been featured in an Etsy treasury called Mermaid Treasures!



I absolutely love this necklace. I love the chain, the aquamarine, the gorgeous pearls, and the wonderful Green Girl pendant!



Thank you, GemdropsoftheFalls!

My 100th item is up at my Etsy jewelry shop!

I've just uploaded a new necklace to my Etsy shop, bringing my total to 100 items! To celebrate this occasion, I've activated a coupon code good for 15% off, good for this week only. The code is ETSY100.



I've hoarded a small collection of stamp pendants for years now. They're really nicely made, with sterling silver frames, lovely smooth backs, and glass set in front of the stamp to protect it. I have several from many different countries, but some of my favorites are the stamp pendants from China. I love the beautiful clothes and the long white expanse of negative space around the figure. I'm so glad to celebrate my 100th item with such a great pendant!

Click here to see the Chinese stamp pendant necklace in my Laurel Moon Jewelry Etsy shop

I'm in another treasury!

The wonderful PhotosByChristine has featured my mermaid necklace in her beautiful treasury, Stormy Seas!





Thank you, Christine!

I'm in another treasury...hooray!

The lovely Etsy seller lipstain has put my Mermaid necklace in a treasury!



Thank you, lipstain!

Another treasury!

My purple unicorn necklace was featured in a treasury!



Thanks so much, bohemienneivy!

Another Etsy treasury!

This time, it's supplies! The lovely wintergarden featured my green rose dome beadcaps in her Carnevale treasury. Thank you SO much, wintergarden!!

A purple Etsy treasury!

The lovely Bohemienneivy has added my unicorn necklace and earrings set to their Etsy treasury!! Thanks so much!

Check out this cute treasury!

Thank you, wimzieprints, for including me in this adorable Etsy treasury!

More new sets in my Etsy shop!

I've been having a great time stringing new necklaces and making new earrings. The latest:



Unicorn! I've had this pendant for ages. It's another wonderful Green Girl design, and I think I'll pop this into the shop tomorrow.

I'm done for tonight. I'm looking forward to the weekend, which will be chock-full of listing and photography and beading and, of course, hot chocolate.

I'm in another treasury!

I've been featured in another treasury! Thank you so much, im2keys!

New charm earring listings, now with color choices!

I've been really thinking lately about my Etsy jewelry shop. I've been revising things and adding a few new listings. I'm about to start working on some new designs, but in the interim I was thinking about what sort of items I could add to the shop to make it interesting.

Then I remembered: charm earrings. When I first started making jewelry, charm earrings were one of my very first projects, and I really loved them. I wore them all the time. And I've sold many, many pairs of them over the years. I have a few good sources for high-quality charms and I'm always looking for new designs.

I have lots of charms stockpiled, and I thought that it might be nice if I set up listings that were made-to-order. I could just provide a single set of pics for each style of charm, and then have a couple photos that show the different colors to choose from, and then I'd make them to order.

Nice, right? But that means I need to make a sample pair of each kind of charm.

And then it hit me: I already did that!

Yes, two years ago, when I was working on putting together my website, I made a sample pair of earrings for each style. Today I dug out a few bins of beads. I dug through vintage Italian lampwork beads, brass stampings, French glass, silver scraps, and Czech satin glass necklaces, and I finally found a little bag containing the treasure. Earrings!

I photographed the colors of Czech firepolish beads that I purchased for this very thing. I have them all labeled with their color code, and I bought a hank of each, a few years ago, so I have a good supply stashed, and the color will remain consistent through many pairs of earrings. (Sometimes Czech beads do vary slightly from lot to lot.)

Best of all, I can just keep relisting these without having to take a new photo for each listing, which definitely simplifies thing!

Here are my color photos:





I like the way they look. I cut and pasted them together so that I could get eight color choices into two images.

So here goes. I'm going to start stocking my shop with these. They're cute and inexpensive and I love the different charms.

Snow, snow, snow

Yesterday it snowed all day.

I actually like snow, as long as I don't have to drive in it. It's pretty, and I do like the winter season. So I was happy to watch the snow fall yesterday, and while it did, my husband and I put up our tree and decorated it.

Our tree is my family tree that is at least thirty years old at this point. It's pretty much your average Charlie Brown tree, if his tree had been plastic. It's skinny and it lists, and the upper part of the tree doesn't fit very well into its socket, which has to be wrapped in napkins. The branches are a bit strange-looking, and the whole effect isn't as much "tree" as it is "vaguely cone-shaped green thing." Still, I love it to bits.

Amusingly enough, when I was little and asked why we had to have a plastic tree, my mom told me it was because my dad was allergic to real trees, and my dad told me it was because my mom was allergic to real trees. That was a little confusing.

After the tree was done, I sat at my jewelry desk and worked on some jewelry. I made a few necklace/earring sets:







I also made a triplet of earrings. No, not a pair, a triplet. I made a left earring, a right earring, and an earring for the furnace duct under my jewelry-making desk. Hope it enjoys looking stylish.

The snow fell, and I kept beading, watching a couple Miami Vice episodes and eating chocolate-covered almonds. Husband made a fantastic dinner and also took care of the driveway, and fixed the generator, so when the power began flickering, I didn't have to panic about how we would keep the house warm.

And this morning, the backyard looks like this:



I think I'm going to bead a little more today. I've really been enjoying it. And I hope that today is just as nice as yesterday was. I could use more days like that, as could we all, I think!

What a cool widget!

I love Craft Cult. If you're an Etsy seller, it's a great way to keep track of your items' hearts, views, and if you've been featured on the front page of Etsy or the Storque (Etsy's blog).

But there's something new! Check out their Treasury Widget page. This awesome widget generator is incredibly helpful. You basically put in your Etsy shop name, pick which treasury you want to make into an image, choose sizing options and whether you want the widget to be live or static, and then Craft Cult creates a terrific image of the treasury to add to your blog or a blog entries. It's a clickable image, and it makes it so easy to share when you've been featured in a treasury.

Here's the widget, in all its glory:



Nifty, isn't it? I love it! Can't wait to keep using this in the future.