Exposure

Though Etsy's landing page may provide us all with our 15 minutes of fame eventually, it is not the Holy Grail of web exposure. To my mind, the ultimate web experience would be to be featured in a wildly popular, professionally produced made for web film. More than 500 entrepeneurs in Seattle are gearing up to bring such a vision to life. I am excited about the possibility of heading over the mountains to take part in it. Watch the preview and you will see what I am excited about.

Sales and Marketing

It's been a while since I posted any tips for Etsy sellers, so I wanted to take a moment to pass this one on. With ConstantContact, you can have a 30 day free trial membership and up to 100 people on an emailing list. They are a great company to work with and their templates make putting together a professional newsletter easy. Before you run off and do that, let me tell you what I am doing. Right now all of my creative energy is going into the expansion of my line. What good is it to reach a 100 or a 1,000 people on my email list if they already have the 4 or 5 PDF patterns I offer? What do I have that would be of ongoing value to the women who have already bought my bags or baby accessories? These are questions I need to address before I activate my email newsletter.
Here is a great article in the Storque about expanding your line.
I think it's a god idea to subscribe to constant contact's newsletter even if you are not ready to launch an email campaign. This way you can learn about marketing from the pro's and get your ducks in a row. Here is an article from them about how to think about making offers like buy one, get one. Now for some pretty stuff I found on sale at Etsy.

darling now

darling now
Originally uploaded by studiocherie

This little shrug has a fun story. It used to be a sweater that came to my hips, think Olympia Dukakas in Moonstruck. Since little old Italian Mama is not my look, the sweater, though beautifully made, sat in my drawer. If you click on the links, you can see the before photo and a couple a pictures of me wearing it on Saturday. If you click on the photo here, it will take you to Flickr where I wrote a brief description of how I did the alteration. When I thought about altering it, I went to the forum on Etsy to ask the advice of people who crochet. Everyone seemed to have strong feelings about it one way or another, and having a conversation with other people about the process while I was doing it made it a lot of fun. Here is the link to the interaction on the forum. It is really a generous and talented group of people at Etsy. So I wore this on Saturday at a leadership seminar where John C. Maxwell was the keynote speaker (that will have to be another post) and got a lot of compliments. People even stopped me on Sunday to tell me how darling I looked on Saturday. Yay!

Owl Anatomy

One of the things I love on Biddy Brain, one of the blogs I read, is when Ronnie shows her process of putting a painting together. She inspired this process post.

First, I liked this vintage pin. I think I must have seen it on Etsy's front page.

I sketched it in a tiny corner of a scrap of paper. I didn't photograph the whole paper because it contains important information like my grocery list and the dimensions of the bag I was making that day. I will leave you to guess what the 428 stands for.

Next it became a pillow plan. The one on the left is for the love birds. I'll post a photo of that when it's done.

Full sized sketch on pattern making fabric.

The first three pieces of the applique on the kona cotton background.

Stitching the details.

I went for non realistic eyes because I wanted them to show up.

Quilted around the outline of the owl.

I used tailors chalk to draw my quilting design on the back, and I quilted it from the back. Next time, I am going to make 6 pillows at a time and quilt them all together from the front on the Gammill. I like the ability to be more freeform than I can on my Viking. My hands get too tired to use the free motion stitching on a quilt this size.

After the cording and the back were added, here he sits. Gabrielle says he belongs to her, but I think he is destined for the aircraft carrier. Rory really likes him too. I think he looks great next to the patchwork pillow. When I put this out in pattern form, the instructions will obviously be more detailed. Check out my favorites for more vintage owl brooches.

Cherie with wristlet tote

Cherie with wristlet tote
Originally uploaded by studiocherie

I think I created something of a stir when I made these things called wristlet totes because other bag makers didn't want me to call them wristlets or totes, but this is what they are.
This pure white one is for a gal in Montana. Luckily it's machine washable.
I stitched up the last seam this morning while 6" of snow fell outside. Whiteness overload...

Color

Sometimes a certain color combo will strike me and I wonder if I am the only one loving this, so I play with poster sketch on Etsy and come up with the answer. In this case, I can see, in the fig art especially, another color to add to make the purple and aqua combo really pop.
So I changed it.

A sweet profile video

As I was reading through the Storque this morning, I came across this video, and want to share it here because I know some of you don't even know what the Storque is. If you know me, you will see why I like this video so much. It's like we could be sisters or something. Enjoy!

Salted Chocolate...

...and other things I enjoy with my daughter. It's Spring break but not too Spring like here in Spokane, so Gabrielle and I are off in search of comfort and girly fun. As I was driving around town with her to visit some of our favorite spots, I realized I can fill in the blank about Spokane. There is no good mix of big city things to do and small town lack of traffic outside of Spokane. Coming from Seattle, lack of traffic has big lifestyle appeal.

Our favorite spots include, TheTopStitch to pick up some Amy Butler fabric and chat with the owner, Carrie Jarvis. She is a gifted sewing teacher, and Gabrielle can't wait to be old enough to take a gumdrop pillow sewing class from her. Right now, we are dreaming about redecorating G's room.

Next stop, Finders Keepers II Boutique. This shop is chock full of glitz and glamour. Warming up for a future prom, I think I better start a special savings account. I can't even try to calculate the amount of money the owner put into inventory for this store. I think she must have done really well in her original vintage shop, Finders Keepers.

That put me in the mood to scavenge for something vintage to go on the new clutch I made, so the next stop was The Classy Rack. All proceeds in this shop go to Union Gospel Mission to house and feed Spokane's homeless. The selection is really great and the prices very reasonable. This was the first time I had ventured into this shop, but I think it could become a habit. The pin I picked up really made the clutch.

The perfect end to our shopping trip, or any outing for that matter, Chocolate Apothecary. As we walked in, G heard the owner telling someone that chocolate is good for you, so she asked, how can chocolate be good for you? Susan Davis was happy to answer that chocolate is loaded with antioxidants, and the darker the chocolate the better. We spied (and sampled) some local chocolate covered sunflower seeds. They were delicate and wonderful. We bought a big bar of salted chocolate and a small square of orange flavored chocolate (G's favorite.) While we had a little visit by the cozy fireplace, quite a number of people came in for Susan's hot chocolate drinks. We will have to try that next time. Oh, yes, we will be back.