Going Green

It would seem that being 'green' goes hand in hand with being creative. Perhaps because creative people see colour and texture where others see rubbish? Who knows. I decided this week's Folksy Favourites would showcase sellers creating from recycled materials. Here's my 5 favourites from the many I found.

Kerli
This shop features lovely handmade, recycled earrings and embroidered brooches amongst other bits and bobs. The earrings pictured are made from paper beads, coated with PVA glue to make them watertight and hard. They are really pretty and certainly will make a statement, then you can tell everyone that asks about them that they are created from recycled paper! In her profile, Kerli says: "I do like mad jewellery, corduroy, colourful things and board games. And recycling. And sometimes I have little animals in my head that need to come out... " Kerli also has a blog: http://kerliandanimals.blogspot.com/

Cat Loves Bear

This shop deserves a mention just for the gorgeous photo in her shop header! This shop features lots of lovely textile work, including shopping bags made from discarded shop curtains, which is what the photograph is of. You can help save the environment twice, not only by not using plastic bags for your shopping but by putting your shopping in a bag that's already using recycled materials. The shop features a fantastic range of a huge variety of bags in many different colours. A shop I feel I may well be shopping at myself.

British Cream Tea
Ooh, I love cream teas, you can't come from the West Country (which I do originally) and not be exposed to the yumminess of Cream Teas. And this shop is just as yummy. It is full of felt food. I have to admit I didn't know what I might do with felt food but that didn't stop this shop making me want to buy some! Some ideas of uses are pin cushions, holiday decorations or party favours. The featured item is obviously a French Fancy Set. They are all original designs, handmade and stuffed and use recycled felt. Absoloutely gorgeous.

Handmade by Tigerlily
This shop features a range of items from paper goods to bags, all created using ethically sourced materials. The item featured is from Made by Tigerlily's range of note books. It is 5" x 7" and made from 100% recycled card and paper. Ethical as well as being very pretty.

Faye Wilson

Stuff made from things. Sounds interesting, hey. This is Faye Wilson's subtitle to her shop. Faye says this about her shop: "I love mixing materials and textures to create different and unusual pieces. I try to recycle as much as possible and LOVE bashing old copper water pipes and hot water cylinders into delicate earrings and brooches." As well as gorgeous earrings made from bashing hot water cyclinders, there is the lovely pair of Earrings in the photograph, made from an old painting that was damaged. As she said, they are totally unique. What a fantastic idea.

I hope you enjoyed this week's shops. I think recycling is so important and I love it when people have the creativity and imagination to create something gorgeous out of some old rubbish.

Two new listings

I have listed two new items today, both Chain Maille Jewellery, one in each Northern Dawn Shop.

• A purple and pink Chain Maille Bracelet on Etsy
• A pair of Purple Chain Maille earrings on Folksy
  

Mobius Link Bracelet

This Bracelet has 25 Mobius balls linked together with bright aluminium jump rings. The mobius balls are made up with one each of a purple, violet & pink anodised aluminium jump ring. It is 19cm long and is fastened with a silver plated Lobster Clasp.

I think it is really pretty. It is also comfortable to wear, moves nicely as you move your hands and arms and catches the light as well!

FOR SALE: £12.00

Japanes 4-1 Earrings

These Earrings are made using a delicate, fiddly weave called a Japanese 4-1. The purple anodised aluminium jump rings are approx 7mm in size and are linked together with 3mm silver plated jump rings. They dangle to a fantastic 7cm.

These Earrings make a real statement with both their length and colour.

FOR SALE: $21.00 (approx. £13.00)

Etsy & Folksy Selling Action Plan

I have just added my new items to my Etsy and Folksy Shops. Follow the links below to have a look:

Pink & Black Tartan & Chain Necklace
Pink and Black Chain Maille Earrings
Blank Golden Retriever Greetings Card

I have also been busy updating my profiles on both Etsy and Folksy. Both now have blog links on as well my Twitter username and Etsy has the details of the McEtsy team as well, so people know that i'm 'joining in'.

I've been reading a lot of bits on Etsy about successful selling and listing techniques and today's Etsy Success article was on 'tags' so I read through that and hopefully implemented some of the useful pointers. The Etsy blog, Storque and the forums are a fantastic source of information, but it is so huge it takes time to go through it all. I have stolen a little idea from another UK seller and put a note on the bottom of my Etsy listings of the price in UK pounds and on the bottom of my profile that i'm based in the UK and all items are despatched from here.

I don't know how successful either Etsy or Folksy will be for me, but I don't see why they can't be. One thing I have learnt is they need to be worked at. Both sites are so big, you can't just sit there or no-one will ever notice you! I wonder which one is better but can't decide. Etsy is bigger and more well known, but because of this it is easier to get lost amongst the millions of other sellers and products on there. Folksy is less well known and smaller but there is less competition. I do know I need to do the same things for each site so I can measure my success (if there is any) of one against the other. There is a general action plan for this, which basically consists of:

• Regular updates - I need to list at least one thing a day on both sites, preferably 2 or 3 but this does cost money so I need to be sensible


• Join In - get on the forums on both sites, do 'treasuries' on Etsy. All these things will hopefully make my name known to other site users and I think a lot of them are buyers as well as sellers.


• Favourites - Add sellers to my favourites and also items. I do my Favourites list on here for Etsy and always let people know they've been added. Each person is another one that has been exposed to my name. It may not result in sales but it has definitely resulted in reciprocal favouriting. I have decided to do a Favourites list on here for Folksy once a week as I do for Etsy.


• The Blog and Twitter - need to be updated regularly, but not just with updates to the shop. I need to try and make twitter updates a bit interesting and add some informative articles to the blog. More people will follow me if I write something worth reading!!


• Amend my listings - I need to amend my listsings that I posted at the beginning with better photographs and update the descriptions and tags after reading the articles i've been reading.

So, that's the general idea of where i'm going and what i'm up to. I also need to do some off-line marketing and sort out my own website, but that's a blog post for another day!

I will update the blog with any interesting news on any of the above points and let you know what (if anything) proves succesful.

Productive Day

Wow, if only every day was like today! I finished a Pet Portrait commission, just waiting for final approval from the customer and then it'll go in the post.

I also turned my Golden Retriever Puppy drawing into a card:

And made a pair of Byzantine Weave Chain Maille Pink & Black earrings which will be a perfect match with my necklace I created yesterday:

The Earrings will be listed on Etsy later along with the necklace and a card will be listed on both Etsy and Folksy.

I also had a very exciting phone call about a project that may be happening later in the year. I don't to say too much about it now but to say it's exciting is an understatement!

Earrings - Purple Byzantine weave chain maille

I managed to complete 3 of the 4 things on my To Do List and by far the most fun thing was making two pairs of Earrings:

Chain Maille Purple & Silver Dangly Earrings, Byzantine Weave:

These Earrings are created using a Chain Maille technique called a Byzantine Weave. It is actually fairly easy once you get used to it but it creates a fantastic effect. The Earrings are merely jump rings attached together in a specific order. The jump rings are purple Anodized Aluminium and the Fish Hook ear wires are silver plated. They are approximately 2cm long from the bottom of the Earring wire. These will be added to my Folksy Shop.

FOR SALE: £5.50

Purple Dangly Earrings, Chain Maille Byzantine weave.

These Earrings are made using the same technique as the Silver & Purple pair, but using only Purple jump rings. They are 3cm long. These will also be added to the Folksy Shop.

FOR SALE: £6.00

Nature's backdrop

A couple of days ago I had an inspired moment and went outside to take some photographs of my Jewellery.

Rat Earrings hanging in our Sycamore Tree
Aqua Berry Charm Bracelet on a lichen on the dry stone wall:


One of the most important aspects of selling Jewellery is the photographs. The photographs are all you have to convince buyers it's your Jewellery they want.

One of the things I have problems with is finding a nice backdrop to photograph my Jewellery against. I don't have a lot of room in my house to set up an area specifically for photography and I need to photograph my pieces on a windowsill to get the benefit of natural light. I have, until recently, been simply photographing my creations on a plain, white piece of board.

On a gorgeous day the beads just look glorious, really vivid and shining, when photographed outside and the background colours of muted blues and greens are a fantastic complement and are bright, but not overpowering. I am really pleased with some of the results of my outside photography so will spend a little time re-photographing the items and amending the listings of my etsy shop.

Aqua Berry Charm Bracelet & Earrings

I have had the idea in my head for a while now to make a charm bracelet using some of the lovely round beads I purchased recently, so on Tuesday I got down to making it:

The random shaped beads are glass pressed and the rounds are 8mm and 4mm, all in various lovely shades of Aqua, Blues and White. They are all hung on silver plated head pins on an antique silver curb chain. The clasp is a bolt clasp.

This braclet is about 18cm long and is lovely and heavy when worn. It's the perfect complement to bright summer clothing or to brighten up more formal wear.

It is currently For Sale at Northern Dawn on Etsy for $24.00.

I made these Dangle Earrings using the same materials and beads as the Charm Bracelet, however have listed them separately as I don't feel they make a set, but would of course be perfect worn together.

The Earrings have four 8mm rounds in Aqua, White and two shades of Blue with twin 3 - 3.5cm tails of antique silver curb chain falling from the middle. The curb chain falls straight and neatly due to the addition of the 4mm White and Aqua beads at the ends.

The Fish Hook ear wires are stirling silver.

They are For Sale at Northern Dawn on Etsy for $19.00

Both of these pieces are perfect for Summer, a fantastic reminder of Sunny Skies and Blue Seas.

Packaging revisited

I have been looking into my packaging a little further and as you can see, have taken some photos. The boxes arrived in the white outer boxes so I though these would look nice with the ribbon wrapped round them as pretty gift boxes. I have however found a problem in that they are not big enough to hold my necklaces with large cascades and round beads as the boxes aren't deep enough and the lids won't shut!

Back to the drawing board on that one then!

New Jewellery Pieces

I have made a new necklace today and a pair of earrings:

Necklace:

It is a 3 strand necklace, made with wire. It has a trigger clasp and is about 60cm long. The beads are pink and fushcia glass chips and some gorgeous Indian glass beads as the centre pieces. The connectors are from a local craft shop and I just fell in love with them and they matched perfectly with the Indian beads I had in my stash, they made a perfect combination for a daring necklace with a bit of girliness about it!

FOR SALE: - £20.00

And a pair of Ratty earrings:

I have pet rats of my own and show them in my spare time. Next year I am going to start breeding them, so when I found these Chinese Zodiac Rat beads on the Jilly Beads website, I had to have them. It took me a while to decide what to do with them but as they are quite small they seemed perfect for earrings. They are simply hung on beading wire and the pink and white glass chips complement them perfectly, hanging off of an antique silver curb chain.

FOR SALE:- £13.00

Both of these items will be going on Folksy, when I have set up my account.