Saturday 19 October 2013

Teams, Treasuries and Time

Well what a busy time we’ve had here. Lots of orders are coming in for Christmas, and I’ve been so busy with them there has been little time for anything new, apart from these pretty beaded coral earrings, which sold quickly, and a necklace I’m trying to work on too. This range will be expanded in time.

Besides that, Etsy have caused a bit of a storm by allowing crafters to outsource their production nowadays, which many of us believe strongly that this will open the floodgates for mass produced items and resellers, which are already a big problem within the site. A team was formed after the announcements, which strongly speaks up for real handmade, according to the definition of the majority of Etsy sellers, and according to the original Etsy ideology. I joined the team and was asked to be a leader, taking responsibility for treasuries, and helping out where needed with general administration in the team. It’s been a lot of work as the team grew much faster than the Captain, Stacey, ever envisaged, which is great, but also a lot of work to keep up with things.

If you want to take a look at the ‘All Handmade by Me’ team, just click on the name. It’s a very busy and active team and still developing ideas to promote real craft and handmade work. Unfortunately because of the team mission, we can’t allow vintage and supplies in, and are very wary of copyright issues so if you’re using well known names and images, do make sure you have proper permissions and licenses to use them and can show you have. Otherwise, all handmade artisans and craftspeople are welcome to join us.

I’ve also had to have a scan for suspected gallstones. Happy to say there are none, and no lumps or bumps that shouldn’t be there (the radiologists words), so it looks like the problem might be a duodenal ulcer…more tests and the dreaded camera I suspect. Waiting to hear from my GP.

So, here are the earrings, and the work in progress on the necklace. Hopefully when I have completed the orders I will be able to get back to making more new things and writing some more tutorials.