Artisan of the week, Joanne of Lej Jewellery

What a Beautiful Sunday morning we have here in Wales. The sun is shining Brightly and it really feels like spring is here to stay. Today I have the joy of introducing you to the lovely Joanne of Lej Jewellery. As her shop name suggests Joanne makes jewellery, but that is not all. She also hand crafts cards and gifts such as sun catchers & curtain tie backs. Her work can also be seen on Folksy and MISI . So here is Joanne to tell you a little bit more about herself.
1. Could you please introduce us to who you are and what you do?
Hi I'm Joanne, I live in Lancashire with my husband and 2 children and I design and create handmade jewellery. I also enjoy making other things such as bookmarks, curtain tie backs and sun catchers. I also dabble in card making, cross stitching and sewing. I love trying new things and most crafts, I tried knitting once but couldn't get past the casting on part!

2. What led you to take up your craft?
I had started crafting with cross stitch not long after my son was born and after a couple of years moved onto card making. It was while I was out looking at card making magazines that I came across a bead magazine with free beads and thought I'd give it a try. The rest as they say is history.

3.Which part of your work do you most enjoy?
Shopping for beads, I love beads and have completely taken over the house with them. I don't yet have my own craft room so I tend to sit in the middle of the living room floor with my beads spread all around me and plan what I'm going to make and what beads I'm going to use. I also enjoy making novelty jewellery, I like the idea that I have made something that nobody else has.

4.Which part do you find the hardest?
Waiting until my kids are asleep before I start to craft, if I could I would craft all day and night. I feel my fingers itching to start crafting once it gets closer to bed time. My son stays up late of a weekend and sometimes I'll get my beads out and he joins in but my daughter is too young and it will be a couple of years before I can let her loose with my beads.

5. Where do you hope to be in 1 years time?
I would love my website to be established, I have only had it a year and have worked pretty hard to promote it and get to the stage I'm at now. I also did some designing for a magazine recently and would love the chance to do it again and maybe for it to become a regular feature.

6. What is the best advise you have ever been given?
To respect other people and there opinions, it was drummed into me as a kid and I now tell my kids the same. I think it is important in life to respect other people and their opinions as not everyone is the same and we don't all think the same. The world would be a very boring place if we did.

7. Could you name artisan sites/shops would you recommend are worth a visit?
Of course there's MISI, and Folksy where I have shops. Also a couple of people who I have bought from or plan to do so in the future are Tee & Toast , Kitschy Coo and The Pink Fairy Cake

8. What is your favourite sandwich filling?
Well that's quite tricky as I don't really have a favourite anything, my mind changes daily depending on my mood. Today I would have to say cheese and finely chopped spring onion, tomorrow maybe tuna mayonnaise or ham salad.

Thank you for joining in at Autonomous Artisans Joanne. I hope your website goes from strength to strength. The Pink Fairy Cake site you linked us too has made me drool. So much yumminess so little eating time. Thanks for sharing. As usual dear readers if you click the images you will be taken to the items and the shops they are selling in. Take a look around and see what else Joanne makes.

Written by Lynne of PiratePixieCrew and Hyperloop Hoops

Artfire's Crazy Train

Yesterday was the start of the Artfire Crazy Train promotions. This was set up by the ever so lovely Paula of Picard Creative. Basically what it comes down to is lots of people sign up to be on the train and then each person is scheduled to be in the VIP carriage of the train for 2 days. For those two days the rest of the people on the train check out the VIP's shop and pick out items to show to the rest of the world, by blogging, twittering, plurking, email... anyway they can think of really. Well I was Lucky enough to be the first person in the VIP Lounge. So Yesterday I woke up and logged on to the net and found all my shop contents being talked about all over the place. It was fabulous! I felt like a superstar!

The thing that most touched me though was this. Everyday on the Artfire fora there is a thread started for people to post their "Item of the day" and to my surprise so many people instead of picking thier own goods to show off they picked mine. This kind but simple act almost made me cry. Silly really, to consider of all the things people did to promote me yesterday, that one should affect me the most. I guess it's because I wasn't expecting it. So in honor of those people picking my goods to show off yesterday I'm going to put an item of each of theirs on todays blog. Please click on the photos and take a look around their studios. They all have some many gorgeous items for you to buy.

Catfluff

The Jewelry Shop

A Kimberly Design

Jewelry by Janzia

B.A. Kid Again

Janelson Arts

Alisun's

Creative Cove Jewelry Designs

Wooley Creek

Jewelry to Keep

Silver River Jewelry

Picard Creative

Thank you all for promoting my work. To everyone that spent time twittering, blogging, plurking, bookmarking, networking, singing from the roof tops, emailing, dancing in the street or any other kind of promotion about my shop, I would like to send you all a giant squishy hug.

You are all amazing!

Written by Lynne of the PiratePixieCrew and Hyperloop Hoops

Photography Tutorials: Staging Your Photos

or

“Pay no attention to all that stuff in the background”

Cluttered photos, we’ve all seen them. You know the ones I’m talking about…that lovely handmade gown, displayed beautifully on a dress form, with the overflowing laundry basket in plain sight, the hand-thrown ceramic bowl, sitting on a kitchen counter overrun with mail, car keys, and dirty dishes. Or, perhaps, my personal favorite: the shiny, silver coffee pot that clearly reflects the state of the photographer’s, ahem, undress.

No one wants to buy your dirty laundry and dishes, nor will they even contemplate touching that vintage coffee pot. We all have chores that get put aside for the sake of our art (I, right now, am surrounded by a sea of Lego and unfolded laundry) but no one wants to see this in your product photographs. If you are photographing items outside, please take care not to include your neighbor’s trash cans or your plastic swing set in the background. Some folks really like to include props when staging their photographs – sometimes this is a necessity, in the case of hats and clothing which require a model to display them properly – but it is important not to confuse the eye. Simple, uncluttered photographs will never deter a potential buyer.

What exactly am I selling here – stuffed animals? Plastic blocks? Just because you want to illustrate that something could be used in a baby’s room, you don’t need to accessorize your item to that end. Mention the child-friendly status in your item description, but let your customers use their imaginations when it comes to the visuals. If you really want to accessorize, use something that won’t distract from your item and is harmonious in color or theme.

The next major challenge: reflective surfaces. I often remove glass from picture frames if I need to eliminate glare, but if you are trying to photograph a shiny item that can’t be altered in such a way, you have to get creative.

Standing head-on is not the answer!

Simply moving to the side and reflecting the window and trees beyond is a much better image (using a light box would, of course, eliminate the problem as well and we’ll chat about that another month). For now, just step to the side and please make sure nothing untoward is reflected in that flask!

*personal note: this flask is for illustrative purposes only…no conclusions about my state of sobriety while writing these tutorials should be drawn.*

Written by Michell of MKCPhotography

Google pick me please!

When you start out in the world of selling your beautiful handmade goods it can seem like a really big learning curve and a massive struggle to get everything just right. Add to that the huge amount of ways you can now sell and sometimes you can feel like you are drowning in information. My advice is, take each bit of advice you are given, learn from it and evolve how you sell as you go along. Don't think you have to fully act on everything all at once. Concentrate on one aspect of selling at a time. Perfect that and then move on to the next thing.

This week I have been concentrating on getting my goods seen more often and in a higher spot on search engines like Google. I knew that where you come in the ranking on Google within any one search is made up a complicated algorithm, but I wasn't all that sure what things, other than back links, that affected it. I knew titles and descriptions played some part but I wasn't sure just how much. My search for information happened to coincide with a bit of advice given by Tony Ford over on Artfire. Tony linked a fellow seller on Artfire to something called Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. This is a tool designed for people using AdWords advertising to increase the effectiveness of their ads, but we can use it to find out what words people have used in their searches and change our listings titles and descriptions so they get pulled up more often in searches.

So in the top box you type in words that you have used to describe your goods , fill out the "I am human" box and the press "Get Keyword ideas". You should end up with a page full of words, numbers and little teal coloured boxes like this:-

(right click image and open in a new tab to enlarge)

I typed in 'baby hat' and these are the Keywords related to term(s) entered. So what does it all mean? The words on the left are words used in searches by the general public. The teal coloured boxes indicate the number of people already using those keywords for their adverts. The next 2 columns of numbers refer to the number of searches done using those keywords. The first is those that have been done in the month of February and the second is the average number of times a month those words were used in the past 12 months. The second column is what we are interested in.

So there are no great surprises in the results for this. Lots of people searched for baby hat, but what you can see from the figures is that people also searched for specific styles of baby hat and you can see the more popular terms used to describe certain types of hats.

(right click image and open in a new tab to enlarge)

I make baby hats with what I would call a bobble on the top that also have ear flaps. Now I would normally have titled this as a 'Babies bobble hat', but as you can see in the results more people refer to what I call a bobble hat as a pom pom hat, also there were more searches for hats that have earflaps than either bobbles or pom poms. From now on I will be retitling my hats of this style as 'Baby earflap hat with pom pom' and then in the first 2 lines of the description I will use the words earflap, pom pom and bobble to increase my chances of being pulled up in a search.

Under the 'Keywords related to terms entered' box you will find another box titled 'Additional keywords to be considered'. Take a look through these also. They might help you to find words that are relevant to the goods you are listing and had never thought of using.

(right click image and open in a new tab to enlarge)

As you can see by the words that came up as suggestions in my search 'knitting' is one that is searched a lot, so I will also be adding sentences like, "I enjoyed knitting this hat so much..." to the start of my descriptions. It may not make a huge difference, but every little helps.

So do you now see just how important it is to get good titles with words in them that people actually search for? This tool is really useful in helping you to decide what words to use that are relevant to your goods.

Thank you Tony for tipping me off to this tool!

Written by Lynne of the PiratePixieCrew and Hyperloop Hoops

The gift drawer

When I imagine being completely grown up, and totally organized I think about my imaginary gift drawer. This will (hopefully) be a drawer full of wonderful gifts, suitable for a wide range of friends and family. If I ever forget someone’s birthday, or special event I can turn to my drawer of handmade pressies and find something lovely (not that I will, because I’ll be totally organized). I’d stock up this draw from lovely Etsy and Folksy sellers, as well as craft fairs.

I’ve chosen some great gift items from Folksy, for when that day of ultimate organization comes!

First up is a lovely double sided beech photo frame is made by Chris Dodsworth Designs. It’s pretty much a perfect gift for anyone! It also allows you to store photos with it, so you don’t have to scrabble around for a new photo, each time you want a change.

The present box will definitely also contain a large number of cards, for all occasions. I already have a box with spare cards, but most them I don’t really like! These beautiful cards from Fleshie, are just right – they’re colourful, unique and flexible as they have been left blank inside. They come in packs of five, great for stocking up!

Even though I make purses myself, I can’t help but be tempted by other peoples, especially this gorgeous woollen pouch, Materialised. If I could bear to give it away, then it would make one of my girly friends very happy indeed (if they weren’t already inundated with handmade purses). It’s even made from recycled felt sweaters, so great eco-friendly gift.

I love notebooks, they are so handy! I seem to have a collection of these too, but none quite as stylish as Pumpkin Sputnik’s pale blue pine notebook.
This subtle pine design gives the pamphlet style notebook a touch of glamour, making it a perfect present for the more sophisticated friend.

These keyrings from Picciolo would make great little pressies, on there own or to add an extra unique element to a bigger present. They are felt double sided keyrings, with piccolo’s unique design and complementary fabric.

I wonder how many other people are organised enough to have a proper pressy draw… I’m sure there are some of you out there!

Written by Rose of FeltGiraffe
You will be able to see Rose's handmade beautiful purses in person at Handm@de Cambridge this weekend.