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Monday, January 15, 2007

Etsy fame, still looking for fortune...

This has been an exciting week for me on Etsy.com . We were featured in 4 treasury lists which are lists created by individual etsy members of their favorite items for sale on etsy. Usually there is a theme involved in the choices picked. Our Light Blue Spirals and Swirls barrette was put in 3 treasury lists and today's list got chosen to be the front page list for the day on the Etsy homepage. It's a great rush to see your stuff right there on the front page large and in the spotlight. We got over 550 views on it today. 16 people marked it as one of their favorites. Yet with all that love and attention it still hasn't sold. I can feel the love, just not the money. I'm not complaining. We can live on love.


One of my other accomplishments this week was finally figuring out a somewhat successful way to take pictures of our earrings. These stamped spirograph geometric sterling silver disc earrings have been a real challenge. I set up a spot in the shade ouside and something about that spot and the set up has worked. It's very exciting to not be wasting endless hours of my life taking useless blurry messed up pictures like I used to do.

These abalone freeform buttons are another product we just listed on Etsy. They are a tedious boring hassle to make and remind us why we don't want to work in a factory.Press down drill, lift it up, move piece over a little bit, press down drill, lift it up, remove piece, put new one in ,repeat. Break every third or fourth one. Start over again.

Here are my computer nerds. The elder bee brother is teaching his younger already fully obsessed brother the fine points of mouse manipulation.


This is Henry's picture of Mommy.The breasts play a prominent role in the portrait which is actually quite true to reality for anyone who knows me in real life.

Well it was a few days ago that I started this post but nothing all that exciting has happened since then so I'll just leave it at this.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Barrettes,Floam and Shoes





Now that the Holiday Market is over I've been able to list new things on Etsy. This week I started listing some of our Aluminum Barrettes. There will be more to come in other sizes and colors. They are made possible through the miracle of E 6000, the perfect glue for the job.They haven't sold yet but I did have an astounding amount of sales this morning of other things which put me in glorious mood.
I have also had time to indulge Henry in "projects".He has been bugging me to buy him Floam ever since he saw the ad on Nick Jr. For those of you who don't taint your children with the evils of television and Nick Jr.and have no idea what I am talking about, it is this bubbly gooey colorful sticky stuff that they show attaching to all sorts of objects from doll house furniture to dinosaur models.You can let it dry or keep it in it's container. Basically like play doh but with styrofoam bubbles in it. I had read somewhere that you can make your own floam so I googled it and sure enough there it was:
Make your own Imitation Floam
Even more miraculously we had all the ingredients on hand for instant gratification. It involved breaking down some styrofoam into it's individual tiny little balls of foam. That was a tedious and messy job in which I ended up doing most of it and Henry got bored quickly. Half way through I re read instructions and saw they recommended grating it. Much to Nick's chagrin,I used our cheese grater. After mixing the elmers glue and borax and water and the foam pellets and then readjusting the recipe to make it the right consisitency we ended up with a cottage cheese looking pile of floamy goo that i tried to make into a snowman.

Later we bought some bright and nasty food coloring which Henry enjoyed adding to the floam.It made our hands blue/green but eventually washed off. I am still mesmerized by the squishy, lumpy stuff that we keep in a zip lock bag but Henry has pretty much lost all interest. I'm glad I didn't give into the allure of the $20 plus shipping and handling advertised floam.


The other highlight in the past week of my life is the awesome Christmas present my wonderful mother-in-law gave me- a very generous amount in gift certificate to www.Zappos.com . It is an online large shoe store with free shipping including for all returns. After wasting hours and hours of my precious time looking through possibly thousands of pictures of shoes I ordered 3 pairs. I spent one evening looking at 179 pages of just wide shoes. Two out three pairs fit which is pretty good for my freakish wide short fred flinstone feet with an unusually low placed ankle that tends to blister on most shoes. I was able to print out the return mailing label easily and so far it all seems to be working out smoothly.But now I have more money to spend and even more precious hours of my life to be spent in a shoe haze while ignoring my children and husband.