Valentine Cookies!

I know, I'm terrible about blogging.  I have a few too many things going on in life so even when I have an idea and think "That would make a great blog post!" it often ends up sliding out of my brain before it becomes a post.

But today is February 13th and while I'm not a hopeless romantic (I think of myself much more as a hopeFUL romantic, thank you very much) and I don't need a Hallmark holiday to remind me that I'm lucky in love with an awesome hubby... but regardless I do LOVE a good excuse to bake.

And if anything screams out for the sweetness of cookies, it is absolutely Valentine's Day.  So I picked up some heart shaped cookie cutters and made up some traditional sugar cookies.

I uses a slight modification of the cookie recipe in my well worn copy of the Betty Crocker Cookie Book.  I also made my first effort at royal icing (inspired by having seen many pretty pictures of the nifty decorations people were doing on valentine cookies all over the internets this week.)  I must say I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

                                                                            

Valentine Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 1 1/2 cups superfine sugar
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk

1. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until light a fluffy. Add the vanilla extract, egg and egg yolk and continue beating until creamy.
2. Sift the flour and salt together and blend into the butter mixture. Mix together until the mixture forms a smooth dough, but don't overmix.
3. Remove the dough from bowl and knead lightly until it forms a ball.  Wrap in cling wrap and chill in the refrigerator for about an hour (or up to 2 days).
4. When ready to roll out and cut your cookies, pre-heat the oven to 350°F and line two baking sheets with baking or parchment paper.
5. Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and divide into smaller portions. On a lightly floured board roll out the dough until 1/4 inch thick. Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter cut out the cookies.
6. Place the cookies onto the baking trays, spacing them about 1 inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until they turn a light golden color.
7. Remove from the oven and leave on the trays for two minutes to cool slightly, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
8. When completely cooled, ice and decorate however you wish.

Astronauts and Aliens on my mind.

With all the attention my tinfoil hat has been getting over on the Etsy/Nasa Space Craft Contest, I got into the spirit over on Artfire too and put together a Space-Age collection of fun stuff.

You can check it out for yourself.

I'd add a photo but blogger is telling me image uploads are currently disabled for maintenance so you'll have to do the hard work of clicking the link.

My Domino Jewelry is selling like hotcakes

My day job is working at a private high school... primarily a boarding school.  And I recently was able to convince the lovely ladies who run the school store to put out a small display with some of my jewelry.  I wasn't really sure what kind of response it would get from the students.

I started them out with a handful of my smaller, less expensive items.  Pretty much just an assortment of scrabble tile and domino pendants.  Well, in the couple of weeks since they first put out the display I've sold four things.  Which isn't a ton really, and they're only selling for $10 each, but it is incredibly gratifying to think I've tapped into some fun items that appeal to the hipster, fashion-concious teens who I see every day.

The most popular items are apparently everything I've made featuring the work of the very talented Doug Munson.  An artist in Chicago that I am lucky to have met on Flickr and was even luckier to meet in person last time I travelled through my old hometown.  He's been generous enough to let me use his quirky one-of-a-kind imagery on my pendants.  The comment I was given about his stuff specifically was "We really like the scary ones".  You should check out more of his awesome paintings here.  I've also realized that a couple of the kids are using the domino pendants not as necklaces, but added to their key chains instead.  I'm going to make a few with keyrings on them to start with and see if that's also popular.  Here's hoping I've found a new untapped source for sales.

And do keep an eye on my ArtFire shop for more of his work to appear on my jewelry.  I've just finished SIX new dominos from some more of Doug's paintings and plan on photographing them properly for use in listings tomorrow.

doing a happy dance

I'm having a lovely week.  My day job is driving me a bit bonkers, but tomorrow is Friday and my creative endeavors are keeping me sane and happy.

To start with, I now have 100 "active monthly users" on my facebook fan page.  I was thrilled to notice the 100th person and she left a nice little hello note when she found me from a forum post I'd left on Etsy.  So I came up with a prize for her.  I'm making a free domino pendant for her with a cute puppy graphic on it (which she requested for her daughter) and I'll be excited to see what she thinks when I finish it and send it off.

And on top of that goodness, I made another sale on ArtFire.  I'm still always so amazed when total strangers buy my items.  I mean, I've purchased things myself from other artists on Etsy and elsewhere, so I don't know why it seems so very strange to be on the other end.  But I sincerely hope it never stops feeling like such a wonderful validation of my work.

How the mighty have fallen...

Oh Etsy... I really wish we could stay friends.  I wanted to keep on good terms with you and not have it be uncomfortable when I ran into you at parties or when other friends mentioned you in passing.  But now I'm just so annoyed with you I think we really need some time apart.

I heard about the minor Etsy glitch the other day from chatter on forums outside of Etsy's site (read: on ArtFire).  And being curious, but not overly concerned, I headed over to Etsy's forum and read the offical post about how some people's real names were displayed instead of shop names in Treasury lists... that it was a small number of people, and only for a short period of time, and so on.  But what I read and absorbed most was this:  "We will be contacting all members who may have been affected and are taking steps..."

That quote was posted at 3:07pm on September 20th.  And I read it sometime in the evening on the 21st.  So I shrugged my shoulders and went on with my shop figuring that since I hadn't been notified that my personal information was unaffected.

And today, September 24th, I received an email from Etsy Admin (apparently sent at 12:30am) notifying me that I was one of the sellers who had indeed had their names displayed and "We have reason to believe that not all of the 2% affected by the Treasury issue on Monday, September 20 all received their notification emails."  No kidding!  This was certainly the first I'd heard from them.


Now, I don't actually care that my name was out there.  I have my name listed in the intro section of my profile so it isn't the actual result of the "glitch" that bothers me... But to have a security problem, and then somehow not be able to manage a simple thing like a mass emailing?  Now you're into my epic FAIL category.  And that makes me worry about the site's ability to handle the security of information I do care about.  I'm extra glad right now that I keep my online shop accounts paid through PayPal, so it isn't as if Etsy has my banking info stored that they could lose or expose or heaven knows what else. 

I won't be taking my toys and going home quite yet, the shop will stay open because there's nothing really to be gained by deleting it.  I may as well have the extra exposure of two online stores at least through the holidays.  But I'm going to have to think really hard about whether or not to start re-listing items when they expire.  Giving my hard-earned money in fees to a place that has lost my confidence just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  Most likely I'll let the shop fade away there and focus on my ArtFire presence instead.

Front Page!

I'm super happy because the "Float Me" collection that includes my Sparkling Waters necklace made it to the ArtFire Front Page last night!

And the views for that necklace have gone through the roof (more than tripled).  Of course, I didn't see the page or message letting me know (thanks for passing that along ShinyAdornments!) until I got up this morning and it had cycled past (stuff is only on the FP for a limited time so more folks can get seen) so I couldn't take full advantage of the popularity blitz... but now I've made that item (and the other necklace in my featured section) free shipping to hopefully encourage someone to actually buy instead of just browsing.

 

Another Collection with My Stuff

Just a quick note to gloat...

The lovely SkinBodyWorks on Artfire included a pair of my earrings in This Lovely Fall Harvest Collection

I'm extra pleased because my earring listings don't tend to get a whole lotta love. (mostly becuase they're in great need of more and newer photos).  It's also happy-making because I spent a little time earlier today re-titling and re-writing descriptions and updating tags for all my earrings and this seems to me to show that it was worth the time and effort (which will encourage me to continue slogging through that process for the rest of my listings too).

When I get home to a real computer (read: my mac) I'll take and upload a screenshot to my steadily growing facebook album of treasuries and collections.

Still in Love...

ArtFire is still totally turning me on.  Even tho' I feel like I've got acres of work to do in order to fully utilize the tools he has to offer.  I do feel like I'm making progress on that.

I'm slowly changing titles and descriptions to increase my SEO and I've taken some new photos (but not all that I want to) and I've still gotta find time to edit them all in photoshop.  Much more to do and it all can occasionally feel a lot like work.  But without a crappy boss-man to deal with!

So, today one of my pieces made it into my first ever collection on ArtFire.  Very Exciting for me.

Screenshot:

And you can check it out here.

In which I give thanks...

I have amazing wonderful friends.

The first piece of jewelry I ever sold was to a friend.  The amazing woman who got me hooked on beading had regular girls night hang-outs at her house (to watch Project Runway, of course) and one of our mutual friends there bought a necklace I had made.  And that was truly awesome.

Around the holidays last year I shared a link to my flickr jewelry album with some folks I work with and that turned into bringing a display in for a couple days and selling several items to people who, while they are not all close friends, are my colleagues and folks I see regularly on the small boarding school campus where I work.  And that was great too.

Now that I've moved into selling online I somehow figured that most of my customers would be complete strangers.  But of course, my friends are showing me once again how much they rock by not only leaving supportive comments, hearts on my Etsy page, liking my Facebook fan page, and those easy free things that take but a moment of time...  But several of them have now purchased my work and I am humbled and so thrilled that they want to spend their hard-earned money on things I've made.

Some folks seem to think that the ultimate judgement of quality is when the average consumer who doesn't know you personally wants to buy your items.  But I feel just the opposite... My oldest friend spending money on a pendant when she knows if she just hinted around her birthday or Christmas I'd be completely likely to give it to her as a gift... that means more to me than managing to tap into a market or find a niche that makes strangers clamor for my work.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't want my business to take off and be profitable (preferably to levels beyond my wildest dreams).  

But I hope that no matter what happens I'll always make stuff that my friends think is cool, and that I'll always have friends like the ones I have now.

ArtFire is now active

Alright friends and fans...  I've taken the leap and went pro (no, not like that! get your mind out of the gutter!)

I put together my ArtFire shop and imported my items from Etsy.  I'll need to spend a bit of time getting used to the tools there and fine-tuning my listings (and as always continuing to work on more and better photos) but in the meantime here it is:

EmJayDesigns on Artfire