Shop updates

I'm still busy, stocking my Etsy supply shop with handmade supplies. It takes a long time from start to finish, including the photography and listing process!

Right now, my supply shop has 65 listings, which represent well over 200 items, now that the "listings variations" option allows us to create one listing with multiple variations (such as size, quantity, color, # of holes, etc.)

Here's an example of one of my listings for enameled beads:

These are some antiqued hammered copper washers:

And here are some etched sand dollars:

I also got all my enamels out, got my enameling station set up to go on Saturday - did everything except actually fire up the torch. That will happen tomorrow! So look for more enameled beads, headpins, and other components in my shop in the days and weeks to come.

I hope if you're looking for handmade components for your designs, you'll take a look at my supply shop!

And as far as my jewelry shops go, I haven't had much time for jewelry design, what with trying to get supplies made, and teaching classes at the shop, but, after a blog post by (and subsequent private convo with) my friend Christine, I decided to revisit the issue of "pendant vs. necklace". I enjoy making pendants, and figured that designers would want to buy them "as is," so that they would have all their creative options wide open when working with the pendant. In the bead shop, my pendants sell well, but on Etsy, not so much. I have heard this discussion so many times before - pendants don't sell well, you need to turn them into necklaces, folks don't know what to do with them, yada yada yada. But I held firm, and left them as pendants.

On Saturday, I decided to take 3 of them, and turn them into necklaces, list them, and just see what happens.

Here are my finished necklaces:

Cobalt Blue & Copper Necklace, available on Etsy

Mixed Metals Woven Pendant on Sterling Chain, available on Etsy

Azurite and Malachite on Copper and Vintaj Natural Brass, available on Zibbet

So that's the status of my online shops.

Looking forward to some torch work tomorrow; I also have a full run ready for the kiln as soon as I walk in the door, so that's my first order of business, then the torch. I'm a little nervous about the torch; it's been about a year since I did any torch work, and I dread starting the learning curve over again! I just want to get in there and be perfect! No Mistakes! Is that asking too much???

Back to Nature

It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote about the butterfly chrysalises that are covering the back of my house.

At the time, I speculated about how long the chrysalis stage lasts; I could have looked it up, but I didn't.

A trip out on the deck this weekend proved my speculation wrong. Seems like after several weeks in the chrysalis, the butterfly starts to slowly emerge:

Emerging Gulf Fritillary butterfly, October 3, 2013

I discovered this one on October 2 in the evening; I rushed home from work with the camera on October 3, figuring it would be long gone, but it essentially looked the same. Every so often, it wiggled its antennae at me. 

Here's the same chrysalis from another angle:

Emerging Gulf Fritillary butterfly, October 3, 2013

At first, I thought this emergence must happen fairly quickly, because the butterfly seems so vulnerable like this, and must be hungry, right? So I'd race out to check it in the morning, then race home to check in the evening. But the process must take way longer than I thought, because here is the same chrysalis this morning:

Emerging Gulf Fritillary butterfly, October 7, 2013

Here is another emerging butterfly:

Emerging Gulf Fritillary butterfly, October 7, 2013

This one isn't quite as far along; it's antennae aren't out yet, and only a small amount of wing is visible.

Here is an empty chrysalis, showing the split down the middle where the butterfly emerged:

Empty Gulf Frittilary Chrysalis

Here is a chrysalis that hasn't started to open yet:

 Chrysalis ready for emergence

And here are some caterpillars that I think died sometime during pupation; I can see where the chrysalis just started to form, but then the process stopped, and now, several weeks later, the caterpillars are just hanging there, dessicating:

And this is a mystery visitor that surprised me when I opened the back door this morning:

This is about 6 inches above my head, right as I open my back door - that's the outside on the left of the door frame, and the kitchen on the right.


This big black and white butterfly really startled me; he was slowly flapping his wings, and just hanging onto that chrysalis. At first, my brain processed it as a freshly emerged butterfly; his wings were even wet! But then I realized that a) he's not orange. Not a gulf fritillary at all. And b) the chrysalis he's hanging onto is still maturing, and not ready to open yet.

This pretty visitor ignored me and Bailey as we went in and out, opening and closing the door, and flew away after about an hour.

This is a weed that randomly decided to grow in a pot of ivy on my deck:

 Pretty deck weed

It has 2 different colors of flowers - pink and purple, and they remind me of Gloxinia, although that is certainly not what this is:

Purple deck weed flower

Pink deck weed flower

more purple deck weed flowers

And here is a visitor outside the bead shop last week:

All 3 pics are the same guy - he's at least 3 inches long, and a beautiful grass green (as in the first photo), and some sort of grasshopper. My best guess is that he's actually a grasshopper nymph, the immature form that develops from the egg, before multiple molts occur, resulting in the mature adult grasshopper. But I'm just guessing, based on the smoothness of the body and the lack of features I normally associate with adult forms.

He hung around for a couple of days. During the first day, I actually caught him and carried him down to the hedges, away from all the stores and people, because I know how some folks like to squash bugs. But he was back the next day, so I decided to leave him alone.

It's still in the upper 80s here, but the weathermen (at least on our local ABC station) are calling the forecast for tomorrow "Cold", as it will only be in the 60's. Yay! Can't wait. Tired of the hot and muggies! I know you guys north of here are really feeling us, with our "cold snap" heading in tomorrow. The weather dude even suggested we take a jacket with us tomorrow. Yeah, that'll happen. Thanks, weather dude!

edited 8:40 PM, 10/7/13
The cold front is moving through, and it is absolutely pouring buckets and buckets of rain. So hard. With loud booming thunder, which is freaking Bailey out. I am worried that all this hard rain, sluicing down the aides of the house, will damage all my butterfly chrysalises! Though I imagine eons of evolution has made them able to withstand storms. But I'm still worried, and can't wait to check on them in the morning.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Yesterday, Etsy announced that it is changing their definition of "handmade."

They aren't changing THE definition of handmade, because they can't. But they have decided that as far as they are concerned, it doesn't mean what most of think it does.

According to Etsy, handmade products no longer have to be made by hand.

?

Here are the new guidelines:

• Etsy sellers can now hire people and collaborate from different locations.
• Etsy sellers can now use shipping or fulfillment services, but the seller is responsible for the customer experience. (i.e. drop shipping is now allowed)
• With approval,  Etsy sellers can work with outside manufacturers to help produce their designs
• If  Etsy sellers work with other people or manufacturers to create their items, they need to share that information on their About page.
• Re-selling — purchasing a new, finished product you had no role in creating and selling it to someone else unchanged — is still not allowed. 

Sellers took to the forums yesterday to discuss what this all means, and the upshot is, Time will Tell.

But "Single Makers", as we are now known, are probably a dying breed on Etsy.

If an artisan starts subbing out work, and employing manufacturing processes, the products are really no longer handmade, are they?

And "transparency" is the new buzzword at Etsy - with an apparently Pollyanna sort of vision that resellers and others who sub out their work will step forward and self-identify, so that buyers can locate truly handmade items if they wish.

Ignoring the fact that truly handmade items canNOT compete financially in the marketplace with manufactured items, information about the process behind a seller's production will be buried on their "About" page, which hardly anyone reads. I learned 20 years ago that when a corporation starts talking about "transparency," it means they have something to hide.

Unlike the Emperor, whose loyal subjects believe the edicts about his new clothes, Etsy sellers, if the forums are representative, don't see this as the positive step that Etsy does, and aren't falling for any of this.

Etsy can redefine handmade, but that doesn't make it so. You can call "steam" "water" if you like, but if you're dying of thirst in the desert, try drinking a big, tall glass of steam, and let me know how your thirst is.

Steam is water, right?

One of the major issues presented by this new "definition" of handmade, aside from the financial one (who can compete with products manufactured where material and labor costs are much, much lower than the US?), is the Search issue.

Etsy switched from a recency-based Search algorithm to a relevancy-based one awhile back. What does this mean? Whereas the old Etsy search favored whatever item had most recently been listed, the new search supposedly favors the item that has the most relevant keywords in its title and tags. Problem? This is easily gamed, since sellers pick their own keywords, and when the search term queried returns 250,000 or 25,000 items with the same relevant keywords, you know what happens? The search algorithm reverts from relevancy back to recency. So if a factory-manufactured product's seller uses the same keywords for, say, a "statement necklace" that I do, I am never going to be found in search, because I can only afford to renew an item every so often with my limited listing budget, but factory concerns (may I please call them what they are: "resellers"?) can afford to list and renew endlessly, to stay at the front of the search queue, burying everyone else. Plus, they often have bots to do this renewal for them. Me? No bots. Wish I had a bot!

It looks to many of us that the "single maker" is being pushed aside in favor of bigger operations, which represent more income for Etsy. Nothing wrong with that business plan, for Etsy, anyway.

What does this change mean for me? I'm not sure.

Sales in my Etsy jewelry shop are better than ever this year, and I have been busting my butt to stock my Etsy supply shop, in an effort to reach a larger marker. Etsy has such good traffic, it's hard to think about rebuilding somewhere smaller. But if that traffic no longer can find me on Etsy, it becomes a moot point.

So I opened a Zibbet shop yesterday. Along with a lot of fellow Etsy members, apparently (Zibbet tweeted last night about the huge influx of sellers from Etsy opening Zibbet shops following Etsy's announcement yesterday.)

It's always hard learning something new, but Zibbet is surprisingly easy to figure out, and has so many features that we have been asking for on Etsy for years (without success.) They have an Etsy importer, so you can actually basically import your listings from Etsy straight into your Zibbet shop. Only a few tweaks needed to get the imported listed live. They have no listing fees and no sales commission. You heard me. Unlimited number of shop sections. Up to 8 product photos per listing. And more. Plus, no resellers. Ever.

Zibbet is a fast-growing online marketplace, and they have pledged to their growing number of handmade sellers to NEVER open their doors to resellers and factory-made items. But even as Zibbet grows, we cannot prosper without buyers, so I hope my lovely customers will follow me to Zibbet!

I've decided to migrate my current Etsy listings over to Zibbet as they expire. So far, I have one item listed. It looks lonely, and I want to retake the photos, but it's a start. I have a couple of listings expiring tomorrow, so I'll put them up over at Zibbet, and see what happens. The buyer base is much smaller, so I'm not sure what to expect in the way of views and sales.

I'm going to leave my supply shop on Etsy for now. See what happens. Supplies have always done well on Etsy, so I hope that continues.

If you sell on Etsy, what did you think of yesterday's announcement (all sellers received an e-mail outlining the changes.) What is your plan, moving forward?

Grand (Re)Opening of my Supply Shop

Today's the grand re-opening of my Etsy Supply Shop, SweetGoodies (not a bakery, I swear!)

I started the shop several years ago, but closed it after only a few sales, because I was just too busy with other things to manage 2 Etsy shops AND the bead shop.

But times have changed, and I seem to have more time now, or I'm managing it better, or something, so I decided to re-open the supply shop, with a new focus. The old shop was strictly commercial supplies, the new shop will focus primarily on handmade components, although some commercial supplies will find their way in from time to time.

I got a few listings up today - I have made a pile of copper components, and am getting them listed, slowly. Today's photo session didn't go as well as I'd hoped, so I need to retake some of the shots.

I also have a huge pile of copper components that I am going to enamel for the shop: clasps, connectors, and more. - but I doubt I will get to the torch before the end of next week. But look for bright bursts of enameled color to flood the shop with a couple of weeks!

I already have 2 classes on the schedule for next week; 1 in wire wrapping, and 1 beadweaving. Just as I decided to dedicate my free time to making handmade components, classes are booking left and right. Not complaining, though!

Once I get the first batches of copper enameled, I hope to be able to take custom requests for enameled components in the supply shop, although I'm afraid the turn around will be LONG -- like 2-3 weeks, because of all my other commitments. Plus, it's just plain time consuming to start from scratch; creating the copper component first, and then taking it through the enameling process, and then photos. But I'll make it work!

Some of the items I listed today:

Textured Copper Components, perfect for earrings!

Wavy antiqued copper discs

These wavy discs are the ones I used to create these earrings:

 

It's Science, Baby!

Let's switch it up a little - here's what's going on in my backyard:

I know it is technically autumn now, but my South Carolina backyard still thinks it is summer.

I planted a sprig of Passiflora incarnata (Passionflower) in my backyard over 15 years ago, not knowing that it was highly invasive, and you know what? I'm glad I didn't know (although I quickly learned!) - because I probably never would have planted it, and I would have missed out on a lot.

 Passiflora incarnata blooms (Passionflower)

These are a couple of the passionflower blooms, a few weeks ago - surrounded by their pretty, abundant, 5-lobed leaves and their graspy, grabby tendrils. The tendrils will grab anything, and wind around them tightly - so fast, you can actually see it happen if you settle down with a good book, and hold out a finger (not that I've ever done that).

I've blogged about my passion for passionflower before; but what's going on now is new! Let me lay a little groundwork for you, first.

At the time I purchased my little sprig of Passionflower, I was told that it was the only natural food source for the caterpillar of the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) butterfly:

Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae)

Sure enough; the year after I planted it, I started seeing these pretty orange and black butterflies; more and more of them each year - but nothing like this year! There are hundreds and hundreds of them! Just gorgeous!

And where there are hundreds of butterflies, you can bet their are hundreds of caterpillars. And did I mention - their offspring are voraciously hungry?

The passionflower vines are covering at least 50% of the other foliage in my yard, as well as my entire deck - so pretty! But within a few days of hatching, the caterpillars start to decimated the vine's foliage, leaving it pretty "moth-eaten."

Compare the picture of the passionflower foliage above, with one I took yesterday:

Decimated foliage of Passiflora incarnata

The leaves you see to the right are from the obviously non-tasty forsythia - a hardy shrub with pretty yellow blooms in the Spring. This particular portion of the passionflower is covering my deck, and the forsythia, and a couple of hydrangeas - and all the passionflower blooms are gone. In this area.

And look what I found when I inspected a little closer:

caterpillar of the Gulf Fritillary

This hungry varmint is trying to hide behind a forsythia leaf.

caterpillar of the Gulf Fritillary

Mere inches away from the first caterpillar, another one tries to find a few molecules of sustenance. And these caterpillars aren't hard to find - the vine is covered in them.

The new thing that is happening now is that these caterpillars have decided to use my HOUSE for the next phase in their life cycle.

Starting a few weeks ago, every time I'd open the back door to let Bailey out, I see 2 or 3 of the caterpillars dangling upside down in the door jamb. Weird. And the next day, there'd be what looked to be a dried-up leaf in their place, but in actuality it was their chrysalis.

So I took the camera home from the shop with me yesterday, hoping to catch this process. And as I quickly discovered, it's not just the door jamb - it's the whole back of the house!

Here is one of the caterpillars soon after attaching to the house (they apparently have some way to drill into the house (or tree, or whatever) with their back end, and then they hang upside down like a bat. These are 2 different caterpillars:

 early stage of pupation, Gulf Fritillary

early stage of pupation, Gulf Fritillary

Within less than 18 hours, they start to visibly change:

Early pupation, Gulf Fritillary

See the white areas near the head of the caterpillar? If not, allow me to point them out:

Chrysalis formation, Gulf Fritillary

[BTW - pay NO attention to the mold growing on my house - I certainly don't.]

Within another 24 hours, the chrysalis has completely formed - here are 2 of the hundreds attached to my house:

Gulf Fritillary chrysalis

Gulf Fritillary chrysalis

I don't know how long they stay like this - I assume until next spring, since there is no foliage for hungry newly-hatched caterpillars to eat in the late fall and winter. And I wonder what creatures find these chrysalises good eating?

Over to the far right of my deck, I have a Chaste tree (Vitex sp.) that the passionflower vine just discovered this year - yesterday I saw that the tree is partially covered in passionflower, with some gorgeous blooms, and none of the foliage has been eaten. I guess it takes  a year or so for the butterflies to lay their eggs, and for the eggs to then hatch, before the caterpillars can start eating the new portions of the vine. According to the Internet (motto: "We'd never lie to you."), Passiflora incarnata can grow 15 or more feet in one season. I am going with "more," since it discovered and completely took over this tall tree just since this Spring.

Passiflora incarnata blooming on Chaste tree

This was a difficult shot for me to get; the blooms are about 20 feet away from me, and about 20 feet off the ground, so I used the telephoto lens. The arrow is pointing to the large 5-lobed leaves of the vine, completely untouched by hungry caterpillars. To the right of the arrow, and a little below it, is one of the purple passionflower blossoms. There are a few more blooms in there, but they are lost in the setting sun coming in from behind the tree.

 Butterfly life cycle

So, there's today's science lesson!

And on a more jewelry-related note: After 1 full day and 2 half days of steel wooling, here is my pile of polished oxidized copper components (following the Liver of Sulfur treatment a few days ago), ready to go into the tumbler. I was surprised at how heavy this little pile is - I had to split in in 2 for the tumbler runs. The first half is in now, and the rest will go in tomorrow. Now that this chore is basically done, I can set up the torch for enameling (on a different batch of components)! After I teach a beadweaving class tomorrow, though.

ready for the tumbler, finally!

It stinks in here!

I have fallen a little behind on my production schedule; I just took this batch of copper pieces through the Liver of Sulfur, and boy, did I stink up the bead shop!

I need to take the stuff outside and dump it, now that I'm done, but the shop has been steadily busy all day, so no chance to sneak outside. Yet. My customers are too nice to tell me how bad it stinks in here, but I popped out quickly to close the car windows (fixin' to rain again!) - and my eyes and nose started burning from the stench when I came back in!

Next up: I get to take steel wool to these pieces, and polish them up, and then I'll tumble them.

I still need to drill holes in some of the pieces I plan to enamel - that's a whole 'nother pile.

I had really hoped to already be enameling by this time, but it wasn't to be - and I'm teaching classes on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, so it looks like maybe Thursday for the torch, depending on how quickly I can get the drilling done.

In production mode

As I said earlier this week, I am putting down the beadwork for awhile to work with metal.

One of my goals is to re-open my supply shop on Etsy, and stock it with handmade etched and/or enameled metal components and findings. Towards that end, I have been busy all week hammering, cutting, drilling, etching, pickling, sanding, etc....

Here is the temporary workstation I improvised in the middle of the bead shop so that I could get more work done without having to constantly get up to get what I need:

After 4 days, I have finally finished (for this run, anyway) all the etching and cutting.

I still need to drill a lot of holes, and sand some pieces. And I also have some hammering yet to do.

Also yet to come: Liver of Sulfur for the etched pieces.

And also, enameling - I will try to get to this by the middle of next week. There is still much to do before I can even think of firing up the torch! Plus, I am teaching a beadweaving class next Wednesday, so that whole day is shot as far as this endeavor is concerned! But at least I will get to squeeze in a little beading!

And after all this metal drudgery fun, comes the worst part: photos, descriptions, and listing on Etsy. I hope to get the  Etsy shop back open by the last week in September, even if I only have a few items listed!