I had such high hopes for getting the photo tutorial out.  First tax season hit early; tax preparation is my “real” job, so I’ve been straight out since the middle of January.  Then, I felt lousy all Wednesday night after dinner, and finally early in the morning I suspected it was my appendix giving me troubles.  Sometimes it’s lousy being right….

So it’s out, and I’m recuperating.  My bead soup project will probably have to wait till I can “belly up” to the work table.  I’ll be in touch soon!

My Ice Skates pendant made it into this Etsy Maine Team Treasury.  Brrr!!!

And no, I haven’t forgotten the tips I promised for taking product photos.  We’ve been suffering from a lack of sunny days lately–the one sunny day we had, I wasn’t home.  I have a draft in progress, but I need to take some pictures.  Soon….

Just a few of the pieces that came out of the kiln on Sunday.  The first time I fired this load I underfired it, and the stuff looked, well, crusty and nasty.  Much better this time.  I’ve been loading many of these new pieces into my shop, so stop by and take a peek.

Isn’t that focal beautiful?  These came from Eileen at Dorset Hill Beads. Don’t they make you wish you were somewhere tropical?  Now I have to decide what to do with them….such possibilities!

These are the pieces I sent to Eileen.  Sorry about the photo quality–I grabbed these pieces out of the kiln late in the afternoon and packed them for shipping that night, so there was no natural light.  The toggle is a new design that I’m excited about; rather than add wire to the toggle bar I’ve just left a hole in it so that the designer can choose what color metal to use.  I have another one coming up in blue in the next kiln load.

The wavy squares in the lower right hand corner are vintage German glass from The Beadin’ Path. The opaque pink beads are rose quartz, then there are crystals and silver glass seed beads.

I spent this morning adding a number of pieces to my shop for Valentine’s Day.  Quite frankly, I’m all “hearted” out.

1. The picture is so blurry/dark/busy that I can’t tell what you’re selling.  I want to see the details!  The photo doesn’t have to be artsy or staged like a pro, but if it’s blurry I can’t be sure I’ll like it when I get it.  In the next few days I’m going to post my photographing and editing process, so you can see the steps I take and adapt them to your own use.
2. The devil is in the details: What is your item made from?  How large is it?  Your descriptions don’t have to be pretty; clear and concise will do it for me. On items like bead caps and other such supplies, I love to see a scale reference. I can’t always visualize how large those bead caps are, or how long the linkage in that chain is.  If you don’t want to use a penny, that’s fine, but use a ruler in one of your pictures so I can see for myself.
3. Profiting from shipping charges.  I’ve done my fair share of shipping, so I have a pretty good idea of what it costs to ship items.  I don’t mind if you pocket some change from my shipping charges, and I also don’t mind paying for packing materials and such; however, I feel that the charge of packaging and the time it takes you to create a pretty package should be factored into your item cost, and not into the shipping charges.  That also goes for the cost of taking the stuff to the PO–that’s part of overhead, and should be factored into your pricing structure.  It’s not as much of an issue on Etsy as it is on Fee-bay (and yes, eBay sellers, I know you’re dodging fees by inflating the shipping charges: I’m not a dunce, I feel it’s a cheap trick, and I won’t fall for it).  It’s irritating to get the package in the mail that you paid $4 shipping for and to discover it cost $1.76 to mail.
4. You haven’t filled ANYTHING out in your shop policies, profile,  or your shop intro. Etsy is a community. It’s also a business.  If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of returns, that’s fine, but let me know (BTW not allowing returns on items purchased, unless they’re custom or final sale items, just costs you customers). I’m not into guessing games. If you only ship once or twice a week, state it clearly in your policies.  You don’t have to fill out every section, but pick one and be concise. Show that you care about your shop and your customers.
5. Gross grammatical or spelling errors.  Copy and paste your description into a word processing program and run spell check.  It won’t always catch usage errors (like when to use less vs. fewer, the difference between you’re and your, etc.), but it can remove the glaring errors.  And along a similar note: I CaN’t ReAd tHe TiTle WhEN YoU TRy tO MAkE iT CuTe!  It makes my head hurt.

These are just a few of the reasons that I came up with, and I’m sure plenty of you might disagree, especially with the shipping charges. What are your pet peeves?

If these pieces aren’t in the shop already, they’ll be there before the end of the day.  We’re having a very snowy day today, so I won’t be getting any more pictures taken till the sun makes an appearance (if it ever does again). In the meantime I’ll just get some more glazing done and maybe play in the clay a little bit.  Hope it’s sunny where you are!

Now that we’ve had the birthday party, it’s safe for me to show the necklace I created for my sister.  If you know her at all, then you could guess that I made this for her, since booger green is her “signature color.”  I used 80 zillion seed beads (I believe they are 11^, but they could be smaller),  6^ seeds,cultured pearls, lemon jasper rondelles (I LOVE these!), an assortment of glass beads, and sterling silver components.  The pendant was created from a button from my grandmother’s buttons stash: chosen because they were particularly close.

My swap beads are gone, as is my Bead Soup mix.  Tomorrow I’ll be listing some hearts on Etsy, along with some spacer beads that came out of the kiln today.  I used a new glaze on them and now I think I have a new favorite!  They’re delish!

I had planned on glazing tonight but I’m afraid that I have a migraine on the way–my little internal barometer started warning me of a storm earlier today, but now I’m teetering at the brink….

While browsing through my Analytics, I discovered that this ornament was featured on Weddingbee. Quite a treat reading all the kind comments about it.  This pattern and color combination will be making an appearance soon in an Etsy shop near you.

Here are some greenware hearts that I made last night.  I still need to prep the edges. For the larger hearts I used some plastic cookie cutters from Wilton; the upside is that the shape is symmetrical, the downside being that the cut isn’t as clean as it would be with a metal cutter.   I’ll be making more pieces this afternoon.  I need to make some of my “X’s and O’s” pendants, along with some more charms.  I also had a brainstorm this morning about some new pieces for people who aren’t  fans of hearts. They will still scream “Love,”  though!

I’m heading down to North Berwick tomorrow, weather permitting (the weather has been biting me in the backside, lately).  The kiln is down there, so my firing schedule will depend on which days my mother can take Isaac. Soon I’ll be down there six days a week doing taxes, so if I have the stamina I’ll be getting lots of firings in.  So much nicer loading the kiln in 68 degrees, rather than 20.  I can’t wear gloves or a bulky coat loading the little kiln, so the garage was getting a bit unpleasant to work in.

Lori Anderson picked out swap partners for her Bead Soup party, and I’ll be swapping with Eileen Snyder of Dorset Hill Beads.  She makes amazing lampwork beads–be sure to check her work out!

The clear tackle boxes were no longer working–every time I had an order to pack I’d have to go through them three or four times,.  I got this idea from Lisa Peter’s Flickr photostream.  There are also pockets on the backside of this piece, and I think I’ll probably store terracotta pieces on one side and earthenware on the other.   A vast improvement.

I still have a number of pieces to put in there, and judging by all the bisque I have to glaze, I’ll probably have to order another one shortly.