February Giveaway

At the beginning of January, my Facebook page had reached 900+ likes and to celebrate I promised I'd hold a glassy giveaway.

Well, better late than never, eh? :)

So here's the prize - one of my signature Rainbow Tie-Dye art glass beads in the shape of a heart, hung on a sterling silver snake chain. Either keep it as a gift for yourself or give it to someone special on Valentine's Day!

It doesn't matter where you are in the world - this giveaway is open to international entries.

To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post. I don't require you to "like" my Facebook page (Facebook does not look kindly on that sort of thing) but I'd appreciate it if you did and would be kind enough to share it with your friends :) It'd be great if you could follow my blog too - that way you'll know when the next glassy giveaway is happening...

I will put all the names in a randomiser app and will use it to choose the winner at 8pm on Friday 8th February. The winner will be announced here and on my Facebook page. Good luck!

Edited to add: Some people have had problems posting below and I know some would prefer not to, so if you'd like to leave a comment on my Facebook page, under my post about this giveaway or  under a photo I posted of this pendant I'll add you to the list - thanks!

9th Feb Update: The winner has been announced

A little something for myself

I'm usually so busy trying to keep both my Etsy and my own webshop stocked that I forget that I took up lampworking as a relaxing hobby!  Making something for myself, just for the heck of it has become a rare occurrence, so over the past few weeks, on and off, I've been working on a little project for myself.  It's something that I've had in mind for a good while...

Here's the result!

Rainbow Necklace

I'm really pleased with it :)

Now I know what you're thinking; it shouldn't have taken me so long to put together something with relatively simple beads.  You see, I'm obsessive about colour and order.  The beads had to be made in exactly the right shades, ensuring a smooth gradient through the spectrum.  Then there's the size - for this to turn out the way I'd pictured it, the beads had to be a uniform size... but I've never been great with sizing beads.  It's why I don't make many sets - I usually have to make twice as many beads as end up in the finished set, just to get consistent sizes!

I thought that this project might give me a chance to practice and gradually get the hang of evenly-sized beads but try as I might, it just wouldn't happen.  I knew I'd have to give in and use a bead roller.  I do prefer shaping glass by hand (well, not exactly "by hand" - that'd hurt!  You know what I mean :) ) but in this case I realised it wasn't going to happen.

Boy am I glad I did give in!  After taking some advice from a friend, I bought a bead roller from Howaco Glass (who offer a very friendly, personal and quick service), waited a few days for it to arrive, sat and looked at it for a couple more days (I often do this with a new piece of kit... like I'm letting it settle in before bothering it) and finally gave it a go.

The result was I made my necklace in two days with only one attempt per colour!  Each bead is about 16.5mm in diameter and 9.5mm hole-to-hole.

I now have lots of similar ideas branching from this one.  I'm currently working on an etched version as well as other necklaces, bracelets and bead sets in similar gradient style but limited to "palettes" (hot reds and oranges, cool greens and blues, etc.).  I'm going to try different sizes and shapes too.

The positive side-effect of making this piece is that I've started having ideas again just as "beadmaker's block" was setting in. 

Now I just have to work out what to do with all the beads I made before I invested in the bead roller...

ALL the beads!

Pricing puzzler

My question:  How do you price a bead like this?

Rainbow Kaleidoscope

I'd joked that I was going to name it "Two And A Half Hours And A Burnt Hand" which pretty much sums up what it took to make this piece.  Anyone familiar with my work knows I'm a bit partial to rainbows... in this case, I decided to use *all* the colours; the result was that it took 2½ hours to carefully melt the layers whilst making sure the disc didn't melt down or become too wibbly.  At the end, I was so tired that I became careless and forgot that the end of glass rod that's fresh out of the flame is HOT!

Top view;  keeping the disc thin and straight whilst
melting down each layer was particularly tricky!

My problem is that now I've made a bead with which I'm rather chuffed, how do I price it in such a way that I'm covering not only my time but the skill involved in making it?  I don't intend to charge extra for the burn as that was my own silly fault ;)

Advice and suggestions appreciated...

A new line for a new (glass) year

This week, I finally manage to make it to the workshop for the first time this year and I chose to start with something new - interchangeable ring toppers. I was pretty pleased with my first attempts:



And here's the second batch (one has already sold to a lovely person :) ):




If you don't know about interchangeable jewellery systems, this is how they work:




The great thing is that you only have to buy one ring base (pendants and cufflinks are available too) and you can switch the topper to suit your outfit!

Bases are available from Little Castle Designs (sterling silver or stainless steel) and from by george (sterling silver only and the ring bases here are adjustable).

Watch my Etsy shop for new topper designs.

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Etsy tip #2a: be sociable - Facebook

Whether you love or hate social networks, they are now a fact of life and the quickest, cheapest, easiest way to pass information around.

You don't have to be on all of them... if you were, you'd spend more time updating your information than with your beloved craft materials!

As you know, these tips are based on my own experience, so I'll only be talking about the sites I've used to any great extent; Facebook, Twitter and more lately, Google+. I'm not saying the others don't have any merit - it may even be that if I were present on more of them, I may get more page hits on my Etsy shop but I spend enough time promoting my work as it is, I don't need to add another just yet! In this post, I'll tackle Facebook.

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Facebook

The first thing to say about Facebook is to make sure you have a fan/business page rather than simply using your regular Facebook account to promote your work. That way you can keep the two sections of your life as separate as you need them to be. Your "fans" won't see (or be put off by) your non-business information ("Your friend needs help with a barn-raising"... I'm so glad I managed to kick the Farmville habit!) and people won't have to send a friend request to be able to follow your work.

Now I know that some people have a separate account for their business; I can't really see why this is needed when you can have a business page on your regular account without one affecting the other. Besides, you'd have two sets of usernames and passwords to remember and really, don't we have enough of that from all the sites we join without duplicating one? If I did it that way, I'd forget which "me" I'd logged in as and post the wrong thing on the wrong account! ;D




Creating a business page is pretty easy - there are plenty of tutorials out there to help but you probably won't need one as it's a fairly logical process. Tarting it up is another matter which I may address in a future post but for now, have a play :) My page is here: http://www.facebook.com/janehamillbeadsandjewellery - look at the bottom of the left-hand column and you'll see a link for "Create a page".

At first you will be given a generic URL for your page but once 25 people have started to follow it, you can choose a more user-friendly version. When you have created your page, feel free to post the link to your business page in the comments at the bottom of this post - hopefully you'll get to 25 followers before you know it! :)

A quick word about naming your page - make sure you choose the title of your page wisely as you will be unable to change it in the future, which could be awkward if you make any changes to your work. I find this particularly annoying as I'd prefer my title to be "Jane Hamill - Art Glass Beads & Jewellery", in line with the changes I've made to my other promotional materials. Instead I'm stuck with the much longer "Jane Hamill - Lampwork Glass Bead and Jewellery Artist". And I thought using my own name as my brand would be easier! ;)




The most important thing here is to make sure that whenever you list something, post it to your business page! People who like something but can't buy just now are likely to share links they like with their friends so it's a good way to spread the word.

Obviously you don't want to flood your "viewers". You see, that's where tip #1 - "An item a day" is also useful here. If you're posting once a day to Etsy to keep your visibility up there, you're also posting at least once a day to your Facebook page, to keep you on people's walls.

There's nothing to stop you posting to your Facebook page more than once a day, just be careful not to flood it as that's the surest way for people to remove you from their list of "likes".




Of course, we're hoping that your customer base is as wide as possible and so probably international so we're working across timezones. There's no way to guarantee you'll catch all of the people all of the time but I use a handy technique to promote the same thing twice over two days and at different times.

I list new items in the evening of day 1 and post the link to my business page.

On day 2 I upload a picture (preferrably a different one to the one I associated with the original link from the day 1) to my page's photo album and in the caption I put the name of the piece and its Etsy link. Even if the item has sold before I get to this stage, I still upload a photo with "Sold - thanks!" as the caption because you're still promoting your work - I've received a few commissions this way.




There are a number of Facebook groups that you can join, who are happy for you to post links to handmade shop listings on their pages. The ones I use are:

• Etsy Promo Love
• It's Better Handmade
• Handmadeology

I post a link to each day's new listing on each of those groups. You don't have to do the same. For instance, you could post a link to your Etsy shop once a week.




There are other things you might want to put on your fan page, for example Etsy treasuries in which your work has featured or that you have created yourself. For now, I've tried to include the basics to get your FB page started. I have plans to write further ways to use your Facebook page for promotion but this post is long enough already, so I'll stop here!

If you think I've left anything out, please leave a comment below. If I edit the post to add your tip, I will also include a link to your shop, blog or Facebook business page :) Next time: Twitter!

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Etsy tip #1: An item a day.

Keeping your visibility on Etsy is important. You want your items to appear regularly on the recent items lists and in your favourites' and circles' activity pages. Obviously you can't make enough of your craft to be able to be constantly listing new things but you should have an aim.

That aim is to list one item per day.

I know what you're going to say; there's no way you can make enough of your high-quality handmade items to be able to list one a day without burning yourself out! Yes, I agree - the only way I was able to do this right from the beginning was because I had a huge backlog of stock that I was moving from my own webshop across to Etsy. I moved one per day whilst I still continued to make beads and jewellery, creating a further queue of items.

I'm also lucky that my chosen art, lampworked glass beads, enables me to create at least one high-quality saleable focal or set per torch session. In fact there are usually more than that and when my health allows, I have one torching session, three days per week.

If you're creating bigger items that take a great deal more time to make, the one-per-day rule is tricky to stick to, if not impossible.

The best advice I can give is to at least *aim* for one-per-day. Sometimes you might find yourself with a few items to list, so don't be tempted to do so all at once, eke them out over the next few days, one a day.

Etsy recently introduced the "Draft listings" option, where you can type up your description, upload pictures, set your tags (try to use all the slots for pictures and all of your 14 allocated tags where you can!) and then save it as a draft to activate at a later date. This means you can set aside some time at the computer to get all the listing done and once and all you have to do for the next few days is to activate each one.

And of course, whilst you're working through this queue you will also be making new things to add to the end of it... and so on...

Remember also, renewed items count as a newly-listed item. Obviously we're hoping that you will sell your work before its listing expires but if it doesn't you can at least use it to your advantage :) Don't renew your items all at once; again, eke them out.

Once you have built up some momentum with this you'll find it easier over time to approach, if not reach, listing one item per day - good luck! :)

Etsy tips - an introduction

Although I've had a presence on Etsy since January 2008 and have had a few items listed every now and then, it wasn't until the beginning of the year that I started to really concentrate on it. Until then I'd had my work in exhibitions here and craft shows there but my health made it all a bit tricky, so the obvious solution was to sell online.

I also had a webshop but didn't sell much through it, so I decided to give Etsy a shot. Partly because the listing process was much more straightforward (Zencart was a headache!) but mostly because I knew that people already go to Etsy to window shop... many more than would stumble upon my own webshop!

So I scoured the web for information, found lots of advice, followed some, ignored others. It looks like I chose wisely because it started to work.

The upshot is, in the last 6 months, I've sold more via Etsy than at shows, exhibitions and old webshop *combined* for the past 2 years!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not making enough to pay the bills but I'm confident that as my name becomes more well-known and word spread, I'll get there. For now I'm covering my costs and making enough to invest in more tools, equipment, supplies and sundries for the business.

So anyway, here's the point. A couple of friends started asking me for "magic tips". Then a couple more asked. Then lots more asked... so to stop a lot of searching old emails, copying and pasting I decided to do something useful and Put It In My Blog.

There's lots to learn so I'm going to post every now and again in bitesized chunks. I'll post them as and when I've edited my various email-novels into a digestable and readable format :).

NB: These tips come with no guarantee - these are just what I did to get my Etsy pageviews from a monthly total of 82 (December 2010) up to 9332 (June 2011).

Etsy Tip #1: An item a day