Early Morning

There is a point every morning where I simply lie awake in bed and think. Usually my thoughts are of no real significance, I solve no great dilemmas, make no amazing plans, but every so often I have a small epiphany. This morning was one of those mornings. The epiphany was relatively small in nature and it contained no actual wisdom. What it did do was potentially create a new tatted mask.

I had set the mask designed after my Art Deco Duo necklace quite a while ago hoping that the answer would come to me and I think it has, so hopefully I shall have something new to show on Monday or I will recount my stunning defeat at the hands of this little tatted mask.

In other news, I have busted out with the yarn again. This time it's just some store bought cotton and the creation has yet to form. It may still be insanely hot in sunny California, but I feel fall in the air and it's inspired me to create a little something to keep you warm. I think it shall be similar to one of those scarflets or collars that have been knit and crocheted everywhere recently. I'm actually trying to model the design off of my cuff patterns, which will be available in the November issue of Bell Armoire, by the way.

I do enjoy working with yarn, as I love the unusual creations I've made with it, but I hate the way it feels on my fingers after the needle thread has been pulled through the tatted countless time. It becomes so rough and unpleasant, luckily that yarn hides harmlessly under the much softer knotted yarn in the final piece.

While I was taking the picture of my yarn project underway I took note of the pile of lace that has been forming on top of my light box. I thought it made an interesting image, so I took a shot to show you. It's just a small section of the pile. This is where the pieces lay in wait for completion. My least favorite part of making tatted jewelry is the jewelry part, or rather adding the clasps and jump rings and whatnot. I have no real skill in this portion of the work, so I tend to wait until the last minute to do it. I've gotten much better at it over the last couple of years, but it is definitely not second nature to me. Sometimes I wish I had a jeweler assistant to do this part for me, but since the only candidate for the job is only four years old, it'll be a wile before I'll be able to outsource.

The Cat Came Back

Not the very next day and not actually a cat, but I digress. I am referring to one of my amazing disappearing special order customers that I talked about in this post. As it turns out, life did in fact get in the way and they returned, explained the absence and purchased their listing all in perfect order. I bring this up to share a little wisdom. When I feared that they were gone forever I had some choices to make, mostly regarding how I contacted the customer and what I said. I was quite put out at the time and I could have let that guide my communications, but I chose to maintain excellent customer service. I was straightforward, but I made sure that the customer would feel welcome to return should they change their mind.

This is really the lesson in all this. You cannot take these things personally and you should give your customers the benefit of the doubt. Though you need to look out for your own best interests, there is generally no good that comes from burning bridges. I am certainly glad that I did not lash out and was patient.

I though that this advice would take a little longer to share, but apparently it was a much simpler message than I thought. I have finally caught up from my little bout of fame on Monday. Everything has been remade and listed and now I am suffering from the inevitable letdown that occurs after any bit of excitement. Lucky for me, I have a whole house to clean and a couple of family requested projects to work on. I think I shall let my store sit for a while without any new designs, just for a change of pace. I hope this isn't a bad move, but I'm a little designed out for the time being.

Nosy Nose

Every single time I have had a bit of "fame" on etsy, like an item on the front page or Mondays Finds email, I get extra convos from relative strangers. Most of them are simple congratulations or 'hey did you know" kind of messages, but along with those, that I wholeheartedly appreciate, there are the weird ones. Okay, maybe weird is the wrong word, let's say unsolicited advice veiled as a compliment. The advice is almost always regarding pricing and usually comes from someone with a blank profile.

I really don't get why people feel the need to tell me that I need to charge more for my work. It seems anti productive if they are really customers to ask for a higher price, so I'm left assuming that the advice comes from someone who feels like I'm devaluing their work or simply a nosy nose with nothing better to do. I suppose they could just be looking out for my best interest, but I somehow doubt that. There of course is the chance that I could get more for my work, but that's not really the point, the point is, they are my prices that I picked and if I want them higher or lower it will be up to me.

Look, pricing is a tough subject and I've talked about it before, You Want How Much For That and more recently, Perception Of Value. These posts represent my opinion on the subject, but to address the most recent comment I received, I must talk about speed. I recently read another tatter detail the amount of time she spent making the most beautiful hankie border. After listing how many hours it took, she pointed out how much she would have to charge to make a hourly wage for her effort which was much more than the average person would think about paying. This got me thinking less about price and more about speed. I concluded that I must be a fairly fast tatter. I am certain that I am not the fastest by a long shot, but none of my pieces take nearly as long as most people think they do.

At the risk of removing the mystique from my tatting, most of my pieces are done in just a few hours, with the more elaborate ones like my hat taking the longest at a few hours a day, even it was done in a week. It's still time consuming and it still takes a degree of skill, but it does not take me 40 hours to make anything I sell. I do still have small children and a house to take care of, so it might be a week before I finish a piece, but that's not actual work time. With this new information, perhaps my prices won't seem so low to people. I've always thought that I will increase my prices as my skills improve, but never just because I think I might be able to get that much for it.

I do want to get paid for my time, but I also want to make something that is affordable. I make a lot of pendants that take much less than an hour to make and I use fairly large thread that is not only easier for me to work with, but works up fast and makes a more durable piece. There are so many factors that go into creating my pieces that no one but me knows. Sure there are those that can make an educated guess and be pretty close, but they are most certainly in the minority. So, in conclusion, those of you who feel like sharing your unsolicited advice, please stop being such a nosy nose...oh, not you, your opinions I care about.

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.

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/