PATTY'S PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 2012

Written by Patty of Twisted Sticks
Make a statement in this big chunky necklace from Studio Milika. I love this black and white necklace ! Her choice of using ribbon instead of a chain is really a great idea. I love it!                                              
                                                                    
                               
 These lovely leaf placemats from Patties Pieces will add a warm touch to your table. Being reversible, you have double the fun!
Be sure and see Patties Treasury Pick of the Month.                                         Edited by Marilyn Rush
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Snack Mat

Xmas Stocking

Dresden Plate Mat

Here are some great new things from Patty of Twisted Sticks. 

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Edited by Marilyn Rush

GOLDEN ROSE CRAFTERS - OUR NEWEST MEMBERS

by Meredith of Patchwork Crafters

Jewelry Holder

Our first new member this month is Keti whose shop is JewelryHolder Keti (www.etsy.com/shop/JewelryHolderKeti) Keti lives in Valencia del Alcantara, Spain and is a welcome addition to our growing international membership

Jewelry display organizer

Her shop has a variety of framed jewelry organizers that allow you to display your jewelry as artwork when the pieces are not being worn.  Her creative organizers are lovely and a great idea!

Welcome to the team, Keti! We're so glad you've joined us.
                                   



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 Denise from Poway Ca. is our next new member.  Her shop is justFabulousDarlin 
(www.etsy.com/shop/justfabulousdarlin).

Necklace

Key chain or Fob

 Denise's goal is to make beautiful pieces of jewelry that are affordable and unique.  She loves using gemstones, crystals, and pearls in her creations.

Window shopping through her store is a treat and a great way to start your Christmas wish list!

Welcome to the team,  Denise!


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Alice vintage creation is our next new 
shop.  Alice is our new team member
 and lives in Charlottesville Virginia.

                         
                                       

 She loves to craft, creating beautiful items from vintage craft supplies.  Her loves include crocheting, sewing, making quilted pictures, quilts and generally staying busy!!

 Alice's items and a stroll through her shop is most enjoyable.

Welcome to the team, Alice!

                               
(www.etsy.com/shop/AliceVintageCreation)

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 Debbie's and Eva's shop is stocked with handcrafted, wearable art and jewelry.  These friends have been collaborating for many years creating unique jewelry and one-of-a-kind timeless pieces of art to wear.
                                                                
                                                                       

A lovely experience awaits you as you take the time to stroll through their shop.
Welcome to the team, Debbie and Eva.
(www.etsy.com/shop/CobinFreud)
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Coasters

Our next new member this month is Bindhurani.  Her shop is BinduDesigns, located in Ontario, Canada.

Crochet Cap

Bindhurani describes herself as a crochet addict who loves making caps, hats scarves, blankets and more. When not crocheting, she also loves creating earrings and necklaces using wire and beads. 

Visiting her store will help give you a start on your holiday shopping list.
Welcome, Bindhurani!  So glad you've become a Golden RoseCrafter!  

Earrings

(www.etsy.com/shop/BinduDesigns)
                                                                                            
                                                         

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Our last new shop this month is TkSpringDesigns, owned
by Terri from Spring's Desert Resort, AZ.

Standing in Doorway by N. Rockwell

Terri's shop display's wonderful vintage, antique and handmade items that are functional, beautiful, time-tested and classic.  Strolling through the aisles of her shop is a treat!
                                   

Porcelain Figurines

 

Snowman Coffee Cu

(www.etsy.com/shop/tkSpringDesingns)                                   
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Here are some great new designs from Patchwork Crafters....................................






Edited by Marilyn Rush

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE THE WINNING TREASURY?

Written by Marilyn Rush

If you are one of our team members who likes to make treasuries,  and you do them each month, yet yours has never been picked as a winner, perhaps you would be interested in knowing how we judge your treasuries. It really has a lot to do with seeing to details. Let’s start from the top of the treasury and work our way down.

At the top right hand side of the treasury you will find the facts about: Views, Clicks, Admirers.  I have a form that I fill out and these numbers are the first that I record. When tallying the points these each count for one point.

I would like to remind everyone here that the treasury exists as a powerful advertising tool. Sixteen people benefit from it. The curator will benefit because these shops in the treasury will reciprocate and use her items in their treasuries. The treasuries are meant to be beautiful and a pleasure to look at therefore drawing a crowd to look at it. So you don’t create the treasury and let it sit still with no one looking at it. You promote it. When you are finished you promote it again and again. I actually found one treasury that I had to judge and it had 0 views and 16 clicks, so the curator at least clicked on each item. That one should actually have had points deducted.

The next thing that we look at is how well the curator has interpreted their theme, the title of their treasury. We look at it and ask ourselves if it answers why they gave it the title they did. Can you look at it and understand why they chose that title. Does it live up to the title or theme? You should be able to look at it and see why they gave it that name. (Earns 4 to 10 pts )

This is where the most points can be earned. There are three sections that are the points winners. This is how it works.

Good = nice, but not really moved by it (4 pts)

Very Good = somewhat moved by it but can’t go so far as excellent (6pts)

Excellent = can’t find anything wrong with it to your thinking, love  it but won’t go so far as Perfect (8pts)

Perfect = this is as high as you can go, this is a treasury you want to win (10pts)

After the Theme Interpretation, comes the Color Theme.  The color theme is the color scheme they chose. Can you see an actual color scheme or are the colors just out there with no viable color plan. (Earns 4 to 10 pts )

At this point we check the Tags, has the curator used all 18, if so it is worth 1 point. If you use the team tag GRC Team, or Elite Alternative then that is worth 1 pt.

Last but not least is the Overall category. Here is where we judges have some room to express ourselves. We look at the overall appearance and feel of the treasury and judge the treasury as a whole. (4 to 10pts)

The points are tallied, and the winner is picked. You can see that the treasury itself earns the most points, however, those other one point items are tie breakers besides being important.

SHOP CRITIQUE OF SIMPLY KATIES BY MARILYN RUSH

written by Marilyn Rush

As I looked thru Katie Lynn’s shop I found little to improve on. Her shop is small at this time but it’s chock full of beautiful artisan wire jewelry. Katie describes her jewelry as being a  minimalistic design. Her theory is that the woman should be noticed first when she walks into the room, jewelry second. I am not sure this jewelry would come in second Katie, it’s noticeably lovely.

 The banner is nice and is an excellent symbol for artisan wire jewelry. Being in grays and steel blues it has the feel of cool metal so that you can almost reach out and touch it. Directly below lies the shop announcement area. Katie uses this area to explain her jewelry design ideas. You might  use this area for the announcement of sales or any special deals you might be offering your customers. Holiday announcements or special policies could also be mentioned here. You can also use this area to welcome people to your shop and invite them in and give them a word picture of what they will see on the journey through your shop.

One tool that Etsy provides that you are not taking advantage of is the FEATUREDS. Etsy allows a space for 4 items across the top of the front shop page. You can pick any of your items to be here and you can change them as often as you like. You can use these for sale items or for your new items. I like to change mine often. I put up 4 items that are somehow related, perhaps all bracelets done in blue, or earrings done in red. And then I put them on sale for 25% off,  that gives me a reason to advertise them. I can take them to all the teams I am on, post them on the sale discussion threads. You could also take it to Twitter, Face book, Pinterest, or any of the social networking sites you may be associated with. This is a great way to shine a spotlight on some items that are there in your shop just collecting dust. It’s a good idea to use the Featured Spaces and change them often, and use them to breathe life into items that may have grown cold.

I looked at your “About” page and WOW, it is great. One of the best that I’ve seen. That is a wonderful advertisement for your shop. The pictures tell what your shop is all about. The first picture with the pencils and paper with the drawing show how you design a piece first, and how you could design for a customer as well. The pictures of your jewelry pieces are gorgeous,  followed by the picture of your workspace with your tools, they finish the story.

Another word about the About Page. The pictures you took of your jewelry for your About page are excellent, I would like to see more of those in your shop. Those close-ups that hone in on a striking feature are so effective. It is not necessary to show the entire item in each picture or even your first picture. Most people know what a bracelet, earring, or necklace looks like, so when shooting pictures concentrate on a particular feature that will really define your item.

I am going to group several smaller things together here. Let’s talk about Facebook and Twitter. It would be a good idea to work on your likes and follows. You want as many people to see you as possible. But that is nothing to the biggest market you are missing out on, that being Etsy. You are only in 49 circles and have 33 admirers. The first thing you need to do is to start clicking on every Add To Circle button you come across. A good place to start is with your teams.  Go through the membership page clicking on each members picture. When you do a menu will come up,  click on ADD TO CIRCLE, most people will also add you if they haven’t met their limit. I have met my limit, so occasionally I go to my favorites page and delete some of the oldest ones so I can add some of the more current shops. But keep adding shops to your circle until Etsy tells you that you cannot add anymore. Then when you click on something it will go out to all of those people in your circle and it will continue through the circles of the shops that are in your circles. What you have favored has just gone out to thousands of people. You may ask why do I care if people are looking at these items that are from other people’s shops.  One word. Reciprocation. They will reciprocate and click on your items. When you are looking at things on your activity feed you can favorite them as you look at them, others are doing the same thing as they look at yours.  This is somewhat of a give and take game, yet it is very serious, there are whole teams focused on nothing but clicking on the members of the team, so that they guarantee each others that they will be on the activity feed many, many times each day. A clicking team can keep your items appearing for the full day. Your views will go up and increased views means sales. 

Now let’s look at something else, those titles and tags. Google, Etsy, and other search engines use the titles and tags to find items that people are searching for.  

You can start with Etsy’s search on your shop’s front page. Let’s say you are ready to list a bracelet. If you want to know what tags to use when you list it, type in the word Bracelet and see what pops up in the box below. First you will probably get For Men,  For Women. You could click on either of those and Etsy would bring up pages of bracelets that fit into that category. So you would probably want to add a tag to indicate which it is such as Women’s Bracelets. A customer might know she wants a bracelet made of beads, so you could put into the search box, bracelet bead, beads, or beaded, what will come up will include handmade, design, plus more, a useable tag might be beaded bracelet, handmade beaded bracelet, and so on. Some people might just enter in the search box jewelry or bracelet jewelry, that brings up quite a few choices, friendship bracelets jewelry, charm bracelets jewelry. You can use this same method for the Google search box and you will come up with their particular search terms, they will be quite similar to Etsy’s.  Using the tags that are recognized by these search engines guarantees that when someone is searching for an item that you sell in your shop, Google or Etsy will send that person to you.  And using the best tags will get you on the front page or close to the front page. You want to be one of the first shops that people go to.

Now let’s think about what a woman looking for jewelry might put into the search engine.  Jewelry, women’s jewelry, bracelet, bead bracelet, beaded bracelet, green bracelet, pearl bracelet, woman’s bracelet, fashion bracelet.If you had used the tags that came up in your tag search each one of those tags would work for you.  Not only do the search engines use the tags they use the title. So you want to use tag-like phrases to describe your item.  Let’s change the title to this:  Beaded Bracelet, Green Beaded Bracelet, Fashion Beaded Bracelet, Woman’s Beaded Bracelet, Woman’s Jewelry, Pearl Jewelry, Crystal Bead Bracelet.

  You can’t think like the crafter or shop owner. You have to put yourself in the position of your customers and how they think. In general people don’t know technical terms, or quite how to describe just what they want. They may not know what they are looking for in jewelry, let’s say a bracelet, if you describe all the features of your bracelet, let’s say this is your listing, bracelet, hunter green Czech 7mm crystal beads with pink rice pearls and silver plated jewelry findings, 7.5” long,  toggle clasp. Let’s say as a title you say Dainty Pink Pearl and Hunter Green Crystal Angelina Bracelet. Now for the tags: bracelet, pink, pearls, green, crystal, pink pearl, rice pearl, hunter green, Angelina bracelet, dainty bracelet, woman’s bracelet, Czech crystal, light pink.  13 tags, what Etsy allows.
                                     

 

 You can see more of Simply Katies Designs at http://www.etsy.com/shop/SimplyKaties