The Great Gift Reveal - Part 2

I had a hard time deciding whether to do jewelry or manly gifts today. I have settled on showing off the gifts to the men in my life. I don't know about you, but buying on etsy for the males in my life is, well, challenging. They are not a bunch of hipsters or even classic man types so I have to look long and hard. First up is a gift for my brother who is in his first year as a high school teacher. He also has an obsession with the ocean and sharks. This tie from simplyneckties seemed like s good place to start.

Both of my brothers are also into photography and I thought that these key chains from TimothyAdamDesigns would be a perfect addition to their gifts too. They are small and interesting, though I have to admit that one of my brothers had to be told that it was a camera...oh well, I tried.

My youngest brothers obsessions include not only photography, art and his cats, but also bikes. I really thought I was done shopping when I saw this clock by 1byliz. Not only is this piece made from salvaged materials, but unlike a lot of recycled things, it is very chic looking. I was really excited to find this one for him.

One last handmade thing today. This one was for my father-in-law who is notoriously hard to shop for. It's not because he is very picky, but he simply buys himself what he actually wants. We usually give him a plethora of gift cards and that appears to make him happy, but I was determined to get him something handmade. I settled on this wood puzzle by sopsop88 , though I won't be really surprised if he never puts it together. It's still a neat little piece to add to all those gift cards.

It'll Be Great... If It Works

Over the last week, I've tried a few new things to increase my exposure. I can be quite a lazy person and I have two extremely demanding kids, so I was looking for things that would require little effort on my part. First, I signed up on Timothy Adams' newest endeavor, Buried Treasury. All I had to do was look around, make a few comments and then sign up for a few bucks. Now I have my own little section where my etsy mini lives for more folk to find. It's a neat little site and Tim promises to send out site statistics so we can see how many visitors the site gets.

Then, when hanging out in the forums, I saw a post about Celebrate with Style, a new website that has a boutique section that artists and designers can sign up for. The boutique offers a place to post photos of your pieces along with a link to your own online store. The hitch was, it is by invitation only. So, throwing myself to the wolves yet again I signed up to be reviewed for an invitation. I've done this sort of thing before, I tried Trunkt, Nifty, Indieshopping and quite a few others, all to no avail. Apparently I don't "fit" in a lot of places, but this time I was pleasantly surprised to receive not only the invitation, but quite a flattering email describing my tatting as "distinctive" and "unusually creative and fashionable".

I have now signed up with them as well and my page is up here. I have no idea whether either of these endeavors with result in any additional attention, but neither required too much effort and they need almost no upkeep, so they meet my strict requirements. I guess we'll see if they helped over the next few months. I guess I just felt I needed to do something outside the forums and since I'm seriously burnt out on networking, these seem like good ideas.

Here's hoping!