Shop Improvements -- Suggesting Matching Items

I'm in the process of hopefully making it easier to shop for matching, or similar items in my shop. I picked up the tip from muyinmolly, through the Full Time Etsy Crafters Blog. I'm adding links to shop search results, instead of to a specific listing, or shop section. For example, in my red bridal bouquet listing, I added a link to the search results for the terms "red wedding."

There are a lot of other great tips in that article, from full-time sellers that have reached major "milestone" sales numbers. The article can be found here.

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go....

My latest Treasury, featuring the work of (from left to right, top to bottom):
Row 1: orsinimedici1951, FantasyPeriodCostume, chicallure
Row 2: MysticDragyn, amyburgessjewelry, annesophietoniazzi
Row 3: KristieGK, bellanovia, jacksdaughter
Row 4: KealaLegacy, handcraftedjewels, isabellaslittleshop(aka IsabellaSmiles)

I know I should have posted the direct links of the shops I featured in previous treasuries, but did not think of it until now.

Computer vs. Camera

I meant to write about this earlier, but didn't get around to it until now...

Hubby got me a new Dell laptop back in July. It's the first computer I've had with Windows Vista, and I mainly use it for working on my Etsy shop. That means uploading a lot of pictures... Well about the end of August, I began to notice something weird: The "safely remove hardware" icon was missing when I had my camera plugged in to the USB port, and if I tried to remove it anyway (not a technique I recommend) I got the dreaded "blue screen of death," which is what happens when Windows apparently shuts down and restarts itself automatically "in order to protect your computer," as it says.

Fortunately, I have in-house tech support (aka Hubby) and he found out that it was a recent automatic update that my computer had downloaded for Vista which was causing the problem. It was update KB973879 that apparently did something screwy to the Dell USB drivers. Anyway, once it was removed, my computer and my camera decided to get along again =)

He didn't tell me exactly how he did it, but I did find directions on how to take care of this problem on techerator. Supposedly Windows has since stopped putting out this update, but just in case anyone else still has a problem with this, the link in the previous sentence may just help solve it.

Dragon Fire

Created another Treasury collection, this time dedicated to dragons: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=81097

I made the front page!

Well, the treasury that I made did, anyway! It was the red origami collection I put together, I only found out about it through a Google alert when it was posted on the Etsy Front Pagers on Flickr. Here's the link to the Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28488923@N05/3883926741/ if you would like to check it out... or if you don't really believe me ;-)

I'm still having a hard time believing it myself. Was it beginner's luck, maybe?

Octopus

This is the newest art piece I've created, based on a photo I took at the Waikiki aquarium while "playing tourist" earlier this year. The octopus is made up of two different size cranes, folded from 2-inch and 3-inch paper -- for a total of 145 in all.

Oops!

Just noticed my blog was still set on Hawaii time... It's been changed over now.

September Goals

I'm a day late writing these down, but these are the things I want to achieve this month:
1. List, re-list, and renew at least 5 times a day on weekdays, and 3 times a day on weekends.
2. Add at least 1 new item a day.
3. Have 175 items available for sale in my shop.
4. Blog 3-4 times a week.

I was kind of tempted to make a sales goal, but decided to stick to things that I can actually control.