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

She's Mad At Us

This is Bamboo.


She's not the happiest of kitties right now.


First of all, something bit her and created an oozing sore that got blood all over Melissa's sheets.

Then we took her to the vet, got the area shaved and cleaned, and put a cone on her head.

You decide which one of these incidents was the most obnoxious to her.

Me, I'm just going to nurse the scratches on my hand and giggle as she catches the cone on things.

Why Does No One Agree With Me?

I am not feeling well, and as some of you may know, when I don't feel well I whine A LOT. I've actually done it so much that I am sick of whining about the pains in my tummy and need something else to complain about. So! I'm going to complain about things in my shop that I really like but that haven't sold (or at least not as well as I want them to).


This bracelet was the second one I made of this pattern, but it was supposed to be the first. However, I didn't have enough black thread when I first set out to make this bracelet and ended up making one with a white background. Only later did I make a black one. I liked both of these bracelets so much, and they have been so popular with others, that I have made them two of the few permanent friendship bracelets in the shop, listed as made to order and always relisted when sold.

My problem is that everyone buys the white one. I mean yeah, the white one is awesome too. But the black one? This bracelet is awesome. I chose fantastic colors, if I do say so myself, and they almost glow against the black. But let's go to the scoreboard:

White: 4 sold, 1 requested as a gift, 1 traded
Black: 1 sold


This was pretty much the first bracelet I listed on Etsy. Or at least one of the first three. It got a lot a views and a lot of hearts compared to the rest of the shop. It was rather well made even compared to my knotting now. When market season started it was taken off Etsy and put in our market discount bowl because it was older and had been made back when I knotted both ends of the braided ties.

I still have it.


I admit that this one here could be a picture problem. I have been unable to take good pictures of the any of the seasons bracelets despite several attempts. Hmm. I haven't tried in a while. Maybe I should try again. Or maybe I should give up on these ones. But... but... I likes them!

The End

Since the Epic Bracelet went to its owner like two months ago, I suppose I could post some pictures of the final product.




Yep, that's it. Biggest bracelet I've ever made. So far, anyway. I want to make one that says Quiet Mischief and Company, and I'm considering doing one that says 100 Hour Board. Both just for me. But since I am spending every free waking minute typing these days, I don't have much time for non-work projects.

...what's that? Why am I spending every free waking minute typing?

NaNoWriMo.

Those of you who have been around my blog awhile know that I used get a little more vocal this time of year - two years ago I posted almost every day in the month of November. However, last year I was trying to get typing in along with actually having a job (*gasp*) and trying to run a newborn online shop and didn't have time for blogging. This year? I'm just lazy.

And it's too bad I haven't been talking about things. I've had some exciting times this year already. You know how it's the ninth of November today? And we have until the 30th to write 50,000 words? Yeah, hit 50,000 last night a little before six PM, having written the last 1500 in about half an hour because my boyfriend was hurrying over to stop me from hitting 50,000 (jerk).

There's Some Green!

So I've been meaning to upload pictures of the Epic Bracelet for a little while, but was hoping that I would be able to be a little more interesting about it. The need for an update has forced me to post them without anything to say. *sigh*


By the end of this row, I was on my third skein of white.



Not only am I almost done with the 'n' in Ethan, I have also started adding the green in!

Whoo-hoo!

?

Also, a picture from my merchandise photo shoot today:

No, Really

YOU GUYS.

I have always wanted to learn to belly dance.

For those of you who know me, that is an outright laughable thing to say. I am a quiet, shy girl who loathes dancing of all kinds (or so we all thought), not to mention that I have yet to find even a one-piece bathing suit that fits my idea of modesty. I honestly have no clue why one of my glaring contradictions (a girl has to have a few glaring contradictions in her life) is that I want to belly dance.

I was reminded of this a week ago today while at my Pleasant Grove market. A theater group was performing Romeo and Juliet, but the market was starting to slowly fill with other performers, ones who jangled when they walked, flowed in the breeze, and had black screening over their otherwise bare stomachs. (This is Utah County we're talking about.) We had started cleaning up when the belly dancers finally went onstage, but I stopped to watch them anyway, and wished that I could forget my booth altogether.

I love how a good bellydancer moves, especially the separation between hips and torso. I mean, that's just crazy! "Lemme just be perfectly still from the waist up while my hips are gettin' all up in your business," I'd say. Though belly dancing is not all about the hips; often the arms get into the action too. And the hair. There is always a lot of hair. (There's another reason why I cannot be a belly dancer - my hair is, by my estimation, about six inches too short. At least. You never see a chick all swingin' her hips about in a jangly bra and skirt with her hair cut just below her jaw. The cropping is in the top, not the hair.)

Maybe it's just that I want to wear the jangly, flowy outfit, like people who buy designer jogging outfits to lounge around the house in. I have often noticed that I very much admire certain styles but feel that I could never pull them off, or that I'd have to apologize for dressing like that. "Sorry," I'd say to the indie girl I met in the street, "I'm not really like you at all. I don't listen to obscure bands or shop at thrift stores or anything. I just really like the look."

So no matter how much I want to belly dance, I think this is one dream that's not coming true. The hair, outfits, the dancing; it just wasn't meant to be.

Unicorns

Siri, our current expert on all things pink and sparkly, is here to answer your questions and fill the gaps in your knowledge. Today's topic: unicorns.


Q: When did the legend of the unicorns start?
A: I don't know. Last year.

Q: Is there any truth to it?
A: What?

Q: The legend. Of the unicorns. How much of it is real?
A: Unicorns are real!

Q: Where do they live?
A: They live in South America, on a farm where horses live.

Q: What do they look like?
A: They look like brown horses. They are white. They are white and pink. They are 20 feet tall. They have very long twisty-tidies with pokes at the end. The twisty-tidies are pink. Pink is my favorite color! But some unicorns don't have swirly things, twisty-tidies. They might have mistletoe! They have very big hooves, and they wear shoes on them. The shoes look like cat toes. Like cat-unicorn toes. Babies are two feet tall and have little paws like kitties.

Q: Okay, thank you. Um, what do unicorns eat?
A: They eat hay. And chickens. And they drink! Unicorns drink!

Q: What do they drink?
A: They drink water.

Q: What do unicorns do?
A: They go gallup-a-trot, and dance (here Cami did some head-banging and break-dancing), and some of them sneak, like cats, but sometimes they have to sit on their body or curl up so people can get on them. They go up on their hind legs, but magically, right up high like a little bird. Unicorns tip over, and guess what they can do? They walk on two legs, up high and down low, and then their sharp, their poke, it gets sharper. They can freak out. And they wave good-bye at their very own friends.

Q: Wow, that's -
A: They can go to unicorn parties. They eat horse food, or they can eat somebody else's food. And they grow up and up and up. And they will have problems, if they don't have the very sharp ones on their heads. Give them a drink and horse medicine, and take them to the unicorn doctor. The unicorn doctor will check out the throat and the tummy, and check out what things look like.

Q: Uh -
A: I saw a unicorn, far away, by Timpanogas Cave, and it ran like a blur far away all the way to the end. Unicorns neigh like horses. But they can't talk. And they go to school, and they can have fun at school! And they have to go to the bathroom. And the unicorns have a big, big unicorn computer.

Here I distracted her by mentioning princesses, then trapped her in the closet. She eventually talked herself to sleep.

It's Coming Along

Also: listened to 45 minutes or so of radio, with stations being changed every 10 seconds or so, and recognized 10 songs. Yeah, that's right.

Epic Bracelets at Market

I last worked on the bracelet in question at Saturday's market. Mondays I ship orders, you see, and so far today I haven't been able to get much done for various reasons. : (

I have finished the e in ethan, and started the c in charlotte.


Lena made a cute little piggy! (Not related to my bracelet, but it's cute, so I'm sure you'll forgive me.)


I hit the stopping point for the day; the c in charlotte is finished and the t in ethan has been started.


My dad's car stopped working on Thursday, so we had to use my mother's car. And we had to be picked up. So Lissi had to sit in the back among the flotsam of our book. She was nearly killed by a large table and had to sit in the car until I pulled several things away.

The Epic Bracelet: Part One

I am undertaking a rather difficult bracelet, by far the most difficult one I have so much as thought of. A friend of mine commissioned it for her sister. Read on to see just how difficult this bracelet will be.

Here are my materials: seven skeins of white, four of pink, three of red, and three of green. Will I need it all? Probably not, but it's good to be prepared. Nothing like trying to finish a bracelet on a deadline only to find that you've run out of a specific color.


Here are a couple of terrible pictures trying to show my sketchbook - graphbook- whatever - where I have mapped out what has to get done in this bracelet. Yes, I do have to fit all three names in the large alphabet.




All of the currently needed threads cut and ready to go. So far I have used two skeins of red, two of pink, and I'm on my second skein of white. The green will come into play later.


One row done. I've made 31 knots so far. And now I must undo them, because I left out one pink string. : (


All correct now. 32 knots (I don't count the ones I have to unpick).


Three rows in and just under 100 knots. Also, fun facts: the biggest bracelet I have done, aside from this one, had 34 threads (one more than this bracelet) but was only 17 knots across (this one is 32 knots across).


And the stopping point for now. Not very much lengthwise, but I'm up to 224 knots.

Come Home, Mommy!

This is Camryn.

She was being rather funny yesterday. That is, she was being funny in between bothering my brother's poor puppy (who will always be a puppy no matter how old he gets) and generally misbehaving.

It started at lunch. She had found a clip that we use to hold salad bags closed, and decided it was a phone. She sat next to me, sharing my cucumbers and carrots, and occasionally making phone calls.

"Hello, Mommy. Say hello to mommy!"

I said hello, adding that I was eating lunch and couldn't talk right now.

"She can't talk right now. But mommy, you need to come home now. Okay. Bye."

Cami put down the phone and informed me that mom was on her way home.

Several more phone calls were made, and they started to all sound the same; she changed "Mommy, you need to come home" to "Come home Mommy" and "Mommy, come home." Why is that change significant?

(Skip ahead to 0:44 if you don't want to watch the whole thing.)

Later she told my brother Dano that she was going to build a "zapinator" that would zap mom back to our house. Then mom would ask, "Cami, why am I here?" and Cami would say "I made a zapinator to zap you back home!" Then mom would say "Oh, how sweet! Why don't you come with me?"


This is Caiti. She's 2.

Around dinner, Ben took the kids for a walk with Perry (the aforementioned puppy). When Caiti came home, she came up to me, told me something about the walk, craned her neck to see what I was watching on my laptop, and said, "Whatcha doin'?"

Market Adventures: Week Three

May 29
Week Three

Hooray for mild success! We sold over $30 today. Nowhere near what I would like it to be, but better than we have done before.

We owe much of it to Lissi. Her duct tape rings were the most popular item on the table, at least as far as actual purchasing goes.



The item that got the most views was the duct tape tie.

We have a couple of ideas why the tie didn't sell: there was only one, and, while cool, people didn't seem to realize it was wearable. We're going to fix this by having several next week, and having at least one of them that is actually tied for people to see and try on. We will not, however, lower the price, which is what a fellow vendor snottily suggested. *angry face*

Our setup overall looked better than last week. I'm constantly learning and changing things. I only wish we could afford real displays instead of cobbling them together with fabric and boxes.


I'm excited for next week, as usual, and hope that things will continue to get better. I'm sure they will, in fact, especially if I can get Lissi to stop looking for monologues and start making more duct tape items.

Market Adventures: Week Two

Here I am! And I have excuses for not posting this until Wednesday. They involve cats, driving, grumpiness on the part of myself and others, and a boyfriend who thinks I should hang out with him all the time or something.

Anyway. On with the show.

May 22
Week Two

The good news: despite terrible weather in the morning that I was sure would prevent any buyers, we set up and did manage to sell a bit.
The bad news: We made just enough to make our necessary stall payment, with no money for new supplies or even for change for next week.

However! Like last week, I am still optimistic; still sure that things are going to get better.

We changed our set up from the get-go, see?

It did do us proud. We got lots of people who were interested by different things. Some stopped to look at wish bracelets. Some noticed one or the other displays of my bracelets. Some noticed the bowls of discount bracelets. And some noticed the duct tape item.

Item, yeah, only one so far. But a good one. Lissi sat there with her tape and her clipboard and made a tiny rose, then attached it to a simple band. All duct tape. She made a tag, set the price as seven dollars, and put it in a bowl on the table.

It sold in five minutes.

Yeah, I'm glad I have her along. By this Saturday we're planning to have several items: more rings, a couple of ties, some flowers to carry and look pretty, and a couple of smaller flowers attached to headbands or barrettes. I'm excited. : D

And we have Lena's stuff now!

Aren't they pretty? I want one, and I don't even know what I'd do with it! When we have money for supplies, I'm totally going to get some of that string stuff for making bracelets.

All in all, it was an okay day. We did better than I expected, though we did have to suffer in the cold.

I was the one taking pictures, so I'm not in this one, but I was also wrapped in a blanket. Mine had Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, and Donald on it. : D

And there's one thing we brought home from Market that made me really happy.

This tiny little bundle of joy is a beautiful tabby/calico mix with lots of energy. Her name is Bamboo and we love her. Well, Yuki doesn't think much of this little intruder, but the rest of us love her. Hopefully Yuki will calm down in time.

Here's to high hopes for next week!

2nd Market To-Do List

Tomorrow is the second week of Market! Here's what I need to get done today:

Load everything into the car again, but better this time, so I don't think I've left things behind

Find the other tablecloth

Make business cards or something

Start about five bracelets, including two custom orders

Buy stickers

Make a cover page for the animal shelter photos so people don't ask us if we're selling dogs

Remember to eat

Get to bed on time


Looks like I have a couple things that will need to get done every Friday. Also, I need to remember to take pictures of things.

Market Adventures: Week One

May 15th
Week One

The good news: we made more than any week last year.
The bad news: that’s only about $27.

But I still feel optimistic. Want to know why? I hope you want to know why, because I’m going to tell you. I mean, you don’t have to read it all, but why wouldn’t you? We all know that I am a wonderful writer and hold you entranced. Yep. I’m going to go with that.

Item number one: our set up.
I’ve been reading up on good stuff to do for markets and shows, and though I do ponder all advice, I don’t always follow it. One thing I didn’t follow was that it was strongly suggested that the table with merchandise be completely in view of the passers-by. I rejected this because I didn’t want the table to be between me and potential customers. However, after most of the day and most of the Market-goers simply passing by, I moved the table to the suggested position. We didn’t get any more sales, but we did get a lot more people actually stopping to look at stuff instead of walking by with only a glance.

Item number two: our neighbors.
There were several problems with them. They were too darn nice, for one. Also, they both had the set up I at first opposed. Also, they both had interesting items (one was chainmail jewelry, the other hair accessories in an uber-popular style) while our most visible items were our simple wish bracelets. Sigh.

Item number three: timing.
The morning was chilly. It was the wrong kind of first day, i.e. the first day where everyone doesn’t even know about or forgets it rather than the first day where everyone lines up to see.

Item number four: displays.
Yeah, I need something better than fabric wrapped around cardboard boxes. One of our neighbors had this gorgeous set up with vintage picture frames with fabric inside so they could pin products to it, and lovely trays for rings, and all sorts of stuff. : P

Item number five: personality.
We… usually… said hi to people to who passed, and sometimes even asked them how they were doing. I need something better. Lissi, who is usually so outgoing, kept her head bent over her work and relied on me to call out first so she could look up and say something too.

Well, I figure that’s enough to work on for one week, especially since I do have more merchandise to make and I need to quit ignoring my Etsy shop. Sheesh!

But I’ll say it again: I’d rather do this than work for someone else.