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

You want to know how to impress me?

  The short version. This:

The long version. I put in a small order for some beads with Artbeads.com because they had Swarovski in colours I couldn’t find elsewhere. And they offer free shipping in the U.S. I like free stuff. The image above were the contents of the shipping envelope exactly as I opened it. Yes that’s their business card secured in the tissue paper, nice touch. Inside the gems were in compartmentalized little capsule thingies, bagged individually, (in resealable bags even) and labeled. Then wrapped in a layer of… that flexible foam stuff that should be bubble wrap, because bubble wrap is more fun. Lack of happy popping notwithstanding, these little touches of presentation and attention are what make me want to come back to a company.

There was no question I got what I ordered, and it arrived quickly, and with free shipping. I like free stuff. Other companies, even home businesses, (myself included) could take a few hints from this to evaluate their packaging and shipping and labeling.

I’ve dealt with companies that cram unlabeled bags of whatever in a box, stuff contents list inside, and send it off. I’m thankful as all hell for a list of contents since half the time I can barely remember what I ate yesterday, let alone something I ordered a week or so before. The trick when it arrives, is figuring out what’s what without having individual bags labeled. Had I ordered rings in the same dimensions, in two similar looking materials, like Stainless and Aluminum, it’s that much extra effort to judge them by weight, make a label, and integrate them into my storage system (storage system, me? Yeah that’s a laugh, I have tchewbs, lots of tchewbs everywhere.) If a few more companies learned from Artbeads.com we could spend less time cutting open heat sealed poly and figuring out what’s what and more time putting nice labeled baggies in their place until their contents are needed for stuffmaking.

--Have fun,

Charon

Note, tchewb is the phonetic pronunciation of tube if you’re Australian. Ask any of them, ‘struth.

Technorati Tags: beadwork,beginner tips,suppliers,tchewbs,shipping,packaging,marketing

Handmade Artist’s Forum Fall Challenge

 

Think it’s probably best here to say very little, and just link the blog. That said, I’ll probably say more. ;> I have a bracelet entered, which I’m sure is immaterial to you, since you all just want to vote for a chance to win the bracelet donated by Heather's Haven.

Stop by, look around and please comment and vote for me.

 

--Have fun,

Charon

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

One of these days I’ll get some Maille done.

Okay, not quite true that I haven’t gotten anything done. I put together a pretty awesome stainless bracelet this morning. I’d have photos, but now that I’m awake again and can take photos, I’ve got to go hang out with family again today. As a note, when your family tries to make you feel obligated to show up for something, it won’t be as amusing as showing up voluntarily.

Have fun, I probably won’t.

--Charon

Technorati Tags: Maille,Chainmaille,Bracelet,Stainless Steel,Family.

Oh, and there’s this.

I’ve been toying with live Writer for posting. I haven’t really come to a decision on how much I like it just yet. It does allow you to pre-write updates and schedule them for posting at a specific time, which I’m trying now. If all goes well, this was written about an hour before it was scheduled to appear. I think that’s kindof neat.

If you’re on Blogger too, and have made a few edits to your .css you might have seen how badly that can goof up Blogger’s layout editor. At least I don’t have to risk seeing that all ugly and misshapen.

Speaking of, I have some actual Maille to do. A stupid move on my part caused one of my pieces some damage, and I have alot of rings to replace. Embarrassing and upsetting.

 

Have fun,
-- Charon

A personal update.

Completely not maille related today. I’ve been distracted by a tragic family event. Which you can go ahead and just read as someone died. I wasn’t completely shattered over it or anything as I didn’t really know her all that well. Even that seems like speaking ill of the dead…

She was family though, and watching the family I do know and love lose someone they were close to is still pretty rough on me. I spent the weekend sortof dazed, reading other blogs outside those I usually visit, and just generally ignoring everything.

I guess it’s probably best not to go into too much detail. It’s enough to say that at driving over to your Great Aunt’s place to see if she’s alright and finding out no one got there in time will screw with you a little bit. I can’t and won’t blame myself, or anyone else, it was just one of those horrible results of a horrible and careless mistake that ended her life.

The real bite of it all still goes back to the rest of the family. What can I honestly say to them? Nothing makes it all-right. I can’t just console people with things I don’t believe to try and make them feel better. I know trying to console them with my own thoughts won’t do anything but cause more damage.

So yeah, I’ve felt pretty useless the last few days, and because of that I’ve been pretty useless. Non productive, reclusive, and generally apathetic about anything I should be doing.

 

Be well,

--Charon