NEW PRINCESS CROWN -#Crown, #MiniCrown,# PrincessCrown, #HolyCommunion, #Wedding,#FlowerGirl, #Costume deas,#PartyCrown,# Ballet, # Pink

This little crown would be beautiful for a little girl for her Holy Communion or Costume party or as a flower girl in a wedding. How about that Nutcracker ballet where she will be the star. It is covered with pink crystal beads and flowers and pink silver lined seed beads sewn on by hand. . It is 3 inches across and has a comb attached to fasten to her hair.

Mini Crown, Princess Crown, Holy Communion, Wedding, Flower Girl, Costume Ideas, Party Crown, Ballet, , Purple and Lavender

This is something new for me. I made one before and it sold the day after I posted it in my shop.
This little crown would be beautiful for a little girl for her Holy Communion or Costume party or as a flower girl in a wedding. How about that Nutcracker ballet where she will be the star. It is covered with amethyst beads and flowers and lavender seed beads sewn on by hand. . It is 3 inches across and has a comb attached to fasten to her hair.

Navigating around Etsy #3- TEAMS

Teams are groups of people that come together to promote themselves and others with common interests. There are knitting teams, crochet teams, jewelry teams, social media teams etc etc. You can find a long list to look at to choose what would fit your needs. Here is the link https://www.etsy.com/teams/?ref=ftr
No man is an island, especially here on Etsy. You need a team or 2 or 3 to get exposure for your shop.
By participating in the threads of a team, you will get to know the team members and probably make some friends along the way. Before you decide on a team, look at their threads and see if you can participate in them. Also if you look on the right side of the threads, you will see when the last person posted. If there has not been a posting in a day or so, forget it. They are not an active team and will not help you a bit.

Some words of caution:

1. You are not evaluated by Etsy on how many teams you belong to but by your participation on those teams. Don't join more than you can support. The idea of being a member of a team is to promote yourself and also your teammates. If you can't commit to doing what is suggested or required to be a member of a team, DON'T JOIN IT!

2. Some teams that say they are moderated actually check if you are doing what you say. DO NOT POST AND RUN.  That is to post your item to a thread or discussion, then not promote the other team members as stated in the instructions to the thread. You will be removed from the team if they catch you at it.

3. Make a schedule for yourself to do your posting to your team or teams. Some teams have a requirement of how much you must participate in order to stay on the team. Fulfill your requirements first, then play with the others. After a month or so, you will find which ones do you the most good.

4. If you find that a team does not work for you, you may choose to leave the team. You have an option to do that on the home page of the team. Please leave a team rather than sit there like a bump on a lug. The Captain will thank you for it.

Navigating around Etsy #2- FOLLOWERS

Let's talk about followers today. Your followers are the folks that see your favorites in the Activity Feed. If they like what you posted, they will favor it and send it on to their followers who in turn do the same. It creates a cascade. It gives you exposure in the Activity Feed. The more followers you have the more exposure for you. There are steps you can take to gain followers and they are as follows 

ETSY allows you to follow 1080 members.

• Clean out your following list by unfollowing ones who are not helping you with your goal of sales. Start at the last page of people you are following. Delete those with less than 1000 followers or whose favorites are private. Another group to delete are those whose favorites are less than 3 times their followers.  If they don't have many favorites, they don't like to click on that little heart.

• Choose a member of a team you may belong to who has a large number of followers and go to their page. You can start with the Captain and the Leaders of any team you may be on. 

• Open their Profile and click on FOLLOWERS

• Choose from their list and FOLLOW people from their list who have a minimum of 1000 followers and thousands of favorites until you again have 1080 you are following.

When following someone, open their shop and favor it and a few items. This might get their attention. Hopefully about half will follow you back.

• USE the ACTIVITY Feed: 

1. FAVOR EVERYTHING in sight, not just what you like. Boosting your number of favorites will encourage members to follow you

2. When people favor you, favor back.

3. Do this at least twice a day until you reach your goal of followers. Do more if you have time.

Aim for 500-1000 followers. Once you hit 1000 followers you can relax and the followers will filter in. 

BJs WEARABLE ART IS HAVING A SALE!!

BLACK FRIDAY AND CYBER MONDAY SALE    

50 % OFF EVERYTHING - NOV 28-DEC 1

          

Today I want to share my pet family.

Coco (the dog) has the most expressive face I have ever seen on a dog. This one is "Save me from those cats. I want to sleep." She is a shiatsu and poodle and very smart but at times stubborn. She really loves the cats except when they want to get into her food.

At the top are the felines.

Maya is a very dark Siamese. She came to me from a friend who wanted a good home for her because she was being picked on by the other cats in her home. Here she is the Grand Dame whose only job is to be beautiful. She spends most of her time on top of the refrigerator.

Lizzie is next. I got her a few months ago when I lost my precious Missy. Lizzie is a clown and all the animals love her. Her greatest pastime is batting a ball of paper around the room. No store bought toys for her.

Rosie is the youngest one of the bunch. I found her in my back yard in 31 degree weather. She got separated from her litter when she was just 4 weeks old. The poor little thing was shivering. I brought her in and that is all she wrote. She and Lizzie hit it off right away and now I have a kitten circus everyday.

Tigger is the Grand Gentleman to Maya's Grand Dame. His job is to sleep and fuss at Maya whenever they get within 2 feet of each other. Tigger came with me from California.

They all give me so much.

 Coco gets me out of the house to walk,has appointed herself the nanny of the babies,gives me her wiggly butt and is my doorbell.

Maya and Tigger give me comfort when I need some peace and quiet.

Lizzie and Rosie give me belly laughs by the barrel.

My life would be very dull without them.

Navigating around Etsy #1- THE NAVIGATION BAR

Once you get your shop, you will find this bar at the top of your page.

1. Search bar- To find items on Etsy by color  or type, put the words in this box and click on SEARCH. For instance, if you put in Red, pages and pages of red items will come up. Also when you put red in, a drop down will appear allowing you to choose a red dress, red pillows etc. in order to narrow your search.

2. HOME - This takes you to your activity feed page. This is where you will find what you have favored, what your favorite shops are doing, and many items that made it to be favored by followers. (we will talk about them in a later lesson)

3. FAVORITES- This is where you will find items that you have favored. You can refer to this when doing treasuries. ( another subject for later)

4. YOUR SHOP - When you click on this you get the following. At the top of this is a place to click to go directly to your shop.

a. Dashboard- when you go here you will see the statistics for your shop. Views and Favorites are things you want to work on to increase the exposure of your shop. Browse this page to see where you are receiving your views and favorites from and what is being viewed and favored.
b. Items takes you to your listings page
c. Orders - I hope you have a lot of reason to visit this one. It shows your orders for items from your shop.
d. Stats is a repeat of a.
e. Bill - shows how much you owe Etsy
f. Promote- You may add a promotion link for a fee. It will increase your views in the search engine.
g. Shop Settings- This is self-explanatory.
h. Add a new item brings you to the page to add a new item. Fancy that!


5 YOU- Here is the drop down from my shop

a. View Profile takes you to your profile page to change as you wish
b. Conversations has a 3 beside it. That means I have 3 messages or  convos waiting for me. That 3 will show by YOU when you have messages. You have to click on Conversations to get to them.
c. Purchases and Reviews- Shows you how much money you spent and to whom. It is also the place to leave reviews for the sellers. Be sure and do this. It helps the sellers.
d. Account settings - You probably already know this one since you now have an account.
e. Your teams- we will discuss teams later
f. sign out. self- explanatory. You may use this if you have more than one shop and want to move back and forth between them.

This covers what is at the top of your page. Next lesson I will cover what is in the sidelines of your shop.

Have a great day:>)
Barbra

SHIBORI RIBBON JEWELRY

I have begun doing my bead embroidery on Shibori Ribbon. It is a silk ribbon about 4" wide that is pleated down to 1". As the ribbon is unfolded, it creates these beautiful hills and valleys of silk ribbon. It is also hand dyed in many beautiful colors. It may have as many as 4 or 5 colors within 1 ribbon. When beading with this ribbon, it tells me where to place the beads in the  many folds produced by manipulating it to fit the base I am working with. Here are some of the pieces I have made with it.

And here are the bracelets

Here are some beautiful pieces that I have found on an Etsy by some very talented artists.

The following pieces combine Soutache embroidery with the Shibori Ribbon creating beautiful works of art.My dream is to be able to create something as beautiful as this.