Railroad Jobs and Gift Tags

Keith applied with BNSF railroad yet again, they have openings for 10 conductor positions. I told him yet again not to get his hopes up too much, because what with the 15% unemployment here in Bakersfield, not to mention the 45% in some of the other towns around here I'm sure they'll get a few thousand applications. Plus we found out that if he did by some stroke of incredible luck actually get hired we might have to move to Barstow.

BNSF wants to consolidate operations and move their Bakersfield people to Barstow to save money or something like that and the Bakersfield people are just a little upset at the thought of having to move to Barstow because Barstow is out in the middle of nowhere and who the heck wants to live in Barstow, not that Bakersfield is much better. We found out about this turn of events a few days after he sent off his application, we were watching the news and here comes a story about BNSF families protesting with a picket line and everything out in front of the operations here. Railroad families have a tough enough life what with dad or mom working weird hours and weekends and putting up with furloughs and having to follow the work wherever there is work available and they really don't want to have to uproot their families and try to sell their house in an unsellable market and move out to the desert. And I can't blame them one bit.

Out of curiosity Keith was looking on our kind of outdated California map because who uses maps anymore when you have all that fancy stuff on your car and computers on your phone and people you can call if you get lost, but anyway, he was looking to see what other towns are near Barstow and where people who work in Barstow might possibly live. There is not much near Barstow, Victorville is the next biggest town and about 30 miles away. Or you could live in Hinkley which you may remember as the town where everybody drank the water and got cancer from the movie Erin Brockovich. You don't want to live in Barstow which apparently is the crime capitol of the desert with 'extremely and unusually' high crime rates per capita according to the crime rate web site that I found. I'm sure I've been through Barstow before but don't remember anything about it, but Keith says that it is definitely a sh*thole and downtown is full of gangster looking and homeless looking people milling about.

So. BNSF is supposed to come to a decision next month about all this, but with a big company like BNSF it all comes down to the profit margin now doesn't it?

I made some gift tags and a few bags and boxes in Christmas themes. I wasn't going to list any paper stuff on Etsy because by the time you get done paying the fees to list you don't make much money off of it if it, but I'm also wanting to sell the darn things, so I double listed them on Etsy and Artfire.

Holly Berry and Music Pillow Gift Box Set


Retro kitty cat gift tags


Big Victorian Gift Tags


And some big Poinsettia and Santa tags


I have some more papers for more gift bags and tags but after making these kind of lost interest a little. I've really been having a hard time getting inspired to do much of anything these days, but I'm hoping I'll get creative later today.

I'm Bored

So I'm listing some new stuff over at CraftIsArt, a new site that I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with for long or not, we'll see.

Anyway, I've got some new collage pendants that I'm putting up today along with free shipping on everything in that shop and my Artfire shop. Since Etsy costs so much more to sell on, no free shipping over there. Yet. I am thinking about doing a summer special with free shipping, though.

Tiny Birds in Flight Collage Pendant


Little Brown Bunny Rabbit Collage Pendant


Little Brown Sparrow Collage Pendant


And Blue and Black Butterfly Collage Pendant

He's Not Even Cold Yet

As soon as news was out that Michael Jackson was dead, people started trying to cash in by selling t-shirts and other memorabilia. It doesn't surprise me at all, anything to make a buck, right? But when etsy puts THIS on the front page, I was a little more than disgusted. Not only because it is tacky and cheap looking, but come on etsy, lets try to be a little more classy than the street corner t-shirt seller, okay?

It is supposed to be a tote bag, by the way.

And speaking of tacky crafts, I've opened a shop on a very new site, trendyindie, in fact, here's a link to my shop: http://geelizzie.trendyindie.com. Not that my shop is tacky, well maybe a little bit.

It didn't take long for the tacky crafters to find this site, either. Hey, if you are going to sell a dog cape, and what dog doesn't need a cape, at least IRON THE CREASES OUT OF THE FABRIC FIRST!


Actually I thought this was a baby bib when I first saw it.

And, speaking of dead celebrities and tacky things, I was way more saddened by the news that Billy Mays was dead than Michael Jackson.

SALE!!

I'm having a spring clean sale in my shop until May 15! I'm doing my shop instead of spring cleaning my house-haha.

I'm trying new things for my shop, magnets and wood pendants instead of concentrating on soldered pendants. With the economy in ruins, I want to offer more affordable choices (impulse buys), plus the magnets and wood pendants are fun to make.

So, all of my old style glass pendants are half off. I'm still going to do glass pendants but am going to make a new style of reversible ones only.

Here's a sample of the sale pendants:


This size pendant was originally 11.00, now 5.50. I'm in the process of bringing all of these pendants over from my other sites and listing them on etsy these next few days, so there will be a huge sale section to choose from.

This is a sample of what's new-wood magnets and domino pendants:


And the new reversible pendants-this one is a little risque:

Yes Etsy Has Them

I did a little searching on etsy for cloth wipes and there are some sellers who have them listed under personal bathroom wipes.

These watermelon wipes are from allnaturalme and are 10.00 for a pack of 10. Now, remember, I'm using these just for number one, not number two, that's just a little too much. We'll use toilet paper for that, thank you very much.

These ones are from littlelovedesigns, 7.50 for a pack of 4.


I did see some on etsy that were made from recycled t-shirts-sounds soft but the word 'recycled' scares me when it comes to wiping my very personal area. That's kind of icky, I don't care how many times you've washed the t-shirts, somebody else wore them and probably for a long time.

These are what the cloth menstrual pads look like. The care bear fabric is really cute, and what could be more fun when you have to be on your period than some cheery happy loving care bears?

You can also use these for incontinence pads! I may need to get some of these-ha ha.

Twitter?

So, I'm reading in the etsy forums about how twitter helps get you exposure and sales for your etsy shop, but what exactly is the point of twitter?

Apparently you are supposed to tell people what you are doing all the time, like anyone would really even care. You are supposed to tweet by texting things like 'just went to the movies' or 'having lunch now' or whatever. Come on now, does anyone else really need to know what you are doing 24/7 and is anyone's life really all that interesting? I joined twitter for about 5 minutes and then canceled it because I couldn't think of anything to say. Plus, I don't have a cell phone, so I have to be at the computer to tweet.

Here's what my daily tweets would look like:

I'm having my coffee.

I'm cleaning the cat boxes.

Just put a load of laundry in the washer.

Just put a load of laundry in the dryer.

I'm sitting at the computer reading blogs.

Now I'm blogging.

Lunch time! Peanut butter or tuna?

I'm thinking about cleaning the bathroom.

Nah, I'm not going to clean the bathroom today.

I'm vacuuming up cat hair.

Now it's time to clean the cat boxes again.

Dinner time! Peanut butter or tuna?

Wow, TV is so exciting tonight! Biggest Loser or Howie Mandel?!?

See what I mean? I'm sure I'd have plenty of twitterers hanging on my every tweet with that stuff!

Oh, and I sold a necklace to a...well, I guess you could call her a celebrity or famous person (maybe infamous). Without naming names (shhh...) there is a blonde woman singer/actress who's first name begins with C and last name begins with L and who was married to a grunge band singer who shot his head off some years ago, and she has a child that they keep taking away from her because she is a big druggie, and she likes to shop on etsy. Did you guess yet?

Anyway, this is what she bought but I haven't shipped it yet since she paid by echeck and I'm waiting to make sure it clears first.

http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=13191208

Etsy and Google Analytics

Etsy finally incorporated google analytics to where you can see what kind of traffic you are getting in your shop and where it's coming from. Unfortunately it doesn't really work right, but it is interesting to see what sort of google searches are bringing people to etsy.

For instance, these three searches: breast carressing(sp), caress her breast, and caress her bosom. Obviously someone looking for porn, or maybe instructions, who knows?

And this one: caterpillar thought life was over.

This has me intrigued. Does someone have a depressed caterpillar who is just ready to give up on life and is searching for stories of other caterpillars who have managed to find hope and have overcome their depression and lack of will to live?

Huh.

Little Houses

I've always loved little things. One of my favorite series of books to read when I was growing up was The Borrowers-the little world with little people and their little adventures fascinated me. Dollhouses and miniature shadow boxes still fascinate me.

Years ago I made little cardboard house ornaments, painstakingly cutting and gluing papers and cardboard together, making tiny little windows out of paper, and gluing little dried flowers around the base for a garden. These little houses took hours and hours to make and I think I sold them for around $5.00. And I sold a lot of them, most buyers not realizing that the entire house was made by hand. I'd been thinking about these little houses lately, wanting to try something a little different with my collage papers. The thought of cutting and gluing the houses together made me think twice, though, so yesterday I made a trip to Michaels, thinking maybe they had some premade houses that I could embellish. So, I found these houses in the Christmas section and brought some home to paint and paper and glitter up. I think they came out pretty cute.


At first they looked kind of plain, so I added some of my plastic flowers and some rhinestones and glitter to sparkle them up and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. The visions in my head are nothing like the end result, of course, but I guess that's all part of the creative process.

I wasn't sure how to price these, they do have a lot of work in them but not a lot of material cost, so I did a search on etsy for cardboard houses to get a price range and I found the cutest shop with the most original little houses I've ever seen.

These are from http://recyclerabbit.etsy.com and I just love them!
She does the imaging on the computer and then makes the houses out of recycled cardboard, like cereal boxes.
These bird houses are just too cute!

The War Continues

A while back I wrote a post about the scrabble tile pendant wars on Etsy. I'd do the linky thing to the post but I'm too lazy to figure out how to do that, so...

I was curious to see how many scrabble tile pendants are currently for sale on etsy (5964 as of this writing, and probably 100 more in the last five minutes) because it seems like everybody has jumped on the old scrabble tile pendant bandwagon thinking they are going to sell hundreds of pendants. Well, some sellers have sold hundreds if not thousands, but the price on the pendants, which were up around $12.00 have now dropped to an average of $5.00 and one seller has them for $3.00. Not to mention the buy 2 get 1 free offers in a lot of shops.

$3.00 for a scrabble tile pendant? Why would you even bother making them for a lousy $3.00?

I did find one seller who has a unique take on the scrabble tile mania with this brooch:

And there are a few scrabble tile pendants with images that are a little unusual:
I like the kitty one of course:
It just seems to me that if you have to price your pendants at $3.00 to sell them, then the scrabble tile mania is coming to an end. It's just way too overdone. Kind of sad, because the idea behind them is a good one.

Whew!

I'm almost finished.

I decided to do a revamp of my etsy supply shop with all new fresher looking pictures and a weeding out of old stuff that's just been sitting there. So, for the past few days I've been taking new pictures and editing all of my hundreds of listings. Now that I am almost done I'm really wondering why I decided to do this, it's a whole lot of boring work!

But, my shop might look a little nicer and maybe supply sales will start to pick up again. It's been kind of slow in both my shops for the past month or so. Guess I can't complain too much, though, at least I'm still getting sales on a regular basis.
Time for a beer!!

Part two of CALM Sunday tomorrow.

What to Blog About Today?

I have nothing interesting to blog about today, not that I blog about anything that interesting to begin with, so today I think I'll share some of my etsy favorites with you.
I don't do a lot of shopping on etsy mainly because I'm trying not to spend money on non-necessities, but I see a lot of etsy sellers with some really nice things, so I 'heart' them and save them in my favorites so I can go back and look at their shops later. It's kind of like browsing through the Speigel catalog-do they still print that?-looking but never actually buying.
So, here are a few of my favorites:
This collage is made on an old flash card and is from http://lanisvintage.etsy.com. I don't know how to make those clickable thingies where you just click on the words and it links you so for now I'm just going to put the whole shop address in. I'm too lazy to figure out how to do much on this blog. Bear with me.
These are vintage bird pencil sharpeners from http://shop66.etsy.com. I love anything retroey fifties and sixties and also little bird things, so I may have to get one of these.
And this funny bunny necklace is from http://polkadotthunder.etsy.com. Plastic! My favorite material!

Shop etsy.com!!!

A Little Bit Un-PC

So, I was working on some new pendants yesterday made with puzzle pieces from a vintage US puzzle. They're coming out pretty cute but I don't think I can use THIS piece, it's just a little bit too politically incorrect!
Don't think the little black kid eating watermelon would quite cut it!
I'm putting these on black faux suede cords with heart charm dangles.
And I made a whole bunch of them yesterday!

5000

Items sold in my supply shop. In less than a year. Not bad, if I do say so myself, but when you consider the profit margin on 2.00 packets of flowers, it's not like I'm getting filthy rich, but it sure helps!

Yay!

Wowza!

Yesterday afternoon I got a bunch of orders all in a row and was kind of like 'what the heck? where'd these come from?'
Turns out my naughty romance novel glass pendants were featured in 'smartbitchestrashybooks.com' a website for romance novel enthusiasts, complete with a link directly to my shop. So, the orders kept coming in last night and this morning and now I'm all in a rush to get more of these pendants made and in my shop before the Playgirl mag comes out in a few weeks. I'm just overwhelmed by how much attention I got from that blog feature, guess it's a very popular blog! I know most women who read romances won't admit to it because, well, it's not 'real' literature and they're a little embarrassed to admit how much they enjoy them. Nothing better than sitting by the pool with iced tea or a frosty margarita and a good hot romance novel on a summer's day, though!
So, thanks to all the romance novel readers out there who want a little piece of romance (or hot sexy stuff) around their necks, you've made my day!
Here's a link to the site, it looks like a lot of fun!
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com

I Opened Another Etsy Shop

Now I have three. I'm going to take over the world with my etsy shops! I didn't really like the look of having my collage mixed in with my jewelry and have been thinking about opening a dedicated collage shop for a while, and yesterday finally went for it. So now I have geelizziecollage on etsy. Selling, you guessed it-collage! All collage all the time!
Here are a few that I'm listing in the shop.
I'm hoping that my collages will get a little more attention in a shop all to themselves.

I never check to see who has favorited (hearted in etsy speak) my other shops since it's all so old hat now, but I did check to see if anyone had hearted the new shop, and out of 8 hearts, two are from shops that sell banners-the logo things that you can put at the top of your shop page. I was going to get a banner for the new shop but after looking at my home page I decided I like the look of my shop without a banner so I took them out of the other two shops also. What bugs me about the banner shops hearting my shop is that they are only doing it in the hopes that I'll buy a banner from them.
NOT!!!
I wish there was a way I could remove their heart from my shop. Favoriting another shop to promote your own just seems extra extra tacky to me.

The Scrabble Tile Pendant Wars

Wow, just wow. Out of curiosity I just did a search on etsy for 'scrabble tile pendant' and came up with 148 pages filled with 3094 scrabble tile pendants. The queen of the scrabble tile pendants has over 8000 sales in her shop, so everyone seems to have jumped on the 'if you make it they will buy it' train. When I first started on etsy, they were selling for around 8.00 and the price slowly went up as the original Littleputbooks sold more and more of them. You really didn't see any others on etsy until people started seeing the potential and started making their own. It seems as if in just the last few months, a new scrabble tile shop opens up at least once a week in the hopes of becoming the next top seller. Well, I think the market is pretty well saturated with scrabble tile pendants, and a bit of a price war seems to be happening here. A couple of new shops opened up selling them at 5.50-just the pendant, no chain-and now today I've found a shop that is pricing them at 4.99. I'll wait a few more months and we'll see a shop that will be paying you to buy them!
This is what they look like for those who are blissfully unaware of the scrabble tile pendant phenomenon.
Yes, they're really cute, but I'm a little baffled as to why these are so popular-no offense to any of you scrabble tile pendant makers, guess it's just like any other etsy trend. Octopuses, deer, trumpet flower earrings, all kinds of things that start selling well seem to cause this 'me too' effect.

I don't do a whole lot of browsing on etsy lately, just check the newly listed every once in a while, but today I saw the cutest baby tee ever. Now, I just need to find a baby to buy this for.
This is from littlebitsys shop on etsy: http://littlebitsys.etsy.com
Isn't that the cutest thing ever??

Wow, All Sold Out!

On our last trip downtown to antique shop I found a united states puzzle and made these:
American Beauty Puzzle Brooches.

And too many more to show you all of them-after all, there are 50 states!
Anyway, I started listing them and sold a few and then all were gone!! So, I have about 10 more to list and went on ebay to find some more puzzles to make more. It's about time I found something that might be a top seller!

The Fur is Flying on Etsy Today

An unhappy buyer started a thread requesting that fur be banned from etsy, as they are a vegan and find fur disgusting. Well, good for them. Why do vegans and vegetarians always have to preface every statement with the fact that they are vegan or vegetarian? I don't start my posts by saying 'as a carnivore, I find the lack of meat products on etsy disgusting and I think all vegan products should be banned!'

I remember when I was a kid my mother had some kind of animal stole-maybe a fox?-that still had the feet and head attached. The head had like a spring clip in it so you could put the stole around your shoulders and clip the head to the tail of the animal. Creepy? Yes, but I used to have so much fun playing with that little animal mouth, opening and closing the clip to make the mouth open and close. I think the stole originally belonged to one of my grandmothers who were always properly dressed with their fur stoles, hats, and gloves.

Here they are, along with my grandfather, but this picture was taken at my mom's June wedding, so no furs! Too hot for summer.
You don't see people dressed as elegantly today, do you?

I Just Hit 2000 Sales!!!

In my jewelry shop: http://geelizzie.etsy.com. Just now. Like three minutes ago. Earlier today the sales count was at 1995, then up to 1997, then about 1/2 hour ago, up to 1999, told Keith only one to go, then yay! 2000 sales!
I feel like I've arrived and can quit stressing every day that it will all be over with and I'll never sell anything again.
Funny, though, I think the first 100 sales was the most exciting. Actually the first ever online sale was pretty unbelievable to me.
And I'm working on 4000 for my supply shop!!

Internet Assholes

Is it the relative anonymity of the internet that brings out the worst in people? I don't usually let it bother me, but sometimes on the etsy forums, which in and of themselves can be a hotbed of drama, people turn into bona fide assholes.
I try not to spend a lot of time there, but while I'm loading pictures into my etsy shop or bored or whatever, I'll venture into the forums to see what's going on. And, yes, sometimes I'm looking for a little excitement and a chance to play voyeur for a little while.
The forum police-we all know who they are, the ones that will jump immediately into a thread and make sure that you know you are posting in the wrong thread or breaking some other etsy rule. Sure, organized forums are nice and all, but do you really think that it's going to go on someone's gravestone: Etsy forum rule breaker-may they burn forever in the flames of hell?
It's just a forum folks, it's just not that important in the greater scheme of things!

And then every day there is a thread about 'why is it spam to notify people they are in my treasury?'
Because it just is! When you make a treasury and tell someone 'look I put you in my treasury' isn't that basically saying-hey look at me and how nice I am to put you in my treasury. You owe me a million thanks and maybe even a purchase from my shop because I'm so nice to include you in my treasury!
And then there are all the responses about how I'd really like to know if I'm in a treasury because it just takes too long to look through the treasuries to see if I'm in one and I never look in the treasuries because they're kind of boring. Well, then why do you give a flying f$%k whether or not you are in a treasury since they're boring and take too long to look at anyway?!??!! Obviously nobody's looking at them anyway because it takes too freaking long!!

And my personal favorites are the people who look at the forums as a way to feel that they are popular and everybody likes them. They'll start a thread that really has no meaning and shouldn't require any responses and then the thread goes on for pages and pages with equally meaningless responses just because the responders want to be considered popular too.

And then there are the ones who like to argue about whatever the topic is and will go on for pages arguing their point over and over. Like the never ending threads about walmart and how walmart will be the downfall of modern society as we know it. They exploit their workers and drive mom and pops out of business and eat kittens for breakfast and pollute the entire planet and if you shop at walmart you should burn in the fiery pits of hell forever and yes, I do think that should go on your gravestone.

Nuff said about the etsy forums, I'm going to try and steer clear of them for a while, because you know what? They're just not that important.