FeltmeUpDesigns

This week I'm featuring the work of FeltMeUpDesigns AKA The Felt Menagerie

Mel hand makes needle felted birds and gifts and they are perfect as a Christmas gift, wedding toppers or simply as a gift to yourself!

Cardinal Christmas Decoration


Snowy Owl Mini Wreath


Bird Wedding Cake Topper


Check out her shop for lots more gorgeousness!

Weekly Round Up

This week I've been making nothing but pearl cluster bracelets. I've more or less caught up with all the ones that I've sold and have added a couple of new ones to my range. I've also spent more hours than I care to count, tweaking my listings and titles for when Etsy search reverts to relavancy only. Hope it's been worth it!

New this week -
Forest Green Pearl Cluster Bracelet


Lavender Purple and Silver Pearl Cluster Bracelet


Quarry Blue Pearl Cluster Bracelet

Recent Purchases

I've been doing some buying from Etsy and thought I'd share with you.

I bought myself this Tote Bag - contemporary print from fellow UK chat thread regular MoaningMinnie It was beautifully made and got lots of outings when I was on holiday.


If you are looking for well made hats, neckwarmers, headscarves and more, check out this shop!

Friday Round Up

This week I'm managed to complete 2 out of 3 custom orders. For these 3 orders I've wire wrapped somewhere along the lines of 700 pearls, so I'm pleased (and relieved!) that I've got them done. I've also been trying to add some new things to my shop.

I've added these Bridal White Pearl and Rhinestone Fireball Sterling Silver Earrings These are made with handmade earwires from FoothillsFindings


I've been adding some new memory wire bracelets as well, including this Purple and Pink Pearl Memory Wire Bracelet


and this Burnt Orange, Champagne and Tangerine Pearl Memory Wire Bracelet This seems to be a very popular colour scheme for weddings this year, as I've had 3 custom requests since the beginning of January for bridesmaid accessories in these colours.

Mondays Featured Seller

Today I'm featuring the work of fellow UK chat thread seller OneStopPamperShop Here you will find a yummy mix of candles, votives and gifts.

I love this idea of the 12 days of Christmas candles, with scents such as mincy pies, orange and clove and mulled wine.


And how cute are these Snowball candles?


And finally, how about this personalised Photo hurricane candle lamp?


Check out her shop for more goodies :)

Mondays Featured Seller

Today I'm featuring the work of Italian crafter katrinshine In Katrins shop you will find a mix of leather and fabric jewellery, leather accessories, medieval dresses, corsets, patchwork bags and pillows.


Yellow-green leather Pendant


Cerise pink leather flowers bobby pins


Waist Reducing CORSET

Check out her shop for lots more gorgeous items, perfect for gifts.

Coupon Codes

Another great feature from Etsy! I think they are very slowly getting there with sellers tools and this one is in time for Christmas sales.

I've trying it out by offering 15% off to all my blog followers. Simply put in the code 'BLOG15' at checkout and Etsy should do the discount for you :)

Craftopolis Edit Express

Last week when I wanted to save time by batch editing my shipping, someone on the forums linked to the 'edit express' tool on craftopolis. I found that although it was my shipping that I wanted to edit and the tool doesn't allow for that, you can edit item prices, descriptions, titles and quantities easily.

Simply add your shop name, allow the app to connect to your etsy shop and the rest is simple!

I do have to ask though, why is it the Etsy never seems to offer these simple tools that help sellers so much and it's up to other sites to introduce them???

Friday Round Up

This week I have been working on some simple, single strand bracelets that are all $15 I wanted to offer an affordable range for stocking fillers and if they don't sell online I shall bring them to a craft fair I'm doing next week!


Chocolate Brown, Mocha and Ivory Beaded Bracelet


Burgundy, Silver and Grey Bracelet


Pale Pink, Purple and Diamante Bracelet

I was at a bead fair this morning and got some yummy beads, so will post some pics later this weekend of the beads and some of my new creations.

Weekly Round Up

This week I've been busy with making some bracelets and as always at this time of year, the big problem is getting them photographed! It's been a dull, wet week here and I'm noticing the quality of my pics is rapidly decreasing.

I've added a couple of bracelets to my shop, including this Coppery Gray Memory Wire Bracelet


and this Black and White Pearl Cluster Bracelet


Also back in time for Christmas, I've got some Christmas Baubles in a range of colours, including this Red Berries Christmas Bauble


and for the less traditional holiday colour scheme, one in teal


I'd appreciate some opinions too on whether or not you would buy a memory wire bracelet kit. I'd love to know if you think it would make a good gift, or if people would rather just buy the made up bracelet.

Friday Round Up

I'm heading off to Aberdeenshire in Scotland for half term tomorrow. I'm taking my beads and pliers with me, but will have limited access to the internet. Hopefully any buyers will be happy to wait a few extra days for their purchases!

This week I've been working on some new designs and replacing some items that have sold.

This Old Gold and Champagne Pearl and Crystal Bridal Cluster Bracelet is back in stock.


I've been working on some memory wire bracelets which resemble 3 strands of pearls, including this Burgundy, Raspberry and Pale Pink Pearl Memory Wire Bracelet


and this Rhinestone, Silver, Grey and Black Pearl Memory Wire Bracelet

Statsy Clockbot

How many threads are there and have there been in the Etsy forums asking what is the best time to list? when is the best day? etc.

I don't know the answer to that one but I do know looking at my stats, that I get my best views late evening (remember I'm in the UK) So I've taken to listing or renewing just before I go to bed. This has resulted in a couple of sales, especially in items I've listed in the Weddings category.

But I do wonder what would happen to views etc if I was in a position to list even later or overnight. And thanks to this nifty little tool, the statsy clockbot I can now renew an item whenever I want!

Simply log into the site, add the listing # of the item you want to renew, the date you want to renew it and the time (EDT timezone) and ta da! The item is renewed for you - brilliant!!

Craftopolis

I've got to admit with the new treasury east and the easy way of finding out if you are featured in a treasury, I've not been looking at craftopolis recently.

However I stumbled across an unrelated forum post that mentioned tagging and found that craftopolis' tag report allows you to see how people are finding you through Etsy search.

You just need to sign into your Google Analytics and you get the choice of finding out over the past 60, 30 or 7 days, yesterday or today.

It will give you the search type (usually handmade for me), search terms eg champagne, crystal, earrings and page found on, which I suppose lets you know what search page your item was on.

I suppose it's quite good if your items are in the top 10 pages of the search, especially for a jeweller like me with 1000's of us on Etsy, not so good if it's on page 93, like one of my bracelets! I just can't imagine anyone ploughing through 93 pages of bridal bracelets to stumble across mine :)

Friday Roundup

Today Alex starts grammer school. She spent 3 half days last week there at summer school but today's the first day of the uniform and classes. I've got such mixed feelings. So proud of her on one hand, dreading the inevitable growing up on the other.

Jewellery wise I've been working on custom orders and have been introducing some new items. I'm continuing to add to my earring section and been pleasantly surprised that they are actually selling LOL!

Aubergine Pearl Dangle Earrings


I've made this matching Aubergine Pearl Cluster Bracelet which I've got to say, I absolutely love!


And finally I've added this new Purple Pearls Memory Wire Bracelet

Craftweasel

I found out about craftweasel when browsing the Etsy forums and thought it was worth sharing.

One part of the site offers a 'shop stats tool', where you simply enter your Etsy shop name and it supplies you with loads of valuable data, such as a graph of your tags with most views/day (pale pink), a graph of your tags with the highest price (necklace) and a graph of your most-used tags (bangle)

The other part of the site is the 'tag finder tool' which -
"helps you choose the best set of tags for your Esty items. Tag finder will generate graphs showing the price and views per day of items with your query, as well as on related tags. This lets you see which tags will be likely to bring the highest number of views to your Etsy items."

It lets you see a distribution of prices, graph of related tags with most views/day and related tags.

I put in Pearl Cluster Bracelet and had a chuckle to find that AMIDesigns is rated one of the related tags to use :)

Weekly Roundup

This week I've been working on more custom orders and slowing down generally as I go on a 2 week vacation to Cornwall. I'm shutting up both my shops while I'm away as I think 15 days away is just too long to be open but unable to ship or maybe even respond to convos, as our interent access will be so limited.

This week I've been featured on this lovely website - BestHudsonValleyWeddingEver.com by Jen from NimiJewelry This Teal, Blue and Aquamarine Pearl Cluster Bracelet is the featured piece.



I won't be blogging again till my return from hols, when I hope to have some lovely photos :)

Friday Round Up

This week I've been busy with custom orders. We go on holiday to Cornwall next Friday so I won't be taking on any more custom work after the weekend - hubbie would kill me if I took beads with me on my hols!!

This week I went back to my roots and made this Honey and Amber Memory Wire bracelet


I also added this Silver Shimmer Memory Wire Bracelet


And finally, I've got a new Chocolate Brown and Turquoise Bubbles bracelet

Friday Round Up

Today is a very big day in our house. My daughter Alex leaves primary school. This week we went to her new school for her induction evening and last night we were at her Leavers Night at the Primary. I felt a little bit sad last night that she really is growing up and starting a whole new era, when she will turn from a little girl into a young woman via the inevitable nightmare teenage years. But I have no choice, she is ready and raring to go - it's me that needs to let go :)

This week I made the deciscion to reopen my Folksy shop. I haven't really added any new stock since Christmas but I've decided that I will give it another go. I like the fact I can refer people to a shop that sells in pounds but there are still a few things about the site that need work on. It remains extremely slow for one and I have still no idea how they decide where an item is in search - I have to hunt through several pages of listings before finding any of my items, even newly listed ones. I've decided to list only a few of the same items as in my Etsy shop, such as a few Bubbles bracelets, but will mainly do a different line of jewellery.

I've listed a few necklaces on Folksy including this Teal and Turquoise Cluster



I've also listed this perfect summer Chunky Boho Necklace



I haven't completely forgotten about Etsy and have been listing some new memory wire bracelets like this Peachy Pink Shimmer Memory Wire Bracelet

Wednesday Wish List

This recent spell of good weather and my upcoming holiday to Cornwall has put me in the mood for summer clothes, so I decided to see what summer skirts I could find on Etsy.

The first one I found that caught my eye is this funky one by ZoeChen



Next, I really liked the fact this Prairie Skirt by LedThread is reversible and can also be worn as a dress.



And finally, I love all the pieces by this fellow EST member ThongbaiTatong, but I the gorgeous mix of patterns and colours in this Cotton Skirt are especially lovely.

Friday Round Up

This week I've been spending all my free time making bits and pieces for the school fair, which is being held tomorrow. This has left me very little time to make anything new for my shop but I have managed to add this Hot Pink and Black Bubbles bracelet



Also back in stock is this Cherry Red Bubbles bracelet



And finally, also back in stock is this Gold Bubbles Bracelet