SNS and a personal milestone

It's been a while since i participated in the Saturday Night Special promotion in the Etsy.com forums. Now, I probably shouldn't be spending a whole lot of time online -- I mean, today is my wedding anniversary (5 years. Wow, has it really been that long?) -- so I should be spending it with my very patient husband. But I wanted to celebrate in my store as well as in real life. So, here goes:

Saturday Night Special (SNS). Good from 5pm (EDT) to
Free shipping on all items in my shop.

Super SNS (this is where the celebration part comes in)
In addition to the free shipping, I am adding the following: Buy (or custom order) any bridal bouquet, and I will take an additional 5% off every matching bridesmaid's bouquet bought or ordered at the same time.

The Great Etsy Experiment

I've always heard that the best way to get exposure for my items on etsy.com is to list frequently -- something I've never done. But since it will be a while before I go to another craft fair, I have the time to try out this method. The plan is to list, or re-list, or renew an item in my Etsy store 2x a day. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon. We'll see if it helps. I plan to keep to this schedule for a full month.

Newest Projects

I finally got around to listing my kanji in frame in my Etsy store. Kanji is a chinese character used to represent a Japanese word or phrase, in this case, it represents "Ai", or love. I didn't want to make it completely flat, so I used layers of cranes to help indicate what would be the proper stroke order if it were being done in ink.

I plan to continue this particular series, and next up will be the character "Yume", meaning dream. I tried to do "Heiwa", or peace, but somehow it just didn't look right. I think were just too many overlapping "strokes" that were hard to represent in the cranes.

Also in the works is a new series of leis, made from mulberry paper. I've had some comments that my regular origami cranes leis are a bit uncomfortable to wear for those with sensitive necks, so I wanted to make something a little softer. The sheets of mulberry tissue paper are cut down to size, then folded into cranes. I haven't decided yet where it will be listed online, in my Etsy store or on my regular website.

Saturday Night Special

Yes, I've joined in the madness that is the Saturday Night Special (aka SNS) in the Etsy forums. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's a group of Etsy.com sellers that choose to host special sales in their shops from 5pm Eastern Time on Saturday until midnight Hawaii Time (6am Eastern.) Since I'm about an hour late at posting my sale, I think I'm on page 16 of the thread . . . shows just how many sellers do participate in this!

The details of my special are posted both in the forums and in the welcome announcement on my shop page, 3DCranes.etsy.com

Unfinished business

Oh, what a procastinator I 've become! I participated in my first Creative Challenge on Etsy.com with #44, and #45 certainly seemed like it would be right up my alley. All I had to do was reveal a secret, or little known fact about myself in one of my works.
Okay. First thought: I don't have any secrets, not any that I'd want revealed for the whole wide world to see. Secrets . . . I was wracking my brain when the song "Masquerade" from Phantom of the Opera began playing through my head (shows what a music geek I am, but that wasn't the secret, it's a pretty well known fact).
"Masquerade! Paper faces on parade. Masquerade . . . Hide your face so the world will never find you . . ." -- from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.
That was it! I'd make a masquerade mask from gold origami cranes. A venetian style mask that might have been worn during that scene. It would still be a secret, I thought, even though it wasn't exactly my secret.
So here it is. Already 24 hours after Challlenge #46 has been posted on the forums and I still haven't listed my mask on Etsy. It's done. I think. But it still feels like something is missing . . .

While I'm on the subject of unfinished business, I need to give a long overdue shout out to the very first customer to purchase from me: Whimsywool. I've included her address in my "Interesting Links" section below. She has the most amazing shop, full of beautiful, handspun yarn that I've been admiring from some time. Unfortunately, I could never do any of it justice. I don't know how to knit and it's much too good for mere "experimenting." Not to mention, anything made from yarn wouldn't get much use for as long as I'm living in Hawaii -- it's just too hot!