The best news yet.

I’ve been holding back on this post because the holiday weekend, and this week just generally being pretty crazy.

I did some shopping and looking around up in Bloomington a week or so back. It’s a college town, for whatever that says. I won’t go off on an opinionated rant right now, but let’s just say it’s more than a little artsy. That’s good news for me, it turns out.

In looking around for beads and findings and stuff in the local jewellery shops. I ran across The Venue. A privately owned art gallery near the University. So I looked about, talked to the owners, mentioned what I did, and they asked to see it. So I pointed them at Etsy and gave a bit of a tour of my shop. Pretty much instantly I was invited to bring some of my jewellery to show and sell in their gallery.

A freeking art gallery, can you believe it? They host classes on occasion, and shows and a few other things. “Other things” pretty much mean “more exposure” and I’m good with that. They sell what’s on display there, as a consignment kind of deal. While they take a percentage of the sale, it’s a fair percentage. This does mean I’ll likely be raising prices online somewhat. Primarly because I have to match prices between the gallery and anywhere else I sell stuff, contractually. Coupled with the markup I have to make to actually profit after paying The Venue their portion of the sale, it becomes a little problem. I’ve done my best so far to keep my Etsy prices more than reasonable, hell, if I factor the time involved in making maille, I’ve been undercharging since the beginning anyway. Selling through Etsy however, means I only really pay a few cents in commission, and shipping. Which are more than made up for in the necessary adjustments.

What I’m getting at, is, major, major cuts in shipping charges. Probably free on lightweight items. So good news for you too!

 

Have fun,
--Charon

Technorati Tags: chainmaille,maille,chainmail,crafting,etsy,jewellery,making chainmail,marketing,promotion,packaging,shipping,The Venue,Art Gallery

Craft Swap with Tanya

  Something I organized over Twitter with a friend. She was looking for a pair of simple, cute, Swarovski earrings and wanted to organize a trade. Tanya’s a polymer clay artist, and Canadian, but I don’t hold that against her. I love her little dragon pins, each one’s made with a little personality and a story.

So here’s what I came up with for her. They’re for her sister in law for the gift giving holiday of your chosen denomination. ;>

And here’s Ember.

With Tanya’s little character profle:

Meet Ember. She’s a feisty little dragon who will keep you on your toes.

Ember likes to play tricks on people. She likes to sneak around and light candles and fires – if you have a fireplace.

If she gets angry, though, keep your eye on her. She’s been known to set a curtain or two on fire!

Ember arrived wrapped with a little ribbon, and in a sheer black pouch. Another example of great attention to presentation that I really need to work at myself. She made it here quickly, too. Sadly, I was beyond the point of thinking I’d have to send a replacement pair of earrings. Turns out, Moose are just really slow postal carriers, but I was told they made it there safely today. I’ve already re-ordered the Swarovski to replace them, but that’s alright, they can be used for something else.

I set up another swap with one of my closest friends back home, more about the new collection of polymer clay beads tomorrow when I have light for photos.

Have fun,
--Charon

Technorati Tags: Earrings,Craft Swap,packaging,promotion,shipping,Etsy

Jackassery, loopholes, copyright infringement, and 35 year old children.

Yep, that’s right. Some pathetic waste of bandwidth and skin set up a crawler to Chainmaille related images over to his own photobucket account, and post them to his site. Around a week ago, Peter Croteau of Virginia made the mistake of stealing images and articles submitted and owned by the members of M.A.I.L. Following him failing to understand the burden of proof, intellectual property laws, or how to conduct himself as a member of a civilized society. His website was shut down.

  That lasted about a week.

  Now Chainmaille.org is back up online, and using a loophole in the EULA with photobucket and several other free image hosting services. Packed with images owned by myself, and many other maille crafters. The solution, aside from pulling all my images from photobucket, is a bit elusive. I’d move everything from photobucket right away if I could find anything on flickr that allows me to link to my images directly, so they could be used in forum posts and such. Since I haven’t found that yet. I’m left with keeping my hosting private, which revokes the license loophole, but it may for the time being mean until I can obtain another hosting option I’m limited in where I can post my images. Unless I begin leaving them here as blog posts and linking to them.

  The rest of the solution, is more important. Association with little Petey and Chainmaille.org should be cut off by anyone with any respect for intellectual property. There’s a reason I’m not linking to him like I try to remember to do with everyone else. His site is an attempt at Search Engine Optimization, without putting any real effort into creating his own content. Search engines require links from outside sources, such as bloggers, community sites, or anywhere else, to partially determine how useful users are likely to find the site in question, and thus the order in which a site appears on a search return.

What Peter wants is to steal traffic from artisans and crafters by appearing in the top slots of search engine results, without actually being a crafter himself. Worse, he wants to steal traffic from you by using your work. Taken without permission through a segment of the EULA that states basically, that while you still own your work on Photobucket, you automatically grant every other Photobucket user the right to publicly display, alter, edit, add to, remove from, etc. He wants your traffic, maillers, for one reason, to generate revenue from advertisement links. Yes, like some of the ads I have here. The difference however is a vast chasm: I’ve made maille, I’ve taken photos, I’ve written articles and the occasional bit of funny; Little Petey there, hasn’t yet shown any ability to make maille, snap photos, or write anything but whiney confrontational blather directed at people who own the things he’s stolen in the past.

What have we learned from this? Peter Croteau is one of the lowest kind of parasites. Photobucket isn’t as cool as it seems. In the end, there’s still assholes on the ‘net. I wonder what Google will think about using the edge of the law to coerce adsense clicks?

Have fun, Unless you’re Peter Corteau of Virginia Beach, VA. If that’s the case, have a stroke, or a cardiac arrest.

--Charon

Technorati Tags: maille,chainmaille,copyright,loopholes,promotion,marketing,intellectual property,children,crafting,making chainmail,tools,beginner tips,chainmail

Chainmaille for Kids.

I've seen this come up a few times, and figured I'd probably go ahead and cover it.

Maille contains small parts. If essence, Maille is small parts, alot of them. If your child is prone to chewing on things, regardless of their age. Maille is not exactly a wise choice for multiple reasons. The off chance a ring comes loose and becomes a choking hazard being one of them.

Speaking of chewing on things, there are also CPSA standards to consider. Most of us who are marketing our craft can do a few things to stay in compliance. The first, is to use materials on their known safe list. At last check, items composed of these materials did not require manufacturer (that's you) testing. Be sure to stay up to date though, and not just take my word for it. Your suppliers should also be able to tell you if items you're purchasing from them are CPSA compliant. The next point to mention, which brings everything back on topic, is not to market your product to children under 13 in the first place. This is the safer, smarter, and simpler solution.

Now, if you have children, little gamers or squires or Hallowe'en knights, and they want maille, that's your decision to make. Keep a few extra things in mind: Young little bones are not fully formed, and adding a sudden extra weight load could end up causing some frightening damage. Also, the black oxide rub-off from standard aluminium, and the zinc coating on galvanized steel, are probably not something you want ingested. Zinc fumes are certainly toxic (one reason you should never heat galvy) and I wouldn't personally take the risk in any other form. A good solution to both of these problems, is the use of Bright Aluminium. Properly called alloy 5356. It's lightweight, doesn't leave that dirty looking black junk on skin and clothes, and it's incredibly shiny which makes for great costuming. Still not something you want them gnawing on, alright?

Again, if you have kids that can't help but chew on anything in reach, don't give them metal objects of any sort. Just plain don't sell or market to someone else's kids. Know what's in your work and what potential hazards are involved, and draw your line strongly short of risking such hazards for your own protection.

In my own work. I avoid any sort of symbolism that might be taken as child-friendly. Sorry, no pink hauberks with a Hello Kitty inlay... unless you can prove you're over 13, and want to pay alot for making me look at that much pink. A good portion of my market is strictly the 18+ crowd. No explanation is needed there.

Short version, just don't do it. If you do, use safe, lightweight materials for clothing, or "armour-like objects" not armour. In jewellry, know your materials and their contents, and the age and maturity of your customer. If you are marketing to a younger crowd, be fully aware of the standards set forth by the CPSA.

Have fun,
--Charon

Shopping, promoting the Mailler's art, and another handmade jewellry project.

Discovered today that the Dremel wasn't really going to cut it... literally, when it comes to thicker stainless. So I'm buying a slitting saw arbor and building a cutting guide. It's not exactly the rig I really, really want, but I'll get to that eventually.

Meanwhile I have a wicked gift for a friend planned out. This will be my first attempt in shaping a pendant from a solid sheet of metal. I can't describe the plan, in case she reads this, but it'll be awesome, I promise. She digs steampunk stuff, especially keys, and while browsing Etsy the other night we ran across a piece she really loved. So I thought I'd change things up a bit, my way.

Promotion is wearing me thin right now. I'm out of motivation to weave for the time being, or maybe just inspiration. I tried a patterned version of the Doublemaille bracelet in a slightly higher AR than the last one, and just ran out of care juice.

Anyone out there have a good site or two for business cards? Some local, face to face style marketing might be just what I need. Maybe not just for the shop, but at least to make me feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Have fun
--Charon