For lo, cleanliness is nigh unto godliness

Half of my favorited shops on Etsy are soap shops. I've only ever made one soap purchase, but it's more for lack of money than anything else. With more funds I would gladly buy five times as much soap as I and my good friends could ever use.

As this is so, I had to make a soap treasury. Actually I will probably make several soap treasuries as time goes on, but this is the first. It has little direction. I just wanted to showcase some fantastic soaps I had come across.

Pomtini by TallulahsSoaps

This one was the last one I found, and when I saw it I knew it must go in the treasury. I love the colors. It almost seems to glow.

Root Beer by luxuryfalls

This one smells like root beer, which I find amusing, but that's not why I chose it. I love the marbling effect on this bar, and also that it seems to go all through the bar. It's pretty enough when only the top is swirled, but to swirl the whole bar must take some effort.

Pandora's Promise by Intentions

I have had Intentions in my favorite shops for a loooooong time, mostly because of how fun her soaps look. This one was chosen because it looked the most fun, and I was trying to feature fun soaps as well as beautiful ones.

Speaking of fun soaps...

Sunny Side Up - Goats Milk Soap Bar by soapopotamus

Animal Cracker Soap Set by aBreathofFrenchair

Yep, fried egg soap and animal cracker soap. The fried egg soap comes from another of my longtime favorite shops, and is full of all kinds of food soaps, mostly desserts such as doughnuts and cake. The animal cracker soap was made from molds made from real animal crackers, so are exactly like!

One Angel Wing Soap in Grace by SatinandBirch

I saved the most beautiful soap for last. While this soap cannot boast of a huge bar, and the emphasis is not so much on the scent, this is still the star of the show. And if cleanliness is next to godliness, surely bathing with angel wings will get you extra points.

Click here to see the full treasury, and don't forget to share this blog post and/or the treasury with your soap-loving friends!

Yeah, Maybe

I laid out all of my thread by color so I could more easily work on choosing colors for a project.

"No one should own this much thread," said my brother Ben.

Honestly

Remember how I was ranting about whale playing cards being one of my top keywords? It was number three or something. Well, today I signed into my Google Analytics and found this:



Yes, that's right. 'Whale playing cards' is now my number one phrase for people finding my shop. Not only is it number one, but look at this spike (click to make it larger):



What on earth happened last Thursday that made so many people (or one person many times, I can't tell) search for 'whale playing cards' and then go to my shop? What was it??

The Best of the Best

I have finally created my first treasury. It has taken me this long to try it because a) I am lazy and b) I kept getting frustrated and giving up because there were so many things I wanted to feature but wouldn't because the product photos weren't great. I am so determined to fix all of my photos now...

Anyway, the theme I finally decided on was A Life's Work, or in other words, really fantastic pieces created by talented people. You can see the whole treasury here. But here are some highlights:


Skintenna Top by BrightCircle
This was the one that inspired me to do this showcase. I stumbled on this one while trying to create a different treasury, and then searched out 11 other items to go with it. This took 90 hours of work, people. If that's not dedication I don't know what is.


robot pixel mashup fair isle sweater by elf518
Now that I have finished one item and therefore officially taken up knitting as a hobby, I have become a lot more interested in the craft. Something I really want to learn is fair isle knitting. This is a particularly fantastic example of the technique.


Tiger Lily Chinese Brush Painting by CLineCreations
I found CLineCreations through her bobby pins, which are decorated with a knot done in silky cording. (I now own one in pink and white cord.) However, I was also impressed with her brush paintings. Having admired them for months, I had to put one in this treasury.

That's only three examples from the treasury. Click here to see the rest of it, and marvel at the talent as I did.

Odd Ways to Find Us

The Etsy shop is registered with Google Analytics, which provides us with all sorts of wonderful goodies about the people who visit our shop. One of my favorite things is the part that tells us what keywords people have used in search engines that have led them to our shop. Most of these make sense - keywords or phrases having to do with duct tape and friendship bracelets - and some of them are very odd.

It only shows the keywords for the last month or so, so I can't find everything that has been used to find us, but I can provide some.

2 visits "amy butler olive seeds"
2 visits "world war ii pin up costumes"
1 visit "abby sciuto costume"
1 visit "edible massage candle"
1 visit "who designed the breakfast at tiffany's sleep mask"

And the oddest one of all - whale playing cards, 24 hits.

Really? Whale playing cards? 24 HITS? How does that make any sense? Especially because I know this number has been higher and seems to be regularly used - 18 of the last 31 days have hits, including yesterday. ??? My only guess is that it counts when people come to Etsy by searching for whale playing cards and then view my shop before leaving Etsy.

...

Actually, that's probably how I got all of these hits. People look for stuff, find their way to Etsy, and visit my shop before heading off into the internets again. Well that makes some of these less odd.

I STILL THINK 24 HITS FROM WHALE PLAYING CARDS IS ODD

A Year of Etsy

This was my first full year of having an Etsy shop, and I think things went pretty well. Here are some stats for 2010!

119 items sold (total: 141)
26 PDF tutorials
23 duct tape rose rings
15 custom orders

20 sets of wish bracelets
14 alpha bracelets
7 bracelets costing $20 or more
6 charm bracelets
5 flame patterned bracelets

6 bracelets so lame there is no way I would put them up for sale if I still had them

199 shop hearts (total: 230)
We have every letter represented with at least one username aside from U, Y, and Z. Also, 28 of those hearts are secret admirers.

344 item hearts
Top five hearted items:
38 hearts on the PDF tutorial
14 hearts on the custom order form for one rose ring
13 hearts on the dark rainbow plaid bracelet
11 hearts on the zebra duct tape rose ring
10 hearts on both the pink peacock bracelet and the duct tape sunflower pen
This may not be too accurate, because until only recently, when an item sold and was then renewed it was a whole new listing and lost all views and hearts. If not for this, our Charlie ring and white rainbow plaid bracelet would probably be on this list, and the black plaid and custom order form would have had more.

First sale made on January 3, 2010 (a ridges bracelet)
Last sale made on December 31 (the PDF tutorial)
Most items sold in one day: five on December 13th
Most items sold in one month: 25 in December

*beams*

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of myself.

While looking through these stats, I noticed that, in the four months from me starting me shop to the end of 2009, I made over 20 sales, the first within about a week of opening. That's pretty fantastic. Some people on Etsy wait months to have their first sale. I always felt like I'd had to wait forever for a sale and then had really slow sales, but compared with a lot of newbies, my shop was on fire! I suppose then that it is only right that things continue to get better, especially with how well this year ended.

Goals for 2011:
Average 20 sales a month
Get over 100 hearts on a single item
Sell a single bracelet priced at $40 or more ($35 is my current record in an off-Etsy purchase)
Get on the front page of Etsy, in Etsy finds, or be featured on the Etsy blog
Have 550 shop hearts