business cards

Recently I've been working on some business cards. I've put this off for a while due to commitment issues (I can't ever decide on a design without changing my mind a week later) but finally found some motivation. The white card on the left side of these photos is a business card I picked up in one of my Favorite stores in Montreal. After keeping it in my wallet and admiring it for months I decided why not use it as my muse. I took some similar scraps of linen paper and drew my design by hand, taking inspiration from Heritage.

Then I worked in photoshop to create the actual file that I can use to print from. I'm trying to 

decide which of the front design's I like better. There's only a subtle difference; my name placement, 

but the way your eye moves through the info is important.

I'm thinking of getting a stamp made to go with my cards, this way I can stamp my info onto fabric tags to stitch into the clothing I sell. Perhaps a good strategy to get customers coming back to my Etsy store?

Frayed Sew

I'm excited to announce that you can now buy my Bicycle Bit earrings in Helena, MT! I just filled an order to consign in Frayed Sew; a chic boutique full of hand made treasures and green goodies. It'll be interesting to compare the sales in Helena vs. Missoula. Looking forward to feedback.

A new favorite of mine:

Another Favorite:

So it looks like they're all ready to go right? Well i finished making the 20 pairs they ordered friday afternoon, and I'd printed my artist statement, and put each pair on a tag. I'd also taken individual photos, and made a contact sheet with item codes and prices to email to the store for inventory purposes. However i still ended up working until midnight, on a FRIDAY night so I could drop everything off on Saturday because ....

I had to write by hand, on each card, first in pencil, then in pen, my brand name, blog site, and etsy store. This took about three hours somehow. I've officially decided I'm having a stamp made with all this info so I never have to handwrite my business info again. Haha yikes.

also, here's a peek at some new designs for necklaces and bracelets

etsy

Wow I’m really no good at consistency. I’ve been trying to stick to at least a weekly post here, but time continues to slip away from me.

I finally started an etsy account, which I have high hopes for but at the same time, understand it will be a  slow start. 

Last week I worked for hours in GIMP creating banners (because I’m too poor for photoshop) I just kind of pulled whatever images I had and played around with resizing, color effects, transparencies, and millions of fonts. Here’s the one I ended up using, but hopefully it’s only temporary, since I’ve got a slightly different vision for the final result.

However I made two others, which I like but decided not to use

I also have been trying to list a new item every day. You can be very startegic about when you post your listings. If you’re  really with it, you research the hour of the day/ week with the most site traffic and post then. This is my goal today; RESEARCH!

You can see my store by clicking here. I was excited this morning to wake up and see that someone “favorited” my charm bracelet. I’m still working on figuring out treasuries and circles of etsy friends. One step at a time!

as a side note, here’s an AWESOME video I found on facebook via miss Cassie Stone, who also happens to be a great artist.

see the photos here

Also I have a new business I’m idolzing. I stumbled across this little jewelry shop; Agas and Tamar in the east village while in NYC. The beautiful window display caught my eye, and then from there I just fell in love with the rest of the store.

They have this awesome rustic and raw looking jewelry which is worn by celebrities (I guess Sex and the City’s cast are big fans, as well as the Olsen Twins) but what really stands out are the simple but gorgeous natural elements in display. In the photos you can kind of see what I mean. They wouldn’t allow me to take pictures, but these are from their blog. They had old fashioned dress forms, antique barn wood, and sets of extremely old wooden boat oar tips they’d lay bracelets on.