Contest -- how you could win a free piece of gorgeous Dalkullan Jewelry!!!

Valentine's Day contest! The lucky winner will win any one item from my shop, worth $70.00 or less. How to enter? Just post a comment on the Dalkullan Jewelry fan page on Facebook between now and 6 p.m. central standard time on Feb. 14th. It needs to be an actual comment, not just a 'like'. If you'd put up a link from my shop of the jewelry piece you'd like if you win, that would be great, but that's up to you. :) Any Facebook fan of Dalkullan Jewelry can enter, so please tell your friends! The contest results will be announced at 8 p.m. on Valentine's Day. Wishing you good luck!

Been away for awhile

I haven't been able to craft jewelry for about a year due to illness.  It's great to be back at the jeweler's bench, it was like I'd never been away when I picked up my torch again.  There's something about  solder as it melts under the flame of the torch that is very refreshing to my spirit.  It's very enjoyable to be hammering, sawing and filing away, so grateful to be able to create jewelry again!

I'm working on new designs -- incorporating new gemstones,  new settings, and I'm signed up for classes to learn new techniques, which I'm really thrilled about.  Here's a picture of my latest design,  an almandine garnet ring, and my first listing at Dalkullan Jewelry which employs a prong setting.

Some of the new techniques I'll be learning are keum boo, a way to combine 24k gold foil permanently to sterling without using solder, engraving and carving metal, and enameling.  Whew!  I'm going to be busy! :)

It's great to be back, I've missed my blog and hearing for you, my wonderful blog followers!  Thank you so much for stopping by!

Harvest day in the garden

This year I wasn't able to get outside and garden as much as I would have liked, in fact, the garden had to run on auto-pilot this year.  That, coupled with the dreaded Japanese beetle, resulted in a pretty small harvest from the garden.

But we did get some lovely grape tomatoes, which were kind enough to seed themselves around the compost pile.  The compost pile is always a source of surprise plants.  :)

Now that it's Fall and the beetles are gone, the roses are blooming again.  And there's always the hope of next year, and hopefully a glorious garden.  And now, the glorious colors of Autumn.

Thanks for dropping by, wishing you a blessed week!

A Walk in the Woods in Autumn

Here's a couple pictures from a walk I went on Saturday.  The leaves were starting to turn on the trees, it was a perfect Fall day, sunny and crisp. 

Those red berries looked delicious, but I doubt they're edible.  At least, I didn't sample them to find out.

Hope you get a chance to take some walks in the forest this Autumn too, and enjoy the beauties of God's creation.  :)

Tropical Leaf sterling silver earrings

I'm really excited about my newest listing at Dalkullan Jewelry .  It's a pair of earrings, called Tropical Leaf sterling silver earrings.  I crafted them using a technique invented by Charles Lewton-Brain, a master gold and silver smith. 

I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Lewton-Brain at the 2010 Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee.  He's a very nice gentleman, and it was great to see him in person, and exchange a few pleasantries.  He's also one of the founders of a wonderful website for jewelry artisans, called Ganoksin , which means 'orchid'.  If you've never been to Ganoksin, it's definitely a website you'll want to visit.  There's tons of information on jewelry fabrication, including videos, and it's all free! 

Back to the Tropical Leaf earrings --- I started by cutting out the basic leaf shape from sterling sheet, then folded it in half after first annealing the metal.  Annealing means to heat with a torch, then quench, or cool, in water.  This makes the metal soft (for metal, that is) and bendable.  After folding it in half, I began repeated cycles of hammering along the non-fold edge, alternating with annealing the metal.

After a course of hammering, the metal becomes work hardened, and becomes stiff and brittle.  Annealing changes the molecular structure of the metal, making it maleable again.  When I'd completed this cycle 4 times, I carefully opened  each leaf, and it arced into a lovely leaf shape along the spine.  I used pliers to carefully manipulate the edges of the leaf, creating extra folds. 

The next step was melting the end of a 20 gauge sterling wire to form a little ball at the end, then soldering it on the front of the leaf, to create a stem, which is also the earwire.  Some more shaping, filing,  sanding, polishing, and patinating, and the earrings were complete.

If you're interested in learning more about fold forming, Mr. Lewton-Brain has written a wonderful book on the topic, called Foldforming it's available at Amazon, among other places.

Twitter Tips -- how to get people to follow you

So you've followed some people on Twitter, and now you're hoping they'll follow you back.  I've got some ideas that could help to make that happen.

1.)  Tweet about more than just your shop.  If all your tweets are buy buy buy, unless you're Jim Cramer, people are might get bored pretty quick. Interacting with people is enjoyable, there are a lot of wonderful Tweeples, give yourself the joy of meeting some of them. :)

2.) Retweet other people's tweets that you find interesting.  It shows that you're not just on Twitter for what you can get, but that you're also interesting in helping others.  Good in life, and also on Twitter. :)

3.) Thank people for RT's.  It only takes a minute, and it's polite and friendly.  If I RT somebody a couple times with no response, I learn my lesson, and stop RTing them.  RT's are helpful because they get sent to all your followers, and also the followers of the person who was kind enough to RT, potentially resulting in a lot of new people reading your tweet.
4.)I know there's a lot of opinions out there on this one, but I almost never DM, or direct message.  If I'm tweeting with someone and want to make it more private, I'll DM, that's about it.  I almost never read the DM's because they could be scams or what's worse, a virus.

And here's my Twitter pet peeve, people who put up quote after quote after quote, especially when the people they attribute the quote to aren't the ones who actually said it.    "Dance as if nobody who could commit you is watching ~ Mark Twain"   Funny, I agree, but not something Mr. Twain ever said.

Please leave a comment, and be sure to add your own tips, I'd love to hear from you!

Here's today's mystery photo.  I have no idea who the gentleman in the photo is, he just walked by as I was taking the shot.  The question is -- where was this photo taken?  Here's a hint, it wasn't anywhere in Europe.

Extra hint, it was taken in southern California. :)

Some ways to find people on Twitter to follow

There are a lot of different ways to get more Twitter followers.  There are apps to do so, but I've never used any of them, so I can't comment on that.  I like the direct, hands on approach.  It takes longer, but in my estimation you end up with followers who are more interesting, and are real people, not bots.  What good is having 10,000 followers, if they're mostly bots?

Method 1.) Put up a thread in the Etsy forums, under Promotions, and ask for new followers, and offer to follow them back.  This results in followers who are already on Etsy, have an account set up, and know the mechanics of purchasing on Etsy.  All big pluses.

Method 1.a) Search the Etsy Forum for old threads asking for Twitter followers, go down the list, and follow them -- hopefully they'll return the favor.  This method involves less time on your part than the first Method, but the disadvantage is that you're not directly interacting with people on a thread.  Of course, add yourself to the end of the thread, which will put it temporarily at the top of the Promotions group, which could result in a lot more people following you.

Method 2.) Do a search for #FF on Twitter.  On your Twitter home page, about halfway down on the right hand column, there's a box with "search" in it.  Click on the box, and enter #FF, and it'll pull up all the latest Tweets with the hashtag #FF.  That stands for "Friday follows" and each Tweet will have a bunch of Tweeps listed.  Click on them to follow.  I like to actually go to their home page and make sure that I want to follow them.  Sometimes they tweets about things I don't want to read about, or they only tweet things for sale.

Method 2.a)  Like method 2.) but this time search for #etsy.  Or you could search for anything you think might be helpful, like #jewelry, #knitting, #vintage, etc.

Method 3.)  When you're on a blog or Facebook, look and see if they have a Twitter account, and if they do, follow away.

That's my ideas for finding new people to follow.  I'd love to hear your tips on finding new people to follow, just jot them down in the comments!  Next time, I'm going to blog about how to get people to follow you!

Here's the mystery photo of the day.  I'm looking for what city this picture was taken in, but if you're really feeling sassy, tell me the intersection and the name of the body of water shown.  Bonne chance, mes amis!

Some Twitter tips

Twitter can be a wonderful way to drive traffic to your Etsy shop.   But if all you do is tweet about your shop, you probably won't get many people reading your tweets.  So, what to do?  No worries, here's some ideas about using Twitter:

Try to be interesting.  This is a difficult one, at least for me, to accomplish.   Coming up with something witty or humorous in 140 characters or less is a challenge, one that perhaps not everyone is up to.  So when words fail, go with pictures, which bring me to my next point.

Use Twitpic to post interesting pictures.  I enjoy seeing beautiful things, and you most likely do too.  Put some up, then tweet about them.  I always enjoy beautiful flowers and cute baby or animal pictures, for instance.

Retweet other's tweets that you find particularly interesting.  That is a friendly thing to do, and maybe they'll reciprocate and retweet some of your tweets.  Then you'll reach their followers, too.

I always try to thank someone for a retweet, RT in twitterspeak,  of my tweets.  It only takes a minute, but it's polite and friendly to do so.  I make a mental note of people who don't do this, and stop RTing their tweets.  Nobody likes to be ignored.

How do you know if somebody has RTed you?  Go to your Twitter home page, and on the left hand side, under "Home" you'll see @yourtwittername, which in my case is @DalkullanJewel.  Click on it, and you'll see all the tweets sent to you specifically.

There's more than just RT's here, there are also all the tweets that were directed at you.  You'll probably want to reply to them, too. 

Here's today's mystery picture.  Can you guess what it is?  I took this picture while on vacation with one of my beautiful daughters a couple years ago.  Happy times!!!

This is the first post of a series on Twitter.  Stay turned for further developments. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Great Shop Promo Advice from BrickHouseFabrics

I was doing some reading on the Etsy Forums the other day,  when I stumbled on this fount of great advice on promoting your Etsy shop from Barbara of BrickHouseFabrics .
Brick House Fabrics is an online fabric store that specializes in novelty home decorating fabric, and they carry fabrics that showcase a person's loves and interests, including  Braemore, Covington, Duralee, P.Kaufmann, Ralph Lauren, Robert Allen, and have Laura Ashley, Schumacher, Thibaut, and others.


Barbara was kind enough to let me blog about it, so the following is a quote from BrickHouseFabrics: 

................................................................................................

" BrickHouseFabrics says:
The first thing I would do is to step back.
Renewing does not work for me, and it is only good for people on etsy.  Here are my basics:

My basics for being found on the net, and places I use:

The shop title is searchable. Fill it w/ keywords about your product.

Get your announcements set for search engines: fill the first paragraph w/ keywords about what you make/sell. Move everything down below it- no one googles hello, or welcome.

Titles: the title should be what a person would google to find the item. 54-56 characters are pulled by search engines. Fill them w/ keywords. The first 2 words are the most important. Remove words like and, the, or, they lower searchability.

Reuse the keywords in the first sentence of the listing.

Give measurements in both inches and metric. I use an on-line metric convertor:
http://www.worldwidemetric.com/Measurements.html

Write the description as if there weren't a pic. Take the pics as if there weren't a description.

The thumbnail is crucial to being successful: the average buyer on the net spends 3-5 sec. before clicking or moving on. Take pics of everything about the item.

Use an photo editor: pic nik, picassa, photoscape are all free.
And use a tripod! It eliminates a lot of issues!

Artists- most people show a picture of the item very cropped. Take another one of the item on an easel- table or full sized, to give a sense of scale, and to let the buyer know exactly what they are gettting.

Make certain, if you sell internationally- to have a disclaimer that the buyer is responsible for all customs fees, duties, and import charges that are levied at the time of delivery.
I have it on every listing, and add a link to http://www.sloanefox.freeserve.co.uk/importukduty.htm

Make certain your policies are filled out, and your profile, and location.

Join twitter; even if you don't tweet- you can use twit pic to upload a keyword filled message, and link it back to the shop w/ Bitly. That message is searchable, and the link is good.

Upload items to Kaboodle.

Do a Squidoo lens about your shop:
http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-use-the-etsy-module

Then do another about your things, your craft, whatever, and link it back as well.

These are all fast, free ways to do some promoting.

Also remember- the net works off of new. Once a month change the announcement, or titles, or shop categories. If you do a lens, or publish anything on the net, make certain to tweak it, or add to it, even a RSS feed, anything to keep those bots happy and coming back for more!


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Here's another sample of just one of the gorgeous fabrics available at BrickHouseFabrics:

Wonderful advice, and all things you can do for free!  I'm a major fan of Twitter, I've found great info there, made some internet friends, and bought some lovely items from people I would probably never have know about otherwise.

Hope you've found something in this post to help you achieve the success with your Etsy shop that you're working towards!  Wishing you prosperity and the joy of creativity.

Crouching Bunny, Hidden Rodent

My darling hubby took some pics in the garden this weekend, and I thought you'd like to see them.  He focused on the animals that enjoy the backyard.  We have a lot of different kinds of plants, and having a varied habitat attracts a wide range of insects and other animals.  At least, that's what I try to tell myself when I don't manage to get out there and weed, lol.

Here's the famous "Crouching Bunny, Hidden Rodent.  He gets those beautifully shiny eyes from all the flowers he eats.  Lots of vitamins.

Do you like Autumn Joy sedum?  The bees and butterflies sure do.  Here's a little bee enjoying his morning nectar.  In my opinion, nectar's got nothing on a steaming cup o' joe, but to each their own.

This amazing butterfly has such beautiful markings.  I would have thought it was a kind of moth, but I would be wrong.  I never have figured out the distinction between moths and butterflies, outside of the fact that butterflies don't wreck havoc  with my winter wardrobe.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting my garden.