Treasury Time!

Just a quick post of Friday night to say thanks to DogmawGlass for including me in their Orange treasury - woohoo!! DogmawGlass makes gorgeous glass beads - definitely check out their store!!!

Twitter Tastic!!

I'm not posting or listing anything today - the light is horrible and I can't get a good photo of things I've made. Instead, let me talk about my latest online obsession. Over the last couple of months, I've started using Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that I first read about it in the storque, etsy's news area, and thought, hmm, that sounds fun. Well, okay, I first really signed up to twitter about six months ago, but at that point, I couldn't really see the point. Twitter seems to be reaching a really interesting critical mass at the moment - problogger uses it to connect to his readers, and dooce just blogged about it this week as well. I'm really enjoying my little twitterfox that pops up and tells me the antics of some fairly random crafty and fashion peeps all over the world. Following a post of on the Etsy forums, people started adding each other as friends - I currently only have about 50 "followers", as opposed to my 500+ myspacers. But I wouldn't want to have 500 twitter people - then I would be deluged with "tweets". Tweets are 140 character long messages that people send via twitter to provide updates on their life. It's amazing how informative a 140 character post is. Jellypotpie provides frequent updates on her running. paintgranny tells us about her weather. Delightfully tells us about new sales and cheers everyone else on with theirs. I talk a lot about lost crochet hooks and jaffa cakes. We all provide updates on our creative processes, new listings, and new blog posts. The joy of twitter is not just the public posting, but the ability to reply straight back to people directly - conversations start, relationships build, and connections get stronger. I would like to think that this is all part of a bigger strategy to build up customers, rapport and more. But in the meantime, it's not much effort, and rather addictive.

Follow me on twitter.

50th post!!

Yes, I can't quite believe that I've made it to my fiftieth post. Not quite as exciting as my 50th sale, which will be quite some celebration. Yesterday I was lucky enough to celebrate my 30th sale, and that lucky chappie will be receiving a little extra gift in his envelope when he opens it. Actually, he was a really great customer, a couple of convos about the item in question before buying it, and I just really liked ho he took the trouble to get in touch. Big smiles.

Yesterday, I was supossed to be making more amigurumis, as they are by far the most popular thing in the shop. But I realised that what I really wanted to do as to stack my felt up and to vaguely tidy my thread box. I've included a before picture, but I forgot to take the after picture - doh! But bringing some order to my life made me a wee bit happier.


Today, I also neglected the amigurumi ducks (nearly finished, honestly) in favour of making something entirely new. Please welcome this tiny little felt car! I think it's adorable. I saw something similar in an Aranzi Aronzo book, but I wanted to go smaller and use buttons and some embroidery, so ended up with this little cutie. I really want to make a whole heap more of them now. The only shame is that his buttons don't actually turn, otherwise Ori and I could race them round the flat!

Tonight I'm having a late Easter dinner. Roast lamb, all the trimbings, and a rhubarb crumble for dessert. I've never actually made a rhubarb crumble, so I have to admit to being slightly worried about it. Mainly that I don't actually have enough for the crumble, to be honest. I wasn't really thinking when I picked up the bunch, and now this could be a disaster!

I got blogged!!

Just a quick one as I'm tired after a hard day's shopping (what, I'm allowed, I'm pretty sure Lent's over). I got a google alert today that someone had written about my wenis badge - turns out a certain Rob Williams noticed it on the etsy site, and provided some further background on the word wenis. I always thought it was just a mix of weiner and penis - who knew? Anyway, it's pretty cool that he blogged about it, so I'm happy.

the grass is always greener!!

No matter what I'm doing, it seems I always want to be doing something else!! I am a firm believer that variety is the spice of life, and the fact that the last three things that I have listed in my store have been felt brooches (and aren't they lovely?), makes me want to start listing more amigirumi crochet. Not that I have any! Right now I'm putting together some whales for my mum to send some friends, and right after that, I'll get back to making some cute things for the shop. I can't believe that I can't just be happy with my new product line - always thinking of the next thing!

Alchemical

One of the most recent changes to the Etsy website is the introduction of Alchemy - an area of Etsy where buyers can request a custom item to be created by sellers who "bid" for the sale of the item. Prior to it being launched, I thought "yeah, that sounds like an interesting feature". And interesting it sure is, but not for the ways that I thought it would be. There are a number of results that I had no idea would happen.

The first is that buyers no longer have to search for an item, and therefore I imagine that browsing/random purchases are down. I know that quite often I think that I want one thing on a website, and then when I actually get there, I get distracted and buy something else entirely. This is the premise behind having shop locations, having categories, having showcased items - all of retail is based upon the browsing mentality. Alchemy effectively loses the browsing, and I don't wonder if sales are actually down. I imagine that site views certainly are. Of course, without clear statistic on Etsy performance, it's hard to say. I have seen zillions of posts for "wanted: banner for my shop" - well, there are zillions of banner creators out there - why not just use one of them? Of course, promoting is an absolute constant in any good store, but this feels like beyond promoting and closer to pimping my store!

Secondly, is the "race to the bottom". Etsy is supposed to be a marketplace that values hand-crafting. However, sellers are underpressure to cut prices and enter lower bids in the Alchemy service. Many of the ideal prices are quite simply frighteningly low. No seller is forced to enter a bid, so I can't possibly comment on the rights and wrongs of it, but I personally know that I don't think that many of the ideal prices are worth effort of creating the item.

Thirdly is the "rip-off" attitude. By this I mean the "can you create this but for a bit cheaper please" that seems to go on. I thoroughly approve of adding pictures that you are inspired by or you sort of want your item to look like. But asking people to copy other's work, or to undercut them is just plain cheeky.

Finally, Alchemy itself is difficult to work. There are no categories to search by and the bid process is confusing.

I was genuinely excited by Alchemy when it first arrived. I've now realised that it's not a service that I plan on using, either for buying or selling. It will be interesting to see how it matures and other Etsy users experiences of it.

moustaches and clouds

Just another quick post to say that these two were listed today as well. I sold a couple of the moustache pins at the fair at the weekend, so I hope they do well on etsy. The cloud keyring came from some random doodles in a business meeting (my notebooks are an embarassment and I have to try and not let all the senior guys see them otherwise they'll just think that I'm more of a girlie nutcase than usual). I am really enjoying making the felt brooches and keyrings at the moment. It's giving me a lovely break from crochet, which I think is giving me RSI. Too much of anything, and I start to crave other things!