Found

I feel certain that the good karma should be wearing off soon. Again yesterday, I was surprised with a lovely bit of news. I had just gotten up to do something, came back to the computer to see a bunch of messages all of a sudden. Their subject, the etsy finds email. So I open the email to discover that my bridal pair of slave bracelets were among the many winter wedding themed finds. The other messages in my inbox were friends alerting and congratulating my luck! Once many moons ago, one of my masks earned a feature in the finds email, though I was contacted before hand that time, so I prepared to spend the day counting views and whatnot. This time was a complete surprise.

If you're wondering what a feature like this can do, I have prepared some comparisons. First off, it didn't do anything for sales really at all, this time nor the last. What does happen is a lot of convos are received with mostly, "I love your work" or "I didn't know anyone tatted anymore". Your views on the item featured and your store do in fact go through the roof. On a typical day I get between 150 and 250 store views, yesterday the number was nearly 1200. That's good news as are the nearly 60 new hearts on the shop. I do not mean to undermine the excitement at being featured somewhere with such great exposure, but this feature had a large amount of picks in it. I figured sharing the data would put a realistic spin on it. This is awesome, but not the same as say being the featured seller which does result in tremendous sales for anyone that gets that spot.

In between all the extra conversations including one where I was asked to make pieces 'exclusively for her brand', I declined, I mostly worked on sold pieces. My eyes did wander a few times to the beads in my tatting jar, teasing me with potential, but I must stay the course. This is turning to to be one extremely long and busy week. And to karma, here's hoping it just gets busier, but only in that I have tons of sales to take care of way, not more cleaning or errands or anything though. On a karma related note, I do plan on offering up that other pattern I teased about on Monday or Tuesday next week, so be on the look out for that as well. Back to the salt mine for me.

TotusMel's Wunderkammer

I got completely sidetracked yesterday and started myself a brand new blog. I had thought about doing this for a while, but it was just idle speculation really. I decided to say something 'out loud' on twitter just to see what the reaction would be and it was good. This sent me on nearly a day long quest to design and create the thing. I didn't think that I would actually get it up and running by the afternoon, but I did and now you can visit my Wunderkammer.

The name was a gift from Libby Bulloff of exoskeletoncabaret , well mostly, so thanks Libby! It means a cabinet of curiosities and since I plan on finding the dark, romantic and steamy amongst the items at etsy it seemed a perfect name. The first post is up with some quick steamy finds and the second features some more Gothic beauties. My husband is afraid that this venture is going to take too much more of my time, but I'm hoping to keep it quick and clean. If it seems like I need a little help, I might seek some guest posters of like taste to keep the stress down.

The reason I wanted to do this finds was because though there are plenty of blogs featuring etsy items, mostly they stick to the cute or kitchy and rarely are they dark and sumptuous. While I am certainly no amazing archeologist, I shall dig and find what I like and probably what I cannot afford. I hope that I can provide a unique place to find some of the more unique things that etsy has to offer and perhaps elsewhere if I get adventurous. It's still pretty bare and I haven't filled up the sidebars with anything yet. I still haven't decided whether this would be a good spot to try out ads for the first either. I guess what I'm saying is it's a work in progress. If you have any suggestions for finds, just let me know through the email in my profile, I'm certain to need a little help now and again.

Two Thousand

It looks like I've rolled back around to goal making time again. Just this weekend I reached the amazing total of 2000 hearts. I never thought in the beginning, that I would be getting so much love. This does however mean that it will be quite sometime before I will reach another heart milestone. I shall instead focus on sales, I am currently just a smidge above 350, so my slightly ridiculous goal is to reach 400 by the end of the year. That means I need to average over a dozen sales a month for the next 4 months. It seems like a stretch, but within reason.

I do so hate to make fiscal based goal without making creatively based ones as well. To that end I am publicly announcing that I am adding to my list of outlandish goals, which already includes making tatting the next crafting craze, a published book of my work. I've no idea how to even begin making that happen, besides actually writting down my patterns, of course, but that won't stop me from putting it on the list. It can sit right next that novel I've been contemplating since high school. They will make great friends.

I thought about making a blogging goal as well, but that would turn all this into work and that would take the joy right out of it for me. What I write here has to be optional and random or I would just start to dread sitting down at the computer, so no blogging goals. I would also like to come up with more tatting wearables like I've already mentioned, but I won't put a deadline on those either. So that's it for today, goals for the future some realistic and some not so much. I will keep you posted on thier developments!

In other news, I received a convo on Friday informing me that I am to be included in Mondays Etsy Finds email. I got so excited that the malaise of the previous week just melted away. From what I've read this will probably not result in tons of sales, but scads of views and hearts. The email goes out to 15,500 people, so it should find a whole mess of eyes. I'll let you all know how it plays out as I'm certain that I will be complusively watching my store all day.

UPDATE: The storque article that accompanies the etsy finds email is here:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/spotlight/article/etsy-finds-amazing-masks/2523/