kthxbye Etsy!

Here they are! Click HERE to get to my shop, or the thumbnails below for each item.

Yippee-Yi-Yay Cactus Hollows:

ColorBlast Opal Hana Glimmer Strips:

Winterblue Smooches:

Petite Polka Dots:

Blushing Diva Dot On A Stick Hollows (from the FOOF series):

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Hope you all are having a fine weekend so far! I guess I’ll go find something fun to do so that I’m not one of those jerks who works on the holiday weekend.

Toodles, thanks for checking in!

 

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First things first.

If you have a facebook, you’ve probably already seen this. If you haven’t, you have to watch this. You must. All the way through. You’ll notice they put the real cats away after the very beginning. Because claws.

nelson

And next in order of importance, these beads will be on Etsy:

the last etsy beads

They’re almost ready, it won’t be long now! I’ll post here again when they are.

See you in a bit.

 

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Holy Beadazzled Driftwood, Neckbeards!

As I stood washing dishes at the crack of dawn (after having been up all night, of course), nature’s sweet perfume of honeysuckle wafted in through the open window as if on a breeze made of winged flutes and glitter. I almost smiled. Almost. Before I could, I realized what was happening.

SUMMER.

“Blah!” I said aloud. It’s here: the season of constant sweating, bathing, washing my hair, hairballs (cats’, not mine, ok, some of them mine), lawn mowers and chainsaws whirring when SOME grumpy cats are trying to SLEEP because they’ve been WORKING all night. And, of course, ants. And sun. Lest we forget that dastardly thing, it comes back. Every day, without fail. Why can’t it go live behind a dark cloud forever, and only keep us semi-warm? I don’t have time for this kind of aggravation. Sweaters and boots, por favor, I implore? NOPE. Just pit stains for you and yours. BLAH! I say once more.

I’ve been working on stuff! Here, a special order beaded bead bracelet. I’ve been working on this for years. I’m not exaggerating.

Can I complain just a little bit? Not that I haven’t been constantly, already. But this hunching over a 1000+ degree flame in the midst of these sultry southern summers has grown tiresome. Loathsome. A few months back I mentioned not working with silver for a while, and perhaps July/August might be a good time to (tentatively) plan for it. There’s no kiln baking or a torch running nonstop for silversmithing activities, which helps keep the room temperature down. I need to buy a bit of silver before I can proceed, and I probably would have by now if it weren’t for the deals, Deals, DEALS on perfume on eBay. Egads. The stash is getting stupid out of control, and I’m loving every second of it. Dr. Phil was chastising some spoiled princess on his show last week for having – gasp – THIRTEEN bottles of perfume! I just laughed. Amateurs. So cute. But I must get my priorities straight… after I get my grubby mitts on that blue/black/silver can of Rive Gauche I’ve been eyeballing. Yes, people who know what Rive Gauche even is. It’s in a CAN now. And I gotsta have it.

recent ebay scores: Kobako, Givenchy Vetiver and vintage Mitsouko EDT

So, if you need some glass beads, gimme a jangle for an order in June. Don’t be shy, now. June isn’t so bad heat-wise. Usually. I was wearing a sweater yesterday morning, so who knows how it will all go. You have a few more days to peruse my Etsy sold listings for ideas, and I really will get my website updated. Another thing I can do while sweating my guts out these next couple of months.

special order knotted leather necklaces – want something like this? you know what to do.

Meanwhile, I’m getting ready for My Last Etsy Sale. I plan to spend today/tomorrow getting everything ready, and to list it all for sale on Saturday or Sunday. Yeah, I know, it’s Memorial Day weekend, probably the worst time for a sale because everyone is outside in the sun catching their deaths. But hey, maybe some of y’all hate the sun as much as I do and you’ll be inside in the air-conditioning, possibly saying goodbye to some of your other favorite sellers who are also abandoning their Etsy shops for more reasonable digs. What a shame. I assume my shop will go defunct on June 1st at 12AM, when ye olde tyrannical neckbeards will descend from high (of the doobage variety, presumably) and make it so. I’ll take a short while to mourn the Great Massacre of Derp and get my Big Cartel shop put together, but you will surely hear about it here once I’ve shed my darkened veil of moustaches and popsicle sticks.

Waah. I’m really gonna miss hurling insults at Etsy from behind the safety of my computer screen.

Here’s a glimmer of what’s coming up – sorry, some of it’s still in the kiln so I don’t have a photo of everything yet:

(experimental) yippee-yi-yay petite hollows! come see us and our friends on Etsy this weekend!

Smell you later!

 

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Goodbye, Cruel Etsy

go here for source of fanged sock monkey

Etsy shows no sign of backing down on the Etsy Payments takeover. Or, as I fondly refer to anything Etsy is involved in, The Feast of Unfathomable F*ckery. They’ve so generously granted us another two weeks of grace, I’m guessing to either figure out that the “other guys” suck way worse, or, knowing us crafters, extra time to find our social security cards and photo ID’s and birth certificates under our piles of sewing accoutrement and moustaches. And plenty of time to find the perfect palm frond to fan them with whilst we serve them some fava beans and a nice chianti. But I’m standing firm – I’m not signing on for that. The extra time is appreciated, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a total greedy deebag move, Etsy. I am not a compliant little robot, but I AM a reasonable and thoughtful person. I think about stuff and act deliberately, and I’m not the type to get all lathered up and knee-jerk react. Since I’ve ultimately decided to adopt a wait and see attitude about this, I’m not going to say I’ll never sell on Etsy again. I’ll keep a psychic claw in the undercurrents, an eye on the Etsy forums, and see what sort of issues arise. If it feels okay I’ll go for it. But it doesn’t feel okay right now.

my latest email from etsy – click on this for a full gander at the tomfoolery

I must comment on this quote from the above email:
“According to a 2016 Etsy analysis, in countries where Etsy Payments (formerly know as Direct Checkout) was available, active sellers using Etsy Payments saw more than twice the revenue (on average) of active sellers not using Etsy Payments.”

I cry horsefeathers. If eBay can auto-sort listings in any category based on certain seller criteria (eBay calls it Best Match), Etsy can just as easily make sellers who signed up for DC/EP more findable than those who didn’t. Duh.

And just so you know… you can pay anyone who has a Paypal account with a credit card WITHOUT maintaining your own paypal account. Isn’t that convenient? Probably not for Etsy’s superfluous payment processing system. But whatever.

Anyway, I’m really sorry about this. If you feel like this is going to make it more difficult to buy from me in the future, I totally understand. I would hate being asked to tromp-a-lomp all over heck and half of creation to buy someone’s art. I’m sure that if you had to drive 30 miles out of your way to buy toilet paper, you would. But luxury items such as the ones I produce? Probably not.

But please bear with me and give this a chance. When the time comes, I’m going to try Big Cartel, which is simply a shopping cart service, just as Etsy is (whether anyone wants to admit it or not)… and it’s cheap. Etsy wants 40 of my dollars this month, even with a relatively low number of sales. Big Cartel wants a flat fee – one that is significantly less than that for an entire month of service, no matter how much I sell. I’ll need to ask them a few specific questions before I choose the plan that will work best for me. By the looks of things, it works just like Etsy does, but without a feedback system and nifty networking features. I think.

But again, it works the same way Etsy does, meaning, I’ll have to do all my own marketing. If the item shows available, it is, just like Etsy. You add it to your cart, you choose your payment method, you pay me and I mail it to you. Same. I’ll be allowed the same number of photos, I can accept Paypal and whatever other methods of payment I choose. I can even customize my shop. Big Cartel doesn’t appear to want to force a payment system with unclear terms of service into my life, where, at the very least, my yearly accounting is further complicated. (We’re artists, for cripes sake. We’re already really bad at this sort of thing.) I’ll announce new items here, just as I always have, and you’ll be linked to my Big Cartel shop instead of Etsy. I’ll also keep a permanent link to my Big Cartel shop handy here on my blog so that you can visit it any time. I think it’s worth a try, considering my alternative. It all seems pretty easy in theory, but I do realize it may take me and you both a little while to adjust to these changes. I hope we can, together. Kumbaya and all that rot.

Let’s discuss the lack of a feedback system… in case that’s a concern for you, I guess it’s on me to inspire your confidence. There is one thing I can promise: I take quick shipping and careful packaging very seriously and I always have, no matter where I sell my work. This is my livelihood. My reputation – whether it’s what you read online or hear through word of mouth – is all I have, and I strive to maintain high standards in that regard. Yeah, I know I can be a little odd sometimes, but business is business, and if I don’t do things above board I don’t eat. Not too many things in life are simple, but this one thing seems to be the simplest of all.

So. Until my Etsy selling privileges are yanked on May 31st for non-compliance in their evil plot to commandeer every bank account in the crafter circuit, let’s enjoy my time on Etsy while it lasts. I plan to add some new things early-mid next week. And Superstars (on my website) will continue to happen whenever I have the energy. And if you’ve been using my sold Etsy listings as a catalogue for made-to-orders, worry not – I WILL get everything from 2016 to now added to my website gallery, hopefully within the next month or two.

And now, my incessant complaining about Etsy concludes. I’ll see you back here next week with my usual grand announcements of new things for sale. Thanks for checking in!

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