Summer parasol sale!

I've got a bunch of vintage parasols kicking around in the sewing room, crying for me to play with them and make them fabulous. But my stock boxes are overflowing, and I'm out of some basic things like ivory Battenburg lace. So in order to make more, I have to sell some. So I've put more than a few pieces on sale, $40-50 off.

Here's a few of the sale goodies:

Butterscotch Plaid Steampunk Lolita Parasol OOAK



Batik Brown Grey and Ivory Steampunk Lolita Parasol



Steampunk Gothic Lolita Black Parasol Flower Pattern



You can peruse my parasol section to find the rest of the marked-down pieces. Just look for the little "sale" ribbon in the bottom right hand picture of the thumbnail. Happy shopping!



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Spring cleaning

Organizing the corner in which I keep all my jewelry making supplies yesterday led, of course, to making jewelry! I had experimented with some double-drilled beads some time ago and wanted to revisit this style. It's always fascinating to me how you can come up with completely different pieces using the same basic materials.

Here's the first piece I created in this style:

Howlite and Dyed Red Corral



And here are two more in the same style that I created yesterday:

Geometric Black Onyx and Glass Necklace



Yin Yang Necklace

Tis the season!

Canning season, that is. I fell out of the habit the last couple of years, but in Christmases past I'd give tasty sweet things for presents to my coworkers, jams and lemon curd. I've decided I need to start up again, so am getting a head start. Tonight's accomplishment: 15 8-oz jars of papaya strawberry mango jam:



Next - bragging over a fun find. I dropped into one of my favorite antique stores during lunch yesterday and they'd just put out a bunch of antique keys, including some little bitty ones:



Ooooh, am I going to have fun with these!

Still continuing to get new pieces in the store. 38 days till Christmas!

Amazonite Briolette Earrings on Sterling Silver Earwires



Opalite Rectangular Glass Earrings on Sterling Silver Earwires



Red Coral and Brass Key Steampunk Necklace with Leaf Toggle Clasp OOAK



Steampunk Earrings Antique Crystal and Watch Parts with Rubies



Green Garnet Steampunk Necklace Antique Watch Part on Sterling Chain

Filling the shop with more shiny things

What better to do when I'm procrastinating filling out the paperwork my doctor's office sent me in preparation for my annual check-up than listing more jewelry? I'm not looking forward to my physical this year. I did just turn 40, and that means I get to start having my breasts made into waffles. Er, I mean, it means I get to start having annual mammograms. I've had two already, once when I was pregnant because the doctor I saw for this, not my regular GP, wasn't satisfied when I told her my breasts normally felt like that, and later when I was having some issues that resolved themselves when I seriously cut back on my caffeine consumption.

Am I making you squirm yet? :D

Our local public radio station does Public Service Announcements reminding women to get their "annual streaming mammograms" except the person doing the PSAs slurs his words a bit so it came out sounding like he said "annual SCREAMING mammograms." How appropriate.

But since we're on the subject, did you know there's an app that sends you a reminder to do your monthly self-exam? It's called the "Your Man Reminder". Why is it called this, you ask? Watch and learn!



(I chose the doctor.)

Now here's a few shiny things to take your mind off of the need for a cold shower:

Cobalt Fancy Steampunk Brass Neckalce Draped with Vintage Chain OOAK



Faceted Vaseline Glass Bracelet on Sterling with Toggle Clasp OOAK



Faceted Garnet Earrings with Pewter Celtic Knot on Sterling Earwires



Steampunk Gear Earrings with Opalized Glass on Sterling Earwires



Amber Glass and Brass Steampunk Necklace Crystal Vintage Chain OOAK



Orca Earrings - glass on silver earwires



Cherry Amber Nugget Drop Pendant Necklace on Sterling Silver Box Chain



Faceted Black Onyx Earrings on Sterling Silver Earwires





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It doesn't sell if it's not listed

You'd think after all these years I'd not have to be reminded of this, yes? But yet there is this large ziplock bag sitting next to me as I type of stuff that I made but never actually listed or put into my Designs by Victoria ArtFire shop. Doh!

So expect over the next few weeks to see lots of old new shinies being posted. It's only six weeks till Christmas, after all! And as much as I appreciate Nordstrom's decorating policy, waiting too long to buy hand-crafted goods from artisans online can sometimes cause a delay. Everything I post is already made, but if you're looking at a custom item, your likelihood of getting it before Christmas goes down each day you wait. That being said, I hope you'll still patronize a small business or independent artist for your holiday gift needs this year.

Steampunk Blue Skies Key Necklace Glass Sterling and Vintage Chain



Tiger Iron Briolette Earrings on Sterling Earwires Brown Striped



Amethyst Dangle Earrings on Sterling Silver Earwires



Black Cinnabar with a Twist Upcycled Necklace Silver



Knotted Purple Pearls Necklace and Earrings Set 9mm



The Snowflower - white frosted glass on sterling silver

Who's looking at your ArtFire shop?

One of the most important things for an online business is finding out from where your business is coming! There are various free programs for blogs and websites that you can use to monitor activity. I use Blog Patrol here, which gives me a blog counter as well as stats on where my traffic originates.

Their stats page tells me the number of hits my blog has gotten for each day of the current week, as well as in what hours of the day those hits occurred. It also gives me a summary of pages that were visited and the referrer sites, or how my viewers found my blog. Plus they give some nice visualizations of some of the stats, too.







Funny how searches on some of these things have brought people to my blog, eh?

ArtFire has a built-in stats feature for your shops. It's easy to find, from either your home menu or your Studio tab.





Once you're there, it gives you the number of shop and item views you've gotten overall (circled in red). I keep track of mine in a spreadsheet so I can calculate daily views. It also gives you incoming item (1) and studio (2) URLs. If you hover over the truncated links in this section, it'll give you the whole link in a pop-up. This is good because for the search engine links, it'll give you the keywords that someone used. Keywords are good! Keywords are your friend.



Plus, there's (3) - if you click on the links fore each of the items listed in this section, it'll show you all the incoming links for every one of them. It's almost TMI, but not really, because every little bit helps when you're trying to make your shop stand out in the wide wide web world.

Why is this all important, and why should you care about all this information? Being able to see if I have incoming links from social media, or from a website on which I'm running an ad, and being able to compare the number of hits I get to days or weeks when I'm not doing lots of promo activities lets me know if my efforts are paying off. Plus knowing what people are searching for will help me tailor my listing titles and descriptions, to make me more findable.

So go forth and check your stats. Do you know where your business is coming from? You should!


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New Steampunk Creations

A long overdue post - I finally listed the jewelry and parasols I've completed over the last month in my Artfire shop!

Steampunk Lolita Parasol Olive Green Rust and Ivory OOAK Lace Trim



Steampunk Victorian Nanny Tan Parasol with Burgundy Trim and Lace OOAK



Steampunk Flower Cameo Necklace Antiqued and Vintage Brass Chain OOAK



Steampunk Brass Key Necklace with Vintage Chain and Black Glass OOAK



OOAK Steampunk Lolita Black Pagoda Parasol with Black Fringe Gothic



Steampunk Flower Cameo Necklace with Vintage Chain and Glass Pearl



Steampunk Lolita OOAK Taupe Parasol with Ivory and Gold Braid and Lace



Steampunk Red Rose Cameo Necklace on Vintage Silvertone Chain OOAK



Steampunk Flower Cameo Choker Necklace on Vintage Chain

Why ArtFire rocks!

I've been transitioning over from Etsy to Artfire over the last few months, for several reasons.

Firstly, my listings don't expire. I'm paying a flat fee per month, instead of having to renew things every four months, and there's no listing or transaction fees. Considering the number of items I have in dbvictoria and MissVictoriasVintage, that's a huge savings for me over the course of a year!

I also love the ease of listing over there - their one page format makes things so simple.

Plus, 10 pictures if you've got a pro account! Especially for my parasols, trying to show them off to full advantage with a limited number of shots was challenging.

Butterscotch Plaid Steampunk Lolita Parasol OOAK



Their front page rotation is tops, too. Did you know they've got a limiting system built in, where if someone's been on the front page or in a finds email, they can't be featured again for a set time period? So you always get to see fresh new artists!

And their checkout and invoice system has some handy little features too. It's got the option that I can click on an icon and it'll show that I've got the item packed and will send a message to the customer saying their purchase has been shipped.

I could blather on a lot more, but let me just say that I love being a seller here. They did a lot of listening to what people wanted, and have incorporated that into their site.

Become an ArtFire Pro with this link and get your 3rd month free!



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Daily Collection feature!

This morning, as I'm checking my email, I open up the ArtFire Daily Collection feature, and guess what?

Vibrant Purple and Orange

Curated By: bycamille

ArtFire.com

Jewelry Supplies

Yep! That's my parasol included in this richly colored collection. *happy dance*

I also broke 10,000 item views in my ArtFire shop this week!

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