Challenge 52 - week 3

Yes, I realise I should have written this last weekend, but we were doing the tiling in the kitchen! It went pretty well and now everything is back in the cupboards and finished!

Last post I mentioned the commissions I was asked to do. One I am very excited about I will save for another blog post as I'm waiting for some supplies to arrive. The other was for a Steampunk necklace. I had to buy some new epoxy as when I had carefully designed and arranged all the pieces in postition I realised I didn't have enough to stick all of them (it tends to seep through the lid no matter how tightly you screw it on, so I bought some in a syringe this time). Well, I was having a bit of a steampunk marathon and made some rings and hair pins too. These are the pendants for the necklaces drying happily - I have given the potential customer the choice and will put the rest on the website afterwards.

 I signed up to Google Merchant Centre to add my website's shop to the 'shopping' items for Google searches. I'm pretty high when searching for 'pirate jewellery' or 'steampunk jewellery' but need to go through all my meta keywords and descriptions on my website. I think when I first changed website hosts I was in such a hurry to get all the products up, I didn't add all the meta info for everything - that's another fun job to look forward to! Though Create are a really good and easy to use website provider it's not too much of a pain, just a bit time consuming.
Oh by the way, this isn't week 3 news but I had my first order via Google checkout yesterday, so I'm pleased I added it!


OK, I'll hopefully do another post on Sunday and that will bring me up to date!
~Jane

Challenge 52 - week 2

Hello!
Well what's been going on this week?

If you look to the right you can see a cool Challenge 52 badge which Abi from Birdcage Creative made me, to include my website address.

This Challenge 52 idea has really made me determined to do the things I've been meaning to do for a while.
So this week I've made a Flickr account and am in the process of uploading hundreds of photos of my jewellery to it. The link is on the right of this page. I will put a link on my website http://www.pirate-treasures.com/ once I've got all the photos uploaded, and use it to show 'sold' items. In the past, on my old website I had a slideshow of sold items and had a couple of commissions from people wanting similar things. So having a whole Flickr photostream will let everyone see what I've made over the past few years and not clog up my shop pages with 'sold out' things!
Yesterday I set up a Google Checkout for my website to give customers an alternative to using Paypal as a checkout processor. I don't know if it will make a difference, but I know some people don't like Paypal - though my shopping cart only uses it to process the payments and you don't need a Paypal account to use your credit or debit card.

Apart from that, I've just done a little tweaking with the website, I haven't even had time to make anything new as the kitchen decorating is still going on. It's a kitchen-diner and we've had to use Polycell wall smoothing stuff (can't remember the actual name!) on the walls, then sand it off before it can be painted. I have painted two walls today (Homebase 'Putty' colour paint!) and will hoepfully get the rest done tomorrow so we can get the tiling done by the end of the week.
I have commissions from two customers to work on this week, so have ordered supplies of things I haven't got in stock. I plan to photograph the process of making them for my next blog.
Bye for now!!
Jane

New Kitchen & Folksy Friday - Kitchen theme

I have just had a new kitchen fitted this week. It's not quite finished, there was a door and a shelf missing and we still have the tiling and decorating to do, but it's really brightened up the room.

So naturally I thought I'd do a Folksy Friday on a kitchen theme - if only I had enough money to buy new accessories! It's only a very small selection as I've been cleaning out the cupboards and putting everything back in them, which has taken aaaages...

Click on the picture to go shopping!

Shops are 1) Tigerlilly Primitives 2) EnigmaArt Decoupage 3) You Say That You Love Me 4) Candace Gray

Oh and here's a kitsch-kitcheny necklace from me!!

~Jane

Challenge 52 & April Show-ers

OK, so maybe I need some sort of incentive/threat to get myself moving and remembering to blog...

Well luckily Abi from  Birdcage Creative had a great idea with a great name and invented Challenge 52, where she will aim to make/design/blog or otherwisely be creative every week. She has invited others to join in, so that's probably the poke with a blunt stick I need! But as I have two blogs, I might alternate some weeks if I don't manage to get things done for both of them - sounds like I'm chickening out, but hopefully I'll keep it up! Yes I know I attempted the One a Day Challenge last year and that tailed off, but once a week might work out better.

Also, I'm joining in with the daily listing club on Folksy this month, called the April Show-ers. I'm alternating between Pirate Treasures Jewellery and The Emporium of Curiosities each day, so that will make 30 listings in total.

So far for Pirate Treasures I've listed three Pandora style bracelets. They are very popular with my local customers - I daren't think of how many beads one of my friends has bought from me, she has an adiction to them! I've sold quite a few on my website but haven't listed any on Folksy before.

Right then, as we are in the middle of having a new kitchen fitted and it's fish & chip shop dinner tonight, I can use the extra not-having-to-cook time to go and make some more jewellery! Look out for a new necklace later this week... 

~Jane