Comfortable Shoes Studio

Some Notes on The Recycled Pages

I've been working in the 100% recycled journal for a  few days now. I've filled a few pages,but I've been working it in my usual manner of actually working on 4 or 5 pages at a time and working ahead and cleaning my brushed out on future pages. It's a style that works well for me in thicker journals and less well with journals that are jotter thick. The beauty of this journal is that I'm not overly concerned with using up the pages, they aren't precious to me in any way say like, fabriano or stonehenge even. 

That being said I've found tha the gesso is a pain in my arse. Pure and simply it didn't adhere overly well to the super slick and glossy pages of the Nat Geo mag i used to make my pages. The culprit as I've found it- hte brush I for application. I used a watercolor brush (an old one, calm down) and it put on a very thin layer that dried fast, which was my goal. I should have gone for better coverage and covered fewer pages. the pages that I applied a thick coat have less of an issue with scraping and weird behavior. the thin pages the gesso scrapes off, which can lead to some very cool antiquing effects but wasn't what Iwas really looking for.

Don't get me wrong I love this journal, but I had to learn how to use it.

Notebook Stories

There is a great blog over here called Notebook Stories.They do reviews of notebooks, find great artists and doodlers as well as notebook addicts. Great stuff. I should see if they will review some of my notebooks...

Anyway it's a great blog and everyone should go over and check it out.

Facebook Me

I've set up a page on Facebook, you can find it here. I link to my new items and put up some pictures. All good stuff. I also have been experimenting with some online contests. Follow me on Facebook to find out more.

What I really want to write about today is Etsy's new Facebook feature in which when you heart an item a link pops up under the "heart this link" that says "facebook this item." Very, very cool.You have a chance at link an item for your friends to see, it could be a neat way of telling friends "hint hint I'd like this in large for my birthday" or it could just be a fantastic way of linking to an item so lots of people can see it.

I read on the forum (I know I know, I hate taht plce but can't resist  a link to it from twitter) that a lot of people were looking at this as spam for their facebook account. In a way I suppose if you abuse it, it is, BUT I look at it form a customer's perspective and not a seller's perspective, as in "How cool is it that I can link to all these awesome items?" Etsy should have rolled this out to  buyers and not so much sellers. It hink that etsy sellers are an easy sold to target. Let's face it the buyers spend less time on the site than we do, they might spend hours browsing the items but they aren't listing items and don't have the same involvement on a day to day basis that sellers do.

What I'm saying is this: wicked cool feature but not so much for sellers, email that stuff out to the buyers etsy and yo've got something cool on your hands. It would b nice if you set it up so we could send a link to Twitter in the same breath. I tweet way more than I facebook.*

SO if you are a buyer on etsy or even a seller, go on there and heart a few items today and put them up on your facebook for the world to see. Sellers get your friends to SIGN UP for etsy today and start linking to items!

*artfire has a tweet this item link on the left side of each items page, pops up with a micro url and some text already in it, I'd love it if they did a facebook link too. It's super easy to use.

Book blocks, glue and leather

Whew. In addition to mowing the lawn* I managed to finish that fat stack of 7 hedgehog/ moleskin notebooks I've been sitting on for close to 2 weeks. The elastics and envelopes went in in no time and pressed for a few hours. In that time I glued 6 more blocks into leather covers.

I pulled the finished books out of the press, signed and dated them, stuffed business cards in the pockets and then shot pictures. Edited said pictures and then listed all the items to my artfire shop. It went smoothly and everything looks good.

Thursday I visited my friend in Swampscott and she had been hoarding some paper and advertising posters for me. I walked away with 20 or so posters and about 2 reams of paper. I'll be able to use the guillotine to chop them up into nice matchbook notebooks. The posters are already chopped to size and will be stored until the next time I make a big batch of jotters. I also got some plastic posters that I use for jigs. I set up a jig to make covers with some of the left over scraps as the spine with some great backer board as the cover. I picked up some 30x40 sheets of backer board at the Charette clearance sale in Woburn.So I'm going to try out some new books and stitches. Fun stuff planned.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Western Mass to help a friend set up an ArtFire and an Etsy shop. I"ll spend the afternoon testing out my skillz.

*no small feat considering that it's rained every weekend for the last 3 weeks and I've not been able to mow for that whole time. The grass was halfway to my knees and I"ve got an electric lawn mower... It wasn't pretty.

Featured Artisan

I'm the featured artisan over at Autonomous Artisan. They sent me a few questions and I answered them they posted them with pic on their blog. Aww gee Shucks, anyway head on over and check it out. The blog is fund has a bunch of cool features, they are listed at the top of the window click a tab and check it out.

quality matters so represent

Here is something that bugs the hell out of me: when people put badly done work out there. I was searching on Etsy and came upon a seller making Coptic bound books. The covers were fantastic. So I looked at a bunch of their work. I found several books in their shop that I’d have been embarrassed to list myself. Why? Loose and sloppy stitching, crooked stitches, and spines that were lined up with the holes in the books and not the spine edge of the cover. This was selling for top dollar too. The seller had listed it with the rest of their listings as if it were the same quality.* ARGH.

I have 2 main issues with this practice by sellers. First it gives sellers of handmade goods a bad impression. By selling that book that seller is making all bookbinders look bad in the eyes of the buyer. As sellers of handmade goods we have to remember that we represent ALL the other makers of the same goods. When that book fails it will leave a bad taste in the mouth of the buyer. That seller is looking to make a quick buck but ultimately will tarnish his/her image.

Here is my second issue: Its bad customer service. Pure and simple putting out a subpar product will only damage your image in the eyes of your buyers. Craftspeople have a hard enough time selling our goods without people selling badly done work. No matter where it’s sold it doesn’t matter when you put your work out there you represent your work and all the other people who make something similar. Buyers who learn through use and looking at other handmade items will soon learn the flaws of a poorly made item. They will be unhappy. They will not be back. They will feel scammed.

A note to buyers: If you’re looking for some Coptic bound books where the seller has pride in their craft, does great work and has some spot on design skill? Check these sellers out:

KateBlack.Etsy.com Her books are amazing, well designed and well made

MyHandBoundBooks Very well made and fun books

Kristincrane.etsy.com Well made fun and funky and a lot of maps!

Additionally, buyers should feel like they can ask a seller questions. ASK questions of the binder. Ask how long they have been making books. My suggestion ould be to not buy books from anyone who been making them less than 6 months. Bookbinding is not an easy to learn craft and one that take patience and practice to get good at. I’ve been binding for close to 10 years and when I take a break from a particular binding style, I always make a few screw up books, and Coptic is one of those styles you foul up on. Even when I am making them on a regular basis I screw up regularly.

So for those of you who are sellers, if you must sell a piece please label it as a second, list the quality faults, be honest with your buyers and represent all of us well.

 *One could argue that perhaps the seller didn’t know that this was a flaw, but before going on my tirade I looked at the rest of the shop and found several books made properly and many books with different designs. This was obviously a seller who knew better!

on fire

I set up an ArtFire account, you can see the large banner on my side bar. The link on that banner goes to my shop, where I've got everything 10% off for the month to celebrate my shop opening.

ArtFire is still in beta, I'm an early adopter though not too early. I was a fairly early adopter of Etsy too, that was still in beta when I started there as well.  Like the other there are a few quirks that will get ironed out as time goes on, but so far I like it.

I don't plan on giving up my etsy shop, I've got 200+ sales there and usually do well with it. The fees on etsy are still by far cheaper than they are on eBay and I like the no auction format. It's steady. It's safe.

ArtFire is as of yet untested waters I've made 4 sales there so far. Which isnt' bad for a week or so of being there, but when I started on etsy I had an inital boom of sales then things tapered off.

What I like about ArtFire is their democratic RANDOM ordering of items on the front page you can see the most recent items, the oldest items or random items. Which is really cool. But it can be chaotic and less attractive than perhaps possible. The search function WORKS, and works well. Also the items show up in google. ROCK ON!

It's takes me less than 5 minutes to list an item on ArtFire, multi loading pics goes fast on my cable internet. The one trouble I've run into is that I have to write all new descriptions of my product. they use Google base so that the items show up in Google and some weird words are blocked from the descriptions. I had to read the forums to learn more about it, but really I need to learn to work with it. The ability to show up in google's search listing is something I've relied on my blog and facebook for in the past. So to have my work show up automatically, can in theory, really drive views and sales.

The shops can be greatly customized to really personalize it. I've seen some really great looking shops.

I'm debating a paid account. If I buy one soon I'll be locked in at their introductory rate of $12. Which would be great. But to equal the percentage of fees that I get with etsy I'd have to sell a minimum of $200 in product a month. (A rough estimate gave me a fee % of 6% for etsy- factoring in listing fee and 3.5% final value fee.) For my lower priced items thats 20 to 25 sales a month. Lately my sales have been much lower.

Another great thing is that you can use google cart for check out too. Which really can open the shop up for a whole new set of shoppers. Also because you can ad HTML you can ad widgits, which means you can put your etsy site on artfire. That seems very much in the spirit of DIY but rather counter intuitive for a business. But then crafty handmade stuff has never made sense from a standard business model...

I'm not totally head over heals in love yet, but so far I'm liking what I see and love the ease of use and searchability of the site.

Twitter Fun Stuff

Okay for those of your reading this who are also on twitter, follow me, then the first 5 people to DM me their address and name I'll mail them a free jotter notebook. WOOT! Fun right? Thing is you need to follow me on twitter to do it!

updates and stuff, new ArtFire account

Holy moley! It's been awhile. I've been having god awful allergy issues the last few weeks, as we've had the worst tree pollen season in years here in Mass. It's knocked me for a loop. My allergies aren't that bad, usually but this year I've been virtually immobole. Tree pollen season is here for a few more weeks, so I can expect to feel pretty crappy for another couple of weeks. Blargh.

Good news though. I've been working on my hedgehog (moleskine style) notebooks I"ve got 10 in the press right now drying. Tomorrow night I might be able to get the elastics on them and hopefully listed this weekend. IK've got 8 with leather covers and 2 with handmade paper hardcovers. The paper shear really makes creating them a lot easier. I managed to crack the base of my press the other day and will need to repair it this weekend. It won't be hard just time consuming.

Other good news! I started an ArtFire account and I've got the items listed @10% off for the first month of sales. Right now I've got a stack of lined jotters listed but will list more as time goes on. I'll list a few of my hedgehog (moleskine style) notebooks when I finish them this weekend. Find the link on the right of my page that should take you directly to my artfire account!

I have the guts of many more hedgehogs ready to go too. I need to get stitching. The rest of this week is supposed to be rainy so I guess I know what i'll be doing!

I'm also on twitter! You can follow me @Lessherger be prepared though, i use it to soupt off and occasionally put up discount codes for etsy. Also I'm on facebook! You can be a fan of Comfortable Shoes Studio or friend me. Again I'll be putting discount codes up on the  the various sites and announcing sales and what not.

Land of Lost Luggage Blog

The land of lost luggage blog is a great little blog with lots of great pictures and images. THe owner of the blog is going to have a online art workshop involving 9 hi-def videos teaching you how to make her backgrounds. Check out those great blackground they are phenominal. Check it out here.