Custom Order

Two vases in earth tones, 7 ¾ “ by 2 1/4” each, polymer clay over glass, fresh-water pearls, and acrylic paint.

New Technique for Reducing Irregularly Shaped Polymer Clay Canes

I love when people think outside the box.

Here is a new and clever idea I just read about at Polymer Clay Daily. Idit Fischer Katz (Idit Zoota) developed this technique, and Naama Zamir translated it to English.

Many polymer clay artists create complex flower canes, which are really difficult to reduce. Usually such a cane is wrapped in a layer of translucent polymer clay to obtain a cylindrical shape, which is then reduced easily. However, the layer of translucent clay presents a new challenge when the cane slices are assembled into a final piece. The translucent parts have to be made nearly invisible, which is not easy. It shows up on your design if the slices are too thick, if the backing temperature is not just right, if the finished piece is not sanded hard enough, and also for no particular reason as well... In other words, this step is tricky and requires a lot of practice, patience, and luck.

Idit took a completely different approach. Instead of fighting the translucent clay, she replaced it with Play-Doh. She says, Play-Doh works well during the cane reduction step, and then it can be simply peeled off and washed away. The cane slices used for the final design are nice and clean! No more fuzzing around the translucent clay in your final design! Wonderful idea, isn't it?!

Naama's post gives step by step instructions for this new technique.

While this idea is being discussed on the Internet, people with Celiacs Desiase remind us that they are sensitive to wheat in any form, even when they touch it. Play-Doh contains wheat. Here is a recipe for a home-made wheat-free equivalent:

Ingredients:
½ cup rice flour
½ cup cornstarch
½ cup salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup water
1 teaspoon cooking oil

Thank you, Kate from Organic Odysseys for sharing the recipe.

Treasury 05-20-09

My red steampunk butterfly necklace is in the treasury that Linda Riopel from NKDesigns.etsy.com put together. Cool name and cool company. Thank you, Linda!

Giveaway Winner

We have the winner! I've asked my daughter to give me a random number and she said twelve. Under this number were comments from... Holly. Congratulations, Holly! You may now choose one of my tutorials as your prize!

New Tutorial, Sea Urchin Vase

Just finished a new tutorial! This one is for a polymer-clay covered vase decorated with fresh-water pearls. The vase is shaped like a sea urchin and looks great both with flowers and on its own. The tutorial is currently listed in my Etsy shop.

Recent Publication

A picture of one of my necklaces was published in the last issue of Polymer Cafe.

This is Synergy, a style that combines my faux cloisonne techinque, sculpted orchids, and wire-wrapping.

Click on the picture for its larger version.

Giveaway

Ready to play again? Here are the rules:

- This Giveaway is open to my Newsletter subscribers only (but you can join any moment - see the form on the right?);

- To participate, you need to look at my polymer clay tutorials and tell me which one you like the most (no need to purchase anything!);

- Post your comments here;

- The winner will be chosen randomly from all the entries (one entry per person, please) on May 15, 2009;

- The winner will receive one of my tutorials of his/her choice (not necessarily the one he or she commented about).

Good luck!

Added on May 4, 2009
Here is how to leave your comments:

- Go to the bottom of this post - you will see something like this:
Posted by Eugena at 11:18 AM 5 comments Links to this post.

- Click on the text with # of comments, and you will be taken to a new screen with a window in which you can type your comment.

- You may then add your name, link to your web site, blog, etc.

- When done, click on "Publish Your Comment" button.

- You should then see a message "Your comment has been saved.
It may take a moment for your comment to appear on the site at the original post".

- To reduce spam, I approve all my comments before publishing, but I usually do it within hours of receiving your submitted comment.

New E-book – Encyclopedia of Millefiori Polymer Clay Leaves

I just finished this new tutorial. It is huge! Thirty three pages, eighty six pictures. I have it in my Etsy shop and will list it on my web site by tomorrow.

Here is the list of topics covered in this e-book:

- Materials, Tools, Pasta Machine Settings,
- Basic Skinner Blend (Two Colors),
- Skinner Blend with Three (and More) Colors,
- Bull's Eye Canes,
- Skinner Blend Block,
- Reducing a Skinner Blend Sheet,
- Shaded Leaf Cane 1,
- Reducing a Leaf Cane,
- Using a Leaf Cane for Flat Designs,
- Using a Leaf Cane for 3-Dimensional Designs,
- Shaded Leaf Cane 2,
- Basic Lace Leaf Cane,
- Detailed Lace Leaf Cane,
- Leaf Cane with Shaded Veins,
- Reversed Leaf Cane with Shaded Veins,
- Leaf Cane with Alternating Shaded Areas,
- Ikat Leaf Cane,
- Feather Leaf Cane,
- Spotted Leaf Cane,
- Long Striped Leaf Cane,
- Short Striped Leaf Cane,
- Water-Lily Leaf Cane,
- Monsterra Leaf,
- Oak Leaf Cane,
- Maple Leaf Cane

Added: This tutorial is now available at my web site.

New Tutorial Coming Soon


I am working on a new polymer clay tutorial. Actually, even two – one for millefiori leaves and another for surface leaf designs.

I wanted to make one tutorial first, but there are so many pictures that it would be way too big. I am even concerned that the my millefiori tutorial may need to be broken into parts for sending it by e-mail...

So far I am planning to show how to make TEN or so different leaf canes that may be used both in flat and 3D designs. This is going to be the biggest tutorial I wrote so far. I think it will also have the most generic use, because it will teach not a particular project or even a technique, but some elements that may be adopted as a part of many different styles and techniques.

I hope to have it finished by the end of the month.

Scarlet Sails
Finished!

I am done! The Scarlet Sails faux cloisonne wall piece is finished, framed, and shipped to the customer. I think it was my biggest, most challenging, and probably the best piece so far.

See my previous posts for work-in-progress pictures. Here is the finished piece (click on the picture for a larger version):

The faux cloisonne part is 4 1/2” by 6 ½ “, the size of the the whole picture with frame is 11 1/4” by 13 1/4”. The faux cloisonne part has domed edges showcased by mounting the piece on top of the two mats within the frame, not behind them, as it is usually done for flat artwork.

Taking a photograph of this piece turned out to be an extremely daunting task. Due to its size, I could not fit it in my light box and tried to photograph it by simply hanging on the wall in my studio. I immediately realized that due to its shiny surface (two layers of clear resin), the piece works as a mirror. Well, not a perfect mirror, but a good one enough to reflect me and my camera when I tried to photograph it. Yes, and also all my windows... When placed away from the windows, it did not have enough light, but still acted as a mirror. After a number of unsuccessful shots, I was finally able to capture the one you see here. The trick? I had my kids hold a solid-colored piece of fabric in front of the camera. I made a hole in the middle of this screen just big enough to point my camera through it. I also used two of my OttLite lamps on both sides of the picture, but not in front of it.

I am ready for a new challenge!

Two Etsy Treasuries

I just joined the wonderful team of polymer clay artists on Etsy.com, and right away my work was featured in two treasuries:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=49477
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=50354




I am really looking forward to getting to know more the people in this group, although I am already acquainted with some of them or at least their works.

I am so happy to join such a creative, energetic, and supportive team!

Work in Progress
Scarlet Sails, Day 6

Final version of the wire work:



And now with color:

Work in Progress
Scarlet Sails, Day 5

The wire work on my commissioned wall piece is almost done. I need to decide whether to have the sun behind the ship or not. I had it on my sketch, but then my customer said that it may interfere with the ship, which is the most important element of the composition. He left the final decision up to me.

Right now I stopped at the moment when everything is done, except the sun. I formed the wire pieces for it and took a picture with them in place, but they are not attached. I can still remove the sun without any trace.

Note to Alan: Alan, I still cannot contact you by e-mail, but I've got your message. No sun.

Work in Progress
Scarlet Sails, Day 4

Work in Progress
Scarlet Sails, Day 3

Work in Progress
Scarlet Sails, Day 2

Here is my progress so far. I am happy with how my Assol turned out, and so the most difficult part of this project is over.

When working on a multi-object composition, like this one, I prefer to start with one of the main figures. The biggest challenge in this technique is to accurately transfer the drawing into the wire lines. For simple designs, such as abstract swirls, it is quite easy, but human faces are among the most difficult transfers to do, because the slightest shift of line may sometimes significantly change the face expression...

Work In Progress
Scarlet Sails

I am starting to work on a commissioned piece based on an old Russian movie, Scarlet Sails.

I am very excited about this project. The movie is an adaptation of a very romantic and beautiful story by Alexander Grin. It is about a poor peasant girl Assol (pronounced ah-SO-lee), who was told by a traveling storyteller that one day a prince on a ship under scarlet sails would come for her. She kept dreaming about this beautiful ship despite being constantly laughed at and teased by everybody in her village. One day Captain Grey saw her sleeping by the sea shore and learned about her story. Taken by the girl's beauty and her kind and romantic character, he ordered to make sails for his ship out of the brightest red silk he could find, and then he came for her, just as it was predicted.

This is going to be a framed wall piece, about 5” by 7”, in my faux cloisonne technique. The person, who asked me to make this piece, saw my Scarlet Sails necklace made about two years ago. The necklace was inspired by the book, so my Assol looked different. This time I am trying to actually portray the actress who played Assol in the movie, and I am using the ship and scenery from the movie as well.

Below is the sketch I prepared already, and I will post pictures of my work in progress from time to time. I think it is interesting to see how such an elaborate piece is developing.

Wish me luck and lots of patience.

Giveaway Results

Thank you, everybody who participated in my GIVEAWAY.

And the winner of a $25 gift certificate is... Mona! Congratulations!

I am planning to run giveaways regularly, and the next one will start in about two weeks. Come and check my blog for the exact dates or subscribe to my newsletter (see the form on the right?) to be notified about the next giveaway, my new tutorials, and other developments.

Thanks again!

Custom Order

These are hand-sculpted leaves and orchids for a bridal version of my lariat necklace.

The original version was made in silver/gray/black tones and named "Les Fleurs des Fer", which means "Iron Flowers" in French. The veins on leaves and petals were applied by hand and then highlighted with silver acrylic paint, heat-sealed for durability. This particular necklace won the third place in polymer clay category in the 2008 designer contest sponsored by Fire Mountain Gems, and can be seen on FMG web site.

Shannon, the person, who ordered the white orchids, found a picture of my necklace on FMG web site, and from there she found my contact information. Oh, the power of the modern technology!

The orchids in this new version are completely white, and covered with mica powders for a gentle shimmering effect. The mica powders on the leaves make them look either white or very light green, depending on the angle of the light. The flowers and leaves are protected with the heat-sealed glaze.

The original necklace is available in my Etsy shop, and I am willing to make a custom variation of this design in any color.

Etsy Treasury

My polymer clay Steampunk butterfly necklace, "Dwellers of the Mechanical Garden, Red"was featured in a treasury!

Thank you, amandamonkey!

Student's Work

This amazing faux cloisonne interpretation of one of Mucha's Art Nouveau pieces was done by Andy Pan, who learned this technique from my tutorial. The finished piece is 6” by 8” and the wire work alone took at least 10 or 12 hours. I am extremely proud and amazed by Andy's patience and precision. Just beautiful!

Click on the picture to see its biger version.

Adventures of an On-Line Seller
Continued: Selling Through On-Line Malls, Personal Experience

To find my previous posts in this series, please use a search box on the right side of this blog. Your keyword is "Adventures".
Adventure is by definition an undertaking of a questionable nature, and finding the right on-line venue for your product is definitely a questionable thing, with no guaranteed success. There is no recipe that would fit every seller and his product either. Some people manage to maintain accounts at all kinds of possible sites, others stick with one favorite place.

I guess, my approach is somewhere in the middle. I am a quick learner, but it takes time for me to find out all the bells and whistles of the on-line mall and figure out the best strategy to make it work for me. I am not even talking about figuring out what buttons to push (although this may be tricky at times as well); I am talking about a general strategy that would allow my jewelry and tutorials to be at least found on the particular site. I know, I can promote my shop, give out business cards, and in many other ways let people know the address of my shop in the on-line mall. This, however, is not the point of joining such malls. I can promote my own web site in the same way, and probably get even better results, because people who visit it would not be distracted by the other (competing!) sellers. The only reason to join an on-line mall, I think, is to take advantage of the existing traffic to that particular mall. And then comes the next question: how can I make my shop visible to the presumably numerous visitors of the site.

I already mentioned eBay and JustBeads.com in my previous posts. Enough said about eBay elsewhere, so I will not waste time repeating it here. JustBeads was a lovely site, with reasonable prices, good traffic, but with a small enough community of sellers that allowed everybody to be found relatively easy. I would love to see this site re-launch in the nearest future and hope they will regain their strength once the site is up an running again.

My other endeavor (and rather unsuccessful one) was RubyLane.com. This is the place where I totally failed the task of being found within the site, I think. They have a good traffic, and I know a number of happy RubyLane sellers, but it did not work out for me. It is quite sad to admit, especially because I was cautious about joining this site to begin with due to their fees. I did manage to sell enough to just about cover my fees, however the time spent setting the shop there and taking it down a few month later is lost.

My current shop is set up with Etsy.com. I am quite happy with it, although I know for a fact that it does not work for everybody. I registered my shop there in 2006, but did not give it enough attention until more than a year later. Since then, I am working on my shop there almost every day, and still learn a lot. There is a number of ways to get noticed within this site, but my advice to any new sellers would be to visit Etsy forum and look for threads about marketing. They offer a lot of information, and everybody can pick and choose the ideas that may work better for them. Again – different things work for different people.

Right now I am trying out two sites, ArtFire.com and 1000markets.com. Being new, both of these sites lack in traffic (and the second one is not even officially launched yet), but they allow listing your products for free, which is very appealing.

My Work in a Book

I've just got the most exciting news this morning: pictures of my work had been published in the new book by Shirley Rufener by Krause Publications Polymer Clay Mixed Media Jewelry.

Shirley says that unfortunately quite a few contributers were cut by the editor, but I am lucky, and my work was included. I understand that the editor has his own reasons, but it is just too bad that the author does not have the final word and after all her hard work now has to delivery the bad news to those who were cut... On a positive note, as I told Shirley, she can now use the left-over pictures as the foundation for her new book.

Any way, I am extremely excited. Although my work had been published in different magazines before, this is my first publication in a book.

Thank you, Shirley! I cannot wait to actually the book!

Etsy Treasury

My Amber Orchid polymer clay sculpted pendant was featured in Etsy treasury!

Giveaway

You can win a $25 gift certificate to use in my Etsy shop!

There are many nice items in my shop, and I will be adding some new ones every day.

Rules: The winner will be randomly chosen from all entries. You may have up to four entries per person:

- For the first entry, all you need to do is visit my Etsy shop and choose your favorite item, then come back to this blog, post a comment, and leave a link to the item you've chosen;

- For the second entry, subscribe to my mailing list and then leave a comment in this blog to let me know that you did it for your second entry (if you already a subscriber to my mailing list, you can still participate - just leave a comment in my blog about it);

- To qualify for the third entry, mention my blog, web site, or my shop in your own blog (please leave a comment with a link to your post);

- For the fourth entry, buy anything from my Etsy shop, then come back to this blog and leave me a comment.

Deadline: The winner will be announced here in two weeks, on March 21, 2009.

Small Print: You do not need to have a blog or even a Google account to participate, but you do need to have an E-mail address. Please specify your E-mail address in every comment to this post (and please use the same E-mail address for multiple comments!). Your E-mail address will not be published and will not be shared with any third party, I promise.

Adventures of an On-Line Seller

Continued: On-Line Shopping Malls

Find my previous posts in this series here, here, here, here, and here.

There are two ways of approaching the task of selling your art and craft on-line. Most crafters are dealing with both of them.

The first one is when you already have a group of royal customers – people who bought from you in person, usually at craft shows. These people already know your product. All you need to do is to let them know where they can find it in between your shows. Almost any on-line selling space (whether it is your own web site or a place at some on-line shop) would work for this group, as long as this place has a convenient check-out process and you provide a good customer service. This one is easy to master – just make sure to pass on your business card with your web site address at every opportunity and remind your customers about yourself every so often.

The second way is a so-called “cold turkey approach”. This is when you are using your on-line selling place to find new customers. This one is much more difficult. This is when you need to think about such things as SEO (search engine optimization), advertising, key words, transfer ratio (number of visitors to number of actual sales), traffic sources, bounce rate (how soon a visitor leaves your shop), and many other highly-educational topics, each of which brings you pages of information when searched for in Google.

It is the task of finding the new customers that makes me looking for better on-line selling spaces. I do have my own web site, and I spend lots of time and effort refining it both for SEO purposes and for my visitor's viewing pleasure, but it is not enough. Trying to bring new people to your own web site is like mailing your advertising postcard to everybody in your town. Most people are simply not interested.

When you join some on-line mall with an established traffic, the task becomes a bit easier. You are now working with a better-targeted group (provided, you joined the right mall, and people who came there to buy something are in fact may be interested in your particular product).

Here are a few things to think about when considering an on-line place to sell other than your own web site (not necessarily in this order):

- Does it target the right group of potential customers?
- Does this site have enough traffic?
- Is it user-friendly (both for your customers and you)?
- How much time will your new shop require (learning the rules, shop set-up, approval (if any), and time for every listing)?
- How much is it going to cost you (look for shop-opening fees, listing fees, and fees per sale)?
- How visible will your product be within this site?
- How good is the technical support at this site?

And before this post gets too long, here is a list of possible on-line selling places for hand-made goods. I've tried and left some of them, I have shops in various stages of maturity at others, and some I have not even visited yet. I think I will share my personal experience with these sites next Thursday.

http://www.1000markets.com
http://www.artfire.com
http://www.artflock.com
https://www.artfulhome.com
http://www.artbyus.com
http://www.artsefest.com
http://www.blujay.com
http://bigcartel.com
http://www.buyitsellit.com
http://www.cafepress.com
http://www.canduru.com
http://www.craftersbuzz.com
http://www.craftmall.com
http://www.crowsoup.com
http://en.dawanda.com
http://www.erayo.com
http://www.ecrater.com
http://www.elsewares.com
http://www.erayo.com
http://www.farcountries.com
http://funkyfinds.us
http://www.folksy.com
http://www.girlshopspot.com
http://www.gozabo.com
http://handmadecatalog.com
http://handmadefusion.com
http://hyenacart.com
http://www.icraft.ca
http://www.imagekind.com
http://www.kinfolkcrafts.com
http://www.lollishops.com
http://lov.li
http://lunacraft.com
http://www.mintd.com
http://www.myartplot.com
http://www.mystore.com
http://www.mywares.com
http://www.notonthehighstreet.com
http://www.papernstitch.com
http://www.pinkdoodle.com
http://www.redbubble.com
http://www.rubylane.com
http://www.seekingdesigners.com
http://www.silkfair.com
http://www.shophandmade.com
http://www.shopify.com
http://www.skydowntown.com
http://www.smashingdarling.com
http://www.strictlyhandmade.com
http://supermarkethq.com
http://www.thumbtackpress.com
http://www.trunkt.org
http://veganica.com
http://www.wagglepop.com
http://www.winkelf.com
http://www.wholesalecrafts.com
http://www.wwcrafters.com
http://www.yabblebabble.com
http://www.yessy.com
http://www.yinia.com
http://youcraft.org
http://www.youcraftylot.com
http://www.zazzle.com

Our Bunny Is Back!

My husband calls our house “Snow White's Cottage”. All kinds of animals visit our backyard – squirrels, deer, chipmunks, wild ducks, not to mention hummingbirds and various other birds.

Last spring and summer a bunny lived under our gazebo. It moved in some time at the end of March, when we were in France for a couple of weeks. By the time we came back, he was quite comfortable in his new house. Our neighbor said there were a few bunnies in her yard, but her dog killed all of them. Ours was the only one that survived. We watched him grow over a few months. At first he (or she?) was really tiny and scared of every little noise. He would disappear under the gazebo in a blink of an eye. In a few weeks he was bullying even doves and blue jays that were picking some seeds spilled from the bird feeder too close to his under-gazebo entrance. After a while he's learned not to be afraid of us either, and I was able to work in the garden with a bunny sun-bathing just a couple feet away from me.

We watched him wandering further and further away from the safety of his gazebo home, until at some point in September or October we realized that we have not seen our bunny for a few weeks. I reassured the kids that the bunny would be back, but with a healthy population of turkey vultures in the nearby woods I was not sure myself...

This morning I woke up to an excited chatter of my kids in the kitchen. “The bunny is back!” - was my good morning greeting. We cannot decide whether it is our little bunny from the last year, his wiser mama-rabbit moving her nest to a safer location, or a completely un-related and new one, who just stumbled upon our vacant spacious rabbit burrow. In ether case, I think our lawn will be feeding an entire family of bunnies this year.

Here is the footage I shot this morning.

Chocolate Cake, Anybody?

We've celebrated my daughter's 11-th birthday this weekend.

This year she asked me to bake a plain cake – not a castle, a princess, a pirate's chest, not even a cat or a hedgehog – just a plain round chocolate cake. I take this as yet another sign of her growing (sigh...)


The cake, however, was wonderful. Being a humble person, I cannot guarantee you that this would be the best cake you ever tasted, but I think it could come pretty close. Here is the recipe:

Triple-Chocolate Torte

For the Cake:
1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate morsels,
2/3 cups butter,
1 ¼ cups water,
1 tsp vanilla extract,
1 tsp salt,
3 eggs,
1 cup sugar,
¼ tsp baking powder,
1 tsp baking soda,
2 cups of all-purpose flour

Place chocolate and butter in top of a double boiler and bring water to boil. Stir chocolate and butter until everything melts. Transfer the mixture into a mixing boil and let it cool. Add all remaining ingredients in the order they are listed, beating the batter for about 2 minutes after each addition.

Pour the batter into 4 greased and floured 9-inch round cake pans. Bake at 350 F for about 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake layers on wire racks completely.

For the Frosting:
24 ounces of cream cheese (3 packs, 8 oz. each),
1 container of Nutella (hazelnut and chocolate spread; look for it in most grocery stores next to peanut butter),
1 Tbsp orange concentrate

Mix well all three ingredients.

For the Glaze:
½ cup of semi-sweet chocolate morsels,
5 Tbsp butter,
¾ cups of powdered sugar,
2 Tbsp water,
1 egg,
1 egg yolk


Place chocolate and butter in top of a double boiler and bring water to boil. Stir chocolate and butter until they melt. Add all other ingredients, mixing well after each addition. Cook for about two minutes after adding the eggs. Remove the glaze from heat and let cool.

Spread each layer of the cake with frosting and arrange the cake. Spread the top layer and sides of the cake with the chocolate glaze. Refrigerate for a few hours before serving.

Bonn appetite!

Adventures of an On-Line Seller
Continued: Blogs

I started my blog in July, 2006.

To be honest with you, I did not know what to do with it for a while. I understood that a blog has a great business potential, and that was my main reason for starting it. After all, the fact that Google likes fresh content while blogs provide the freshest content possible is really easy to grasp. What I did not understand is how to make my blog interesting for real people, not just some search engines. I am not a chatty person by nature, and coming from the academic and industrial sectors, I believed that mixing personal and professional stuff is never a good idea. Turns out, I was completely wrong on that...

Anyway, I've compiled a list of blog ideas for artists, not in any particular order (I am using this list myself and happy to share it with anybody interested):

- Pictures of your new works;
- Pictures of your studio;
- Stories about work in progress;
- Cool tools and supplies;
- Stories and pictures from your customers;
- How-to about anything and everything related to your craft, business, or anything else you care about;
- Your thoughts on any topic related to your area of interest;
- Promotions of fellow artists;
- A giveaway (both for fun and for business promotion);
- A place for advertisement (see my Project Wonderful spots on the right);
- Stories about places you visited – from walk in the neighborhood to a trip abroad;
- Favorite recipes;
- Things that affected you personally and that may or may not influence your art;
- Posts about family, pets;
- Reviews of your favorite books and movies.

More ideas?

New Collection:

Celebrating Color

I've been experimenting with lots of color recently. Here are a few examples from my new collection.

All of these are round pendants, about 1 1/8” in diameter, clear resin over polymer clay.

Student's Work

I just saw a new comment in my gallery on DeviantArt.com. It is from a person, who've learned my faux cloisonne technique though my tutorial.

There is a number of faux cloisonne pieces in his gallery, and I just love what he is doing with this technique. Make sure to read the artist's explanations!

Annual Inspiration Trip

This one of the pictures I took this weekend at the orchid exhibition in Washington, DC. Smithsonian Institution organizes these exhibitions every year, usually in February – April. They alternate between the Botanical Garden and the Museum of Natural History.

This year, there are some orchids in both places. The museum of Natural History tied their exhibition to Darvin's theory of evolution, while USBG's collection is simply pretty.

Adventures of an On-Line Seller
Continued: Personal Web Site

To continue with my Thursday series, I want to talk about creating my own web site. That was an adventure in itself!

I wanted to make my own web site myself, and at a reasonable budget. I have to admit, it was a difficult task, but I enjoyed learning everything I had to make it happen, and I am glad I did it myself.

My first web site was from geocities.com. Free, built over an existing template (which I kept changing over time), and with some pop-up adds. Looking back, I see how many mistakes I made with this site. Aside from the design flaws, this site was screaming about my lack of knowledge about SEO, and the pictures could have used more work (which they did, over time). Never the less, I managed to make some sales even from that site.

What would I do differently if I had a chance to start over? I would start with a blog rather than a web site. This would be a more successful approach, because there are so many things that can be done with blogs, not to mention that search engines love them.

My next move was to obtain my own domain name and find a new host for my new web site, free of adds. The first company I chose (after a careful consideration!), managed to lost all my data two days after I launched the site. They also refused to help me with restoring it. The problem was that I relied on their pre-built templates, which I changed a bit. Yes, I saved all my photos and descriptions, as well as the HTML codes of all the newly created pages. However, there was no option for uploading these pages for me. So, when the data were lost, all I could do was to go back though every individual page and re-upload every picture and description manually once again. Well, I was so pissed off by the service I received from this web host that I went looking for a new one.

The good thing about this story is that it finally gave me enough motivation to learn HTML and stop relying on any templates. Turned out, it is not too bad, and in a month I had my third generation of web site up and running with a new host. By the way, I am glad to report that my new web host, pair.com, provides an affordable and reliable service, and I am very happy to be their customer. I switched my domain name hosting to this company as well.

Note that I said “third generation”, not “third version” of my website. That is because the number of versions I went through in these few years I cannot even count. I've changed everything (a few times!) - layout, background colors, logo, all pictures of my jewelry, beads, vases, and wall pieces... Even the ideology of the site, its purpose, had changed. At some point it was a standing-alone on-line shop with a gallery of sold items. Now it is a gallery of my best items with a link to my shop on Etsy.com. I still sell my tutorials directly from my web site, but not the other items.

To complete this rather long post I want to offer two links I found very helpful for myself.

The first one is to Rena Klingenberg's site, home-jewelry-business-success-tips.com. This site is a collection of jewelry-related business (probably even wider – craft-related business) articles. There is a section for selling on-line, which is a good start reading.

The second link is to J. Cricket Walker's site gnc-web-creations.com. Cricket and a group of other enthusiasts teach one of the Internet's most popular series of on-line classes for Search Engine Optimization, Successful Website Marketing, and Website Development Training. You can sign up for any combination of these classes and receive regular E-mails with their tips and instructions. I went through this training myself and found it tremendously helpful.

New Shipping Boxes / Displays


I have a few very special necklaces, which people would wear only for very special occasions. What are they supposed to do with a necklace like that when they do not wear it? The answer is a simple and elegant solution: shadow box.

I have to say right away – this is not my idea, but I love it. My friend Marigo Stathis, who makes the most amazing dichroic glass butterflies, shared this idea with me a while ago. Finally, I found just the right kind of display to implement it.


These shadow boxes are just the right size to showcase my necklaces. They are easily accessible, with a front door and a magnetic lock. Each shadow box has all the necessary hardware to be hanged on the wall or displayed on a dressing table. For each shadowbox, I made a white satin pillow and permanently attached it to the bottom of the box to create a nice backdrop for my necklace.

Family Heirloom, Preserved

I am ready to share pictures of my recent work, just in time for Valentine's Day. I made this set of earrings and a pendant for my neighbor. She had an old watch, a family heirloom, which did not work anymore. I took it apart and made it into this pendant. I was even able to preserve the back of the old watch (with initials P.P.) by attaching it to the back of the pendant. The pendant is made from brown polymer clay. One side of it has the watch parts and the other is decorated with crackled gold metal leaf. The pendant is covered with clear resin to create a smooth, glass-like surface. The matching earrings are adorned with fresh-water pearls.

Adventures of an On-Line Seller
Continued: Just Beads

...See my previous posts on this topic here and here.

To continue with recollecting my on-line experiences, I wanted to talk about a lovely site I used to use to sell my polymer clay beads on, called justbeads.com. It was a refreshing alternative for ebay, and there, in fact, people were selling beads only – polymer clay, lampwork, metal, commercial supplies – but beads, and beads only. I am talking about this site in the past tense because, as I just found out this morning, the site is currently closed. Here is an excerpt from the announcement they posted a couple of days ago: “We've made some great progress this week! Now that we've completed the rebuilding of the JustBeads.com Auction site, we've been free to concentrate on the many site modifications we wanted to implement...We've still got a lot of work to do....but we are definitely getting closer! Please check back often for our status reports and watch for announcements of our Grand Re-Opening! ... Stay Tuned! “ So overall it looks like something exciting is going on and the site is going to re-open even better and stronger than it was.

When I just started selling there in 2004-2005, the site was quite active, and I was able to sell everything I listed, with people competing for my beads. Later the situation changed – beads (and not only mine, it seemed like a common situation) would still sell, but there were no bidding wars anymore. One bid would appear just seconds before the auction was about to end, and the lot would sell for the minimal preset price. I really did not mind that, although selling in an auction situation was more fun. There were small fees for listing and a percent from the sale price, as far as I remember. You also had to pay for some extra features, such as additional pictures in your listing, a thumbnail picture, some ways to highlight your listing on the page, and the place at the front page, if you wanted any of these tools. One feature I really liked was an artist of the month article/interview they did once a month. There was a nice craft fair-like atmosphere on that site.

I am really eager to see the new changes they make. I left this site when I started making more finished jewelry, built my own site (which is an adventure in itself – more about that in my next post), and then Etsy came along with their lower fees and an option to leave the listing up for months rather than days or weeks like on Justbeads. Anyway, I am willing to reconsider this site once they re-open and I am urging everybody for makes their own beads to do the same.

The pictures in this post are some beads I sold through Justbeads.com. Anybody who knows my work now would see that I was still experimenting with various techniques and looking for my own style back then.

New Tutorial

The third tutorial in my Miniature Sculpted Orchids Series is finished and available through my Etsy shop. I will list it on my web site by the end of the day as well.

This tutorial explains how to sculpt tiny Lady's Slippers (or Paphiopedilum) orchids, how to make the leaves with different shades of polymer clay, how to apply these sculpted details to sea glass base, and how to do simple wire-wrapping of the sea glass pieces. Bonus material includes instructions for a faux sea glass (made from polymer clay, of course!).

Photo-Session Results

I am working on some listings for my new on-line shop (more on that later). I have nice flat shots of my polymer clay necklaces, but I really want to add pictures taken at different angles and especially on a model. I usually photograph my smaller pendant-style necklaces on a bust, but the bigger ones (those with a few focal beads) do not drape on it well enough.

I have to admit that being photographed is my idea of torture. I hate every moment of the process, and quite often the final result as well. Today, however, I had enough motivation to do four necklaces – this means at least about 40 pictures – and I've got four good pictures that I can use for my listings.

The second step was editing the pictures. After playing with them for a while, I have two versions of each – one is more life-like and the other one is kind of over-exposed and washed out. Surprisingly, I like the second version better. I think it makes the viewer to concentrate on the necklace rather than on my face, which is the entire idea, right?

Shipping Special


I offer a free upgrade to Priority Mail shipping for all my heart pendants in my Etsy shop. This offer is good until February 11. The pendants shall arrive just in time for Valentine's Day!

Adventures of an On-Line Seller

Continued: Legal Stuff

See my previous post on the same topic here.

Back to 2004...

Inspired by my first sale (and pushed in the same direction by my husband), I decided to start my own small business.

By then, I had some experience selling my own hand-made goods, although it was in a totally different country (back in Russia, 10 years earlier). As a student, I used to make custom wedding dresses (which was very romantic and creative, but not profitable enough due to the time involved and the amount of customer service needed), I then switched to making backpacks for fellow white-water canoeists (which was way more successful and less time-consuming). Anyway, I had a rough idea of what's involved – business registration, taxes, etc., and I was not looking forward to that. I think, legal stuff sounds scary to many creative minds in any part of the world.

Turned out, the entire process here in the US is quite straight-forward, and so my business was created and given an official status in a record time.

I was about to look for my list of useful links on this topic when I came across this post:

Small_Businesses_and_Taxes

I think it answers all the basic questions related to the legal part of turning your craft into business very well.

To be continued - next Thursday...

Instant Download

My tutorials are now available for instant download immediately after purchase from my web site.

Previously, when you bought a tutorial from me, you would receive it as an attachment to an E-mail within 5 hours from your purchase. The 5-hour limit came from PayPal: my automatic E-mail system was set up to respond to a payment notification sent by PayPal, which sometimes took up to a few hours to receive.

The new system is set up so that right after purchase you will be taken to a page with a link to the tutorial you just bought. Follow the link – and you have the tutorial right away. I am also keeping my automatic E-mail system as a back-up. I will use it to E-mail you the same link for your convenience. The link will expire in 3 days, so I am asking my customers to save the purchased tutorial right away.

Added on February 19, 2009: After discussing this setup with my customers, I decided to make another change. In addition to the instant download page displayed immediately after purchase from my web site, I will also E-mail the same tutorial as an attachment. I am doing this for people who want to be able to access the tutorial through their E-mail rather then on-line, and also so that they would not have to worry about saving the file before the link expires.

All tutorials purchased through my Etsy shop will be E-mailed, as usual.