Breast Cancer Fundraising at Sixth & Elm
Fellow Etsyian, Loopy4ewe is participating in the 60km Weekend to End Breast Cancer Walk next June, and she is attempting to raise $2000 to participate. Once she let the other Etsy sellers know what she was up to, they responded en masse by donating tons of items they have made – large and small and mostly pink – and listing them for her, all proceeds to go toward her walk. She didn’t even ask for donations, but she didn’t have to.
I added my little bit by adding the most popular item I sell, the Scripted Box, stained in Antique Pink in honour of the cause. I sanded it down a bit it looks cute and vintage-y – like a little Parisian treasure. All of the money I raise from the sale of this item will go to Loopy and hopefully get her close to her goal.
Here is a list of some of the other Etsy sellers who have listed or donated items as well:
How can you help? Easy, buy something from someone on this list!
A Note on Canuck Currency
Our recent side-trip to Oregon gave me another chance to observe the odd American obsession with our Canadian money. Comments about the colour, denominations and nicknames for the cash (okay, I admit that “toonie” is a lame moniker) are ever-present when our Canadian currency is displayed and I have a couple of points for anyone with an unusual fascination with our moola:
1. I am really not sure that the Clown commuminty as a whole has one accepted form of currency, so please stop calling it “clown money.”
2. The colours help us tell them apart at a glance and reduce the risk of slipping a $50 bill to our cab driver instead of a $20 when we have been having a few too many at the bar. Good idea, no?
3. Stop trying to pull the middle out of the toonie. It’s way too hard, and besides, I think it is a federal offense.
4. Okay, so we don’t have a bill for anything under $5 anymore – just the one-dollar and two-dollar coins. But you can have a whole wad of cash in your pocket and still only have $7, whereas we can have $35 dollars worth of “just change” in our pockets and not even know it until we count it. I like good surprises.
5. Loonies may look like Pirate gold to you, but I can use it to get a coffee from Timmies while you are still trying to get the chocolate out of it.
Thank you. Carry on…
The Wedding Files – Project #1 Guest Favours
We’ll start with an easy project, but something you need to get started making early since you have to make so many.
For our wedding favours we decided to make coasters for each guest to take home – 2 per guest or four per couple so that even people who came without a date would still have a matching set. We were told that if you have good wedding favours you will have none left over after the wedding and we think we did okay because there weren’t any left for us – I had to make some more for ourselves later.
The coasters we made from bathroom tiles from the hardware store. A box of 75 tiles cost about $70, giving us a final price of about $2 per guest. We bought 5 boxes and tried to carry them home ourselves since we only live across the street. Don’t do that. They are damn heavy. We almost died.
The only thing else we needed to buy was a roll of cork lining. Then came the fun task of cutting 1400 cork circles – one for each corner of 350 stone coasters. It wasn’t as hard as you’d think. I had a cork cutter from work, but a 3/4″ punch would work well – or you could cut grids and use square feet for the coasters.
Here’s where hubby-to-be comes in. You can either use the “if you loved me, you’d do this for us” or “you can either do this or sign all the thank you cards by yourself,” but whichever you choose, set him up with the tiles, some epoxy glue (the kind you mix together – or some other glue for tile surfaces) and the 1400 little circles. It’s better if you don’t let him see all the tiles at once, just keep bringing in more little piles, or else he may refuse at the beginning. One cirlce per tile corner and you’re good to go.
Then you can package them in little bundles of two. I printed little tags (using black chancery font – like I used for all the wedding stationary) and cut lengths of 1″ wide velvet burgundy ribbon. I attached them with antiqued brass eyelets and used the eyelets to string thin black ribbon to tie the coasters together and place them on each place setting. Ta-Dah!
Photographic Evidence…
The best way to make yourself sub-conscious about your photography skills is to marry a photographer. But despite the self-doubt, there are also some upsides to having a skilled eye and a $2000 camera around the house. And you get to use the “if you can spend that much on a camera, why can’t I spend that much on a kiln?” speech. In lieu of this, I advise a digital camera at the least. They don’t cost an arm and a leg anymore; you can get a decent one for only part of a shin, maybe a tibia or two. Adam uses a Canon Digital Rebel and I also have a Panasonic Lumix for back-up (like, for when Adam is inconsiderate enough to use his own camera that he paid for when I need it) and I find I can take decent pictures with it, though it took a bit of practice to get used to composing a picture on the digital screen without the aid of a viewfinder.
But, remember, before you start shooting, put the camera strap over your head. I can’t really see how this will improve your pictures, but Adam swears the camera will blow up if I don’t have the neck strap on and swears it has nothing to do with the fact that I drop nearly everything I pick up.
There are a million articles about lighting, DIY light boxes, and how to place your products. But I have found that one of the keys to god pictures is to be careful about how you compose the final shot. The following are some different types of shots that I try to include in every listing, if possible:
The Full Product Shot
Obviously, you need to have at least one of these per listing. This is like a pictorial summary. The full item is shown, composed pleasingly, and the basic shape and form are presented.
The Macro Shot
From this shot alone it is impossible to tell what this item is. But it looks interesting and pretty curious and attractive so people will be drawn to it. I highlighted the intricate patterns of the beads, the twists of wire and the joints of branches. It doesn’t matter if I can tell what the object is at a glance because you will have at least one full product shot in your listing.
The Low Angle Shot
This shot emphasises the texture and depth of cut for this woodburned decorative map I made. Not only is it a nice looking picture, it gets you looking at the detail of the piece and makes you want to run your hands over it to feel the texture you see in the picture. This is a shot taken along the horizontal plane of the piece, either across the top or along a side, and it will not be useful for every product (such as clothing or bags) but works great for highligting the beauty of the leather covering a handbound journal, for instance, or the texture of a dynamic cabochon. Again, not evident what the full product looks like, but it will be used in conjunction with the full product shot.
The Size Comparison Shot
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This can be tricky. Almost everyone seems to use money, but that is not practical on a site that caters worldwide and may be reaching buyers that are unfamiliar with the size of your money. I have also heard it said to use something from nature since that will be universal but I find it very hard to find something natural that grows or forms to a consistent size every time. Acorns, leaves, pine cones all have enough variability between individual samples that the size comparison could be misleading.
There are a few things that will be more or less consistent the world-over. A wine cork is a good bet, or sometimes even a beer cap (not recommended for selling children’s items – the beer cap might throw people off as to your true intentions).
The Product-in-Use Shot
This one is hard for me to demonstrate since my items are mostly home decor so when I take a picture of it sitting on the table that is what it looks like even when it is in use. This is more important for jewellery sellers and clothes & Accessory designers
The Shot of Your Cat Sleeping on It
Whether or not you want to, you’re bound to get at least one of these if you have a cat and look away for one second.
I hope these tips will help you take shots that will draw the eye to the artistry of your work and hopefully get people interested enough to want to buy it so they can see the true mastery for themselves.
So, what’s on YOUR fridge…
It’s little blog thing going around (God, that makes it sound like a flu) which asks the fairly simple question: what’s on your fridge? Take a picture, point out the highlights and introduce us to your little refrigerated world.
Oh, and I didn’t arrange the things on the fridge to line up geometrically like that for the picture, I actually put stuff on my fridge that way.
1 & 4 Magnets I have recently made. It is mildly interesting that with all the magnets I make I am not actually using any of them on my fridge. I just store them there as they are waiting to be sold and I use tape to stick stuff on. But the magnet population on my fridge is in a state of constant flux as new sets are made, sold and replaced, so it is just easier to use tape then the round up replacements to hold our treasures when I sell one of them.
2 & 3. Sixth & Elm promotional postcards that I designed and the Sixth & Elm Magnet Mini Calendar. No place like home to get in as many shameless plugs as you can.
5. Chicken Note: “Don’t open the freezer or a chicken will fly out”…. this wasn’t a joke. Adam likes to do this thing where he stuffs the cupboards or freezers in a clever way so things will fall on you if you open them. His sisters said he had been perfecting his technique in this long before I met him. This note was in regards to a chicken he had propped against the freezer door. I tried to shove it in fully but couldn’t and we were having party, so i put the warning on the door. Didn’t work though. Everybody kept opening the door to see what I meant and then gasping in surprise as a frozen chicken fell into their arms. Well, I warned them. The sign was never removed, even though the chicken eventually was. It was yummy.
6. A family picture of our cousins Amanda, Kaitlyn, Melissa, Courtney and their Mom and Dad, Janice and Gary. 4 of THE COOLEST girls you will ever meet.
7. SARAH & LYDIA!! Sarah is my best girlfriend and the first of us to venture into the world of marriage and motherhood. Her and Bill have three beautiful kids (who probably have perfect pitch) Thomas, Hannah and Lydia and is waiting patiently for me to join the club so we can get back on similar schedules.
8. Hannah – Baby number 2 for Sarah and Bill and Godchild #1 for me!!! I love Hannah – She is like a little pixie. I keep expecting little fairy wings to pop out of her jumper.
9 Thomas – Baby number 1 for Sarah and Bill and the best older brother ever.
10.”What goes in your green bin?” magnet. It is part of the new composting program set up in Peel Region where organics are picked up once a week and composted.
11. A birthday card from Baba. Man, I miss her. I wish she had the Internet. And the lottery ticket inside won me five dollars, that I promptly lost buying another lottery ticket that did not win.
12. A signed picture from the mouse and his lady. Oh yeah. It’s the real deal, too. It says “To Chantelle & Bruce (that’s Adam’s actual first name but he has been called Adam, his middle name, since birth)… Love Mickey Mouse, Love Minnie Mouse.” And he actually does his “y’s” like the Disney logo. Adam took me to Disney for the VERY FIRST TIME on our Honeymoon and this picture was inside a card left in our hotel room on the resort.
13. This was a perfectly ordinary grocery list that morphed into something else as guests kept adding to it when we aren’t looking. It reads:
Green Apples
Pears
Magic Beans
Fairy Dust
A rock shaped like
Chuki ……..(Our Cat)
Eggs
Alligators
Kitty Litter
Lemon Juice
1 Grandson or Granddaughter ………..(Three guesses who added THAT one)
Jam
Quills & Ink
Potatoes
Firebolt
Purple People Eaters (4)
So that’s it. If you post a picture of your fridge leave a comment here so I can go and check it out.