10.29.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:37 pm by Administrator
10/29/08
It’s funny how you can work at home all day, work at the computer while you eat, and take less than an hour total to exercise, feed the animals and do stuff around the house, and 10 hours later feel like you have accomplished little.
After having gotten laid off, I felt like my creativity was lost in a fog. I could make simple necklaces, but my mind didn’t wander far from that tract. I remembered when I was young, and making things out of beads to sell at craft shows, and I would get these inspired creative streaks and I would make the greatest stuff. And then I’d be so pleased with myself, I’d have a high—I guess like the kind athletes get when they win a game. It was me at my best. But 6 years of working mundane office jobs had pretty much stifled all of that. It came out as a shadow of its former self from time to time, as I made things for our medieval re-enacting, but it was rare and short-lived. I can recall just this past spring, coming home from our week-long re-enactment all full of ideas and excited about all things medieval, and then a month went by without me having any serious amounts of time to devote to playing with those new ideas, so they died.
But now the fog is starting to lift. Now I have many pokers I want to hot up, but I’m having to be careful about how many I stick into the fire at once. I can barely contain my excitement over some new idea of things to make to try and sell. Today it was doll jewelry. I broke out a Barbie of mine yesterday evening and I started designing jewelry. That went into today. I also started the preliminary drafts of patterns for a set of medieval clothing for her. I had this wild idea that, in addition to making jewelry, I might turn out the odd complete set of historically-accurate clothing for Barbie. And I might also sell my patterns (to re-enactors who would like to make them for their kids, but who can’t afford to pay me to handsew all three layers).
In addition to making more doll jewelry and clothing, I still have plenty of stuff to make wedding veils (and hopefully I will have my new head the first of next week, so I can start displaying them and putting them up for sale). And I have a beaded veil on the table, which doesn’t lack much being finished. Plus it’s time for me to start making Christmas presents. Oh, and I have that silk for a couple of veils and enough to do three stoles.
Mind you, all of this creative work is in ADDITION to continuing to promote my website. I am going down a list of 100 web directories and I’m submitting my site to all that are applicable (which will probably be about 90% of them). I’ve done 9 out of 100 so far. And, when I get done with that, I have to figure out how to put my goods on Google’s shopping comparison site. Plus I’m putting my things on eCrater, which is a free marketplace; never hurts to advertise in multiple places if they’re free. I’ve got something like 47 more items to upload there. And when I have something new to add—like the Barbie jewelry—it has to go on my website and either eCrater or Etsy, or both, depending on what it is (Barbie jewelry is only going on eCrater). So it takes a lot of time now to upload one new item, and I can turn out several doll necklaces in an hour.
Oh, and I plan on moving my gallery photos and photos of my sold products onto Flickr because one, it’s free publicity and two, to have my gallery photos the size that I want, they’re majorly slowing down the loading of that page (it’s even slow for me to edit it offline), and I can’t possibly hope to add more pictures—and I would like to find a place for my sold pieces to live on forever—in case someone wants me to copy one.
Somehow I even managed to find time to work on my Psalms project today, although St. Thomas Aquinas has been on the shelf for several days. As has my last library book on self-employment. I need to tackle it in the next day or two so I can return it to the library and get even more than I’ve ordered. And I didn’t work on my Squidoo lens about horsekeeping at all today (I’d like to get that knocked out soon, but while it seems nearly complete, I think I’m fooling myself; I think there’s a lot more work to go yet).
So, with such an enormous task list in front of me (to say nothing of the time it takes to accomplish some of those tasks because of my internet connection speed), I guess it is no surprise that I can work all day and still feel as if I’ve accomplished little. I am a solitary Egyptian moving a block towards a pyramid. I make forward progress everyday, but in such small increments compared to the distance that I must travel, that it feels as if I’ve done nothing at all.
What is most frustrating of all, though, is that I haven’t had any sales in more than a month. I feel like I’m doing these hours upon hours of work for nothing when I don’t get a sale. I feel pressure to produce some cash from all this effort and time spent at home, even though I’ve only been at this since September, and I’m still not up to full steam in terms of marketing or product production. Back when this business was in the planning stages, I expected for it to take a year for me to be producing enough income every month, on average, to pay my half of the living expenses. And even then I wasn’t sure if I could quite make that much money, or if it would be more like I contributed some; it might take upwards of two years to make half the expenses or better. I’m not quite sure if we’ve got a full year for me to try, much less two. But, in any event, we’ve got six months, so we’ll see what I can turn out in that time. If I’ve got a little something going, it might be enough to push ahead with.
I feel that this opportunity came to me on purpose, and that I can make a go of it, if I just stick with it long enough. It will be tough and disheartening to begin with, but I feel if I just hold on (and, more importantly, convince my husband to hang on), I will be a success.
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10.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:11 pm by Administrator
Stuart and I went to a re-enactment this weekend. For the most part, we sat around and talked to people, but we had a good time doing it. It was something like a vacation (I’ve been spending my weekends working on my business).
I’ve been keeping an eye out in on the “want ads” in the paper, just in case, but it’s pretty gruesome. Our local inset to the paper used to have two or three pages (half pages) of regular want ads, plus the transportation and medical want ads. Now, all of the want ads—including medical and transportation—take up just one page. There are more items for sale than want ads. And besides nurses and truck drivers, about all the jobs offered are for fork lift drivers, maintenance men and factory line workers; the white collar, desk-monkey jobs are all but nonexistent.
Speaking of sitting around talking to friends this weekend, a guy Stuart knows was talking about being in business for himself as an artist. Of course, I was curious to know what he was doing and how he was managing to do it well. He said that he had been blacksmithing knives originally, but not having much luck in the way of sales. By pure coincidence, he happened to find some old cowboy toys of his when he was cleaning out, and he started digging around online to see if they were worth anything. His particular models weren’t worth much, but in doing this research, he tapped into a community of people who collect this type of action figure, and others of similar size, and who do them up historically accurately—kind of like model railroads, only with cowboy dolls. He got to talking to someone on a list, who asked if he could blacksmith him a Bowie knife and make a leather scabbard. So he made one up, quoted the guy a price he thought was high, and wad shocked when the guy agreed to pay it immediately. Before he knew it, he was making miniature knives and scabbards for others. Then someone asked him if he could make a gun. The person sent him a gun to copy, he made a mold, and then he started making guns and holsters—he even casts his own miniature buckles for the holsters. He said he now has a mold for just about every gun used in the Old West, and he has patterns for holsters from every major cowboy movie. He’s making enough miniatures that he’s keeping himself in business and has given up regular blacksmithing.
He reminded me that I used to make Barbie jewelry and sell it at craft shows. I only did it for the last year or two that I did craft shows, but it was pretty well received. I’ve been looking online, but haven’t found too many people that are selling jewelry for Barbies. One lady is doing the type of beaded jewelry that I would do, and she’s selling necklace and earring sets for $4-$9, depending on the complexity of the work. Shipping and handling is $1. I didn’t dig through my old yard sale stuff enough to find the remainders of my old Barbie jewelry, but I did drag one of my Barbies out, and I think I will play with making some Barbie jewelry. I couldn’t hope for life to be so simple as I make a living off making Barbie jewelry, but given that I haven’t made a sale in over a month and those job pickings are slim, I’ll try anything. As I was going out to get feed for the horse today, I was actually thinking about historically accurate medieval Barbie clothing. Hand sew it (because some parts, I think, would be too small to try and sew on the machine—not worth the hassle), and have all the proper layers, use beads for buttons, style her hair properly, etc. (I can get Barbies from thrift stores and yard sales—although I think I still have a load of them at Nanny’s house). Collectible Barbie dolls usually go for $50-$300, with most in the $75-$150 range, so I think I could get $100-$150 for one with all the proper medieval trimmings. I’ll have to try it out one day when I’m bored and don’t need to make up anything else.
When we got home Sunday night, my silk was in the mail. I can’t believe it got here so fast, especially from California! It had to have been delivered on Saturday, and I just ordered it on Sunday. And it’s good silk (although I am going to go ahead and order the heaviest weight silk the next time). So I’m impressed and will use Dharma Trading Company again (see “Links” on my website for their web address).
I also ordered a mannequin head today, finally. I found a company’s store on eBay and they sold some cosmetology heads outright (you didn’t have to win a bid), so after losing my third bid on a head earlier today, I bought one of theirs outright, plus a table clamp. I think it’s better than the ones I was looking at previously, anyways. The hair is attached (unlike the first one I bid on, which only had a wig), and it’s pretty long—probably about halfway down the back, if it were on a real person. I’ll be able to play with some medieval-style braiding on it, as well as use it to display my wedding items, and to use as a hat-making dummy. So it will get use both with my business and personally.
I am now in the process of putting my items on eCrater. I got all of my items (except clearance) uploaded to my web page, so now I’m trying eCrater, which is a free marketplace; it doesn’t cost me anything to try it, so why not? I also wanted to try ShopHandmade.com, but I can’t seem to get my pictures to upload and when it times out, their interface as a tendency to not save the changes I had previously told them to save. So I’m rather frustrated with them right now; I will give them another go when I get done with eCrater, but if they’re still not functional, I’ll not use them.
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10.24.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:12 am by Administrator
I ordered some silk today. One type is a find gauze, which I plan on making medieval-style wedding veils with. The other should be a fairly firm silk which I plan on turning into stoles. If I’ve estimated correctly, I should have enough fabric for three stoles. For my first stole, I will bead crosses into it and do a beaded fringe. I may also make a matching cross necklace to sell separately. I’m not sure what I will do with the other two stoles. I may bead something more complicated into one—something like the St. Michael I did for the reliquary bag (see gallery on my web page). There are actually two extant medieval panels that may have been attached to the end of a stole (Grizel, author of “Medieval Beads.com”, has found a third panel in another museum that she’s sure matches them, bringing into question what were three used for?). Anyways, I might copy them, or the style of them, for the ends. I have not ruled out metal-thread couching or silk embroidery either.
With the cincture I’ve already woven and the ordering of silk for stoles, I feel like I’m finally breaking into the main part of my shop. I feel that way about the wedding veils as well (although I still can’t get a mannequin head; all the Halloweeners are buying them out and running up the prices on the ones that are left).
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10.22.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:11 pm by Administrator
I like to watch documentaries as I make stuff because they don’t require that I watch them constantly in order to follow the story, like with a movie; I can get the story by listening to the narrator. Today I was watching a documentary from PBS on the genetic story of mankind—how people populated globe.
50,000 years ago, mankind set out of Africa in two waves. The first wave went directly to Australia by the coastline of the middle east and India; the other wave went to the middle east, then later branched out in other, sub-waves. But what really made that migration possible is that shortly before it occurred, our African ancestors became much more intelligent. They had been using stone tools for a long time—since before they became homo sapiens—but it wasn’t until around the time of the migration that they seem to have learned how to make weapons out of bone and ivory. It’s also when they started making art.
I studied cave paintings in art history class in college, but today, while I was sitting on the couch making a beaded veil, it struck me how creativity is something we all share with our most distant ancestors. The ability to create, invent and reason is what separates us from all the other animals on the planet. The narrator of the show went out on the African plains with some Bushmen, who are the most direct descendants of the people who were originally in Africa. They showed him how they track wildebeest. The cultural anthropologist with him made the comment that the ability to track an animal represented a huge leap forward in deductive reasoning. A lion, he pointed out, would not follow tracks in the sand; if the lion couldn’t see, hear or smell the wildebeest, then to the lion, it didn’t exist. But humans can see a track and say, “A wildebeest was here, and he went off that direction” and follow the tracks to find dinner. It demonstrates a concept of the past—the wildebeest used to be here—and a concept of the future—if I follow the tracks, I will eventually find the wildebeest.
Animals don’t seem capable of estimating the future, and while some clearly can remember past events (elephants and the great apes, for instance), they don’t seem capable of deductive reasoning. An elephant can remember where a member of its herd died, but elephants can’t see a lion’s tracks in the dust and walk purposefully away from them, knowing that a lion was there, and that a lion will be at the end of those tracks if they go in the same direction.
The ability to create and invent is uniquely human. Animals can be taught things by humans and they can adapt to their surroundings (rodents, such as squirrels, learn very quickly in their native environment), but animals can’t just wake up one day and invent a new tool. Adapting some natural object into a tool happens rarely in the animal kingdom. A gorilla might randomly push a stick into a termite mound and then discover, when she pulls it out, there are a lot of tasty termites on it. She is smart enough to do it again and others are smart enough to watch her and learn how to use their own stick, but a random stick is as far as they will go. They won’t reason that a green stick is better than a dead one, and go pull one off a tree. They won’t reason that a sharp stick is better than a blunt one, and so alter the stick to make it sharp. They can learn things by accident or being taught, but they can’t make the leap to logic, to figuring out how to make things better. Apes can be taught sign language, and can communicate with people and other apes; they can even teach other apes sign language. What they can’t do, though, is make up new signs, which even a co-worker’s autistic grandson could do.
Every time we create, we’re attempting to evolve. Humans managed to survive the terrible drought in Africa during the ice age because they adopted better tools, better hunting techniques, probably developed better language, and because they migrated, then adapted to that new environment (by wearing clothing where it was cold). Humans make art and inventions because it’s a basic human need. It’s in our programming to try new things, to make leaps of logic, to create, because that drive is what caused us to adapt and survive all those tens of thousands of years ago. Without even being conscious of it, every one of us is, pretty much everyday, trying to adapt and move our species forward. Just taking a new route home from work to avoid traffic and get home faster is a creative adaptation. Animals don’t suddenly veer off their migration paths. They don’t think, I’ll give those lions a miss that are always hiding near here; I’ll go a few miles this way, then angle back. If they adopt a new migration pattern, it is slowly; the pattern will slowly, over many years, shift direction. And it doesn’t happen because of predators; climate and geographic changes are what move animals in new directions. They can’t make a one-time exception to their habits, as we can when there is an accident reported on our usual route home.
To create is to be human.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 5:10 pm by Administrator
I have been reading a book called “The Ben Franklin Factor: Selling One to One.” I haven’t found it to be very useful from a business perspective, but it’s been an entertaining read. Of course, I got it because I’ve been a fan of Ben Franklin since I was a kid. It has had some interesting anecdotes from Ben and quotes from Poor Richard.
One good item that Franklin came up with was the balance sheet. It operates on the principal that if you can’t sell an idea to yourself, you’ll never sell it to anyone either. Franklin told a young man to divide a sheet of paper in half and on one said label it “reasons for” and on the other side, label it “reasons against.” And in the “for” column number 5 lines, but in the “against” column, only number 3 lines. If you can come up with two more reasons to do something than to not do it, you can sell the idea.
“Once Franklin was approached by a leader of the Dunkard Church, an offshoot of the Mennonites. The pastor said it was losing membership, and he wanted Franklin’s advice. Franklin, a publisher, said that perhaps the church should publish and circulate its doctrines.
‘Oh, no,’ said the pastor, ‘we have no doctrines written down because we don’t know when another of God’s spiritual truths will be revealed.’
Franklin marveled at a religion that was so open to new revelations—that would give way to a new truth and not see it as a threat to its own existence.”
“Once, when [Franklin] was hosting Dr. Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson, he asked them what was the oldest profession. Rush, a physician, said surely it was a doctor because the removal of a rib from Adam to make Eve was a surgical operation.
And then Jefferson, who had designed and built Monticello, said it was an architect—because form and order were created out of chaos.
And Franklin, with a twinkle, announced, ‘No, it’s the politician. Who do you think created the chaos?’”
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Posted in Uncategorized at 1:17 am by Administrator
What a busy day. Didn’t make a literal thing, but made plenty of virtual stuff. I started off my day tweaking my Squidoo page and adding a couple of articles. Then I submitted my website to an open directory. Then I signed up for Amazon ads and added some of them to my website. Then I found a sample business plan online and copy and pasted it into Word, and have started to fill it in. And then I got signed up for MySpace. Then I took a computer break and went to an alumni meet-and-greet for our school’s new headmaster, then I came home and rounded out my MySpace page, requested to add my dad as a friend (how sad is that? He’s a comedian, so I think I get extra brownie points when we link), and have fiddled around in Squidoo a bit more.
Now I’m adding a section to my Etsy store to separate out my religious offerings and wedding stuff from general jewelry. This will allow me to feature certain items from my Etsy store on Squidoo. I mean, sure, I could just put 20 of my most recent offerings on all of my Squidoo pages, but then there would be no connection to the topic at hand, and that’s just not my style. Now, instead, I can offer up all of my religious items on the lens talking about sins and virtues. Or I can show my bead embroidery cross on my page about bead embroidery.
I had a good time at my alumni reception. I like Father Thomas, and his wife is a dear. I wish I had her gift of social interaction. I am rather shy in public, especially when I’m alone (no close friend or family member present), and I envy people like her who can just breeze up to someone, introduce themselves and strike up a conversation and make you feel so at ease.
At least I have a good handshake. I may lack social graces, but, by God, I’ll give you a firm handshake. These are hands that aren’t afraid to shovel horse poop or lift 50 pound bags of feed (mind you, I do WASH them regularly, especially after taking care of the horse!).
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10.21.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:22 am by Administrator
I now have a link to my articles on Squidoo: www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Keriamon Most of my articles are on various medieval topics, but of course I reserve the right to get entirely off-topic!
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10.20.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:39 pm by Administrator
I have found yet another tool—and another place to talk. I think I’m spending more time typing than I am making things. But then, promoting and marketing is always more work than making things, I think. What’s the point of having any talent if no one knows about it?
In one of my library books on marketing arts and crafts, it recommended Squidoo. It’s sort of a blog combined with Yahoo! Answers, or something similar. Basically, you write articles on whatever you want and they archive them. Search engines can find them and, if the site thinks they are very interesting at the moment (needless to say, articles on all things Halloween are popular), they are also listed in the site’s search engine for people looking for content just on Squidoo.
So, what’s the point? Well, the book I read said it was helpful in bringing up your search engine ranking. The lower your search engine ranking, the further down in the listing you are and the less likely anyone is to find you. Apparently it’s not enough to have keywords and content that closely match the search words that people are putting into Google and other search engines; the more exposure your site has, the higher it is ranked. The book compared it to being popular because of who your friends are and how many friends you have. The more links on other sites pointing back to your site, the better. The more relevant pages pointing back to your site, the even better. So, if my dad puts a link to my website on his webpage, that helps a bit. If, however, someone else with a medieval site, or a site for weddings or vestments links to me, that’s even more helpful. Basically, it sounds like the search engines are first looking for the sites which everyone else considers the best or the most expert. If all roads lead to you, so should the Google Search.
Apparently every article (aka “lens”) you write on Squidoo is self-contained, meaning it can be accessed from Google or other search engines based on its title, keywords, and content. And everyone of those unique articles has my bio sitting on it, with a link to my website. So, as far as I understand it, the more articles I write, the more links I get pointing back to my website, and thus I generate my own popularity. Or something like that. Someone on Squidoo said that writing articles really helped pull her websites up from the depths of the search engine results, so here’s hoping.
So I’ve been dredging up the contents of “My Documents” to see what all I have written that could be an informative article. Most of the stuff I’ve found are from notes and handouts that I give out at classes I teach at SCA events. In short, articles on all sorts of medieval stuff. Oh, and one article on flapper fashion. That was a magazine submission that didn’t get accepted (I think because it was at too high a grade level for the middle schoolers I was supposed to be writing for). So, you could say I’m writing historical educational articles with a strong leaning towards medieval history.
Oh, and the other possible side benefit is that if people click on any of the ads on my article (which I have no control over the listing of), or take a look at an Amazon book that I recommend (which I do have control over), then I get a kick back. Like with my Google ads on my website, I’m not sure that this will be a big money maker. On the other hand, I had 50 hits on my site today, which is significantly up, so maybe some of this stuff is starting to trickle through. Now, if people would just start shopping for Christmas….
I found out today, when I was putting new birdseed into the birdfeeder, that Infanta likes birdseed. The wild birds don’t like the old birdseed, but the horse will eat it. She’ll eat most anything, including the spiny leaves off the briars growing around the deck. And my vine-making remnants. I looked out the window one day to see her playing with the vines I had left on the deck a couple of weeks before. These were the green, leafy ends which were not good for the vine. They had, of course, died and become brown in the couple of weeks they had laid out in the sun, but would you believe that horse munched them all up like she was trying to eat a mouthful of spaghetti without a fork or spoon. At one point, she had it all bunched up in her mouth and it looked like a wreath was hanging out of it. I told my husband I didn’t want to see what her poop would look like after sucking back all that long vine.
We have only got one inquiry for her, and someone offered us $400 and our asking price is $900. I told my husband that must be a horse trader; someone offering us less than half so they can turn around and sell her and double their profit. One, we paid $600 for her before she had any training; why should she be worth less now? And two, she doesn’t need to be going to a horse trader and being passed around like cheap commercial goods. That will ruin her emotionally, and she’s already more than a bit fragile. My husband isn’t as worried about her emotional health once she leaves here, but then his separated ribs are still hurting. He does agree, though, that we shouldn’t consider less than what we paid for her originally.
*Sigh* Still on my marketing to-do list (for tomorrow) is creating a My Space or Facebook site. I think I already have a Facebook registry, but it’s really slow and takes forever to load. I think I’ll try My Space. I’d not really bother, having all this other stuff on my plate, but I might connect up with some old friends from high school or college and that might be fun. It might result in something like personal use of this internet connection (gasp).
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10.19.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:30 pm by Administrator
I have been doing some serious work with my website today. While I was up in the wee hours this morning (all this creativity tends to keep my mind running past what should be bedtime), I did get signed up for a pay-per-click service from Google. I have two different ads which will appear on the right-hand sidebar on Google searches (and they might also appear on people’s websites who have Google ads and which have content similar to mine): one ad is for my website and has keywords related to vestments, weddings and religious jewelry. The other connects to my Etsy store and is aimed mostly at general jewelry searches. I ended up having nine click-throughs by noon today. None have so far generated a sale, but hopefully that’s just a matter of time.
Now that I’m about to start driving a lot more traffic to my website, I’ve started tidying it up. I’ve worked on adding ALT tags to all of my images, added page titles (whoops, those should have been there all along), and have been really getting at it today with adding merchandise. Nothing I’m adding to my website is wholly new, but it was previously only visible on Etsy. I am still working on adding more wedding jewelry to my site, and am debating whether or not to add my everyday jewelry, but everything else—religious, home décor, wearables—is on my main website now.
I lost my bid on the original mannequin head that I was after (it got too expensive). I may have to wait until after Halloween because I swear there weren’t this many people bidding on mannequin heads the last time I was looking at them; everyone wants a head for their Halloween parties, I suppose.
I’ve also signed up to host Google ads, but I am waiting for approval of my application. It would be nice if I could generate enough revenue from that to pay for my own advertising, but right now I doubt it; I need a lot more hits to my site (which is averaging around 100-200 hits per month, but you only get paid if you have 1,000 views of your ads).
I got back to working on the Psalms last night as well. I really need to force myself to do 10 a day so I can get them finished up this week; I’m up to 80 now.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 12:20 am by Administrator
I’ve added a page (see the sidebar on the right, at the top) that has thumbnails of some of my Etsy merchandise (the most recently-listed items; not all of them). Take a look if you haven’t been to my store already (www.themedievanun.etsy.com).
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