Zibbet and Computer Troubles

My computer's AC to DC adapter cable went caput, as they say, so I'm working off of my boyfriend's computer right now...it's a bit of a problem, since I have a ton of photos and information on my computer that I need. I need it because I'm starting to sell on a couple of other platforms...and I need my stuff in order to set up shop. Very bad timing. We'll see how it goes.

See, while it's free to have an Etsy account, and free to set up your shop, it's not free to list things OR to sell them. $0.20 per listing for 4 months, and a certain percentage - 3.5% at the moment - of your sale. Sites like Zibbet and Big Cartel and Handmade Spark and ArtFire, on the other hand, have different policies. They don't charge a listing fee or a percentage, and instead they charge a monthly having-a-shop fee. At the moment, this isn't good for me. AT ALL. Etsy would be cheaper any way you look at it. Not counting the 3.5% sale fee (which has probably totalled to like 3.50 since I started selling) I'm being charged like $1.25 per month...that's like 20% of Zibbet's "best value" yearly $69.00 fee ($5.75/month)...not to mention its monthly fee...if you sign up monthly instead of yearly, they charge you like $10.00. Then there's Handmade Spark, which says it has a free account but I can't find out how to get one because no matter what signup I do, it wants my paypal account for $6.00/month. And Big Cartel, I don't even remember how much it was. But Zibbet and Big Cartel (and disappointingly, not Handmade Spark or ArtFire, that I can see) have free accounts where you can set up a little shop and have fewer items than you want and fewer features than you want and see how it goes. Big Cartel, appallingly, only lets you post 5 things for sale...REALLY not enough. Zibbet lets you do 50, which is enough for me at the moment...though there are some crazy Etsy shops with thousands of items listed. It's very strange that these sites use this method, because I can either pay nothing and have a small shop, or pay extravagantly and have a big shop, whereas on Etsy I pay a little and have as big or little a shop as I want. I'm definitely a fan of being on Etsy when I look at it like that.

And I think Etsy's way is the best way...how much you pay depends on how much you are trying to sell and how much you actually do sell...which in my case turns out to be a modest $1.25 a month and small change. It's working out pretty well for me, so far, and I've made 17 sales through that site. Not as much as I want, of course, but that would be impossible, because if I got as many sales as I wanted, I would never be able to keep up with it. It's allowing me to keep making jewelry and I'm breaking even with a little profit, too. It won't sustain me or let me live without needing another job, but it's funding itself right now, and that's my short-term goal.

Etsy also gets the most traffic, the most views, the most google hits, the most everything. Etsy is, in a word, gigantic...and for a little seller, that's the best way to be. My pictures pop up every now and then. Sure I'm not on the first or third or even fourth page when you search etsy for origami earrings...but somehow I still get sales. Probably because mine are the best :] hehe. But in all seriousness, there are so many people looking through that site, all the time, looking for their specific things or just browsing the aisles, that people I don't know actually come to look at my stuff. And not only that, but there's a massive community involved that I actually need to get more involved in soon, joining teams and adding circles and stuff. Etsy is all very interconnected, and very good at making its members feel like they are really members of the massive handmade community that they ARE members of.

But of course, it's best if I come up in as many searches as possible. I want to come up on Zibbet and Big Cartel and Handmade Spark and ArtFire - if only I could.

I guess overall, I'd love to be on Big Cartel, it seems awesome, but it's unlikely. I am going to be on Zibbet. ArtFire seems just disappointing to me. And Handmade Spark is a good community site, but I don't see much selling coming from there. I get the newsletter, that's all. So we'll see how this goes. As far as ripping me off just to let me sell my products, it still seems like Etsy is the least-bad offender...and gets the most traffic anyway. But it's still good to have other options. I wish the others would adopt a more reasonable payment system, though.


Something else: thethingsiwant.com. I don't expect people to go looking for my list to buy me presents, but since I'm now buying supplies from more than just one site, I figured a universal wish list wouldn't be out of order...it's very useful to combine the things you want instead of just having a bunch of separate wish lists. And the way it adds things is that it puts a button in your bookmarks toolbar that links to the thing that adds things to your list...so you just go to the item's page and click one of your bookmarks and then the thing is in your list. Very neat.

...so now, mom, if you want to know what I want for my birthday, and "jewelry supplies" is too vague to cut it, you can search for the wishlist of letterboxlion@gmail.com (I think it searches by email, but it might be by username, in which case it would just be letterboxlion.) It's purely a list of supplies that I want, some with notes like "for wire-wrapping" or "must get with X gauge wire" so it's pretty handy. And it lets you use priorities so while I can keep track of that butane fusing torch, I can realistically note that I should not be even close to getting it yet. :)



More news: I don't have my pictures to post up yet because of my computer problems, but I did make awesome pendants with a few of the cabochons I put up last post...I'll post them when I get my new cable. But good news is, the first person I showed my work to who is outside of the nuclear family with whom I am staying decided she wanted to buy one of my pieces for her daughter-in-law! Her husband's father was an experienced silversmith, and he told me that I have talent. I think that means that I'm off to a good start, when people who have experience with jewelry and metalwork think my work is up to par! I'll post pictures soon, I'm so excited! And hopefully soon I'll get them up on my site! Oh man, so excited. I never expected to be this involved in the crafting world, but it's happening very excellently.

And my new baby is a pair of nylon-jawed round-nose pliers. Thanks to Evan! After he gave it to me for Christmas I pretty much went crazy and made a bunch of pieces, some serious wire-wrapped ones as well as some silly little hammered pieces that were just fun to make and a good way to spend a few crystals. Itching to put them online, let me tell you. Positively fidgety. Well, that's life!

Lots of pretty photos! And vacation.

I'm now on Christmas break! Though, I know for most people those days are probably far behind them, and "Christmas break" just brings back memories of airport rushing around and trying to find a way to get your mom to take you to the mall so you can buy her a gift without her knowing what it is. No airports for me, this year I'm staying in Boston with my boyfriend and his family, who are all amazingly nice. It's very exciting!
My boyfriend's brother has already 1) taught me how to solder (which I've been itching to try for a long time), 2) given me his old soldering iron (he has a new one) 3) given me some solder specifically for use with silver, which is what I'm going to DO, 4) given me a bunch of old, useless and incompatible-with-anything RAM sticks to cut up and use in jewelry...silver and gold accents on an intricately patterned deep green color. I'm so excited! Such possibility. Some of them even have holes already so I can string them if I want.

But I don't have a file to get the edges nice, or a saw to cut them up into smaller pieces, so I might have to wait before I can do what I'd like. I also don't have flux, which you usually need for jewelry soldering...Evan doesn't need it because he just uses it for electrical stuff, but jewelry is specialized in a different way. Maybe when I get going on it I'll post up a tutorial or something...which, knowing me, will be "How To Get Away With Soldering Jewelry Without Following Most of the Steps"


...AND IT'S NOT EVEN CHRISTMAS YET. Also he and Boyfriend of Mine have a bunch of old computer parts and they say they could help me make a good, fast desktop (something I do not have at all at the moment) for $100. A good deal. I'm surrounded by so many nice people!


So finally I'm posting up my awesome rocks. This is, apparently, standard procedure for jewelry-makers with blogs, but it's mostly because I want to, because I am so excited about them. Actually, I think that's WHY it's standard procedure - those people all get excited about the same things that I do.

First of all, I'd better link to these folks: rockcutter62 and terrafinds. They are the awesome people from which I ordered most of this stuff...both of them are awesome and I have no qualms advertising for them...Terra's stuff is more beautiful than her pictures (and she takes very good pictures) and she has sales often enough to make me want to buy all her stuff, all the time. She finds some of the prettiest labradorite I can find, on etsy or off, and sells it for less than almost everybody else sells theirs. And Ron (rockcutter62, of course) is an awesome retired man just cutting cabochons because he loves to do it, and selling them for beyond-reasonable prices. He even threw me in a free gift because he thought one of the cabs I bought was too "marginal"...a totally bizarre standard in my opinion, (the price I bought it for was $1.00!) but I'm not going to complain!

Here's some pretty rocks:

Itty-bitty lapis lazuli cab with pyrite inclusions...such an intense blue, I love it!









Okay, this one I bought because I'm a sentimental baby. My boyfriend's eyes look like blue lace agate, so I bought the least-expensive one I could find that still looked nice and usable (It's not even a cabachon, it's a pendant bead)...I intended it to be my first wire-wrapping experiments so I could be all sentimental and a baby, but I RAN OUT OF SILVER WIRE. More on that later.

This is a sweet little one. Owyhee jasper. I like it because the little blossoms on the side have a hint of pink to complement the brown. This was the one I got for free with the other (non-marginal) one that cost only $1.00. I probably wouldn't have bought it by itself, but now that I have it and can see it up close, I like it a lot.




And, uh, just...let me reiterate that.



Okay so the second picture isn't too clear, but at least it shows some of the color. I love this stone. Dark green, a color that really doesn't show up adequately on camera, shines like glass, has lots of depth...and like any good seraphinite, it looks like somebody squished an angel into it. I'm so happy about this stone. And it's BIG. BIG. (And Ron sold it to me for $5 because it was 50% off...when anyone else would have sold it for $20.) I'm such a big fan of this rock that I bought another one from him as soon as I got it:



AHHHHHHHHH. SO. PRETTY. I can't wait for my silver wire to come, because I am going to have a LOT OF FUN.


*breathe* Okay. Some even shinier things:

These are both from TerraFinds. Gorgeous high-quality garnets and labradorite...I had more of each, but I put them into Christmas presents, which I will post up AFTER my friends tell me they got them and oh man so shiny and well, I don't really like red but I'm sure it will go with something. The garnets look dark, dark red and shine lighter red on whatever they are near.
The labradorite is a smoky grey with shiny flecks in it, that at certain lights, does an impossible-looking color-change and becomes teal-green, or this brilliant shade of blue. The color-changing effect is so awesome and unique that it's named after the stone: labradorescence. Speaking of which.





BAM.

















Oh, uh, sorry, didn't catch that?

















I mean, enough said. You can see right into them. And like the other ones, they change in different lights. These ones are cabochons (no holes), so I need my silver wire (!) to wrap them...I can't just string them on wire and let them show off by themselves. But they are top-notch, really gorgeous. The other ones are awesome in their smoky-grey-ness, but these are crystal clear right up to the layers with the gorgeous colors. Breathtaking, really, for something so small.



AND here's where I post my first attempt at wire-wrapping. CAVEAT: It's not ultra-stable. I was so impatient to start wire-wrapping that I had to do it with the only large-gauge wire I had at the time (other than full-hard copper soldering wire) which happened to be gold-filled 20G dead-soft. Translation: it's really soft wire. I hammered it and everything, but it's still easy to take the stone out by bending the top back. Which I guess is okay, since you actually have to lift it out even if you take the top off...the bottom is secure. I wore it all day yesterday and it never showed any signs of not staying in. But it's not realy sell-able...though since it's my FIRST WRAP EVER I guess I wouldn't sell it anyway. BUT HEY. I didn't even make a total-failure-mess-of-things, as expected. My FIRST WRAP EVER and it's WEARABLE.



And pretty, too.












Now tell me, does that stone look "marginal" to you? Does it look worth $1.00? Because that is what I paid for it. It's not only the only one of these cabochons that really goes with gold wire, it's also REALLY. PRETTY. Blood poppy jasper. I would have paid more for it without the free gift thrown in. Seriously, give that guy some business.


So, I owe this blog a few more pictures...I'm going to post up the presents I made because I like what I did, but of course I can't post those until after their recipients see them. And I may not, depending on how much they like them.
Those should also go up under "recent creations" on my site, so don't let me forget.

Goings-on

Whoo! So much going on. Ballroom competition...eh, it went ok. Made some semifinals. Didn't actually go as well as my first competition did, which is strange because it was about the same size. And there was no internet, so none of my paper got written because I had no sources to work from...Well, so it goes. So tired! My feet, oh my feet.
Sold some more stuff! AND got it done in a timely manner (three custom orders at once!). So proud of myself. Christmas is a really inconvenient time for there to be finals to worry about, but I think I'm handling it pretty well (so far). Better blog now, this week is going to be a busy one.
My website client, weebly, also emailed me to tell me that my website views are skyrocketing. (Which I would hope, since 1 is infinitely more than 0.) Score! Oh man, so tired. Need to write paper. Wait what have I eaten in the last 24 hours?

NEW WEBSITE

Ok I know I know I just posted today. BUT I GOT A NEW WEBSITE. That is, I made one. Weebly is an awesome and really intuitive free website-maker application...I recommend it so far, and it has capabilities for things like blog and facebook integration, so it's really handy. Slideshows, movies, you can do tons with it. My site isn't done yet, but with only a couple of hours of playing with it I've got something pretty solid set up.

SO GO CHECK IT OUT PLEASE. And hey, 22 people "like" it already ;D facebook is pretty scary that way, I don't even know how it knew that that facebook page and that site were the same thing.

A Conundrum

I made a necklace:

Lariat-style(?...I think that's what it's called.) celestial-themed, long and silvery and neat. However.

It's designed specifically to look good on people of my body shape. Basically, it's long and it goes into your cleavage, to make it look like you actually have a little. It draws the eye downward. It is really not designed for people who ACTUALLY have cleavage, since I can easily see it getting really uncomfortable for anyone who has anything there. And while I can describe that in the etsy post, I think it's not very clear to just say "wear it if you have small breasts and want to show it off" - few people probably want to show that off, and it's difficult to make it clear that the necklace is designed to make your cleavage a little MORE impressive, not just make your lack thereof more obvious.
It's also a little long right now. I think I'll shorten it up a bit.
But meanwhile, do I take photographs of me wearing it, to show how it's supposed to look? Does anyone really want to buy something they have seen in someone else's cleavage already??
I'm afraid it would be misleading to just post the photos of it on the table because it's impossible to show the real size or scale or how it would look hanging.

It occurs to me to perhaps take the toggle stick off and thread the chain through the toggle hole. I'll have to look into that, too.