A Shining Front Page!

Making it to the front page of Etsy is every sellers goal. It's instant advertising and traffic to your shop and most of all it's a complete honor to be a part of a front page worthy showcase. I finally had the honor this morning thanks to JooJooLand's magical "Shining" treasury. Thank you so much for including me in your gorgeous design and for being an all around wonderful person. 

Three's a Charm

I am so thrilled to have my roses featured in three very cool, very different treasuries this week! Big thank yous to: WickedGems for featuring my coffin pendant in this very vampy treasury, JooJooLand for designing such an enchanting layout and including my pink rose ring, and last but not least, Danikamon for actually making a beautiful, glow-in-the-dark treasury!

Smile with JooJoo

It's always a nice surprise when an item gets featured in one of those glorious, twelve little boxes of a treasury. And even though I never expect to be featured in return by a seller I've showcased, it's an extra sweet treat when it happens. Like today. My Sapphire Rose Ring was featured in this beautiful, September Stars treasury thanks to the whimsical artist, JooJoo.

I recently discovered her charming shops while I was curating one of my treasuries and I've been an admiring fan ever since. Her first shop, JooJoo, contains delightful prints of her original paintings such as this "tiny pink birdie" pictured above. Her second shop, JooJooLand, ups the sweet factor a notch by taking her enchanting artwork into 3D with her hand sculpted jewelry pieces and miniature sculptures. The photographs of her products are also incredible works of art themselves and needless to say, they look wonderful in treasuries.  The bottom line, JooJoo makes me smile.

I know she will make you smile too, so enjoy her September Stars treasury and be sure to visit her sweet shops (oh, and wish her a happy birthday too!).

Prints: JooJoo.etsy.com
Mini sculptures and jewelry: JooJooLand.etsy.com
Visit her blog: www.JooJoo.me

Good Luck

Luck. Who couldn't use a little bit of it these days? Being born and raised in Las Vegas means growing up with all sorts of luck – both good and bad. There are lucky numbers, lucky charms, lucky pennies… And of course Lady Luck herself can be found in my hometown.  Luck is what fuels Vegas and the lure of fortune's offering is what makes people come back for more.  Including me. I may be heading there soon to visit family, but I'm not going to turn my nose at bringing a little good luck along.

Last night I luckily logged into Etsy right before a Treasury West spot became available. The first thought that popped into my head when I realized I had less than 16 minutes to come up with a design was, "What luck!" I then found this adorable golden kitty by JooJooLand. It's beautifully photographed and the colors are warm like the approaching autumn season. The rest of the treasury was based around this cute little guy and everything seemed to fall right into place. How lucky for me!

So here you go… Here are the 12 very lucky sellers from my latest treasury, Good Luck, and their beautiful creations: JooJooLand, ShySiren, cinnamonsticks, PsAndQs, LatigoMoon, wildcardpottery, ShiStudio, PunkyBunny300, F925, hybridtheory, Leelinau, JoyfulSpirit

The alternate items: arleebee, YaneShops, catondarlingandmoore, sewlutionsbyamo

Craftgawker

I recently discovered an amazing online showcase of handmade products called, Craftgawker. Craftgawker.com is a spin off from their wildly popular food site, Foodgawker.com. (WARNING: Visiting Foodgawker will make you silly with drool, so be sure you are sitting far enough away from your keyboard and computer to avoid liquidy contact. This is for your own protection.)

Craftgawker is interesting. The site has a clean and simple, elegant design that reads almost like a high-end magazine or catalog. And that's because their submission based content has a fairly stringent acceptance criteria. Submissions are moderated and only well designed, well balanced and well photographed images are included. All items must have direct links to content about the product (Etsy, Artfire, Flickr, blogs, etc).

Craftgawker not only allows a crafter to have another venue to showcase their handmade product, but the site also serves as an excellent source of inspiration and motivation to take better, well designed photographs – a very important part of having a handmade business. You may have noticed some appealing products down on the left hand side of this blog. That's the handy Craftgawker widget which is an easy, elegant way to spruce up your website while spreading a bit of handmade love. 

And one last thing to mention… I'm excited to share that my Sapphire Blue Rose Shimmer Ring made the cut! It's currently on the front page and I couldn't be more honored to have been accepted. Check it out… Craftgawker is another incredible tool that helps make handmade a special experience.