Member Profile--XOHandworks

Etsy shop: XO Handworks
Category: Jewelry, Accessories
Specialties:XO Handworks loves making new things from old: old maps, dictionaries, outdated encyclopedias, even junk mail. Using vintage materials adds a uniqueness not found in mass-produced items. Tam's most popular creations are:

• Custom map pendants, pins & magnets
• Scrabble letter accessories
• Soldered art pendants & other gift items

You can also find XO Handworks on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/XOHandworks
• Facebook: http://facebook.XOHandworks.com
• Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xohandworks/

Photo Tips with Annie Howes-- How Do I Take My Product Photos? A tutorial.

[scrabble tile DIY kit at anniehowes]

The following article was originally posted on anniehowes' blog on Mar 28th,2008.In this article Annie shares with us how she takes her photos. Also included is a tutorial on how to make an inexpensive light box.A few more similar tutorials can be found on Annie's blog.
You can find lots of supplies for scrabble tile pendants in Annie's Etsy shop.



I frequently receive requests on this topic so I thought I’d take the time to blog about it. I’m no photographer by any stretch, however I do strive for good color and sharp images. Not all my photos are great. In fact, each one is probably flawed by some standards, but I do think each product is accurately represented to the best of my ability.

When I first began photographing products I was more consumed with composition than lighting. Good composition doesn’t mean squat if you can’t see the product. As a result, I’ve eliminated most unnecessary clutter from my photographs and focus (no pun intended) on good, or at least decent, lighting. And never, ever, ever use your camera’s flash!

Natural vs Artificial Lighting
There are two schools of thought on this and I subscribe to both. Natural lighting is normally my preference but I rarely have access to good quality natural light. What I mean is if it’s not slightly diffused morning light (ideal), I’m not interested. Direct, midday, and afternoon natural light is totally unacceptable. Products end up with sharp shadows, a dark side, glare, or a cast of unwanted color (afternoon light). Unless you’re one to crop around the entire product, which I am not, I would avoid direct sunlight from any angle.

Natural Light - Before:

Natural Light - After:


Adjusting to reduce the color shift in afternoon light is far too time consuming since most of my product photos represent the actual item for sale and not a prototype.

Midday light is great if you have a light studio. A light studio is a cube made from thin white fabric held taught by a wire frame and purchased for $50+ online from many different sellers. Or, it can be easily constructed from a large cardboard box with white tissue papers substituting for the white fabric. The purpose of the photo cube is to diffuse that harsh direct sunlight thereby avoiding those harsh shadows created by direct sunlight.

Because I have limited access to natural light and because I live and work on an extremely windy hill, I have invested in an indoor light studio. It sounds much more grandiose than what it actually is. It all began with a small “hillbilly photo cube” (hey, I live in Kentucky!) that I constructed using a cardboard box and tissue paper and 2 desk lamps with (*gasp*) incandescent bulbs.

Knowing this is an unsatisfactory arrangement (the bulbs were all wrong and the light cube too fragile!), I eventually asked for a photo cube and invested in better bulbs. I still use the 2 desk lamps, but you can see from my photos the end result is not half bad.

Hillbilly Photo Cube:

Than you to Marisa of ElegantSnobbery for allowing me to link to her tutorial on "How to Make A light Cube".

Here’s what I use:
- 2 Desklamps with arms (Walmart)
- GE EnergySmart DAYLIGHT bulbs, 100 watt (Walmart or home improvement store)
- Photo Cube
- Props (off-white sketch paper, dictionary, scrabble tiles, etc.)
- Camera

And here's the set-up.

Light bulb:


Click to enlarge this set-up pic:


Here's how I do it:

My digital camera (Olympus Camedia C-765) allows me to use a Macro setting (tulip icon), and I select either ISO 200 or 400. (What is ISO?) The higher the ISO the more light the camera will lens will let in (slower shutter speed). Brighter situations will tolerate a lower ISO setting.

The photo cube allows me to have the front and the top open. I have one desk lamp over the top of the top of the cube shining down over the product (about 10-12 inches above it). The second desk lamp is on the opposite side of the cube and shines through the side of the cube toward the front and side of the product. All other artificial light in the room is normally turned off in order to avoid unwanted glare.

Because I use the macro setting, I can get really close up to the subject. If you don’t have a macro setting, don’t try to get too close and lose focus. I would rather not list an item than list an item with an out of focus photo. The quality of your photos is what helps turn a visitor into a buyer.

Once I have my photos taken (and I normally take about 8 of each item)I pass them through Photoshop for a number of reasons. First, when you’re working with the macro setting every little piece of lint shows up in the photo! So I normally go through the photo and clean up the stray lint specs and smudges on the props being careful to leave the product untouched.

Next, I’ll want to adjust the curves. I do this with just about everything I photograph. What this does is make everything brighter without washing it out. I make a minor adjustment to brighten the image then I adjust the contrast.

Adjusting Curves:


Lastly, I check the levels and make adjustments to the lighter end of things. I want to be sure my whites are white and bright and not grey and dingy looking.

Adjusting Levels - Before:


Adjusting Levels - After:


The end result is true to my eye on my monitor in both color and vibrancy just as the original is in the palm of my hand.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will answer as best I can.

Etsy Seller Tips With Muyinmolly--Finding Your Niche

[Peachy Nest ring by Muyinmolly]

The following article was originally posted on muyinmolly's blog on May 27,2008.In this article Molly shares with us how she found her "niche" through selling online.You can also find more Etsy seller tips on her blog.
Visit Molly's Etsy shop for gorgeous wire wrapped pearl and gemstone jewelry.She has tons of colorful rings!

Selling on Etsy is hard work.It takes more than your love for crafts to stand out from the crowd. Apart from great photos, clear descriptions and frequent listings, you need to have something different to offer. There needs to be a reason for shoppers to buy from your shop instead of others'.
I have always understood the importance of artistic styles. I am not sure if this is because I received formal art trainings in different media -- especially in fine art, writing and classical music. When I started selling jewelry on Ebay two years ago, I had just started making wired jewelry for two years.I had this passion for working with wire, even though I did not know what I wanted to create with it. I read many tutorials and books on wire working.I liked both modern wire wrapping and traditional wire sculpture. I liked so many things I saw but I didn't know what I liked the most. I decided to try my luck by selling some basic earrings made with very simple wire work on Ebay,and here are one of the very first designs that I introduced --



I had great luck.For some reasons I did not even know, these earrings sold very well on Ebay, so I started making variations of them.
then I learned to make wire wrapped rings.I did not know if they would sell, but I just loved making those rings (For some reason it felt so good to wrap the wire around a mandrel.Wierd, huh?) and it felt so natural to me. I did not like the design I learned from the tutorial, so I modified it to highlight a center pearl.Here you can see one of the very first wire wrapped rings I listed in my Ebay store in August, 2006--



I was lucky again. People seemed to like my wire wrapped rings, for reasons I didn't know, so I listed more rings in my Ebay store.Very soon I had an Ebay store full of wire wrapped rings and more people started to buy rings from me. The same pearl ring design is still available in my Etsy store.



If you take a look at the pictures of this same design, you will find that after making hundreds of rings and taking thousands of photos, my wire wrapping and photography skill have improved a lot.

If you asked me two years ago what my niche was, I would not be able to tell you. But now I can confidently say I offer wire wrapped rings, and I have a simplistic and colorful style. I was fortunate enough to notice what customers wanted from me from the very beginning, and I developed my skills and expanded my designs accordingly. Then I started to find my own style, and people started to notice me more, and I started to sell more.

If you have just started selling on Etsy, or if you have just started making your crafts and don't know what your niche is, give it time and ask yourself consciously as often as possible when you make your craft,and you will know what your style is someday.

Life Of A Full Time Etsy Crafter -- Nicholasandfelice

Congratulations to our team member nicholasandfelice, who just reached their 5000th sale on Etsy today!! To celebrate this amazing milestone, Felice has taken time to share their Etsy story with us. This post is a little long, but once you start reading it, you'll love it so much that you have to finish the whole thing!


How long have you been selling crafts? How did it start?
Back in my early 20’s I started making jewelry and selling it at Grateful dead concerts. Yes, I was one of those Deadheads in the 80’s traveling around selling stuff outside the concerts. I made beadwork jewelry. Then I got a job in Key West Florida for a winter working for a jeweler stringing her necklace designs and then another who taught me some simple wirework that I got to sell at their stores.
I’ve always been crafty and into making things. My father was self employed and had an “Art Store” at one point in our lives where he cranked out oil paintings to match peoples’ couches. He gave me the confidence to believe that I could make stuff and people would buy it.
Then in the spring of 1987 I went to Guatemala with some friends to learn how to buy and import Guatemalan clothing. Nick was there traveling with a girlfriend who had just dumped him and taken the guide book and towel leaving him all alone in a foreign country and without much money (Poor Nick). We met and I hired him to help me carry all the stuff I was buying and have been together ever since.
We lived in Toronto for 2 years, during when I took a “real” jewelry making course and started wholesaling my metalwork and bead jewelry while Nick went to school. At this time the quartz crystal pendant trend was very popular. We had a friend wearing one and Nick looked at it and figured out how to wire wrap the crystal. We rode the crystal pendant wave and traveled around the country selling our jewelry to New Age stores, craft fairs and at concerts. We eventually settled an hour north of Eugene Oregon so that we could sell at the weekly Eugene Saturday Market. That became our main source of income besides some wholesale accounts.

How long have you been selling on Etsy full time?
We’ve always been selling jewelry full time. We joined Etsy on May 26, 2006.

What is your specialty?
We’re pretty good with the wirework. We started with wire wrapping sterling silver around stones and glass. Over the years our designs have become more complex and have a Celtic look. About 7 years ago we took a trip to Victoria, Canada and saw a woman making wired hanging bottle. We thought it was a great idea and came up with our own version of the idea using aluminum wire and our Celtic designs. The aluminum wire sent me in a new direction and we now have a popular line of aluminum earrings and pendants and shawl pins. Nick taught himself machining and acquired the skills to do all sorts of jewelry and metal work. We have a line of stamped and engraved jewelry that includes lots of quirky geeky and science related designs as well as animals, Celtic and Asian character designs etc.




Is there a turning point for your Etsy shop? Did it suddenly or gradually take off?
We had our first sale about 2 weeks after we listed our first pair of earrings on Etsy. Our pictures were terrible and our descriptions were awful. We kept adding more and more to our shop and working on the photography. We still weren’t selling very much to be all that impressed with Etsy or ourselves. Then the week before Christmas ’06 (about 6 months after we started on Etsy) we started having sales every day. We’ve been doing well since then with steady sales and very busy Christmas sales.

How do you keep customers coming back to your shop?
We consider customer service a major part of what we are offering our customers. We’re kind of maniacal about it and treat our customers the way we would want to be treated. Because this is our livelihood we are online all the time (except when we are sleeping or out of the house.)So we always answer convos and emails quickly. We also always send an email and convo as soon as we get an order to let them know we received it and when we are shipping. We’re always polite and upbeat and follow the “customer is always right” model of business. We are crazy about sending out orders as soon as possible which is usually the same or next day unless it is the weekend obviously. During the Christmas rush we may get a little behind that goal and send out orders in two days. We want shopping with us to be a pleasant and easy experience without any hassles for the customer so they will want to come back and tell their friends.
We also know the importance of having new products for our returning customers to stay interested. We are always thinking about new ideas and trying to work on them and trying to figure out the next big thing.
We don’t do anything fancy with our packaging but everything gets wrapped in colored tissue paper and put in a simple brown gift box and tied with a nice piece of chenille or fancy yarn. We put a little handwritten “Thank You!, F and N” and a smiley face in a heart on the invoice.It only takes a second but it’s a nice little touch and I really do feel grateful for every single sale.

How do you supplement your Etsy income?Do you sell your jewelry outside of Etsy?
We sell most weekends at the Eugene Saturday Market and at their Holiday Market. We have another small local craft fair we do in the Fall. We have some wholesale accounts too and get new ones every once on a while from store owners finding us on Etsy. Nick’s other business is selling small lathes and milling machines online for a small US manufacturer. He also does some paid blogging for the “Tool Monger” and has other machining related projects going on all the time for different customers.

what is your daily work schedule? How many hours do you work every week?
This is a hard question to answer. We tend to get up 8:30ish.Get the coffee going right away and check the email. Get our 2 young sons happy with food and yes dare I say it- TV or computers, legos or whatever they are interested in. Max goes to preschool from 9:30-11:30 3 days a week. So I take him there then come back and print out orders and send confirmation of receiving the orders and when we will ship. Nick spends the morning answering emails and phone calls from his customers from the lathe and milling machine business, faxing in orders. I start packaging and making the same items that sold so we can relist throughout the morning while entertaining our 6 year Henry with his various projects and needs. At 11:30 I’m picking up Max and dropping off Henry at Kindergarten. Then sometimes I’m ready to go to the post office with the mornings’ packages or else do some errands with Max and get home and finish up orders. Then it’s time to pick up Henry and do after school stuff like Karate classes or play dates or errands. During this time Nick is working on jewelry or bookkeeping or fun projects. There are a lot of variations to all of this. We live a pretty flexible lifestyle.
I spend a lot of time in the evening working on jewelry and deigns or catching up on stuff to be relisted or new ideas. And more coffee.





How do you promote your Etsy shop?
Nick and I both have blogs:
http://wiremom.blogspot.com
http://mechanicalphilosopher.blogspot.com
http://anotherairgunblof.blogspot.com
We have a flickr page. We have a deviant art page that we rarely update.We now have a facebook business page.
We don’t really do anything else.

I don’t think the blogs have really brought us all that much business but there have been some people that started reading our blogs and become regular fans and customers. I think they mostly just add a nice way for a customer to get a better feel for who we are and who they are buying from. I think that is part of the Etsy experience and blogging helps round that out for those that are interested and curious to know more about us. We keep business cards on us all the time and hand them out if the situation seems appropriate and not weird or pushy. We have had a couple of really lucky breaks as far as getting on other peoples blogs and mentioned once in “Cookie” magazine.
But honestly we really don’t understand or know why we get people coming to our shop and buying.I suspect having proper and good Tags has a lot to do with being found in the Etsy and google search systems.

What is the most challenging part as a full time Etsy seller? How do you handle it?
We often feel like we are in a never ending craft fair with Etsy. It’s really hard for me to not constantly check the email and shop and answer convos right away even when it’s the weekend or late at night. It’s our livelihood and it’s up to us to keep it going so we are our own worst bosses in some ways. We are exploiting ourselves!

Your shop name is Nicholas and Felice. How do you two work together? Did you encounter any problems being a couple and business partners at the same time?
We’ve got a ridiculously co- dependent relationship so it works out really well. We’ve been together almost 22 years and been apart about a total of 11 days. We have a natural sort of division of labor. Nick does all the bookkeeping, CNC and stamping designs. I’ve evolved into the wireworker although Nick is just as good at it. I do the photography and convoing of most stuff unless it’s related to custom stampings and engravings.

How do you balance between family and work? What is the most challenging part about working from home with two children, and how do you manage it?
Ha! How do I even begin to answer that? I do most of my work at my desk in the dining room so I am constantly stopping and starting work in between getting the kids stuff and doing things with them. We have a couple of different shop areas and most of Nick’s machining shop is in the converted garage that is just another room of our house now. So we are always around the kids and trying to get stuff done. They are still pretty young (4 and 6) but soon enough Henry will be in 1st grade all day and Max will get to Kindergarten in 2 years. It’s crazy and we are running around in circles trying to get as much done as possible. I actually don’t know how we do it all. I just try to remember that there really is time to stop working and cuddle for 5 minutes.



Share your best business advice with us.
Make customer service paramount.

Share one of the strangest things that happened to you as crafters.
Nick came up with his “HTML ” earrings (They are a dorky geek joke based on HTML computer coding for those who don’t get the joke.).They got mentioned on dig.com and made it to the front page of the website for a whole day. We were bombarded with sales and he made about 40 pairs in 24 hours. They still continue to sell well. Oh and we had a woman in China who is a programmer order a pair from us. It felt good to be doing are part to help the trade deficit.



One of the coolest things that ever happened was a friend was wearing a pair of our earrings while she was traveling in India. Another friend of ours who didn’t know this person saw her in the market place in a town in India wearing our earrings and said “Hey those are Nick and Felice’s earrings!”

Anything else you would like to add?
Some of our best selling products came from customers. I had a customer ask me to make a treble clef shawl pin. We already made treble clef pendants with aluminum. I didn’t even know what a shawl pin was and if aluminum would be a good metal to use for it. She thought it would be perfect and she was right. It’s light weight so it doesn’t pull on the shawls like a big chunky metal pin would. After I made hers I didn’t think about it again but someone googled shawl pins and that sold one somehow came up in her search and she asked me to make her one too. Then I realized it should be in our shop. That design kept selling quickly and then the ”Duh” light came on above my head and I realized a lot of my Celtic big selling pendant designs would work great for shawl pins. The shawl pins have become a big part of our shop now and sell really well. I’ve been amazed at the great word of mouth advertising from knitters, especially on Ravelry (a knitting forum).Then we got really lucky and the wonderful Deb of Fearless Fibers bought one and sent it to her friend Anne Hanson, who has a popular blog, and she wrote about it. The response has been wonderful and we still get knitters buying the pins from us and saying they saw it mentioned on her blog.
So I guess the moral is pay attention.

Team Banner!

I'm so excited to tell you that our team member Bridgette (Earmark) just created these cool banners for our team.Please help us decide which one to use for our team by voting for your favorite on the left side bar!

fuschia
mustard
bright yellow
khaki
sweet pink
wood

Earmark is a Featured Seller by Etsy. You can find their witty stationary at their Etsy shop.

hello ~

The official blog of Full Time Etsy Crafter Team is finally here!
We are a group of Etsy sellers who have successfully sold on Etsy. Some of us have been selling on Etsy full time, while some of us are working towards selling on Etsy full time. We have made it, and we are here to share our experiences with you!

The following is a preview of our future posts.Be sure to subscibe to our blog so you don't miss any fun and news!

1. featured shops -- short description and/or interview of featured shops
2. giveaways/contests--get free goodies from your favorite full time Etsy sellers!
3. life of a full time Etsy crafter -- a short interview of featured sellers
4. etsy seller tips -- Etsy seller tips from those who have successfully sold on Etsy
5. full time crafter FAQ -- do you have any questions for full time Etsy sellers?we are here to answer them!(convo fulltimeetsycrafters, or post comments below)
6. member news -- sales news,new arrivals, and press features of our members

Please feel free to post comments below about anything else you would like to read in this blog, so we know what to post!

Read our Storque feature here.
Do you have any questions or suggestions for our team members? Convo fulltimeetsycrafters!

Do you sell on Etsy full time and want to be a member of our team? Convo muyinmolly!