First, we had the walls painted! Goodbye yellow and pale green (not that we didn’t like you, just that you wouldn’t quite match our decor)…

Hello, blank canvas white! We chose to go with Behr’s Interior Flat Enamel in Decorator White to keep it simple and let the focus be on the fun, colorful products we’ll be carrying. It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint will do. The place felt instantly bigger, newer and brighter! I have a great painter to recommend if you need one. You’ll notice that the place is a little more cluttered today than it was pre-paint, but that’s because Jimmy and I started moving stuff in over the weekend!

Today was the first day I spent an extended period of time at the shop (5 hours). Thank goodness I had my laptop/iTunes otherwise I’d have toiled in silence! I spent most of the day assembling an IKEA table, wiping down surfaces, putting up some of the display fixtures I bought from Grand & Benedicts Fixtures on Monday, and observing as Steven from the Alameda Towne Centre masterfully fixed the pressure-assist system inside the toilet tank.

It was awesome when Jamie came in to hang two nicely sized “coming soon” signs. They’re great because once they went up, almost every passerby stopped to peek curiously into the window. Thanks Jamie!

The next highlight in my day was when Marianne of Maebee Jewelry — and my fellow Full Time Etsy Crafters (FTEC) team member — came by with her product delivery! I look like I just crawled out of bed, but Marianne was kind enough to say that it’s only because I was working hard. I like that Marianne. :]

Her chic little bracelets look perfect on my new T-bar display, and I love the tiny branded stickers she attached to each one.

I was also incredibly happy when the postman handed Rachel Austin‘s package of goods to me too! Rachel’s yet another member of my FTEC team. I’m so lucky to have such a talented circle of team members. I’m still toying with the displays, but here’s my first crack at putting Rachel’s work up:

There’s a lot more to be done, but I’m pretty happy with the progress so far! We’ll see what tomorrow brings…Similar Posts:

• Introducing…Modern Mouse!

Yup it’s true. I hardly know where to start, but luckily this has all really only been brewing for…the past 17 days, if you count today. And if you count from the day I actually made my final decision to open up shop, then that narrows it down to 11 days. And heck if you count from the day that I signed the lease and got the keys placed in the palm of my hand…it’s been less than 36 hours! So there’s not that far back to go!

Alright already, what am I talking about here? Well in just 18 more days, I’ll be opening the doors to what I hope will be an exciting and energetic space in Alameda, California for people to come and discover the wares of more than 30 amazing, talented and fun designers from right here in the San Francisco Bay Area to across the country (and one in Japan)! The shop has been dubbed Modern Mouse, and it’s a temporary retail venture — i.e. a pop-up store! — which means you’ve gotta come by as soon as it opens and then as often as you can! We open our doors the 2nd week of November 2009 and invite each and every one of you to our grand opening celebration on Saturday Nov 14th!

We’ll have goods ranging from hand felted vases (Papaver Vert, Alameda, CA) to screen printed wool coasters (Girls Can Tell, Philadelphia, PA); t-bone steak plush toys (Sweet Meats, San Francisco, CA) to handmade soldered map pendants (XO Handworks, Osseo, MN); quilted Japanese-style lunch bags (Yokomono Studio, Berkeley, CA) to build-your-own miniature dinosaurs (Tinysaurs, Brooklyn, NY); and asian pear-scented handmade body lotion (mi SPA, Alameda, CA) to wire-wrapped gemstone jewelry (Mu-Yin Jewelry, Charleston, SC). That’s just to name a few! And of course I’ll carry a selection of my own line of bags, purses and pillows too. :]

I’ll get into it more over the next few days. I have so much to say about what’s already been a crazy cool whirlwind of a ride and I’m just spilling with excitement (and nervous energy!) about this incredible opportunity. But in the meantime, you can read more about Modern Mouse on our new website.

If you’re wondering about my Etsy shop, it’ll be on a short break until Modern Mouse is up and running like a well-oiled machine. Since we’ve only got until January 15th to make that happen, we hope that time comes ’round real soon. :] But sign up for any of my lists, or just follow me on Twitter, to stay on top of all the updates!

YAY!!!!!Similar Posts:

• Setting up shop

What is Ebates? Ebates is a website that helps you earn up to 25% (but usually more like 4-6%) cash back when you shop from any of their participating online retailers. All you have to do is sign up for an account (preferably through the link I keep providing so that you’ll oh-so-kindly help me earn a $5 referral fee if you do =), then begin your shopping session from their site.

So let’s say I decide I’m going to order some photo prints from Shutterfly.com, which I do every now and then. I know that Shutterfly is one of the companies that partners with Ebates and that I’ll get a whopping 10% in cash back if I just 1) go to Ebates.com, 2) sift through their drop-down menu of stores or go straight to my Favorite Stores list (below), and 3) click on the Shutterfly link from there.

Clicking on Shutterfly from Ebates simply opens a new window in which the Shutterfly site loads, and when I place my Shutterfly order from it as usual, my order is assigned an Ebates tracking ticket and my account gets credited for the appropriate amount of cash back. If I spend 20 bucks on my order, I get 2 bucks back! Okay so it’s not a HUGE amount of money, but in my opinion it’s a really small effort on my part to occasionally get a few bucks back here and there. And now that I’m a full-time small business owner, every penny counts!

Is it safe? I’ve been a member for a few years and have never had any problems with them. All I do is make sure I go through them when I shop, and every 3 months they send me a check. For me, it’s a no-brainer. But, they also have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. Plus, according to their website:

The company was founded in 1998 by two Deputy District Attorneys in Silicon Valley who used to prosecute online fraud & identity theft before starting Ebates (so you can be sure we are very into secure online transactions!)…Joining Ebates is always free – you’ll never pay us anything…

And this is how it works:

People often ask: “This sounds too good to be true, how are you able to do it?” It really is quite simple. Just like almost every other online shopping center, we get a commission from the stores when you make a purchase. Instead of keeping that money – like almost all other sites do – we share it with you!

I showed an excerpt of the participating stores that I have marked as favorites, but here’s my full list. They don’t have EVERYONE I shop with, but they have enough to make it worth it.

So decide for yourself but me, I’m gonna go deposit my $26.19 check!Similar Posts:

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rainbow lorikeet photo by mrclean1982

This post is inspired by my friend and neighbor Adora, who sent me a note last night in which she happened to say: “My dream job is to name colors… like, colors of paint, nailpolish, lipstick, etc.  My friends randomly point to objects and I tell them what color it is!” I had to pause at that and think: wow, that would be my nightmare job, cuz I’d be like, “Uuuuuh, that one is…dark green with sort of muddy brown undertones. And that one? Oh, that one’s more like bright green, slightly neonish maybe but not really.”

Ya. I’ve always had a hard time being able to name colors that aren’t your basic rainbow of fruit flavors. This I suppose is a rather odd shortcoming for someone who sells items made with fabrics in the most delicious assortments of color! It’s not that I’m colorblind or anything like that. I can see and differentiate colors and their variations, I just can’t recall their clever names!

What’s a girl with such a deficiency to do? Well let me tell you how I cheat my way through it! I hereby present you with…

5 tools to help you pick your perfect color name!

1) Consult good ol’ Crayola!

Crayola.com: There’s Crayola’s own list of Current Crayola Crayon Colors (CurrentCrayolaCrayonColors! CurrentCrayolaCrayonColors! CurrentCrayolaCrayonColors! CurrentCrayolaCrayonColors! CurrentCrayolaCrayonColors! Yup, 5 times fast ain’t easy.)

Crayola.com's list of current colors - an excerpt

Okay, so some of these color names just wouldn’t work in my Etsy shop. Can you imagine: “The color palette on this pillow cover includes shades of inch worm, macaroni and cheese, and a splash of jazzberry jam”?! That’d be nuts! I do love the name “manatee” for that light grey though. :] And indigo, mahogany, magenta and mango are perfectly reasonable color names.

Wikipedia: And of course Wikipedia offers a MASSIVE List of Crayola crayon colors, along with the dates they were issued as well as hex and RGB values. It’s easier to see the colors on their color chart, and the page also includes Crayola’s specialty crayon colors in addition to the standard. Fun!

Crayola colors on Wikipedia -- an excerpt

2) Look it up on — where else — Wikipedia!

It’s no surprise that Wikipedia has its own List of colors that go beyond just the scope of Crayola-made. This page lists colors alphabetically, and by shade! Here are some that start with the letter “E” (eh heh heh):

Colors that start with the letter "e", from Wikipedia

And colors that are shades of green:

Colors that are shades of green, from Wikipedia

3) Find synonyms and related words on RhymeZone.com

I use RhymeZone.com all. the. time. All the time! That’s my dirty little secret, not so secret anymore. Augh! There goes my edge. Sigh. All for the sake of the blog. The blog, I say!! Ya so anyway, RhymeZone’s good for any type of word. But did you know it’s good for colors too? Allow me to demonstrate. “Computer, show me words that are related to ‘green’!”

RhymeZone.com related words search

4) Use HP’s Online Color Thesaurus

The HP Online Color Thesaurus is a cool little tool that lets you enter your starting color and spits out 5 related and 5 opposite colors! The initial set of results is kind of limited, but you can drill down into more results by clicking on colors that come up in the results until you get where you wanna be. You want green, you say?

HP Online Color Thesaurus

5) Get fancy with these two related color tools: Name That Color, and Color Name & Hue

Remember that first green I was trying to describe, the “dark green with sort of muddy brown undertones”? Thanks to some color picking in Name That Color, I’ve figured it out. Avocado! It’s avocado!

Color tool: Name That Color

And the “bright green, slightly neonish maybe but not really” color? Hm…let’s see what Color Name & Hue, which was built based off of Name That Color by a color-blind fella to further identify the hue related to each color, has to say about that. That’s it, it’s chartreuse! Thanks, Color Name & Hue!

Color tool: Color Name & Hue

Am I the only one who comes up short when trying to drum up descriptive color names? How do you choose your color names? Inquiring minds want to know…Similar Posts:

• I Like Your Colors. My Artfire shop does too.

Right, because I recently started working with a few local retailers and am SO excited about it that I’ve wanted to spread the word everywhere: on my blog, on Twitter and of course on Facebook, to name a few! So I added a Retailers page to my blog, updated my Profile in my Etsy shop, tweeted it out and made a few Facebook status updates about the news. And this week, I added a new tab on my fan page called “Where to Buy”!

Here’s a tutorial on how you too can add a custom tab to your very own fan page!

You’ll need:

• A Facebook Business Page (aka fan page) of your own
  • If you don’t yet have a fan page, see my previous post entitled Promote your Etsy shop on Facebook for assistance or try one of the many other fine tutorials that have been written since!
• Some very basic HTML knowledge…or simply the ability to copy other people’s HTML code!
  • Here’s a page from w3schools.com with four very basic HTML tags that make a perfectly good start for HTML newbies! If you’re feeling more adventurous, use the menu of the left side of their site to find out how to make bulleted or numbered lists, basic tables…and more! Hack away, no harm done!

Ready?

1) Add the Static FBML application to your page

• Go to the Static FBML application page and click “Add to my Page”.

• Tell Facebook which of your fan pages you want to add the Static FBML app to. Click Add to Page. Then click the Close button.

2) Go back to your fan page and open the newly added Static FBML application

• I usually access my fan page either through a bookmark that I’ve added to my browser, or through a shortcut I’ve created on my Facebook profile page. Below is a screenshot of the latter.

• Once you’re on your fan page, click Edit Page.

• You’ll see a list of editable stuff for your page. Scroll to the Applications section. (1) Click on the pencil icon to display the edit menu and (2) Click the Edit link.

3) Create content for your new tab

• Clicking the Edit link above will take you to a simple form page where you can edit (1) the title of your tab and (2) the content to be displayed in your tab. You’ll notice that I’ve used some really basic HTML tags in the FBML box in order to format how my content is displayed. If you don’t know any HTML, you could just enter plain text but everything will just show up as, well, plain text and in a single paragraph — no line breaks, no bullets, nada.

• When you’re done, click (3) Save Changes.

• Facebook will confirm that your changes are saved. Then, click on the name of your fan page to return to its front page.

4) Tell Facebook to display your new tab, dammit

• When you get back to your fan page, you’ll see that your new tab is…nowhere to be found. WHAT?! Not to worry. Click on (1) the + icon to add a new tab, and (2) select your newly created tab — in this case, “Where to Buy”.

• You should now see something like this, where your new tab is displayed, content and all, alongside all your other tabs:

You did it! You did it! Jump up and down, call your mother, tell your friends and holla at ya fans! Your new tab is in town!

Addendum:
Waaaaaait a quick second. Say you come back to your page the next day and WTH?! Your new tab is M-I-S-S-I-N-G. Freak out! No no, don’t do that. This just means that your other tabs have momentarily crowded it out. Just click on (1) the double arrow >> icon, and (2) select your previously “missing” tab. Note that you can shuffle the order of your tabs around just by clicking on the tab you want to move and drag it to your desired position, holding your mouse button down while you do this. Hooraaaay, happiness returns.

Feeling fancy?
To take it to the next level, or for more ideas and information, try these helpful articles:

• Customizing Facebook Pages with “Static FBML” application by HyperArts
• Static FBML: Not Every Facebook Fan Page Needs An Application by Snipe.Net

I hope this was helpful! If you have any other tips to share, I’d love to hear your inside scoop!Similar Posts:

• Promote your Etsy shop on Facebook
• How to add a zippered pocket to your handbag
• DIY shelf curtains!

Here’s me getting excited over a couple of cool sewing machines on exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art:

On our Ellis Island tour, we came across this word origins tree and see if you can figure out which word just popped right out at me:

And finally when browsing the library at our Gild Hall hotel, I happened to spot this book in the collection:

Talk about having bags and sewing on the brain! And now that I’m back home, I get to get right back to it. So I’m outta here! Got some sewing and (photo) shooting to do.Similar Posts:

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I awoke this morning to a fun note in my Etsy inbox informing me that one of my “ID, Please!” folding card cases was nominated for the “Which item gets you into a fabric frenzy?” poll in this week’s round of The Voter! The Voter is an interactive tool built by Etsy that lets the community vote on their favorite of nominated items within certain categories. Voting runs for one week, and at the end of the poll the winning item gets featured on Etsy’s blog, The Storque! It’s a big deal for Etsy sellers to get featured on The Storque, so I’m excited to even just be a nominee. :]

As of the 5th hour of voting, I’m in 15th place out of 39 total. And I can’t stop checking! Now there’s a productivity buster for ya. So addicting!

If you’re reading this and it’s not yet August 10, 2009 at 7am PT, vote for me! Vote for me! You’ll have to register an account on Etsy so your vote can be counted, but why wouldn’t you want to do that anyway?! ;] Hooray, woohoo and thanks!

Similar Posts:

• I’d give my right arm for a wallet like that
• Pouches y polka dots
• Faux bois for moi, faux bois for toi

I couldn’t believe a few weeks ago when I noticed that my supply of labels was running low, since that would mean that I’d run through over 300 product labels! I was like, “WHAAAT?!” I am a MACHINE, boys and girls! Eh heh heh heh…

So it was time to order up some more labels. But rather than reorder more of the same, I decided to switch things up a little bit since as a microbiz you kind of just have the flexibility to do that! I played with my colors a bit and added an image of sprouting leaves that I think is in keeping with the bright-sunshiny-day design of my site and shop banner, as well as my business card. And, I think it represents the budding nature of my business and hopefully the new growth ahead. So voila! My new label. :]

I’d had a decent experience with my previous label supplier from Etsy but the turnaround had been a bit slow, so back I went to see what new suppliers might have cropped up since then. I found Worldwide Label, did some price comparisons, read their customer reviews and ordered up a pack of 600!

My first interaction with them was uhhhhh, not so good. I sent them this:

And this is what they sent back to me as a proof to approve:

ACK! I had a few moments of speechlessness but quickly wrote them back to basically say that the proof was not going to work out for me unfortunately and that I would much prefer that it look a little bit more like the design I submitted.

Thankfully, the story quickly takes a turn for the better! They wrote me back the next morning saying that they’d take care of it and not to worry. And they did! Not sure what happened there but they arrived 21 days later, and I am lovin’ me my new labels!

I can’t wait to try them out. Here’s to my next 600 products — cheers!Similar Posts:

• On the hunt for labels
• A sticky situation

I got this little guy in time for Bazaar Bizarre / Maker Faire, and I love it soooo much more than the Bartizan 4850 tabletop imprinter I used to have! Not only is the Bartizan 4200 more compact and therefore easier to pack, it’s just way easier to make a credit card imprint with too.

The old tabletop version took up valuable table space, and I’d often have trouble getting the credit card info to come out clearly. Jimmy was better at it, but I didn’t want to deal with the hassle at Maker Faire because I knew there’d be loads of people and very little space in our 6×6 foot booth.

So I went back to Mr. Imprinter’s eBay store and picked up this listing for myself, which includes the imprinter and a pack of 100 credit card slips for $26.50 shipped. A couple of things to note: The slips that are shipped with this listing are the longer 80-column sales slips, but the unit also takes the shorter 51-column size. I sent Mr. Imprinter an email to ask before I ordered but never got a response back. Wah.

80-column sales slip

51-column sales slip

 
images from Mr. Imprinter

Also, the listing says that this unit doesn’t take merchant plates but in fact it does. It’s “set up for use with a 3 line embossed plate of .014 – .016 over material height” (this is from the manufacturer’s website, and you can also see that there’s a place to insert a merchant plate inside the unit). I guess Mr. Imprinter just doesn’t sell that type of plate, but you can get it separately from Addressograph (I’d check with them to make sure that’s the right one!). Merchant plates, if you’re not familiar, are these customizable metal plates that are mounted on the inside of an imprinter so that your store/contact information are imprinted on sales slips along with the customer’s information.

Here’s Mr. Imprinter’s:

There were a couple of things that were not so great but only one specific to the product itself. For the price and in comparison to the 4850, I’m a huge fan.

Pros:

• The compact size  (1.75″h x 4.125″w x 7.75″l) is lightweight (0.61 lbs) and easy to store and transport.
• You don’t have to sit the unit on a flat surface to get an imprint.
• Produces a clean imprint with one swift pull of the lid.

Cons

• If you slide the credit card in too far on accident, it gets stuck and is hard to pull back out.
• Merchant plate can’t be ordered from Mr. Imprinter but is available from Addressograph. I just ordered a rubber stamp from Simon’s Stamps and got help from my dear friend Jenn to stamp my shop info on all the sales slips. Heh heh.
• I think the shorter sales slips would be easier to manage inside this unit than the longer ones that are shipped from Mr. Imprinter.

And that’s my imprinter recommendation for the day!Similar Posts:

• A knucklebuster to call my own
• My craft fair production schedule
• Feelin’ the love at IndieSacramento

1) I had the honor of submitting a guest post to Etsy’s blog, The Storque, and it went live today! And Etsy readers are so full of love and kind words. I love it! The Storque gets a whopping 2 million pageviews a month — that’s a lot of eyeballs! So we’re taking the liberty of feeling semi-famous…at least temporarily. Read on, if you please: “It Takes a Village to Craft a Handmade Wedding“.

2) A lovely gal on Etsy sent me the sweetest note entitled “Spotted your bag in the wild”. She said she saw a girl with a cute bag at Whole Foods in Oakland and asked where it was from, and it was mine! Awesome that that happened, and double-awesome that she went to the trouble to let me know about it. I am oozing with love and gratitude.

3) Our entire house is strewn with fabric and pouches and sewing implements because I’m preparing for the Bazaar Bizarre craft show at Maker Faire at the end of the month! I’m SO excited to get to be a part of the show this year, as I’ve always been in awe of Maker Faire. I’ll admit I’m intimidated by the amount of people that are expected to be there (the number 80,000 has been floating around), but I’m much more psyched than scared!

4) Earlier this week, I found out that I also get to be a part of Renegade Craft Fair SF again this year – YEA! The event will take place July 18-19 from 11am – 7pm, at Fort Mason’s Festival Pavilion. It was such a great event last year, and I’m sure it will be just as grand this year!

5) When it rains, it pours?! The folks over at Madison Marquette, which owns a bunch of shopping centers here in the Bay Area (amongst other places), are looking for an innovative new business to help them grow San Leandro’s Bayfair Center mall and are running a contest called Retail*Star. The grand prize winner gets a FREE one-year lease on a retail space in the mall, plus a good chunk of seed money to get their business started. I was one of 66 contestants to submit my business idea to the panel of judges via a 3-minute presentation and 2-page written description, and I made the first cut as one of 15 semi-finalists!

6) There are a bunch more little mini things like the fact that I just had Henry’s Hunan Hot & Sour Beef for dinner followed by a bite of dark chocolate. But I’ll end with the fact that I just scanned in this photo that we had taken last weekend at a Mother’s Day brunch at the Marriott, and it makes me smile. They caught Gramma in a blink, but that’s not anything Don won’t be able to fix in Photoshop I think. But it was just such a great family-filled whirlwind of a weekend, from pitching my Retail*Star thing Saturday morning and booking it over to SFO to get to Santa Monica Pier to celebrate Mom’s 65th birthday then crashing at Ah-Yi’s; to this all-you-can-eat-plus-complimentary-family-photo brunch, followed by more family time and then off again to LAX and back home in less than 48 hours. Phew! Though it was short, it was event-filled and somehow particularly fulfilling. This photo cracks and warms me up all at once.

In conclusion, I have plenty of things to be happy about. And therefore I am!Similar Posts:

• Bazaar Bizarre / Maker Faire – all I imagined, and more!
• Blessings to the Bartizan 4200 portable imprinter
• Happy 2009!