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Tagged etsy, Icelandic Association of DC
Last week, I posted on the Tiny Dino Studios facebook page about playing with my foldio, and I got a bunch of questions about how I liked it. Before this past week, I’d only used the foldio a handful of times, and mostly with my phone. And after that, I’d never taken the time to edit the photos, but holy smokes you guys, the little light box thing is totally worth it!
Here is one of the new product photos I took last week using the foldio. It’s not perfect, but it is light years ahead of the photo of the same product I took a few weeks before that on my desk using the window for light.
See the difference?
Here’s another soap that just finished curing. It’s scented with chocolate and lavender, colored with cocoa and red oxide.
This is brand new, and has a couple weeks left on the curing shelf. I call it Good Vibes because it’s a very earthy, fresh, relaxing essential oil blend of sandalwood, eucalyptus and patchouli. I also adore how the poppy seed swirl turned out.
I’m not the most composition-minded photographer out there–and I call myself photographer in the sense that I hit the shutter on my little canon power shot and a photo results–but I’m really glad I have my foldio. While there are some of my photos where I couldn’t edit around bad composition (see below), it’s not the foldio’s fault I barely pay attention to whether my shot is in focus. It’s designed to photograph small things. That’s why it’s only ten inches wide.
With a little conscious effort on my part, I can really improve my product photography with the help of my little light box. So, while this is what I have, I’m going to say that any light box will help.
I’m going to keep practicing my photography, focusing on getting more usable pics out of each photo session, and paying more attention to how I line things up. But editing photos this time around was so much less frustrating than usual. Hooray!
Comments Off on What is Saving My Product Photos
Tagged Business Savvy, etsy, foldio, photography, product photography, selling on etsy
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| There are LOTS of wonderful galleries in St Augustine. This is a piece that was in Amiro. This piece is an awesome example of Estella Fransbergen's work. Raku and wire. AMAZING. |
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Comments Off on Horrifying.
Tagged Amiro, etsy, St Augustine
I have been on a journey for the last ten months. Most of this adventure has taken place inside google docs and 3 or 4 manila folders full of scratch paper. I have written my novel 5 times over and finally landed on a draft that I can make into something. The feeling is sublime., and I have taken a few days to revel in it. I sent it to my beta readers, had a drink to toast it, and gave myself the reward of Maria V. Snyder’s Glass Series. (I have devoured them. Seriously. We need to talk about book more often, reader friends.)
This journey of mine, however, has not just been about writing my novel. I have been on a highly introspective, speculative path that’s had some confidence building detours. I won’t say I’m completely done with it all, but I feel like I could wear this shirt honestly, and get some shit done.
If you’ve stuck with me over the last couple of years, there’s been no surprise that I didn’t know what the hell I’ve wanted to do. I’ve been bouncing around from one crafty infatuation to the next, without ever really settling on anything. One thing about writing my novel that helped me was that all of my passions kept popping up. That book incorporates so much that I love–coffee, textiles, modern small business strategy, men’s fashions. (True confession, I say I subscribe to the New York Times for the book review, and the comprehensive news, but the only thing I ever get through cover to cover is style magazine.) Through the writing process, and examining what worked for my characters, I was also somehow able to wrestle out what gives me the most joy.
Strangely enough, they are the two things I do the most already: writing and retail. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that I should put the two together and write about retail. Except that I am really excellent at getting in my own way.
Comical metaphorical stumbling aside, I have a head full of specialty retail knowledge, and if I don’t get some of it out on the page, I’m in danger of exploding it all over the place. And let’s be honest, there’s a time and place for telling someone they need to reexamine their pricing strategy. (But hey, if you wanna talk about pricing, check back tomorrow!) Meaning, that you, reader friends, can expect to read some tricks of the trade right here.
I am excited. Are you excited?
So what does all this self-helpy, soul-examining, navel-gazing have to do with destashing? It means I need to transform Tiny Dino Studios from a fiber studio to a multipurpose studio. There is a ton of awesome stuff that I’ve basically stopped using, and I want you to have it.
Through October 31st, my etsy shop will be open and all the yarns and spinning fibers I have stashed away will be up for grabs at 60-75% off. That is a steal of a deal on some really high quality yarn. I will be updating the shop on Saturday mornings with everything I can find through the end of October or as long as supplies hold out.
In addition to everything on etsy, I am selling my drum carder. I bought him right before I started to lose my enthusiasm for selling yarn, so I’ve made maybe 12 batts on the guy in the last couple years. (I have cleaned him up since I took this photo.) The card cloth is 120tpi/90tpi. I’m asking $200, and I’ll thrown in a bag of loose locks and fluff and stuff. Local only, I’d prefer not to ship this guy. Email me or leave a comment if you’re interested.
Check out etsy, and hang around for what’s next!
Comments Off on DeStashing
Tagged etsy, liquidation, retail, retail theory, sale, specialty retail, Uncategorized, yarn
While I haven’t received any criticism for my most recent about etsy, where I delved a little bit further into the conflict I feel about the changes etsy has been making, I have been thinking all week about the artists that still sell on their work on that platform.
Just in case it wasn’t clear, I love being able to search for just the right handmade gift from my living room. I love running into new artists in cyber space and sending the links to my husband and my friends when I think they would like them. I like introducing people to new art by artists they hadn’t found yet. (Ya’ll know it’s true, because it’s my day job.) Etsy has always been an irreplaceable tool for discovery.
When I am stuck on a particularly difficult passage in my novel or just need a break for creative inspiration, I pull up etsy and browse through listings of my two favorite things to shop for: self-striping sock yarn and pottery.
We’re Not in Kansas Anymore self-striping sock yarn from White Birch Fiber Arts. I want this for my feet.
A sock knitter can never have too much sock yarn, and as a former dyer, I know just how much work the self-striping yarn is. I don’t have the patience to do it myself most of the time, but I am more than willing to throw down $30 just for the experience of knitting with it. Self-striping sock just never gets old.
With pottery, I’m a little more discerning with my purchases. If I purchase pottery, it’s likely coming from someone I know like, FriesenArt, because I can buy it locally. (I’m drinking coffee out of one of her wheat mugs right now!) But I love browsing through the beautiful shops on etsy, favoriting pieces for future gift ideas, and imagining just how full of robin’s egg blue vessels my house will be when my boys are older.
But these bowls from AbbyTPottery keep grabbing my attention.
Now, imagine the yarn from above in the yarn bowl and that berry bowl full of cherries. Can you imagine the squish of the wool? The crisp contrast of the orange against the blue bowl? The slick glaze cool to the touch. The water droplets sitting on the skin of the freshly washed cherries? The heft of the bowl in your hand as you sit back down to your laptop ready to delve back into teasing out whatever conflict is giving you trouble.
Or is that just me?
Comments Off on Why I Still Visit Etsy Every Day
Tagged abbyTpottery, artists on etsy, berry bowl, etsy, Inspiration, inspiration on etsy, pottery, robins egg blue, shopping on etsy, sock yarn, Uncategorized, white birch fiber art, yarn bowl
Last week, Wired Magazine ran an online story about etsy alienating it’s base in the interest of making money. There is no shortage of articles about how etsy has lost it’s soul. Just a couple of weeks ago, I told my own story about closing down my etsy shop. While my decision had just as much to do my personal change in focus as it did with etsy’s policy shifts, I feel no less disappointed at the transformation of the handmade marketplace into a corporate one.
Etsy was the place to go when you didn’t want to buy from a box store. It was a place where you could easily find unique, handmade pieces. It was a reliable source for gifts that had a story. Etsy was the site that connected the consumer directly to the producer. You knew when you shopped on etsy that you were helping an artist fund her dreams.
Buying through etsy was also subversive. You were taking a stand against consumer culture one piece of handmade jewelry or vintage tableware at a time. Your purchase wasn’t just a new handbag, it was a protest against mass production and etsy was the standard bearer.
With Etsy becoming a publicly traded company, that protest starts to feel a little flimsy. The oomph is out of the gesture because the primary focus is no longer on the independent artist, it’s on how to maximize profits for the company at large. Sure, etsy will still connect you with an artist,if you take the time to sift through the pages and pages of trendy mass produced stuff to find what you’re looking for, and that artist will still get your money, minus the small fee etsy takes.
Charging fees to sellers has always been the way etsy makes money. Compared to the price of running a brick and mortar store, etsy is relatively inexpensive: $.20 to list, a small percentage when something sells, a few dollars a week to boost listings. It’s a humble investment, and when you’re looking for a place to launch your fledgling handmade business, etsy sounds like a steal.
The way etsy attracts it’s sellers through campaigns like Quit Your Day Job, which features shops that make a living wage for their sellers feels disingenuous. The series plays on the romantic daydreams of office workers who hate their jobs, promising that they too might one day work from their own sunlit studio. While grist.org reports that only 18% of etsy sellers are able to make a living from their shops, etsy sells the promise of a living wage to budding entrepreneurs who have little chance of making it. Meanwhile, etsy collects more fees from small sellers struggling to just have their items seen, let alone purchased.
The system favors those sellers who already have a high volume of sales or have the money to invest in etsy’s on-site advertising before any sales are made. Whether the artist is selling or not, etsy is making money. Charging sellers just to get their products seen is likely to cost them more as making money takes precedence over providing a unique marketplace. Making this switch turns etsy into the kind of company shoppers like me were trying to avoid in the first place. The site’s focus has become less about helping the consumer find the perfect product, and more about producing profit, through luring in new sellers.
And yet, there are still artists on etsy whose shops are a big part part of their business plan. Some don’t sell anywhere else. If we want to keep the focus on the artists, the ones whose dreams to make a living from their art are completely legitimate, what is a consumer to do?
First, I would do a little digging and see if the artist sells anywhere else you can purchase from: her website, a local boutique, a craft show, etc. Buy local if possible and keep that money in your community. But if you’ve found the perfect self-striping sock yarn from an indie dyer two states away who only sells on etsy, then go ahead and buy it. Your purchase is still helping that artist live her dream, even if etsy isn’t.
Comments Off on Why Shopping on Etsy is Problematic
Tagged etsy, etsy lost its soul, etsy sellers, marketplace, problematic, Rambling, selling on etsy, shopping on etsy
Some of you may or may not have noticed that I closed down my etsy shop a couple of weeks ago. I tweeted about it last week, but otherwise, I closed it down fairly quietly. It was not a bittersweet moment for me.
The glamour of selling hand dyed yarn and fiber lost it’s appeal about two years ago. If you’ve been reading my blog since May 2013, when we had to leave our cozy little apartment and I didn’t have a place to dye for awhile, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise. I’ve bounced around with what I’ve shared with you since then, a little sewing, a little printing, a little gardening, even a free knitting pattern or two. Each and every one of those things was so much fun in the moment that I wanted to share them with you, hoping you’d be diverted as well.
But as I go back and read over some of my posts, I have to admit, that I am less than impressed.
I can tell I was just dashing off posts as quick as can be–and lets face it, they were pretty shallow.
One of the reasons I closed down my etsy shop was that I just didn’t feel like I fit in there anymore. I love the DIY lifestyle. I love making my own chicken stock and yogurt, I love processing my own yarn from a big greasy fleece. I love composting and gardening and making my own soap–but you know what’s left after you do all of those things?
A mess.
A big fat one.
But etsy is selling a curated, tastefully simple, DIY lifestyle these day, and kind of leaving the DIY out of it. Don’t get me wrong, there are still a million, brilliant artists still selling on etsy, but most of the time those artists are buried in a sea of not-so-handmade listings.
When it comes to the fiber arts though, my competition remained largely other indie dyers and small farmers, and I was completely cool with that. What I was not cool with was the ever increasing price it cost just to get product views.
When I was really having fun with dyeing yarn and doing my yarn club, I could make a couple hundred dollars or more a month off my web sales, after etsy and paypal fees. Not enough to live off, but a couple extra trips to the grocery store if need be or a part for the car, that sort of thing. A couple of years ago, etsy introduced search ads, which allowed you to put your product at the top of the page when someone searched for the keywords you used on your listings. You could cap how much money you wanted to spend on search ads each week, and I thought it was effective. I put my reasonable cap on and saw an increase in sales and in page views when I used them.
A few months ago, they switched the search adds to a bidding system which was not cost effective for a small shop like mine. The minimum cap was about $1/day. I gave it a try one month–while admittedly not doing a whole lot of other promotion–and paid about twice in fees as what I made in sales. I turned it off the next month and received hardly any page views and no sales. I don’t think I’d ever had a month with no sales since I opened my shop, but in December and January it was zilch, zippo, nothing.
I’m not blaming etsy’s new systems entirely. I have already said my heart wasn’t in it anymore, but the recent changes were the nail in the coffin of my little etsy shop. It feels like, as etsy has switched from a website where you go to find handmade originals, to where you go to find what’s on trend, that etsy is more preoccupied with selling the idea of a lifestyle rather than the goods that make that lifestyle possible. I thought etsy was supposed to be a stepping stone for launching a handmade business, but it feels to me now like it’s more concerned with nickel and diming the indie artist out of their studio space.
It certainly wasn’t the right place for me anymore.
And I feel like, while I was trying to fit into that etsy aesthetic, so was my blog. My identity as a blogger was confused. My writing was mediocre at best.
I wrote in November about sticking with Nanowrimo for the first time ever, even though I have goddamn degree in creative writing. I haven’t stopped writing since I started back in November. I’m putting the finishing touches on a draft of a novel, and hope to start searching for an agent sometime later this year. It’s taught me a lot about myself–one of them being that I tend toward caution when I really want to kick and to curse and to generally stir up a fuss.
Writing my novel has shown me that while I don’t believe in censorship, I certainly was practicing it on myself a lot, telling myself this was too controversial to write about, or that was too political. That I would write “fuck” too many times and offend someone.
And now I kind of don’t give a damn.
What’s this mean moving forward? I’ll still write about my knitting and my gardening, but I might also write about books or my writing. I might piss you off. I might insult you. Mostly, I hope to make you laugh, or to motivate you to live your dream. Because I have always wanted to be writer, but I never had the courage to let myself be one before.
Comments Off on It’s Time for Something Different
Tagged blogging, closing my etsy shop, etsy, Knitting, leaving etsy, Rambling, tiny dino, Tiny Dino Studios, why I closed my etsy shop, Writing, yarn
Good morning all. It is August 16th, and as promised, my etsy shop is back up and ready to go.
Stop in and browse around. I have new sock, lace weight and handspun yarns, as well as some new spinning fiber.
How do you like my new photographs? I’ve been meaning to do this for about two years now. In some ways, I am sorry it took me so long to get up off my ass and do it, but in others, I am glad I waited until I had all the right pieces. My dining room has some of the best natural light in the whole house, being lined with windows and all. That, paired with my vintage cherry blossom table cloth (the first thing I ever bought on etsy ever right after it opened) and my new pottery, everything came togther so beautifully.
My table cloth, just to refresh your memory.
Now, I’m off to do some spinning so I have a bit more handspun to offer up for sale. What are you up to this weekend?
Comments Off on Etsy Shop is Back Open!
Tagged Almost a Business, etsy, etsy shop reveal, handspun yarn, natuarl lighting, new photos, photo props, photography, product photography, spinning fiber, yarn
