A Good Monday

A string of interesting things occurred after I wrote on Friday. As soon as I published the post I felt much better, I received a few, 'there, there's' from twitter folk and I got what I can only assume was a pity sale and that was all I really needed to get out of the self pity cycle. The weekend just took off from there. I did feel bad that I wrote such a whiny post, but occasionally I think we all need to vent and that was mine for quite a while, I imagine. Of course I cannot anticipate future events that might irritate me enough to vent, but I can assure you it will not be my sales or lack thereof.

No longer hampered by doubt, I listed my prototype starburst bracelet and it sold immediately. Of course I did list it ridiculously cheap, but still. Then I managed to finish and list a pair of earrings, the perfected bracelet and another necklace all adapted from the starburst pattern. I felt creative and productive and I think the positive activity in my store increased my visibility just enough to achieve my year-end goal of 3000 store hearts. I had intended to do a countdown to 3000 this week because I had assumed I would reach the goal a bit later, but I certainly can't complain.

I also made an impulse purchase this weekend. We visited the closing Circuit City store for a usb hub and I found myself drawn to the discounted cameras. My current camera was purchased with size in mind. I wanted a small camera that was light and fit in a bag, so I paid little attention to quality. It is in no sense a bad camera, but I have been wanting a better one for a while. I picked up a new Sony Cybershot H-50 at lovely price. I think it will be a while before I learn how to effectively use all the features of the camera, but I already love it. Now I need to make some new pieces so I have something to take pictures of. Though it did get a trial run at my nieces birthday party yesterday.

I shall have another new acquisition to share with you later this week as well, but I shall save that for when it actually arrives. I don't have any projects lined up for the week, so I'll just be playing it by ear from this point and hopefully I'll come up with a little something to test out my new camera with.

Something Old, Something New

I love old books. I love thinking about who else has held it in their hands and read its words. There is a sense of history that just cannot be conveyed in a pdf. This is why I keep buying old tatting booklets. I'm sure that I could find their pages scanned online, but it's just not the same. I just got four new ones so old they have no dates on them, though a little research has them dating to the turn of the century. As I sat down to pick new designs to reinvent, I realized that I am hard on books, very hard. I decided that it was in the best interest of the books that I scan them and print out the scans to use instead of using the actual books. My tech expert husband found me a nice pdf compiler for the project and I got my four new ones scanned in yesterday. Of course now I need to scan in my other ones, before there is nothing left of them to scan.

That was my something old for the day, my something new is goals for the etsy store. The last ones I set were 400 sales by the end of the year and 3000 hearts for the store. Well a spectacular October, spurred on by tatted masks no doubt, resulted in the early reaching of 400 sales. I was going to revise the goal to 500 by the end of the year, but then the sales all but stopped. Instead I shall revise it to a more attainable 450. The 3000 hearts was supposed to be a ridiculous number, but a few prominent front page stints resulted in short windfalls of them. I now stand just 50 or so shy of that goal. I remember when I was about to reach 1000, I joked that I didn't even know 1000 people. I had assumed that I had reached a saturation point where anyone who would like my thing enough to favorite them had already done so. I guess I was wrong then and I hope I keep finding new people to impress with my tatted pieces.

I hope to have a few new pieces in the next couple of weeks based on these amazing old designs and the store should soon fill back up with pieces returning from their Steampowered vacation this week. I'm still don't feel ready for the holidays, but I think after today's election is over I can shift into gear and get there.

What A Nice Morning

I woke to a pleasant surprise this morning. I apparently got on the front page in the middle of the night. This is the second time in a row that I have been on the front page and missed it entirely. At first I was terribly put out that I didn't get to see it, but then I realized that the timing of the event exposed me to a whole other side of the planet. I received several messages from folk I didn't recognize at all probably because I'm asleep when they are online.

I wish I could show you a picture of my front page, but I can't find one. It was the same tatted mask that got featured in the etsy finds email so its views are ridiculously high and it has an insane amount of hearts (211 at last count). Imagine if all those people actually wanted to buy the mask. Of course my fingers would fall off if I tried to make that many, but still.

The other side effect of my front page in the middle of the night appears to be treasury saturation. I've been in a few treasuries at a time and then I'll be absent entirely for weeks, but this morning as I was trying to discover where my front page originated I stumbled upon not just a couple of new treasuries, but seven! Seriously seven treasuries all featuring my pieces. This knocked my on my arse. I'm just really humbled and grateful for all the attention and by way of thanks here are the curators of those treasuries:

Monarchdancer.etsy.com - http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12873

insectus.etsy.com - http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12893

calloohcallay.etsy.com - http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12971

susidjewelry.etsy.com - http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12697

homecreations.etsy.com - http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12674

ImNotYourGranny.etsy.com - http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12702

mistflowerstudio.etsy.com - http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12665

Check them out, they all did an amazing job and deserve a little love for their time!

UPDATE:
I found a picture of the front page!

I Was Found

Well, I planned on giving you all the stats from my day in the Etsy Finds email, but it turns out that means I would have to do math. Me and math do not get on very well so it will take a little longer before I can offer up those numbers. What I can do is give you the easy numbers.

The mask that was featured in the email started the day with 388 views and this morning has 1181. It also garnered 89 new hearts for a total of 106. I started the day with 2008 shop hearts and this morning I have a whopping 2137. I know that already seems like a lot of numbers, but hearts and views were littered all over the store and I wanted to go through and see what these new eyes gravitated towards. This is the first time I actually had the forethought to go to majaba and get all the numbers before and after an "event" so I could really get accurate numbers.

If you have an etsy store and you haven't yet discovered majaba's heart-o-matic, you must go try it out. Of course it will just give you yet another thing to be addicted to, so I do apologize to your families for sharing.

I did also make a couple of sales and I even sold one of my other masks. All in all it was a pretty good day, now we'll just have to wait and see if any of those who hearted the store return to buy anything or if it was just a case of, ooh, that's pretty. All the activity of the day gave me that antsy feeling that preceeds the holidays. I'm both looking forward to and dreading the upswing that may occur in the next couple of months. Of course I love to make sales especially since my etsy money has been earmarked as our only holiday spending, but I have actually been enjoying the extra time I've had lately to design stuff without a deadline on other projects looming. I guess you can't have it both ways, so I'll stop complaining and roll with whatever comes my way.