Adding Items Back to the Shop

I've neglected this blog for a long time. I apologize. I shouldn't have been neglecting the blog this way, but lately things have been a bit on the hectic side what with school and church functions. A lot of my business has been through Candlelight Boutique as opposed to through Eternal Stardust Designs, so I haven't paid much attention to this side of things.

I started re-listing items to the shop tonight. I am re-listing things one by one, checking to see if A) I still have the items and B) editing the item photos that I am going to be using. I am also strongly considering moving this blog to a WordPress installation as well as Candlelight Boutique's blog to a WordPress installation on my host, but I haven't decided about that just yet. I have a WordPress installation for Candlelight Boutique, but I don't use it like I should.

In any case, I think my photos are looking better than they did before. :)

This is the before picture. It's kind of dark, you can see the fold lines in the tissue paper I used for a background. Just not a great picture - and this is the edited version. 

Much brighter, and to be honest, the color is actually more realistic on the playing card beads. This one had some heavy editing with a brush set to Overlay Mode and a Spot Healing brush, plus a noise reduction.

Notice the odd pink tint?

Gone, plus a better up close shot - just gorgeous now! (At least I think.)

As you can see, I'm doing better on the photo editing. :) Now to get some better advertising going for the shop. I'm not sure if I want to use the Etsy Search Ads or not. We had a small amount of success with them for Candlelight Boutique, but I'm not sure if I really want to use them with ESD at this point. 

So that is what has been going on with me for Eternal Stardust Designs. :)

Check My Other Blog

For fantastic deals on handmade bath salts, facial scrubbies, and sugar scrubs, please check out my other blog - Candlelight Boutique! The coupon codes & the appropriate percentages off are listed for this weekend's sales - please note that each coupon is good for 24 hours only!

There are three different codes - one for Friday, one for Saturday, and one for Monday! Happy Shopping! :)

What Does Handmade Mean to You?

This is a question that is asked by Etsy to anyone who is lucky enough to be one of Etsy's featured sellers. None of my three shops have been lucky enough to become one of the featured sellers, so Etsy themselves have never asked me what handmade means to me. So, in the interest of curiosity, I decided to answer the question here on my blog - just so people might get a better sense of what handmade means to me.

To me, handmade means that someone has taken something and made something else out of it. Whether it is taking a plain t-shirt and turning it into a work of art by embellishing it with appliques, ribbons, buttons, and bows or taking a ball of yarn and using it to knit or crochet a scarf, sweater, or blanket that is handmade to me. Sure the original materials a person used might have been mass-produced on a machine, but the final product was put together by a person who had a vision for those materials and made that vision come true.

Handmade means that the items will not be perfect. No, perfection is not a part of handmade items in my eyes. The eye loops on my head pins are not perfectly round or perfectly formed when I make my jewelry. This shows that I made those earrings by hand - no machine assembled the pair of earrings I designed. When I knit one stitch may come up larger than the rest in the row. Again - an imperfection, but proof that I knitted that scarf by hand, not using a knitting machine or in a factory that produces knitted scarves at a rate much faster than any human could knit.

Imperfections give a human factor to the items being made. They show that the items were made by a human being with that human's own two hands. I don't care if I designed it but my best friend is the one who actually made the item - as long as she used her own two hands, it was handmade.

What does handmade mean to you?

Black Friday/Cyber Monday Plans

I know many of the shops on Etsy are planning to have Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. I am actually not doing so on Eternal Stardust Jewelry or Eternal Stardust Baby, but we will be doing one on Candlelight Boutique.

The reason I am not doing any sales for Black Friday/Cyber Monday on the ESD shops is because I simply don't have the stock to handle it. Well, I do have a *lot* of jewelry, but at this point, I don't want to raise my Etsy bill too high and not be able to pay it. Besides, I would need to photograph a lot of the jewelry to ensure that the photos were good enough to make people want to buy the items, and right now my classes are a bit more intense with things due on odd days of the week. This makes it a bit more difficult to handle my shops.

By the way, the Christmas Light Earrings are back in the shop! :) The winner of the pair of earrings from my Facebook giveaway never contacted me with her shipping information and never responded to any of my attempts to contact her via Facebook or e-mail. I have decided that I probably won't use that giveaway application on Facebook anymore - it seems most people only liked the page to enter the contest. I don't want to deal with that anymore. 

I did re-list a few of my clearance items just to see if maybe during the holiday season they might actually sell at their discounted prices - they are still marked as being clearance. :) 

If you have a shop, are you doing anything for Black Friday/Cyber Monday??

EtsyBloggers Blog Carnival for 11/14/11 - 11/27/11

BunnyKissd of FaerieGardenFancies asks us these two questions this Blog Carnival:

1. November is National Novel Writing Month. As a blogger, have you ever though of crossing over and writing a book? Have you ever tried NaNoWriMo? Win or lose, tell us about your experience!

2. November is also National Diabetes Month. Do you have diabetes or has your life ever been touched by it? Please share any stories you have...

Well, actually, I *have* tried NaNoWriMo, twice now. The first time I failed miserably after only two or three days. I just didn't like the book I was working on and so I just gave up for that year. I tried again the year after that, with a different novel. That time I got about 30,000 words into the novel before losing interest in it. Every so often I go back and look at the novel again and write a few more sentences. I figure at this point I'll finish it in the year 3,011. LOL

As for diabetes, while I am not diabetic, my birth mother, grandparents on my birth mother's side, and several family members on my birth mother's side are/were diabetic. One of my best friends is also diabetic. I have seen firsthand the havoc this disease can wreak on a person's body -  my birth mother had almost every known complication from blindness to kidney failure. Diabetes is a horrible disease and I give whenever I can to help find better treatments for it!

EtsyBloggers Featured Blogger of the Month

I know, I know, long time no post, especially for anything to do with EtsyBloggers! I've been a *horrible* member of the team, I know this, but lately I've just been running in circles trying to keep up with myself! :P

But this post is *not* about me. This post is about Pamela from MagdaleneJewels!!! Pamela has two blogs which can be found here and here, as well as two Etsy shops - MagdaleneJewels and MagdaleneKnits. A woman after my own heart, as I, too, love to both knit/crochet & make jewelry! :)

She has been a big help to the EtsyBloggers team and has been with us for a while now, although I must admit, I don't really know her. However, I don't need to know her personally to know I love, love, love her shops!

Here is a screen shot of the "featured items" she shows on MagdaleneJewels:

My favorite items in her shop are actually on that screen shot - the Christmas Victorian Earrings and the Christmas Necklace, Ruby Topaz. 

Here is a screen shot of the "featured items" she shows on MagdaleneKnits:

LOVE that Christmas scarf she crocheted and those adorable pairs of booties! :) 

So there we have our featured EtsyBlogger! :) Congratulations Pamela! :)

Long Time No See

I know, I haven't been posting much lately, but I've been busy with the new business as well as starting my sophomore year in college. :) I sold 2 necklace/earring sets - both the same incredibly cool lady - and she featured one of them on her blog - check it out!