bstudio: silk ribbon embroidery & more

Winter

2011-12-10T23:57:00.001-05:00

One advantage of living in the country is the beauty of winter, especially from inside!

Though there are days when the sun shines and the winds don't howl when we do get out and enjoy it.

Here are few winter sites from this season so far here on 'the farm'.

As the ponds start to freeze over we get these interesting looking patterns on the ice.

At sunset the clouds take on a pink hue and the clear sky becomes mauve and azure blue.

Looking out our kitchen window on a brilliantly sunny day. Can you see the deer tracks on the lawn?

I love waking up to see what tracks have been left in the snow from the nighttime visitors, it's like seeing the footprints of ghosts!

Using thread but not sewing

2011-11-19T14:21:00.001-05:00

One television programme that we watch every week is CBS News Sunday Morning. It’s an hour and a half of short episodes about all sorts of topics such as art, food, entertainment, politics, history, humour and more.

We always record it and watch it later so we can buzz through the commercials (it has a ton!). We just watched the November 6 episode and one of the stories was about a new art gallery that has just opened in Bentonville, Arkansas called Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Designed by architect Moshe Safdie and funded by Alice Walton of the famous Walmart family.

As they were interviewing Ms. Walton and showing some of the pieces she has included in the permanent collection, I saw one piece that caught my eye not only because of its scale but the very unusual medium used to produce it. We wrote down the artist’s name and Googled her.

Devorah Sperber creates works of art using spools of thread. The installation at Crystal Bridges is called ‘After The Last Supper’ and it measures 85” high and 29’ long, but the remarkable ting about it is that it is made up of 20,736 spools of thread! You don’t just view it as you would a normal work of art because it is created upside-down and backwards. To see the piece the right way round you view it through a clear acrylic viewing sphere.

Ms. Sperber has been creating the 'Thread Spool Works' work since 1999. Her largest installation consists of 60,000 spools of thread. She has also produced other works using chenille stems, Letraset marker caps and map tacks all following the pixel theme.

Fascinating stuff and I now have a reason to visit Arkansas!

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T16:39:00.000-04:00

I love these felted bowls by thefuzzymonkey on Etsy!

A BIG thank you!

2011-10-29T15:58:00.000-04:00

My shop has been featured on many blogs over the past few years and I've paid for advertising on others but I have to say, the feature given to my Birch Trees Necklace by Rebecca at Soap Deli News Blog has been the best response in terms of views I have ever seen!

Her Stocking Stuffer Extravaganza was posted October 20th, according to my Etsy shop stats, this post has generated 589 views in 9 days. That may not seem to be a lot to some but to me that's an impressive number when I compare it to other features my shop has gotten or ads I've run.

So I'm giving a BIG thank you to Rebecca!

Ghosts of the forest

2011-10-28T21:41:00.000-04:00

I love white birch trees. Now that most of the leaves have fallen from the deciduous trees in the forest straddling the edge of our property the birch trees stand out against the dark background like ghosts in the forest. The chalky white color of their bark makes them instantly recognizable and if you get closer you also see the familiar black markings that is their second most discernible feature.

I decided to try and interpret this look with my silk ribbon embroidery. The first item I made was a pendant. I used three different widths of white silk ribbon and stitched them with dark brown embroidery floss onto natural coloured burlap. I like the rustic look the burlap has.

Some of my teammates on the Etsy Oh Canada Team commented that they thought this would also be a lovely design for a pillow cover. I would have made it out of the burlap but there's an odd chemical scent to a large amount of burlap that I don't like plus it's not the greatest material to snuggle up to. So instead I used my favourite pillow cover fabric, dupioni silk, in a beautiful muted yellow colour.
To make a more 'country style' pillow cover I will seek out something similar to burlap but with a softer less scratchy feel to it such as linen or a cotton hemp blend fabric.

Fall

2011-10-16T05:34:00.003-04:00

I took this shot while we were visiting Letchworth State Park in NY state last week.
Love the contrast of the leaves and the asphalt.

How's it going? Well, I'll tell you.......

2011-09-27T02:12:00.003-04:00

A reader asked recently about the results of my opening a web page at Big Cartel and being featured in the Poppytalk Marketplace. Here are the results so far and my thoughts and opinions on the subject.

Big Cartel:

Opened the website June 18^th.

The weekly visitor stats:

6 weeks ago – 155

5 weeks ago – 151

4 weeks ago – 135

2 weeks ago – 129

Last week – 172

No sales through the site.

I find that having a stand-alone website like this one is a pretty lonely existence especially when you can’t really interact with potential buyers. If it were a site where you could treat it like a blog and write about your latest projects, triumphs and tragedies I think it would be more engaging. That being said, you still have to put the effort into the site and update it constantly to keep people engaged.

Another stumbling block for me, whether it’s a blog or a website, is that I’m not sure where to go to advertise and get people to come and look at the site. I’m a guest author on a silk ribbon supplier’s blog so I had them link my avatar to the website. There’s facebook (I do) and twitter (I don’t) but how much time is one supposed to dedicate to the social media stuff and when is there time to actually create? I know part of my problem is that I’m not the chatty ‘guess what I’m up to now’ kind of gal so I guess that makes me a bad candidate as a salesperson.

According to my Google Analytics numbers for June 18^th to Sept 26^th, most of my visitors (150) were from the silk ribbon blog. Second was tied between direct traffic and Poppytalk Handmade both at 135. Next was the Poppytalk blog at 96, goggle.com/referral at 77 and my own blog at 60.

The Poppytalk Marketplace:

Inclusion is still ongoing. It runs from June until November. I haven’t had an Etsy buyer mention specifically that they saw my items on Poppytalk.

Again, if I check my GA for my Etsy shop for the June to present time, Poppytalk Handmade ranks 26^th for traffic with 52 visits.

Etsy shop:

Sales Stats:

Apr – 19

May – 6

June – 2

July and Aug – 6

Sept - 4

As you can see, my sales on Etsy have not been the greatest since May so that’s really frustrating especially since a month and a half later I started the Poppytalk marketplace and Big Cartel website and haven’t really seen any significant changes. When I read the discussions in the Etsy forums I see lots of sellers in the same boat with low sales. I have been on the Front Page at least once each month and one of my necklaces was in an Etsy Finds daily feature and yet sales continue to be practically non-existent.

Is it the economy, the tweaks to the way the search is run on the site, summer? Who knows?!!

I do like the social aspect of Etsy where you can join different teams, read their blog for updates and insights and glean info and opinions good and bad in the forums. It’s a ready made social network, unfortunately, it’s mostly other sellers that you’re interacting with and granted some of them do turn into buyers but not that many.

I would like Etsy to advertise to buyers in magazines that don’t cater specifically to crafters to try and get their name out there. It seems right now that most of their efforts go towards recruiting more new sellers. They make their money both ways from sellers listing and selling but if sellers aren’t selling a lot of them are just going to give up or move to another site and Etsy will lose out on listing fees.

Featured on Etsy Finds!

2011-09-16T01:49:00.001-04:00

I was over the moon to see that my product photo for my Bee Necklace was used as a feature photo in the September 14th Etsy Finds! After experiencing a drought in sales for September I garnered 2 sales and over 5000 shop views that day and 1 sale and over 2000 shop views on Thursday!

I hope that some of those people that 'hearted' my shop and individual items will come back at some point and buy from me and that I don't get buried in their pages and pages of new favourites! My wish to improve Etsy would be to give us the option to sort our favourite shops and items into manageable categories!

Shrek ears

2011-08-24T04:47:00.002-04:00

I found this mushroom growing through the remains of an elm tree we had cut down (it had died). I've never seen one like it before and it reminded me of Shrek's ears.

Fall colours

2011-08-22T13:04:00.002-04:00

Fall is creeping in. There's a chill in the morning air, back to school buzz everywhere and hints of colour in the leaves around here! I'm introducing some luscious autumn colours in my ring collection.

Blog feature

2011-08-12T22:45:00.002-04:00

As I was checking the new shop stats feature on Etsy I noticed I had gotten lot of traffic from mintdesignblog.com. My Yellow Gradient Ring was featured in one of their posts. Thank you Ellie!

New kids on the block

2011-07-26T23:44:00.001-04:00

Baby redwing blackbirds, a photo by bstudio18 on Flickr.

We found this nest recently with three newly hatched redwing blackbirds. The nest was made of field grasses and cleverly attached to several goldenrod rod stalks so it was suspended off the ground.

Etsy Finds

2011-07-09T12:37:00.002-04:00

Just received today's Etsy Finds titled 'Luxury Shopping Guide' and found one of my monogrammed lavender sachets featured in it under the 'Spa & Beauty Shop' section!

Blog interview

2011-07-08T23:23:00.006-04:00

One of my fellow Oh Canada! Etsy team members LittleBearsMom has posted an interview she did with me on her blog.

Check it out and have a visit to her beautiful jewelry shop too!

Thank you Molly!

The great outdoors

2011-07-07T16:34:00.004-04:00

We're finally experiencing true summer weather here at 'the farm'. The perennial gardens and the wildflowers in the fields are going through their succession of blooms.

Keeping with my love of blue and purple flowers I have great spires of delphiniums in flower along with clumps of nepeta and different types of bellflowers, all punctuated by white, pinks and yellows in the perennial beds while the wildflowers carry on the colour theme with daisies, buttercups, trefoil and purple vetch.

Some of the grasses in the fields are amazingly tall this season reaching up to 6 feet along the mown paths!

This photo is taken looking over one of our ponds (the former owner dredged around the edge of a marshy area so it looks like a river) looking back towards our house.

We don't actually have a working farm, just what used to be one and when we first bought it as our weekend place it got nicknamed 'the farm' by us city folks.

Poppytalk Handmade

2011-07-07T01:16:00.001-04:00

I’m happy to announce that my items have been accepted for inclusion on Poppytalk Handmade for the next six months.

Poppytalk Handmade is a monthly online marketplace that is curated by the Canadian co-founders, editors and husband and wife team of Jan & Earl.

It showcases emerging design talent and vintage goods from around the world.

I have long admired Jan and Earl’s design sense and the way they have laid out both their blog and marketplace site. I’m very excited to be there!

A new venture

2011-06-18T15:46:00.005-04:00

After reading a very interesting business blog the other day I have opened an e-commerce website. The site uses PayPal and there is no need to sign up to be able to buy from my shop.

I am still maintaining the name 'bstudio' for this new shop.

The article on the blog touched on two subjects, advertising and branding and made some very valid points if you maintain a shop on a marketplace website. Their opinion was that if you have a shop somewhere like Etsy or Artfire and someone buys from you, if they were asked where they bought the item from they will say 'I bought it on Etsy/Artfire' not 'I bought it from bstudio'. The site gets the credit not your shop.

So to spend your money on advertising and have your buyer directed to sites like these where they visit your shop but can also wander off and look at your competitors is not the best way to spend your advertising dollars.

This was the conclusion I was starting to come to this past week just before I read this timely article. My shop has been accepted for inclusion on the poppytalk handmade site for the next 6 months. I'm going to be paying for this opportunity and felt that as much as I like Etsy, if they aren't going to pay for their own advertising but rely on their shop owners to bring in the customers, I would rather bring them to my site only.

In the past few months Etsy has created too many ways for a potential buyer to get distracted and they are having major problems with their search function which is probably frustrating a lot of buyers.

I will maintain my shop there and use it for the social-networking they are so heavily leaning towards and when I spend money on advertising it will be for my own site. I know this isn't the ultimate step of having a true stand alone website but I'm getting there. It's all an experiment and I'll see how it works out in the next six months.

Hope you come and see my lovely new shop!

Eye candy

2011-06-16T22:58:00.004-04:00

Have you discovered the try handmade blog and gallery yet?

As the title implies they are big supporters of handmade items and as they state 'we're completely enamored of handmade products and want to share this love with you'.

The blog was founded by Erika Jurney, she also contributes to the writing along with five weekly columnists and two contributing writers.

The submissions to the gallery are all juried and the products and product photos they select to appear in it are top-notch, making it a real treat to look at hence my 'eye candy' title.

I started submitting my work to them around the end of March in the hopes that the founder and editors would like my product photos and include some of them in their gallery. I've been fortunate to have almost everything I sent approved to be shown. The biggest thrill was to find that my Pink Gradient Ring was recently selected for the main blog's in the 'New in the Gallery' feature!

How does my garden grow?

2011-06-16T00:48:00.006-04:00

Very nicely, thank you!

Has it been all the rain, cool weather, a combination of both? Whatever it is, my flower gardens are really putting on a great show this year so far!

As you can probably tell I have a 'thing' for purple flowers!

Gradient Series

2011-05-24T00:58:00.006-04:00

I've been experimenting with colour gradients.

I started out by using the 'look' on pillow covers with evenly spaced rows of gathered silk ribbon stitches for each colour.

Next I decided to try bunching French knots together because that works better on the smaller scale of the necklaces, rings and brooches.

Etsy Weddings feature

2011-03-30T23:51:00.005-04:00

Oh happy day! I received my weekly Etsy Weddings email and found one of my ring pillows featured in it!

Starting the New Year off right!

2011-01-04T01:13:00.006-05:00

January 2nd saw my Chartreuse Ruffled Silk Ring make it to the Front Page of Etsy!

I got three sales out of it, including the ring in the FP spot and my craftopolis stats were better that ever! 863 unique shop visitors, 3284 shop page views and 28 shop hearts.

Advertising Results

2010-12-22T01:30:00.013-05:00

October and November were my months to try some advertising for my Etsy shop. I decided to use three sites. Two were blogs and one was an Etsy statistics site. Once the ads had finished running I checked my Google Analytics stats. Here are the results:

First ad: http://www.onestylemile.blogspot.com/

Time period: Oct 13^th to Nov. 11^th

^{Visits: 35}

Most views in one day: 8

There were 15 days with 0 views.

Second ad: http://www.rikrakstudio.blogspot.com/

Time period: all of November.

Visits: 24

Most views in one day: 5

There were 16 days with 0 views.

Third ad: http://www.craftopolis.com/

Time period: Oct.31^st to Nov.27th

Visits: 118

Most views in one day: 12

There were 3 days with 0 views.

From October 19^th until November 30^th I had 28 sales in my shop. I have no way of knowing if any were generated from these ads.

My shop made it to the Front Page of Etsy 4 times in November, the most for me in one month. This boosted my shop stats giving me 15,892 shop page views and 82 hearts.

Win a Holiday Helper Gift Pack!

2010-12-06T23:52:00.006-05:00

Earlier this year my work was featured/reviewed on the Canadian+Handmade website. Thank you so much for that Sarah!

Now Sarah and Jennifer have put together an amazing prize pack for the holidays titled 'Handmade Holiday Helper Gift Pack'. This gift pack is over-flowing with wonderful handmade goodies donated from artisans who have been featured on their website.

This prize is worth over $325.00!

I have donated one of my ruffled rings and wait till you see all the other fabulous items!

This contest is only open until 6:00 pm (MT) Friday, December 10th.

Win a Shopping Spree!

2010-11-05T02:13:00.008-04:00

I decided to have a go at advertising for my Etsy shop for the month of November. I'll be curious to see the results and will be tracking the views through Google Analytics and Craftopolis.

One of the blogs where I placed my advertising is rikrakstudio. Rikrak is always a lot of fun to read, she has so much enthusiasm and is a real champion of the handmade movement. She's also a very talented craftsperson!

Anyway, rikrak is hosting a $25.00 giveaway! The prize can be used to buy your favorite item from one of her sponsors shops and since I'm a sponsor this month, that includes my shop!

So get on over to rikrakstudio's blog,

http://rikrakstudio.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-love-my-sponsors-giveaway.html

read the entry requirements and get in on the fun!

Good luck!