I Made a Birthday Card – so why do I feel so bad about it?

Wow it’s been warm today – our summer has arrived at last – just when we are well into Autumn!  I have been sitting in the garden today and it has been like a Summers day.  If it is still as warm tomorrow I wonder if it will break October records as I certainly don’t ever remember it being this warm in October.

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I made a birthday card which I must say looked really quite good for my first attempt at making a pop-up card. I should have thought to have taken a photo of it to show you  before I put it in the envelope!   I saw the instructions on StumbleUpon a little while ago and thought I would have a go.  Now why is it that I feel a bit of a cheapskate to send a handmade birthday card – will they think I am too tight to buy one I wonder.  I am sure some people will appreciate that a lot of effort has gone into making it rather than just popping one in the supermarket trolley but then I am sure some others will think I don’t think enough of them to pay for one and just made one instead.  It’s hard to know what people think about this isn’t it.  It’s funny really but somehow I feel that if I make one it is a bit like making one for Mothers Day at school.  It’s a sort of Blue Peter / school / Sunday school project rather than a personal thought-out and spend time doing thing for adults.  I think my card looks quite good, although a tad on the amateur side.  Oh well it is done now and I am certainly not going to just dump it after all that work and buy a cheap one down the shop.  I will try to judge by the reaction when they open it but then it is just the same when you buy someone a present – you can sometimes go to a lot of trouble to choose something you think is particularly suitable for that person and yet they don’t seem particularly enthralled when you give it to them and you wonder if you would have been better to have just bought them a bottle of plonk like nearly everyone had done.  So does it seem like I am being “cheap” if I make a card?

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It’s a bit like my pendants – I try to keep my prices to supermarket / clothes shop type prices, as money is so tight for everyone at the moment, and yet would people think “that is expensive for something handmade” or would they think “that must be rubbish to be that cheap for a handmade item”.  Would people rather buy a pendant that they think is better because it is manufactured and sold in a supermarket or clothes shop, even though there may be thousands of others wearing the same pendant, or would they prefer to buy one that they know is unique and that no-one else will ever have?  I would rather make a little on a few sales than a bit more on just one sale and I also want to get my Pendant-Heaven name known so I do like to keep my prices low.   Somehow though, it always seems easier for people to pop a pendant in the supermarket trolley with the groceries than buy something online.  I am sure the crystal lovers and people more into new age type things, Healing, Reiki, Tarot, Angels etc., are likely to appreciate them more as they know about crystals and know they are all unique, each and every one. 

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I am sure everyone who makes and sells their items have similar problems.  Why buy a handmade card and pay the postage twice to send a card to someone?  Why buy a scarf that has been made by hand when you have the choice of hundreds in shops where you can actually see them?  Why buy a handmade candle when you could probably conjure one up yourself if you had the time?  So many reasons as to why should anyone buy handmade?  Would you appreciate it more knowing the effort that someone has put in to make it?  Would you like it better as it is individually unique?  Which some aren’t of course, as some artisans make loads of identical items or use very slightly different materials, although they are still handmade.  I buy one-of-a-kind bears as you know and although they are all a bit different each artist has their own style and whereas some will say a bear is a limited edition and make 5 of them another artist will make one but if other people also wanted one like it they will make 5 others but all slightly different so they are all one-off.  Other bear artists will only ever make one like that and once it has sold they will never make another similar one.  I can only ever make one of all my pendants as they all look different because they are all made by nature.  They can be cut in the same shape but the natural patterning is always different.  There are a few exceptions of course as it would be hard to tell the difference between Rose Quartz gemstones for instance – they do have different patterning of course but it is not so obvious to the naked eye.

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Then of course there is the debate as to whether your handmade item will be well made or a load of rubbish but just look good in the photo.  There again some photos can make a bad thing look good or a good thing look bad or not do it any justice.  Personally I find continuous comments in my ebay feedback that my pendants looked even better than the photograph – LOL now is that just a complement about my pendants or does it prove I am useless as a photographer?  I know I have improved a lot as a photographer as time has gone on.  We as a family rarely took photos and indeed I had to buy a new camera when I started selling my pendants online as the old one was nowhere near good enough.  I have now learnt to brighten them using a photo editor which I think has brought them up more or less back to how they really look but I need to try different ways and different places to take the photos as the bathroom windowsill in definitely not ideal (especially for my bad back, to have to lean over the sink to take them).  It also restricts what time of day I can take them as I only really have about a 2 hour interval when the sun has moved round but it is still bright enough to take the photos, and yet I still have to be careful not to get the reflection of the window opener on the gemstone.

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I suppose a buyer takes a risk buying a handmade item online as they only have a photograph of the item which can be deceiving as to what the buyer will eventually end up with.  You could buy a handmade bag, for example, that looked great in the photo but when you receive it the stitching is messy and the material is frayed which gives way after 3 weeks of using it.  You are really out on a limb when buying something from a photo when you don’t know how well made it is or how good the quality is of the materials used and the workmanship.  I suppose reading feedback on the seller is the only way to make sure you are buying something that you will be really wanting for yourself or as a present.  I am lucky as I have excellent feedback on ebay and have some wonderful complementary comments rather than just “great item and fast delivery” or something similar.  My customers have made great statements in the few keystrokes they are allocated in the feedback section on ebay.  But on ArtFire you can only comment if you are a member, so all the items you sell to non-members (which I presume will be the majority) will not get any feedback which seems silly to me and I hope they change that.  It is early days for me on ArtFire but I did want to have my own little online shop rather than keep selling on ebay.  I hope to eventually just use ArtFire but until sales pick up on there I have to use ebay too as I do sell a lot on there.  I think here in the UK we are not really “into” handmade items and don’t really know of online sites such as ArtFire and Etsy etc.   They do seem to be more popular in the US but hopefully they will get more of a foothold here in the UK soon.

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Although yesterdays blog had a little bit in about deleting a wrong entry on Google Chrome it was mainly about my life so I probably wrongly titled it so please do give it a read if you like just reading my “normal” stuff.

LOL – and after my long post today, here is my usual snippet of trivia:

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

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And here is todays chuckle:

SENIOR DRIVING
As a senior citizen was driving down the motorway, his car phone rang.
Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him,

"Vernon, I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on the M25. Please be careful!"

"Hell," said Vernon, "It's not just one car. It's hundreds of them!"

I Need a Craft Room

I really would love (and really need) to turn a room upstairs into “my craft room” for my jewellery making and my computer, especially as I seem to spend so many hours in front of the computer these days and at the moment it is in the smallest room in the house (well, apart from the cloakroom and the utility room & maybe the bathroom to be completely accurate).  The trouble is I don’t think any of the rooms upstairs are as light as the dining room as it has 2 big windows.   

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The “bedroom” at the front of the house, which is south facing, may work but it is full at the moment with a row of glass cabinets housing my artist bears, a massage table with tarot decks stored underneath, a treadmill, and there is also a stack of packaging for my jewellery and for selling any bears stacked in front of that.  Along the other wall there is a wardrobe with clothes in that I know I will never fit in again as they are all my favourite items from the “smaller me” period but I do like them so I live in hope (hmm) that I may be able to wear them again.  Yes but thinking about that though, it is now some time since I have probably ever given up hope of being anywhere near that slimmer size again so probably time to de-clutter so I can re-house some things from my overflowing main wardrobe (ok, wardrobes with an s!). 

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Also the internet connection is in the office so I am not sure how it would work – a wifi I suppose or get the service provider to move it.  On the subject of an office, why do I call it an office? - is it because I have spent all my adult life working in offices?  Or is it because the house didn’t come with a “study” and an office seems to be upstairs whereas as study is downstairs – hmm I could do with your feedback on that please – what do you call yours? / or do you have a laptop that you use sitting anywhere in the house and where do you normally sit if you do?  - I would be really interested to know as I am curious about how others do that.  So please please please send me a comment to let me know.  Also if you do craft work do you have a specific room for that?  Answers on a postcard please (as they use to say) – no seriously I want to hear your comments please.

Todays little Trivia snippet:

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

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And lastly todays chuckle:

A Minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon.
Four worms were placed into four separate jars.
The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
The fourth worm was put into a container of good, clean soil.
At the conclusion of the sermon, the Minister reported the following results:
The first worm in alcohol was dead.
The second worm in cigarette smoke was dead.
The third worm in chocolate syrup was dead.
The fourth worm in good, clean soil was alive.
So the Minister asked the congregation, "What did you learn from this demonstration?"

Maxine was sitting in the back and quickly raised her hand and said,
"As long as you drink, smoke, and eat chocolate, you won't have worms!"
That pretty much ended the service !!

Where is Everything NOW?

Well I have completed the 2^nd marathon of listing 50 more pendants on ebay while it is free listing (link at the side of the blog if you are interested) which is why I am late with my blog again.  I can’t believe how long it takes and it is only because they have changed it now so that even though I just copy the main details of a previous listing, I have to individually click all the countries with their postage costs.  Now this doesn’t involve too much – only about 10 clicks per item on the postage part but as you can now use more letters in the heading I was adding Crystal Gemstone which I thought would about cover what people are looking for.  So all in all doing that on 50 items, as well as changing the name and size of the pendant I was listing this time the time, soon mounted up and hours went by before I finished.

It was lucky that I had cleared the dining room of all my jewellery making stuff before Rays daughter and grandson came round yesterday because the photos I have used for this blog shows what it looked like before.  The only trouble is that they had all accumulated there for a reason – ease of use!!!  Now I can’t find anything!  All my things are in different places and all my trays have been neatly put away but I knew where all my gemstones were in the tray layout on the table – now they are in the tray cabinet upstairs in the office and even though there are labels on the front, I can’t get used to which tray holds which gemstones.  I could lay my hands on them exactly when they were laid out on the dining table.  It might have been a mess but it was my know-where-everything-is mess.  I knew which tray held all the different gemstones and whereabouts in the tray different ones were.  Now I just can’t get used to it. 

The idea is that I just take out the gemstones I want to use and then make up the necklaces but I used to do it very randomly and intuitively as to which one I wanted to make up next.  All my beads were around me as well in open boxes so I could see which beads I wanted to use with each pendant but now they are in the office with me the light isn’t so good and I can’t see the colour matches so well which means I have to take them all down to the dining room to match up anyway so it is more hassle – but a tidier dining room.  Even the necklaces are hard to match with the gemstone in a not-so-good light as I do like to play around with all possibly suitable necklaces and beads before I make up a necklace using the gemstone I have selected for the pendant.  It is surprising how some necklaces or beads bring out different colours in the gemstones or just suit them better.  I like to think that a lot of my skill is not just in physically making the jewellery but my designer skills in picking out the right parts to go with the other parts of the necklace.  Occasionally I will find that it is hard to match a particular gemstone at all with the necklace choices I have (and I have absolutely loads of all colours and types) and have to go for the best necklace choice I can find, but most times there are quite a few good possible choices and it is finding a good match that makes the end product look good.

And for the 2^nd part of:

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2011 when... 

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your mobile phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries...

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen

8. Leaving the house without your mobile phone, which you didn't even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

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And todays chuckle:

An older gentleman was on the operating table awaiting surgery and he insisted that his son,a renowned surgeon, perform the operation.
As he was about to get the anaesthesia, he asked to speak to his son.
"Yes, Dad, what is it?"
"Don't be nervous, son; do your best, and just remember, if it doesn't go well, if something happens to me, your mother is going to come and live with you and your wife...." 

I'm all Clicked Out!

Do you know how long it takes to list 50 items on ebay – no I don’t either! but it was a VERY long time.  I have spent the whole afternoon doing it – I thought I had listed a lot more than 50 until I saw the count.  It seemed like 150 but I know they only allow 100 free listings.  By then I had just had enough and I have decided I will leave the next 50 free listings until tomorrow.  Now they have changed it all on there you have to individually click all the boxes for the countries you are willing to post to with the price.  I send a lot of my pendants internationally – they go all over the world and so I needed to click the boxes and check they were under the correct postage prices.  My wrist has gone stiff with all the clicking and I just could not believe the time when I saw I had listed 49 so I thought one more and that is it as I haven’t got anything else done today at all. 

Well I did manage to photograph a pendant on a very unusual necklace.  It is gold and bendy which means you can make it go into any shape so it was very hard to take the photos as there were loads of shapes I could make it into but I can only list 10 photos and had to have a couple of close-up photos of the crystal/gemstone so I could only shape it 8 ways for the photos.  Then there was the problem of how to get the whole necklace in the photo without the gemstone looking tiny (remembering that some of the long necklace would be round the neck.  Hmm - thinking about it now I should have just cut the top bit off the photos but never mind they will have to go on as they are now and maybe I will play around with cropping the photos later.  Pop over to my ArtFire shop later tonight or tomorrow if you want to see what I mean about this bendy necklace in the photos.  It is really unusual and I love its versatility – if you’ve got big boobs you can bend it over the top – LOL.  At its full length it is 34” but as you can shape it in all different ways you can make it into all sorts of lengths.  I had not seen one before but when I saw it at my suppliers I just had to get a couple to try.  The only trouble is they are not cheap to buy so it puts the price of the pendant up higher than normal but I guess you have to pay that for something that is unusual. 

My poor pussy cat seems absolutely fine now despite having a big hole in her neck which is still heavily stained with blood.  She is fine with the dogs as well and not guarding her sore bit really either.  We had thunder today and she always hides under the settee when there is a storm.

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I had a minor migraine this morning and was in bed trying to get rid of it when Rays daughter popped round with his 6 year old grandson!  You forget how LOUD kids are!!!  I know he is rather a noisy boy anyway but when it has been quiet all morning and even the cat miaowing is loud, it seemed sheer hell when he arrived and he got the dogs barking too.  I tried cotton wool in my ears, a pillow over my head – anything to shut the noise out.  Luckily Ray gave them some lunch after a while which meant they went into the dining room and the food kept him quiet for a bit.  Ray said afterwards (when I was moaning about their unthoughtfulness and their inability to keep the noise down) that I should have banged on the floor!  I am not sure if I could even do that with a migraine and I definitely don’t think they would have heard.  Never mind, as I said it was a mild one and luckily I have only had a couple of really bad ones, so I am almost fine now.

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Todays trivia snippet:

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

(I definitely wont be trying that one today)

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And todays chuckle (part 1):

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2011 when...
1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of  three.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

Handmade or Handcrafted or just Assembled?

After my blog the other day about what to call my items – pendants or necklaces, and crystals or gemstones,  I have noticed a discussion going on on LinkedIn about what crafters can actually call “Handmade”.  There are some, lets say “warm”, discussions going on trying to distinguish what is handmade, handcrafted or just assembled.  People who make things from scratch are saying that only their items are handmade – but even they had to get the basic  materials from somewhere in the first place – did they dig it out of the ground etc. – they still have to buy components/ingredients.  Even a cake maker has to buy in the ingredients to make the cake.   It seems to have come to light that everyone has to buy in materials to make their items.   I know I don’t go off all over the world to dig out crystals and then take them home to cut, glaze and tumble.  I would have no idea where I would get the cotton, silk etc. to make my necklaces and as for acquiring the leather to make those necklaces – well forget it.  I would have to be able to make metal, silver etc. to make the chains plus the crimps and bails.

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Some people buy materials and do more basic things with them (as in when I make a pendant, someone makes a candle, someone knits a jumper), some people do a bit more with the bought in materials (as in when I design and make my beaded items, someone makes a fancy candle with shapes on top, someone designs their own pattern for the jumper they knit).  So it seems to me that everyone is making Handmade items if they are deciding which bits go with which, use different moulds or patterns etc. whether their item is intricate or plain, easy or hard – at the end of the day we all have to buy in things to make our items with and they are all changed from the original ingredients we bought to start with. 

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I can honestly say my items are unique in that every single crystal / gemstone I buy to make an item of jewellery with is different because they are all naturally different.  I could make 100 Sea Sediment pendants and if I kept them all plain and hung them all on a plain black leather thong they would all be and look different in that their natural patterning is different.  That is just the nature of my craft work.  But someone who buys in other basic products aren’t as lucky as I am as my crystals are a product of nature.  If someone knits a jumper to the same pattern with the same blue wool, they will all come out the same (LOL – well they should). 

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So would the people who are moaning about the others who they don’t feel are making handmade things say that the jumpers are not handmade because the knitter can make a production line out of them and make 100 identical jumpers?  To me they are still handmade – they are not mass produced in a factory.  I feel that anything that is made or changed in some way to make something else is a handmade item.  It doesn’t make it any more handmade just because someone picks up an old piece of wire at a car boot sale and reshapes it into a swirl, puts a piece of string through it and calls it a necklace, than someone who buys some wool from a shop and spends hours knitting a jumper to sell.  Even people who make an ornament out of wood have to buy the wood to start with – but someone could do a very plain carving and someone else would do a very detailed intricate carving taking 50 times as long – but both are handmade, and the intricate carver had the choice of making it plainer if they chose.  It doesn’t mean that the one who decided to spend a lot longer doing an intricate carving should run the other one down.  Does it also mean that if you made an item of wood on a lathe then it would not be classed as handmade?  Or a pot made in a potters wheel and in a kiln? 

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Ideally there should be a separate category for those that make things that are skill based that only a real crafter could do but it wouldn’t be called Handmade but something like Crafter would suit it.  Anyone can make a “Handmade” card identical to one they have seen if they bought the specific items to make it (usually too expensive unless bought in bulk) and could stick the parts on in the right places but surely the whole idea is that people buy handmade items that they would quite possibly like to make themselves but can’t quite see how, haven’t got the components and haven’t got the time.

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Surely the whole point of handmade is that you are buying something that someone has actually made and in its own way is unique but is certainly not made on a production line, as someone has gone to the trouble to make it using their own hands.  At the end of the day beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if someone likes your necklace or jumper they will buy it whether it is handmade or not the majority of the time.  If they are looking for something specifically handmade then whatever item they choose has not been manufactured by the millions in a factory, but the ingredients bought by someone who has turned them into something else.

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I think the people who moan the most about the name are the ones who put a lot of effort into what they make, and so resent other people calling what they make handmade.  We all choose what we want to make and into how much depth we want to go in making it.  So if they feel that their work is better / more involved / takes longer then they should charge the price according to the effort they have put in to making it.  Unfortunately a potential buyer may not see it that way and may not want to pay that much but that is what we all have to weigh up when we create something anyway – does the time and cost of components make it worthwhile?  We all get satisfaction in what we make because we created the end product.  But the value the consumer is willing to pay is another matter altogether.  If we put a lot of work into it we can either charge more money for it because of how long it took us or we can just be pleased with the item we have created as we enjoyed making it. 

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I know that from my experience it doesn’t matter how long it took me to bead an intricate necklace it wont sell for any more than a plainer one, as different people have different tastes and also the trends for things change.  At the moment I am finding that people are going for the minimalistic look in jewellery as well as in their homes so I am selling more of the plainer pendants / necklaces but things will change and people will go back to more intricate ones at some point.  The idea is to go with the flow and to make things your potential buyers want to buy.  And even though I buy in my components to make the items I happily class the finished product, however detailed it is, as handmade regardless of what some would call it.

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I would like to put one of the Handmade signs beside my blog and I may well do so at some point but I feel someone is bound to shout out “but they aren’t handmade”.  Maybe I should make a sign that says “Put Together By Me”.

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If we are being picky, perhaps we should call them “Handchanged” in that we all change either one thing, or many things, into a different item to sell.  Or even better “Person Made” as opposed to manufactured.  At the end of the day who cares – only the ones who are feeling wronged obviously – certainly not the potential customers!   I tend to think that customers know what Handmade means in general and if they are looking for Handmade items then it means they are looking for something different that is not manufactured in the thousands or more and generally available.  They want the personal touch of something that bit different.

What’s your view?   I would love to hear what “buyers” think so please leave a comment.

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Todays snippet of interest:

The first ever novel written on a typewriter was Tom Sawyer

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And todays little chuckle:

Gemstones or Crystals? Pendants or Necklaces?

It’s funny how I never know what to call my neckwear jewellery.  Choker is reasonably easy and self explanatory although some think of chokers as the velvet type ones that sit on your neck rather than the wire ones that hang at the base of your neck.  I tend to think of them all as chokers and make both sorts but to me they are all chokers because they are “tight” round the neck as opposed to dangly like drop pendants.

But the dangly ones are pendants (or to most people they are) as they are something that hangs on the end of the necklace chain or cord.  Necklaces, on the other hand are fully beaded or complete all the way round.  But I am noticing more and more that pendants are being called necklaces so maybe (regardless of my company name) I should call them necklace when I list them.  At the moment I compromise by calling them pendant necklaces.  Let me know what you think of my pendants as - gemstones or crystals / necklaces or pendants?

Then there are the different names for the natural stones which I use for 99% of my pendant necklaces.  As I said recently I collect crystals – amethysts, rose quartz, tigers eye etc. in their natural or tumbled form.  Anyone who is into new age type things knows what a crystal is and recognise these which are these natural stones.  But some people think of crystals as the shiny diamonte type things.  The same goes for pendants and necklaces – they think of crystals as shiny man-made diamond type things.  Gemstones on the other hand are thought of as amethysts, sapphire etc. that you get in expensive jewellery.  They are the same but of course they are much higher grade stones but an amethyst is still a amethyst.  The healing properties is amethyst for instance are just the same in whatever format you have it in – an expensive £1000 ring, a £10 pendant, a £5 natural amethyst cluster (lumpy rock – not lots on a ring) or a £1 tumbled stone.  So how to describe the type of amethyst that I use or that you find in a new age shop?  Very difficult to know.  If I call my stones crystals then some people will think they are man made glass type items and if I call them gemstones they think of expensive jewellery shop items.  I tend to go with the flow an call them gemstones because that is a category on ArtFire where similar items to mine are sold so I tend to stick with that.  At the end of the day as long as people can find the type of thing they are after if they put the right thing in the search engine, then when they see what they like they will buy it anyway.  As I sell a lot more on eBay than on ArtFire (although it is only 2 months since I opened the studio on there) I tend to think people may be struggling with what they put in a search engine whereas they almost fall across them on Ebay.  I don’t know – I am only guessing.  It may well just be that Ebay is a ready and popular marketplace and I have yet to get the right formula to send people to my ArtFire studio to see my items.  As there aren’t many following my blog yet not many people see them on here either.  Early days I keep telling myself.

I went to see the orthopaedic consultant again today and he says I still can’t go dancing L  So the achilles tendonitis saga goes on!!!

I have a Did You Know for you today:

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes.
When you pulled on the ropes, the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on.
Hence the phrase...'Goodnight, sleep tight' 

And lastly another little chuckle to end on a high (sorry couldn't resist):

New Banner Creation

I have been playing around with my ArtFire banner today.  I know I only joined ArtFire in June to start selling my pendants online so should have had it all sorted out by now but unfortunately they have just changed the whole layout and everything with a whole new revamp of their site.  This meant that my recently paid for banner didn’t fit any more as they have now made a bigger space for the banners and also added a 3D type plate in front of the banner space so that it cuts off the right hand side of your banner.  It always happens to me J

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But what affected me most is that my banner couldn’t be made bigger as stretching it would lose all the definition.  So I had a dilemma – use my normal banner on a complementary background or have a new banner made which would then mean that my Avatar wouldn’t match.  If I changed that as well it would be awkward as people were just getting to know my Avatar picture on all my other things – FB, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn etc.  So I took the easy (and cheaper) route and plonked for the option of keeping my old banner but on a matching background and paid to have it redone - moved left (to show as much as possible of the banner) but staying at the original size with a blue background to match the butterflies in my banner.  She did a very good job with the background too to make it match as near as possible with ArtFire’s new background with a shading effect.  The trouble is that it was still lost behind the 3D bit on the right and on my Facebook Kiosk it then looked blank on the right as thee was obviously no 3D plate on there in front of the banner. 

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But then a really kind fellow ArtFire lady offered to play around with my banner for me and has come up with some different options for me.  She has made my original name banner smaller to fit in the gap that ArtFire left beside their 3D bit and has filled the rest with the swirls that I wanted.  I have installed my current favourite if you want to have a look at what my post today is all about.  I have asked her if she can make a slight alternative so if that comes out better I will swop it again. 

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Please have a look at both the ways it turns out on my ArtFire shop and on my Facebook page as I would love to hear what you think.  I would love to hear your thoughts on the banner.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

And I will leave you to ponder on this:

She didn't turn up ....

Just a quick snippet of a late blog today as I have been busy cleaning - yuk! but sometimes I just have to leave the computer and do it.  But the reason for my cleaning and tidying up was that someone was meant to be coming round – now I know she originally wanted to come last Sunday and we couldn’t make it as hubbie was working so we said to come this week instead, but we remembered whereas she obviously didn’t as she didn’t turn up!  It isn’t really a problem I suppose as I have a clean house now but I do find it a tad annoying.

It is cold here again in East Anglia in the UK so I can only presume our summer, what there was of it, is over and we are starting autumn early – so back out with the jumpers.  It doesn’t seem 5 minutes ago that I stopped wearing them:0(  I used to get a lot more wear out of my t-shirts when I was dancing!

Due to not dancing I saw this which made me chuckle and thought it seemed particularly relevant at the moment (and the first part is true for me):

I have just figured out why I’m overweight.  On the bottle of shampoo I use in the shower that runs down my body it says “for extra volume and body”.  So now I am going to start using washing-up liquid as it on that bottle it says “dissolves fat that is otherwise difficult to remove”.

I was trying to photograph some chokers yesterday but found the bathroom windowsill (my usual stupid but best photographic spot) was too narrow really so I had to adapt and use other places like the back of a cushion (the front was patterned) and an old coffee table in the conservatory – but one good thing I learnt is that I can actually take photos in the conservatory as long as the sun isn’t out (as it reflects all the roof lines in the gemstone).  Here is my usual photographic set-up with me hanging over the sink and bath at a very awkward angle to take the photos from above so they are in the light – sometimes with one leg in the air and sometimes with one foot in the bath to try and get the right angle to stop the window handle reflecting on the gemstone.  The bathmat is on the sink just in case I am careless enough to drop the pendant or the camera.  LOL - I really should find a better place.

Oh and while I am on about bathrooms, here is a cheeky picture I received a couple of days ago that you may enjoy:

I said one thing they missed was the Cloud, which would be the aroma in the room:)  But Clouds are new (well they are to me) so they may not have been around when they thought this one up.

Changing Times....Retro Look

I have another riddle for you today (answer at the end):

After chatting about how Christmas has changed yesterday it got me thinking.  It’s funny how trends change as well.  When I think back all those years to the type of jewellery I was making when I first started, through all the different types of items I have been making and up to the current trend which, in my case, seems to be for the plainer type of jewellery with either very few or no beads but just a gemstone hanging on a necklace cord or choker.  I still like to make the other items but we have to go with the flow and have for sale what people currently want to buy.  Personally I love the natural gemstone look as I have a house full of crystals and love the energy they give off and their healing properties.  I use them in healing too.  So working with them to make jewellery is brilliant.  I also love the difference in all of the markings on them – all so natural and each one is so different.  Well, with exceptions ones like Rose Quartz and Lapis Lazuli etc. that all still have different markings but in most cases you would probably need a magnifying glass to be able to tell the difference.  So with those types of crystals it is the size and shape of them that makes them different.

It is not that I am that old but so many fashions in clothes have moved along and then come back round again.  Usually, annoyingly in a slightly different form from the original so that your old skirt from 20 years ago looks similar to the current ones but still looks different as they use the main style and then change it a bit or the material has improved these days.  Leggings for instance – I remember wearing them but when we wore them they didn’t use lycra or elastane in them so they ended up being baggy around the knees after wearing them for half an hour.  So things move on and change, although there is now the Retro image so if you have got any clothes left that have “come round again” you can still wear them (if you can still fit in them).  How many of us hold on to something because we loved wearing it and then, low and behold, the fashion comes round again and we jump at the chance of wearing that favourite item again – but when we finally find it after an afternoon of rummaging in the attic and get it out to wear, we find we just can’t fit into it any more.  I know a lot of you slimmies out there wont be having this problem but there are an awful lot of us who aren’t the size we were even a few years ago yet alone “before kids”.  I am a hoarder but have reluctantly let some things go as I have realised that I will be unlikely to ever fit into them again and so it is silly to hold on to them “just in case”, because if that is ever going to happen I could buy other clothes and not need to rummage in my wardrobe for my old clothes – in fact I would probably be celebrating by buying lots more.  Meanwhile having a whole spare wardrobe of clothes I can no longer fit in seems a stupid waste of space.

And the answer to the riddle is:

Pour the juice from the second glass into the fifth.

I bet you knew that, didn’t you.  It is one that I am proud to say I did get right.

Missing summer, promoting items

Here is a little riddle for you – answer at the end.

It’s another typical English summer day – tempting me with patches of blue sky but haunting me with white fluffy clouds.  As I sit here in the office with the blinds slanting because the light gets on the computer I notice that it is bright and sunny outside, so I make a conscious effort to think that as soon as I have finished this I will go and sit outside with a coffee (or a lolly) and a magazine so that I don’t miss the few sunny days we get here in the UK.  But what happens! – as soon as I finish what I am doing and finally get downstairs and out to the garden – yes, you have it – the clouds have come over again and the breeze is too cold to want to stay outside.  So up I go with my coffee and spend another day in the office trying to make sure I have covered most of the bases in how to sell my pendants on ArtFire, instead of ebay who are eating up my profit in fees + more.  It seems stupid to keep paying so much to ebay but I need to as that is where I am selling the most pendants at the moment.  I obviously jump at the chance when it is free listing weekends (like this one just gone) but at other times the relisting fees for the ones that didn’t sell use up all the profit of the ones that did sell. 

I am just keeping my fingers crossed that my ArtFire studio takes off and I can drop the whole ebay scenario.  But to do that I need to make sure that I am “crossing all my T’s and dotting all my I’s” as they say with all this social media stuff.  So I am trying to get used to remembering to promote all my newly listed items on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. as well as using all the Bookmarking sites which all seem weird and strange in how they all work differently.  I have now got the hang of StumbleUpon but although I use Kaboodle and Digg I am not quite sure how they work.  And as for Pinterest , +1 and Delicious, I have no idea if they work or if anyone can actually even see my additions to there (or maybe I am totally wasting my time with them).  I only wish I knew. 

All the articles I have read say to engage your customers – well, I have tried.  I have asked them to let me know which type of photos they preferred – on a contrasting background or just with no background at all – I only got 2 responses – 2 for plain and 3 for background (and one of those responses came from a close friend).  I had one pendant that had well over 600 viewings whereas the next highest was just under 300 viewings so asked if anyone had any ideas why that happenend – not that I was expecting much response to that question but the only answers I got were from 2 friends.  I asked about the new layout on ArtFire as well but no response again.  I wanted to ask about peoples preferences as to whether they preferred the more beaded necklaces that I used to make or the ones that seem to be more popular now which are the plain ones with just a singe drop gemstone.  I feel this is cheating as a jewellery-maker but you have to go with the flow and that seems to be the current trend.  But as everyone has different ideas on what they like anyway I will gradually add some more beaded items now I have my studio so they can sit there to see if they sell.  I will add some earring and bracelets occasionally again now as well now I have over 160 pendants listed on there.

Here’s your answer to the riddle:

The last person took the basket with the egg in it.

Do you only feel a day has been good if you finish something...?

I have spent the afternoon in the sunshine catching up on some paperwork that I needed to read.  Why is it that if we take time out like this that we feel guilty for doing so ??  We don’t get too many sunny days – well certainly not this year – so a few hours fresh air should do us good.  But, I don’t know about you, but my days are only measured as good days if I feel I have actually achieved something.  If I flit from project to computer, to housework, to making something, to cooking dinner etc. etc. I don’t feel that I have had a good day.  But if I finish something or better still do something from start to finish, then I feel happy and complete in the sense that I have achieved something and had a good day.  On other days I can be working and doing more for a lot longer but, because the jobs were not actually completed, then I get no satisfaction from them.   But if I clear a surface or tidy a room then I feel all warm and chuffed (not that it happens often as I am a clutterbuck).

Today I realised, rather stupidly and rather belatedly, that the pendants I had listed in my ArtFire studio had some silly prices in the listings for the additional choice necklaces.  I had originally thought I had covered both bases by listing the necklace choices in GBP as well as USD.  What I hadn’t realised (and should have if I had bothered to check a long time ago) is that somehow ArtFire changes all the prices shown and not just the main one for the checkout.  So my GBP prices were classed as USD prices and changed to GBP which completely mucked them all up as there were now 2 different prices for each item and both saying GBP.  LOL – are you following this so far?  Anyway, back to the point – I now have to copy and paste new information in all the items (about 170 so far!).  Talk about causing work for myself.  I also need to change some of the really bad photos that I started out with on the earlier listings before I discovered that photo editing could brighten the pendants back to normal.  Jobs like this will take ages and give no job satisfaction at all – although I will obviously be very relieved when I have finished it – but it will take me a few days between other jobs.  Do you only feel you have had a good day when you have achieved something or finished something or is it just me???  I would love to hear your comments.

How it started...

Today I was thinking back to when I first started making jewellery when my kids were babes - ooh how long ago that seems now!  I really don’t know how or why I started doing it (making jewellery that is – not having babies) but somehow, probably due to my lifelong love of pretty things and especially with jewellery, I got involved with making and selling it.   I can remember going off to the suppliers and buying the things I needed to start making them – in those days I was buying cabochons to glue on to settings to make all types of jewellery and I used cameo type picture ones as well as gemstone ones.  In my spare time – do you get “spare time” when you have 2 youngsters to look after??? – I would sit at the kitchen table with all my equipment and spend hours choosing and glueing.  The windowsill used to be adorned with bracelets etc. while the glue dried and I had to keep an eye on them so that they didn’t slip off the settings a bit or they would end up lopsided.  I suppose it must have been partly my release from looking after the children all day but also my attempt at being a working mum.  I started selling them party-plan style to friends and it went for there really.  But then when my youngest at the time started school and I started working again, my jewellery making went back to just being an occasionally hobby, mainly just making things for me. 

I also used to design weird and wacky jewellery to wear as well – especially pendants and necklaces.  Oddly enough I used to sometimes change clothes to be weird and unusual as well but somewhere along the line I got to hate sewing but still loved jewellery making.  I have now managed to gain a whole box full of things that need mending and do wonder that if they have lived in the box for so many months (if not more than a year) if I really need to bother mending them anyway as I (or we) obviously haven’t missed them!  Shall I sneak them into the bin instead???  It would certainly make more space if I did that and who would notice?  I know I am absolutely terrible about getting rid of things – I am a terrible hoarder.  I have forgotten what is actually in the “to be mended” box but if I took the things out to throw away I know I wouldn’t bring myself to do it if I saw them, so the only way I could possibly do it is if I just put the box in the bin without looking.  Some of the mending would only be a 5 minute job as well but it is just the thought of getting the sewing box out!!!  Do you hate doing certain jobs and sidetrack them as much as possible?? Or is it just me?

Pendant Necklace Photos - on a background or not?

I have just been playing around with my new themer colours in my studio and changing to my new banner.  So many choices and so hard to choose!  Hopefully my final choices make the studio look good and work well.  Obviously everyone likes different colours so what appeals to some wont appeal to others but considering everyone who comes to the studio is looking at the pendants rather than the studio colours the only importance is that the colours go well together and look pleasing to the eye.

What I did notice while checking out the new themer colours though were the differences in the photos I have used in the short time I have had my studio open.  I started off with taking the photos using a light tent to avoid reflection but I think it just muted the colours of the pendants in the photos (you can see if you open the oldest ones as I have changed the main photo of each), so then I just took photos normally which was a lot better.  But they were a bit dark so I eventually started playing around with a photo editor and lightened them - looking back now I lightened them too much at first but I am hopefully getting it better now.  What I noticed most though when I was fiddling around clicking from Default Order to Newest Order was that whereas I thought the photos looked a bit "busy" with the background so stopped using it, I now think maybe the pendants on their own in the photo look a bit stark and they looked warmer in the background photos.  I started using the background (artificial flowers worked best) because I found that the camera changed its focus that way and the real colour of the pendants then showed - their colour seemed to change by just photographing them on the windowsill (the best and brightest place in my house).  I guess both ways will appeal to different people but I would be really interested if anyone could let me know their thoughts on this - do the ones with a background detract from the pendants or do they complement them???  

www.pendant-heaven.artfire.com

Please do let me know your thoughts and which you prefer as I would love to know.