Back from the dead

I'm back from my break. I completed NaNo and survived the holidays. I'm back to working on my jewelry. I've been posting some fused glass pendants to Etsy and I've got many that I'm happy with how they turned out.

I participated in NAMI's Christmas boutique and sold a handful of my pendants there. I'm not sure how to generate more interest for my site, but I'm starting to search out more ideas. I think I'm going to start participating in giveaways.

There is a new pendant on Handmade Pendants and Crafts.

Its all falling apart!

I was looking in my kiln today and found that it is falling apart. The firebrick that lines the kiln is crumbling. I pulled off all the ruined brick and vacuumed it out and fount that I have large chunks missing from the sides. Some of the elements are exposed. I wanted to get a new kiln next payday but the one I had my eye on is gone. Did I write about it already? (Just checked, seems like I didn't.)

OK here it is. I got some glass to fuse. I had gotten a new pyrometer and I figured that I had tested the kiln enough to try some glass. I picked a bad day to do it, the neighborhood had the big dumpsters all about so that we could fill it up with household trash and yard debris. So my mother came over wanting to clean up the forest of a backyard. I was juggling my attention between the cleanup and the kiln. It was several hours into it that I realized that I was reading the pyrometer wrong and I was about 100 degrees off.

I thought maybe I was close enough that things would still work out, and I continued fusing the glass according to the schedule I found on the net. When it came time to anneal the glass I opened the kiln to quickly cool the temperature to 960 degrees. When I opened it, I noticed that I had not made nice, round, fused pendants, I had made a puddlely mess.

So I decided: bad kiln, need new kiln. I found a real nice one, never used, with the furniture, digital controller, all for the very reasonable price of $400.00. I was excited to get it and was willing to sell anything up to and including my soul to get it. But, when I called on it, I found that I was too late. Someone else got the killer deal.

I found a tiny one just $50.00 more than that one, but it is tiny and I couldn't use it for slumping when I'm ready to do that. I just couldn't bring myself to want to buy that one. So ever the problem solver I looked at what I could do to make my kiln work. I think if I buy a digital pyrometer I should be able to more accurately fuse my glass. Also if I diligently kiln sit I should have better luck. I found a resource that told me you can use a kiln with an infinity switch to fuse glass if you sat right by it with a good book and half an eye on it. So we'll see.

But that brings me around to the kiln falling apart again. Do I even want to buy a $75.00 digital pyrometer when the kiln is crumbling? There are ways to fix it. I can find a repairman here in Utah to clear out the bad firebrick and replace it with new ones. Or I can try to do it myself. It will cost me between $30-$80 to do it myself. I have no idea how much it would cost to have someone do it for me. Sadly I can't do anything until after payday.

Posting Spree

I know its not recommended to post a ton of items at once, but I haven't been good at uploading one a day. Instead I have been posting about four a day. I'm almost done posting all I have. I'm starting to describe them on Homemade Pendants and Crafts. I'm working on talking about the pendants in a more dynamic way. I'm still learning how to sell these things.

But anyway my Halloween pendants are available for sale on DamikDesigns. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to leave them in my store after Halloween ends.

I'm mixing things up in my SEO campaign. I'm posting articles with links back on Squidoo and Hubpages. I don't know if I'm going to see results from that, but I'm having a fun time with it. You know I'm just going to crow the first time I see money from one of these endeavors.

Crap, I just realized I've forgotten to use tags on my posts. I'm still getting used to this.I'm sorry about the picture layout, I can't figure out how to make them integrated into the posts.

Halloween Pendant Disappointment

OK when I said that I ruined 3 of my pendants, I was wrong. More like I ruined 1/3 of them. I almost don't want to even bother photographing them for the oops section. I guess I should, because at least I'll be getting my card out there.

There is one that I did that I think I may have turned from an oops to something cool, but I'm not sure. I'm calling it bloody frightening. The resin dripped off over the side and I colored it red in hopes that it would look like blood. I think it worked out well, but I'm not sure if it is good enough to not be an oops. I know I should post it on etsy and get there opinion, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I also have to post my Halloween pendants for sale, I just haven't. No reason but sheer laziness.

The world is conspiring against me

So I made my Halloween pendants last night. I'll be posting them on Handmade Pendants and Crafts when I've taken pictures of them. I ruined at least three of them by getting water into the resin.

I've been wanting to do more lampworking but have been two distracted as of late. I've had a big test that I've been pretending to study for (I was actually surfing the net in a panicky avoidance of study) so I haven't spent much time in the craft room.

Last night I took the evening to watch TV and make my scrabble tile pendants. I showed my husband how to make them too so he could do some designs of his own. As I was cleaning up afterward, in a moment of epic Danie gracefulness, I took a tumble down the stairs. I feel like I should have a huge bruise on my tush and I torqued my hand something good.

So now I can't do my lampworking. You need to have two hands, one to control the glass and one to control the mandrel, if you want to achieve a good bead. I guess it could be done if I twisted my arm into an unnatural position, but my feeling is I'd just be wasting glass on something not worth my effort.

I think I'm going to focus my attention on tiles and coasters for now. I haven't done them in a long time and they are easy to make, even if you are gimped.

A great find!

I'm trying hard to drive traffic to my etsy. I found a really great site walton.communications. I've been enjoying it as a resource. He has put out a really great ebook that is easy to read and full of good information and he has an awesome forum where he answers questions.

I was flattered to see that he used one of my questions for his blog.

So I'm going to make some Halloween pendants in hopes to sell for the season. The thing is I'm out of bails to glue on them. I used all of mine for the pendants I donated to a friend's garage sell. He was trying to raise money for his son's surgery. I hope he sells a lot, but I digress.

I went to the Hobby Lobby to buy some and I stumbled onto a wondrous sight; fuseworks! Glass ready to fuse and inexpensive enough for me to mess it up a few time. I am totally going to come back when I have money. I have to wait because my husband wouldn't let me hook for it.

Working this SEO thing

So I've started to work the SEO campaign and I have to admit it is very overwhelming. I don't think I'll have the results in two weeks, I don't think I'll have it fully up and running in the two weeks. But I'm giving it the ol' college try.

I've started a new blog on wordpress to highlight my work. That doesn't mean I won't highlight my work here to, but the wordpress site is more like my booth babe. It is tarted up to lure people in to see my wares. Or it will be when I get done with it. Right now it is basic and boring.

I'm still excited to start working on my fused glass. I need to buy glass and kiln liner paper to start. I'm selling my car, and if I get what I'm asking for it, I should be able to buy a metric assload of supplies.

I also asked at a farmers marked how I would get a booth for next year. That didn't go well. I think they are sort of like a private club. The people I asked seemed to give me the runaround and the person who finally had answers for me seemed like he was actively trying to discourage me from applying. I don't know, now I think I want to apply out of spite.

Business card challenge

So the business card campaign was a bust. I couldn't find a place to post them. I did donate a bunch of my pendants for a friend's baby's surgery fund and I put business cards in with them, but I don't know how many of them he sold, or if anybody who bought them checked out my site.

I had a campaign going through stumble and it generated a lot of traffic each day, but I wasn't getting any sales. I'm not sure if I'm going to try another ppc advertisement right now.

My next experiment is going to be SEO advertising. Using key words and the like for "search engine optimization". This one is going to be a lot of work, I'm not sure if I should start now or wait until I have passed my tests for school. I should be dedicating my time to study, not business venture. IDK.

I got my kiln working. I bought a new catalytic thermometer for it and I have tested the temps that it goes to. It will get hot enough for annealing. I haven't seen how hot it gets on high, so I don't know if it will get hot enough for fusing, but it got close, so I think it will. I am excited to by glass and start fusing, if I can. I got a laser printer so I can fuse pictures. I have an idea where people send me their little kids drawings in black and white and I fuse them on a pendant. I don't know if that is a good idea or not, but I think it is cute.

I fixed my photos!

I learned how to fix my pictures. I found a great tutorial on setting up the camera. I'll post a link for anybody who is interested when I find it again.

I'm going to take up the overwhelming undertaking of re-photographing all my other pieces. But for now, because my focus is really on selling the lampwork beads so I'm good.

Photo Problems

I'm having trouble with the proper lighting of my photos. I made the recommended light box, but my light source isn't good enough. Right now I'm using a 100 w desk lamp and my pictures come out too dark. I can fix it a little with the photo editing software, but that isn't a good solution. I remember I used to take the pictures outside and that worked a bit better, but that only works in summer when it is cloudless. Which is alright for now, but I intend to continue making beads through the winter and I'm going to want to post them.

I've forgotten in the last few items to tell buyers that it has been properly annealed so I'm going to have to go back and edit. It is important in lampworking because if it isn't annealed the piece could break and buyers are leery of buying improperly annealed pieces because of that.

As for my business card campaign I'm having a hard time finding people and places to pass them out. It was nice in Cali because they had a plethora of art shops that let you place adverts on bulletin boards, but Utah just has Micheal's and it doesn't have and boards. All the people I've seen lately know that I have a shop so I can't give them cards. This campaign is starting to look like a bust. I wish I had started back up in time for craft fair season.

Getting back on track

I let my etsy fall to the wayside. I'm trying to get back to promoting everything. I started doing lampworking and I'm excited how everything is working out. So now on top of my regular pendants I have 3 new glass pendants that I'm selling, with more to come in the next 3 days.

I am also going to start my weekly promotion campaign again. As planned before I'm going to start with business cards.

If you want to view my new lampwork pieces you can go here:
Flying Saucer
Ocean Waves
Purple Dream