Featured in a treasury!

My small grape headpins were featured in this treasury by Etsy seller lucietales.



Thank you, Lucietales!

A cool blog!

A friend of mine has been taking some beautiful pictures of New York, and I thought I'd share the link:

Changing Shadows, Pilgrim Faces

Some of the images are just beautiful! Haunting photos and lyrical musings. Scenes of New York that many of us will never see.

Bring in the new

I have a new computer. My last computer lasted seven years, so this is quite a shift. I've gone from XP to 7, and I have a bigger screen now and a lot of memory. I think the best part of this is that I will finally have better color management. My old monitor was acting very strange by the end, and the new monitor is lovely and the colors look much better. The old monitor made things look darker than they actually are, which was also an issue.

I've taken a break in the website work to get the new computer up and running, and at this point I'm just ironing out the wrinkles. It's been a challenge!

Whew! Photography.

I've been working very hard on photographing beads and cabochons and glass gems for the new website. It's been fun and challenging, as well.

At one point I couldn't understand why my pictures were so grainy--it turns out that I had switched my camera's speed to 800 instead of auto. whoops! I'm so glad that I figured it out.



I've been trying to concentrate on doing a good job, but not getting caught up in making things "perfect." It's difficult, though, because I keep getting distracted by the different levels of light and how dark things look, and I have to stop myself from obsessively just taking the pictures over and over again.



What I like about taking pictures instead of scans is that you get a more 3-D view of the items in question. It looks a little more realistic. The scans are great, but they do have limitations. I think I'll include both on my website.

Also, I think I'm going to take a scale pic for every item. I hate using pennies because it looks a little...off-putting to me, but I can't think of another item that is so well-known and can give such an immediate impression of size.

Who can resist a sale?

The wonderful and talented Andrew Thornton is having a sale! He's cleaning out his bead stash, and there are some amazing beads--as well as amazing deals! Don't miss out on this opportunity. Check it out!

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!