My experience on ArtFire has been totally positive so far.  I added my ArtFire Kiosk to my Facebook business page without any problems.  With MyEtsy, I was restricted to having my Etsy shop on my profile page rather than my fanpage, although it is something that may have been resolved since I tried it last.

Another very positive thing I did this week was to join the Handmade In Europe Guild.  The team members are really helpful and have made me feel really welcome!

Here are some of the team members’ wonderful creations:

Featured shops:

KittyBallistic, BabsBeadsandDesign,
LauraCameron, CatsWire.

I started off my day by packing my first ArtFire sale that was bought by a lovely customer as a gift for a friend of hers. I am making all my own jewellery packaging at the moment. The item is wrapped in acid-free tissue paper and bound by ribbon, then it is placed inside a handmade pillow box. I am constructing the pillow boxes from black cardstock with a wide ribbon, on which I stick my homemade logo stickers. I print out 30 stickers on each A4 sheet of peel-off adhesive silver foil for InjJet printers.

I also packed a little gift for the customer herself, as a little ‘thank you’ for being my first ArtFire customer. As soon as the packing was done I went to the Post Office and sent both packages off.

After my walk to the PO I was happy to do some beading.  I started a pair of earrings with pretty little glass flowers in a delicious violet/raspberry colour with coordinating seed beads and fringe beads.

For more creative spaces from around the world, head over to kootoyoo’s blog.

Not Always Fun!

Last week I got stung by a jellyfish whilst swimming.   I’m normally quite careful and keep a watch out when the wind is blowing in towards the bay as jellyfish will be brought in along with the current, and I have a look into the sea to make sure it’s clear before jumping in.  Staying away from the sea when it’s obvious that there are jellyfish about has kept me sting-free for several years, but last week I got it wrong and was pretty surprised when I suddenly felt a burning sensation moving over my foot.  I was swimming with my younger son at the time and, as he was wearing goggles, he looked down and saw that there was a jellyfish, one of the common purple ones.  At least it was a minor sting but we didn’t fancy meeeting any more jellies so we immediately swam the 50 metres or so back to shore.

TREATMENT

The best way to treat a jellyfish sting is to first of all NOT RUB OR SCRATCH the afflicted area, as that will only spread the venom.  I used a plastic card I had in my purse, a discount card similar to a credit card and scraped my foot where I had been stung whilst pouring water over it.   I would have followed this procedure up by applying vinegar to the sting as this is really soothing, but I didn’t have any and, although it was still burning,  the sting wasn’t too bad in this case and it was bearable.   The red welts slowly started to reduce and thankfully by evening they had almost disappeared.

Here are my picks for some harmless and totally gorgeous jellyfish by the members of the European Street Team on Etsy, enjoy!

Underwater Silence – Fine art photograph – Jellyfish by JKphotography

Handfelted jelly fish earrings by maroulina

Oh Jellyfish, Jellyfish… by GiftsandStars

MEDUSA 2 – Jellyfish brooch by marcomagro

jellyfish dance by enchantedpond
The Monday Moodboard is a game played by members of the European Street Team on Etsy.  Check out other members’ moods on FleurFatale’s blog.

Featured shops:

ClareBears, florigamigirl,
PetitPlat, blota.

The Monday Moodboard is a game played by members of the European Street Team on Etsy.  Check out other members’ moods on FleurFatale’s blog.

A cluster of pretty pastel lucite flowers, each with a tiny Swarovski crystal at its centre, beadwoven onto an adjustable ring base.

Now available in my shop.

I opened an ArtFire store a while back and didn’t do much to it apart from adding a couple of listings.  Views were really low on it and I was wondering how to proceed when I received a promotional offer to upgrade to Pro member for just $1 for the first month.  The membership could be downgraded again whenever I wanted, so I thought there really was nothing to lose to try it out.

So far I’m really impressed with the Pro features, which include an Etsy Item Importer with the facility to import either a single item or all items at once, and a Global Editor, which makes it really easy to make changes to a number of items all together.  There are a number of other features I still need to look into, including a Facebook Kiosk Application which I’m hoping will let me have my shop items on my Business Page rather than on my personal profile as seems to be the case with the Etsy Application for Facebook.  What I really like is the Rapid Cart feature which I’ve implemented here on my blog to allow anyone to purchase from my ArtFire store without having to create an account first.

I’ll be maintaining both my Etsy and ArtFire shops for the time being, but increasing the promotion on the ArtFire one instead of letting it lie dormant. 

Updates to follow, in the meantime I’d love to hear from anyone with a similar experience!

Bathtime Bliss

Featured shops:

bysweetmom, Elixirio, UltimateOrganicSoap
ingermaaike, CampoDiFiore, verityunmondoaparte
Karramandi, NancyvdBoom, martice

The Monday Moodboard is a game played by members of the European Street Team on Etsy.  Check out other members’ moods on FleurFatale’s blog.

This week’s Moodboard is all about upcycling.

Featured shops: yourdoll, BabongoHome, viltalakim, fluxplay.

Please click on the pictures to view their listings.

The Monday Moodboard is a game played by members of the European Street Team on Etsy.  Check out other members’ moods on FleurFatale’s blog.

I bought some glass flowers recently, and decided to use some of them in hairpins. 

Head over to kootoyoo’s blog for more creative spaces.

Click here to view the treasury page.