
I created a treasury in Black and white, Fantastic (2)!!! It wil expire on Sunday March 29 at 2:06 pm. You can still see it here:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=48339
Excerpts from the STORQUE Article:
Etsy Beadweavers Team is helping to fight breast cancer! Twenty five members of the Etsy Beadweavers (EBW) have joined forces to help fight breast cancer and create beaded squares to be included in Jeanette Shanigan’s 2009 Beaded Quilt. Jeanette sews the squares together to form the quilts and then frames them in shadow boxes. Finished quilts are auctioned at the Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee, WI, and the proceeds are donated to the Medical College of Wisconsin Breast Cancer Research Foundation. 100 percent of the donations go directly to research. This year’s theme is “Bead artists have the heart to take on breast cancer” and all squares will include a heart motif. Almost $10,000 has been raised for breast cancer research from the sale of the quilts. EBW members have set an October deadline for themselves in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You can see photos of quilts from previous years here.
The 2009 “Bead-It-Forward” Breast Cancer Donation Project
The title of this project is “Bead artists have the heart to take on breast cancer.”
The artist can use ANY beadwork stitches or other techniques but the motif of the square must reflect hearts of any type. Any colors, shapes, or styles of beads can be used, providing the overall motif is the heart.
My contribution to the EBW Quilt is a red HEART, surrounded by flowers.
I opened my Shop at Etsy in 2007 with only a couple of items, and, because I had other venues to sell my jewelry (Shows, Galleries) I forgot about Etsy for a while. I started to be active only in February 2008, when I decided to give it a new try and I started listing more pieces in my shop, taking care of my Appearance, Shop policies, etc. I immediately had a sale , a Heart Brooch, right before Valentine’s Day. Shortly after I discovered Etsy Beadweavers Team ad I signed up for membership, because I knew how important is for an artist to belong to a group, to a community. I participated in the March Challenge, Stormy Weather, and I was happy to see that EBW Blog visitors would vote for my Brooches. I even sold an other Heart Brooch, The Purple Eye of a Summer Storm - Amethyst Brooch
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=9974696
as a result of the Challenge.
Needless to say, at the beginning I was kind of lost at Etsy. I had to figure out a lot of things, how to improve my pictures, how to make a Treasury. I did my homework every day, looking at statistics (how many people are visiting my Shop, hearting my shop or my pieces, etc.), visiting my fellow EBW members shops and blogs, in order to know them better, commenting, in a word, being active in any way I could. Usually I don’t talk a lot, but I tried my best to be in touch. I made many friends in the group.
Having an Etsy Shop and being constantly successful requires hard work. I will try to list here a few things that I learned at Etsy and in the EBW group. I am trying to implement them in my every day activity.
- get good pictures, not to dark, pictures that would catch the buyer’s attention in the few seconds of her/his visit. The first picture “should be the one in which the item takes up much of the available space”. The work is much more “effectively shown” in close up pictures, so show them first!
- have a detailed description of your piece.
- list/re-list every day, so people can see your presence
- try to write in your blog at least once a week
- comment as often as you can in the EBW Blog and other members blogs
- check often the Forum for News concerning Treasuries, Blogs, New Listing and other events
- learn how to do treasuries. Until you get to do that, comment in as many Treasuries as you can.
And the list doesn’t end here…