Two One Offs

It was such a dreary day yesterday. The previous day had been stormy with heavy downpours and thunder which is interesting and inspiring. Yesterday was the sort of rainy day that saps your will and makes you want to curl up on the couch with a blanket and hot coco. This is not to say that nothing got done, just nothing that took too much energy. I made up two one off pieces in a row, but neither of them taxed my design or tatting skills. In fact the second I literally made up as I went and it is only through some bit of luck that it turned into anything at all.

This is the second one here made around a piece of turquoise from the infamous grab bag collection. One of these days I really must show you how much stuff I have accumulated from those grab bags, but not today. I started on the bottom with a small ring and then brought the thread up through the center. This is when I totally lost the plot and started a strange meandering with rings and chains.  I didn't intend any specific design, but in the end it reminded me of a rain cloud. It was also compared to a vase of flowers and an antique key on the facebook page.

The other one here is actually the first I made, but I am not in love with it. It started around this mystery stone doughnut.  Since it had veins of deep red in it, I used a brick red thread and wrapped the piece. The colors match better in real life and I tried to take advantage of some grooves in the piece, but again, not in love. I suppose everything I make can't be a work of art in my own eyes, but regardless they will both get listed today. I have a feeling there is someone out there that will love it.

I did these in lieu of actually remaking things for the shop like I really should have, but the afore mentioned weather made me choose one or the other. So today I should like to get back to that. The weather is suppose to be back to sunny and temperate so I hope that rubs off on my mood. Once again I will wish for unexpected good things to float my way today and throughout the weekend.

iSad

I know that this has nothing to do with tatting, but since all I did yesterday was working on sold orders and remaking pieces, you'd be bored with that anyway. So here's a short post for Steve Jobs who was at least a small part of reason I can do what I do everyday. Heck, I still have the first computer that was just mine, a Mac Classic from 1991though I used quite a few before them. It certainly is true that if it weren't for my household full of Apple computers  and other products I certainly couldn't sell my wares online...at least not nearly as conveniently. Heck, I wouldn't have even found tatting without a computer and since I only own Macs, I owe a thanks to Steve for thinking differently so I could too.

I read this text from the Think Different campaign yesterday in one of the many tributes online and it inspired me once again so I thought I'd post it here for you too.

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Yes, that is a cross stitch project I made years ago based on a 1997 Wired Magazine cover. Now I feel compelled to clean the canvas and frame the sucker. Back to tatting though, I still have a couple more pieces that need remaking, but I hope to get some time to make another one off or something else creative. Here's to a better day.

The Search Ad

What a nice day I had yesterday. Specifically, what a nice sales day. Spiders were flying out of the shop and I started teh day with an order for a mask that needs to be made. This means two things, one, I am still busy working on that and two I had no time to do anything else interesting enough to talk about.

So I suppose I'll use this opportunity to document my latest etsy experiment with their in house search ad system. It's only the first week so it's still hard to draw any real conclusions about it's value, but I thought I'd share the numbers I got with it in case any one else was curious. I went for the lowest cost which is $5 a week for about 5000 impressions. Each keyword has its own value so I suppose this moves about a bit. I figured $5 wasn't too much to spend to try something out. So, what did I get out of it? Well, I got 6,058 impressions which is how many times my ad items were seen. For the record I chose to show my mask section. For those impressions I got 52 views, which is the number of times my ad was clicked on and 9 favorites. That's it. That's one click for every 112.5 views and one favorite for every 5 clicks. There were no sales. For comparison I got 6,666 clicks in the shop from other sources in the same time frame and 322 favorites. With this information, it's pretty clear that these search ads didn't do much for me at all. I'll let them run one more week, but I think that perhaps they are just not a good fit for me.

I shouldn't be shocked, they are based on keywords that don't necessarily have anything to do with the search at hand. I did a few searches for the wunderkammer and saw plenty of ads that didn't relate at all and thus were useless. Of course, I am also not the biggest of ad clickers in the world and I'm certainly not alone in that regard. Since I have not been the best advertiser of my own business I thought I should at least try it since it was so simple and built in. I suppose it just proves that the easy way is most often not the best way.

Today, it's back to the mask order and I need to make even more spiders and there are a couple of other things that need remaking. You can look forward to another boring post tomorrow then...sorry. Oh, but since yesterday's pleas for something interesting to happen brought so many sales, I think I would like to ask for that again today. May the universe rain down good and unexpected things today as well!

Family Skulls

I didn't get up to as much as I had hoped yesterday. As I dug through my fresh grab bag, I was distracted and thus less inspired by its contents than usual. However, I did manage to pick out a few odds and ends and made up this necklace. Sometimes I feel like I am cheating on the tatting when I make one of these since the tatting is just a part of and not the whole of the piece, but hey, diversity is the spice of life. Anyway, it isn't listed yet, hopefully I'll get round to that today and maybe try again for a bit of inspiration.

In other news, I thought I'd give you a peek at some of the family crafts we've been up to since that fateful trip to Michaels over the weekend. The masks were done by the kids. The youngest did the red and white one...she has repeatably shared that she is pretending that the red is blood. The oldest went for 'realistic' with hers, as long as real skulls have black glitter between their teeth. The fancy coffin there is mine, but both the girls are working on those as well. In a shocking development, they have both accepted that they need to work on them in phases. This means they are actually waiting overnight for the first coats of paint to dry before decorating them. This is a degree of patience I did not think them capable of and it's quite refreshing.

So again, I start the day without a clear plan in place. I might go left or right or get lazy and do nothing of significance. Or perhaps something interesting will happen outside my influence to turn my day in unexpected directions. I'm voting for that last one, if you're wondering.

Weekend Wrap Up

Let's see, Again, I'm afraid there is not much new to share from around these parts. It seems I am keeping busy making spiders for the time being. I was asked if it was possible to simple purchase them and so I made up a listing for a batch of 10 plain ones and once the customer picked those up , I made another just in case.  Then my brother-in-law requested some with beads, so after I picked up some comparable beads at Michaels I made a bunch more. I've got thread spiders coming out of my ears.

Most of the weekend was family time though. We took a trip to the zoo a few towns over. We bought a membership this year so we could keep going back without feeling like we were spending too much money to do so. Then Sunday was mostly a lazy day except that's when we went to Michaels and came up with all sorts of Halloween things to paint and adorn. Just a piece of advice, never take a family into that store without a specific and firm agenda especially around Halloween or this sort of madness is bound to occur. The rest of Sunday was spent painting things and finishing the first trilogy of the Star Wars Blu Rays in an attempt to fully indoctrinate our youth. I think it worked, next it's onto the next trilogy and by that I mean the second set made, we started with the classics.

So, what's on tap for this week. I have no clue. I've managed to keep the store pretty well stocked, so there are no major projects that direction. I did get in another supply order complete with grab bag, so perhaps a stroll through those goodies for something inspiring. Anything, but another spider...well, maybe a few more, it is October after all. I might even put together an instructable for the beaded ones...we'll see.