New beginnings

My website is inching out of the primordial ooze. Yesterday I put up the first item and tinkered with it. There are so many features and interesting bits and bobs that I'm a little overwhelmed. Mostly, though, I'm intrigued.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to is having to only put up one photo per product, instead of endlessly scanning things for eBay and Etsy. Once I have the products in their places, people will be able to buy multiple units, and I won't have to constantly list new pictures of the same products. I'm also looking forward to being able to accept credit cards directly. This is pretty exciting stuff and it's such a huge step for me.

This weekend I will be getting into my photography cocoon. I'm going to set up my teensy "studio" and begin taking pictures of beads and cabochons. I have to remember that they're not going to be perfect on the first try, and that I shouldn't try to photograph everything at once.

Time for a little cocooning

I have just finished five weeks of intense activity. Houseguests, the PMC Conference, Arcadia Daze, working for friends--I've been running around nonstop for days and now I'm home and ready to take a deep breath.

I have a few weeks home with no obligations, and I am ready to take on a new old challenge...that of my website.

For years my website has languished, wanting love and attention, and I've barely understood how to work with it or what to do with it. I've had numerous issues with stocking it and connecting it to the rest of my ebusiness life. Some of my biggest worries were that I wouldn't have enough inventory to make it worthwhile, and that I would have to rely on someone else to update it for me constantly.

So when one of my friends mentioned that she was using Big Cartel, I got excited. I went through all of the information I could find, and was disappointed when I realized that I would still have to rely on Paypal. The core concept was perfect--a template that one simply customizes--but I can't have another Paypal account.

But I knew that this couldn't be the end to this concept. Somewhere, there had to be a template-based system that could FINALLY use my online merchant credit card account, which has also been languishing for years. Fortunately, a good friend is now in the website-making business, and she is in the process of setting up WordPress for me. Now I had always thought of WP as blogging software, so imagine my surprise when I found out they had a surprisingly robust commerce software attachment as well.

I think it might just be perfect. Template-based, customizable, the ability to take credit cards, and also I can just sandwich my blog right into it. For my level of business, and my level of technology, I think it could be just what I was looking for.

Stay tuned!bl

And off I go again!

I'll be at the Arcadia Daze festival in Arcadia, MI on Saturday and Sunday. If you're in the area, stop by and say hi!

And again!

How awesome! I was featured in an Etsy treasury for my jewelry supplies, too! Thank you, Tundradear!

You can view the treasury here!

Hooray for the sugar skulls!

An Etsy seller named Giggles used my Day of the Dead bracelet in a treasury on Etsy!

Check it out!



The awesome ceramic sugar skulls are by Melanie from Earthenwood. I love her work!

A little gear in the works

Sometimes I wake up and look at the piles of stuff I have to do. And the piles of stuff I should do, which is infinitely scarier.

And then I open an order from a supplier, and I see the handwritten numbers on the bags, and I think...I wish I were the one doing that. I wish to be a cog in some great machine, stamping out my gears one at a time, doing something repetitive and mind-freeing. No great decisions to be made. No pathway to negotiate.

It's only a fleeting thought, and not one I think I would pursue, but still, it pops up from time to time and makes me wish I were behind the lead dog, simply pulling, instead of the lead dog with none behind her, slipping down a trail I don't quite understand and can't see far enough ahead to judge where to go.

Then again, it is a little exhilarating. And the view is nice.

Where does the time go?

I've been home from my annual Bead & Button trip for over two weeks now, and I'm just finally catching up. Google Reader had compiled nearly 2500 entries for me, and I'm down to the last 350 or so.

I'm looking at all of the lovely entries from friends who went to the show, and the beads they bought. It's making me a little sad this time. I had planned to buy a little this year, but was so busy that I barely left the booth. I think I saw the least I have ever seen of a Bead & Button show. And I didn't really have time to talk to any of my favorite people, sadly.

Now that I'm home, I'm frantically putting together new listings and trying to restock my store and my Etsy shop, and it's just been a bit of a crazy time for me. I wish I could add more hours to the day. I haven't even been able to get back to my copper pendant experimentation.

I'm already looking at my schedule for the rest of the year and wincing. I have so many trips planned and so much going on. I hope I can get through it all without going crazy.

Home!

I'm home from the Bead & Button Show. Whew! It was pretty intense this year and I barely had time to breathe.

The good news is that I've brought home TONS of new inventory! I bought some really awesome one of a kind vintage beads and cabs and I can't wait to start listing.

Here's a sneak peek:



I just have to process it all. Stay tuned for new tasty listings!!

Off into the wild blue yonder

I'm heading out to WI for a month and a half. I'll be at the Bead & Button show, helping out my friends at their booth. See you all when I get back!

My first copper etching experiment!

I'm still in the process of picking up a few more things, but I really wanted to try etching this weekend, so I went ahead and did a practice piece.

I picked up a lot of different sizes of pendants from Rings & Things, and decided to go with a small piece at first, because the larger pieces seem like they'll be more conducive to the designs I want to make.



I'm in the process of converting my sunporch into a workshop. Tons of ventilation, light (both natural and electrical), electrical outlets, and there's even a phone jack. Plus, the view is gorgeous. Here's the table with its messy array of items:



I cleaned up the table a little, and put down a vinyl protective cover that my uncle made from me, and rearranged things so that everything I need is on the table. Everything else is stashed all over the place, but that will change once I bring a rack into the room.



Since I do not currently have a laserjet printer, I decided to go for a simpler resist: a Sharpie marker. I drew a little test pattern on the piece.



Then, while coating the back and sides with more marker, I slipped, so I ended up adding a little more resist to the edges and front. I'll have to remember to be very careful in the future, or simply wipe it off and start again.



I'm using the electrolytic method, where you put the pendant in a salt & water bath and then hang another piece of copper opposite it. You then run an electrical charge through both pieces--positive to the pendant, negative to the scrap piece--and eventually the parts of your pendant that are not coated with resist will be eaten away.



I've just started the air pump, which is connected to an airstone I've immersed in the water, which will keep the water mixing and allow the pendant to etch faster.



After a half hour or so, the solution changed color.



After taking it out of the solution and using rubbing alcohol to clean off the marker, the pendant looked like this:



I then applied liver of sulfur to patina it, and rubbed off the highlights with a polishing pad.



In the future I will have to be more careful. I must have missed the bottom edge, because you can see that there's a bit that was eaten away. Also, I think some of the marker smudged, because the design in the lower right hand corner isn't very clear.

All in all, I think it was a pretty helpful experiment. I look forward to learning more about this technique.