etsy Sells Out

Yesterday (October 1, 2013), etsy notified their sellers that they have been screwed. They did it in a very nice manner, with an email letting them know they have been screwed, a video explaining how the action of being screwed is really for everyone's good, etc.

According to the email, "Over the past eight years, Etsy sellers have astounded (us) with their creativity, ingenuity and ambition. This is a marketplace we make together; we lay the foundation and you build on it. You’ve grown Etsy in ways we never predicted, but part of our foundation hasn’t kept up."........That's true.

"Sellers tell us that our policies for shops with handmade items have become confusing, intrusive and restrictive. It’s time to give those policies a renovation."........True again.

And then the screwing begins. What we etsy sellers hoped to happen was for etsy to stop allowing many of their sellers to sell mass-produced items, primarily from China, and passing them off as handmade items. Those of us that make one of a kind items are truly what etsy was all about when it first began. Back in the early days they constantly stressed "Buy Hand-made"!!

Well, that's not at all what happened. Instead of etsy putting on their big-boy pants and telling these shop owners to cease and desist, instead they caved in to money. They don't care what is ethical, they just want the money these shops are bringing in. Hello???? In what sense of the word does "handmade" bring to mind Chinese sweat shops. I know my studio is only as big as a bedroom. There's no room for an assembly line in here!

So etsy wants us all to believe that this is for everyone's good. This is to allow shop owners to take responsibility for how their product is made and being honest about it. My question is how will these shop owners be forced to comply with this new guideline? I seriously doubt these shop owners will even take the initiative to apply.

In one of the Facebook groups I belong to, it's evident that people are not buying into this. Left and right people are scrambling to get their own website up and running, or move their listings to other venues such as ArtFire. I, too, am seriously considering abandoning ship. Etsy has been good to me as far as visibility goes, but with SO much competition on etsy, you can't also compete with ridiculously low priced items from China. It's like trying to set up a kiosk in the middle of Wal-Mart!

I may not leave etsy immediately, it's going to take a little while. I already have my own domain (beadifulworld.com) with a few items listed. I need to do some tweaking to make it more user-friendly, but this is a "heads up" to everyone that it's coming.

Transformation of an Earring Card

I have been using my vertical business cards for my earring cards for a couple of years. I absolutely adore my business cards, but it was finally brought to my attention that earrings get lost with the busy background of the card. Duh! I can't believe I didn't see that, I was so gaga over the cards. So I set out on an endeavor to re-invent my earring cards. This, I found out, was no easy feat.



I wanted to make the card simple enough to let the earrings be seen, yet still keep the look of my business cards. I contacted the person that designed my logo and found out that the font she used was no longer available, so that squashed the idea of starting from scratch. I knew I was going to have to somehow use existing cards. When I had my cards printed at Moo.com, I also had several of the mini-moo cards printed to use as a hang tag for necklaces, bracelets, etc. I determined that if I could find a way to use the mini-moo card in the design, I'd have the best of both worlds.

This is my mini-moo. It looks like a small business card only longer.



Here's what I did:

I purchased a jumbo 3.5" craft punch at Hobby Lobby. I printed out "Sterling Silver" on white cover stock paper and then cut out the shape with the jumbo craft punch.



I inserted two of the white punched out pieces into am embossing folder and ran it through my Vintaj BigKick machine, embossing the punch with a pretty embossed design to give it some texture without adding color. I also printed my contact information on brown card stock for the back of the earring card.



I turned the white punch over and attached ultra-thin glue dots on the back (two on each of the bottom corners and one top center), then attached the back of the white punch to the front of the brown card stock, lining up the bottom and sides.



I applied two more glue dots to the top left and top right corners of the front of the earring card, attached one to the back of the mini-moo at the bottom edge of the mini-moo card, and placed it on the earring card, lining up the top and sides.





The mini-moo is longer than the earring card is wide, so I turned the earring card over and trimmed the part sticking out.



I attached an adhesive back earring adapter and Voila!! It has the look of my business cards, yet it's not too fussy so the earrings really pop.

Thanks go out to my fellow SRAJD (Self-Representing Artists in Jewelry Design) for throwing around ideas, and especially to Shelly Owen and Jen Smith Fletcher for really giving me a push!

All in a Day's Work

No day off for me on Labor Day :<[ I had a long list of things to accomplish in the studio, but I seemed to have forgotten about one thing - my inventory reconciliation for the art gallery was due yesterday, and I hadn't even started, so of course that was first on my checklist. Sad thing is I found several discrepancies. Hopefully they'll still honor it and pay me for the missing items, even though I was technically one day late with my response.

My Lortone tumbler that I've had all of one week is going bye-bye. The seller on eBay said it was "gently used" - HA! I plugged it in and 4 minutes into the cycle and belt came off. My very handy husband took the cover off, put the belt back in place, tightened things up, yada yada... you get it. It ran for an hour with no problem. The next day I went to use it, and 3 minutes into it the same thing. Cover off, belt back on..... enough said. He said it could be that it's just worn out. How can a "gently used" item be worn out. It's going back to the eBay seller for a refund. Now to find a replacement as cheap!

I've been trying several new techniques, trying to narrow down my niche. However, this is not a very good place to be when you have a show in just under 4 weeks and you feel like you're scattered hither and yon with nothing much to show for it.

One of the things I'm experimenting with is different patinas on copper. Saturday I tried a technique using cedar ped bedding and vinegar that took FOREVER, so possibly I didn't prepare the metal correctly for it to adhere. More than 48 hours later, some of the items have very little patina. However, the focal part did turn out fairly decent.



Another design I'm playing around with is cigar band rings. I cut out an oblong shape of copper using my jeweler's saw, and after sanding, sanding, and just a little more sanding, I then embossed the metal with a cool design. I shape it into a ring, antiqued it in liver of sulphur and then ran it through my "now history" Lortone tumbler to work-harden the metal. The picture on the left is straight out of the tumbler, before polishing. The picture on the right has been somewhat polished (my arms got tired, will try more later).

Good for the Soul

A couple of weeks ago I posted a message on Facebook that I was cleaning out my studio and had some boxes of beads that I no longer needed.



I had several responses, but the first one came from my best friend, Pam. She is very active with the Animal Advocates of Barnwell, SC to aid in rescuing, healing, safeguarding and giving new life to animals in need. One of the ways they raise money is through their "Pick of the Litter Shoppe". Income from POTL helps to fund various programs including their no cost/low cost spay neuter program.

The Animal Advocates are working with the Allendale Correctional Institute, where several of the inmates are making jewelry which is then told in the Pick of the Litter Shoppe. My friend Pam let me know that the inmates could definitely use the beads for their jewelry.

Today I received this email, forwarded by Pam, from Vikki, the President of Animal Advocates:

"Pam,
Please tell Debbie Bruce thank you for all of the beads she donated to ACI. The guys were so excited and told me to be sure and tell “the lady” that donated the beads thank you." Vikki took the boxes to them today, and she said you would have thought the boxes were filled with a million dollars…<3

I'm so thankful that my "trash" was another man's "treasure".

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Today has so far turned out to be a fairly productive day. I've spent bits and pieces of this week trying to come up with some earring designs. Today I hoped to see some finished results. Well......not so many results as I'd like, but headed in the right direction.

I drew a heart design for earrings, transferred the design to cardstock and cut it to make a template. I cut out four in copper. One set I embossed, then filed smooth, colored with alcohol ink and finally sealed with a matte coating.



These earrings have now been listed on etsy

I then took the other copper set and tried to solder a sterling silver design on the front. Well, that didn't work out so well. I need to brush up on my soldering skills :
The other pieces I've been working on were given a good cleaning in a pickle solution, then antiqued in liver of sulphur. So now I have a pile of dark black pieces that need to be polished, but I don't have the energy at this moment.

I also started playing around with photos on gradient paper which I obtained from a fellow SRAJD jewelry designer, Laura Bracken. These papers make jewelry photos much more interesting than a plain background. Here's a lanyard on the gradient paper:

A Weekend of Praise

This weekend I've had very little time to spend in the studio. I spent a little time Saturday morning while I was waiting on granddaughter Emma to take a nap. Once she was well rested, Emma, my daughter Natalie and I drove over to Augusta for a day of shopping. I mostly tried to keep Emma pre-occupied while her mom shopped for birthday ideas. We then "tried" to eat dinner at Buca diBeppo, the new Italian restaurant at the mall, but the wait staff there didn't seem to thrilled to have another table to tend to (I think we even got the "eye roll" in addition to a very verbal "UGH") so off we went to our very friendly Macaroni Grill for a delicious dinner. Then it was grocery shopping for fruit, etc. for fruit trays for our church program Sunday night. I was exhausted when I finally got to bed, but slept like a baby :-)

Sunday was spent singing, singing, and then some more singing. Awesome worship service this morning, then back in the afternoon for a "Night of Epic Praise" when our choir and orchestra combined with First Baptist Columbia's choir and orchestra. We had approximately 278 people in the choir loft! Over 100 sopranos!!!



And the good news is WE GET TO DO IT AGAIN THIS WEEKEND at their church :-)

Studio Time !!!

I haven't really been up to being ultra-creative for the last few weeks. I had surgery eight weeks ago which required lots of rest and I wasn't allowed to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk, so I figured I couldn't even get too involved in my studio since most containers storing beads are pretty heavy. This afternoon was the first time I've really felt like spending some quality time in my studio. I've been hammering copper (yes, my arms are now very sore since I haven't used those muscles in a while!), making some fancy sterling ear wires, etc. Tools are everywhere on my work table and I can't find a thing, but it's still a great feeling to be working again. Nothing is picture-worthy yet, but I will post some soon.