Dragon Glass - Now on Handmade at Amazon!

At long last, the much-anticipated handmade platform offered by Amazon has launched and Dragon Glass is very excited to be part of something so new!

Want to check out my Amazon store? Click here!

The platform launched last Thursday to almost everyone's surprise. Approved vendors had been receiving reminder emails from Amazon for the previous couple of weeks - telling us how to operate our stores and to ensure we had our profiles and listings uploaded, but with no firm launch date.

Amazon uses slightly different criteria for its handmade sellers, which will surely be welcome news to many Etsy sellers, some of whom are disillusioned with Etsy's continued push towards allowing 'handmade' sellers to outsource their manufacturing processes. Whilst I love that Etsy are thinking towards how to support smaller sellers in their quest to become larger sellers, they do seem to have lost their way in what and who made them quite such a roaring success. Many also complain about the sheer numbers of manufactured (outside the approved Etsy channels) and trademark infringing listings on the site - something not yet seen on the Amazon site, although, undoubtedly, without 'constant vigilance' (in the words of 'Mad Eye Moody') this will likely become a problem there too in time.

The best thing about it? The platform only launched on Thursday and I've already had a sale!

Sold!

So far here is my take so far on the Amazon platform -

1 - The stats don't update in real time like Etsy's. They are also more complicated. Much more complicated. They run a day behind, which, isn't bad if you're used to Google Analytics, but, when you're used to Etsy's real time updates, it's a little frustrating for us eager beavers that want to see how many views we're getting and from where. They also don't seem to show where the traffic originated. So, if you're using both Pinterest and Twitter to advertise your products, you don't know which one is effective.

2 - The listing process is a 4 page one as opposed to a 1 page one, as Etsy's is. This is not too much of a problem, since once you've got the hang of it, it's reasonably easy, but, it does take longer.

3 - Once you've uploaded a product listing it can take 15 minutes or more to actually appear on the site.

4 - You cannot batch upload product pictures. They need to be done one at a time. Not a huge deal, it just adds to the time it takes to add a product.

5 - Edit - There is now a copy listing function! Woohoo! Great to hear that Amazon listens to its users! There is no way to 'copy' a listing. So, if you are listing similar products and just want to change out dimensions or photos, you cannot do it. You can copy and paste descriptions, but you can't just copy a listing and change the few things you want to.

6 - The fees are higher - 12% vs 3.5%. Although, right now, there are no listing fees, unlike Etsy, where you pay to list and renew every few months. The fees also apply to shipping charges on Amazon. But - when you consider that wholesale arrangements can include discounts anywhere between 30 and 50%, 12% is a bargain.

7 - The traffic is higher. With zero promotion, you will get traffic on the Amazon platform. I currently get about the same traffic for 13 items on Amazon as I do on Etsy, where I feel like my life revolves around tweeting, pinning and making treasuries.

8 - The shipping process is easy - the same kind of process as Etsy. Just know your weights and your package dimensions.



Overall - I am excited for the opportunities that being on the Amazon Handmade platform brings. It will enable small handcrafted businesses like myself to reach customers who, for whatever reason, don't shop, or don't want to shop at Etsy.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Handmade at Amazon! Do you like it as a seller? Would you shop there as a customer?

Coming Soon!

As a native Brit living in the US, I take advantage of the very long American summer school holiday and head back across the pond for a little time with family and friends.

This time is always wonderful, but it’s also a great opportunity to both take a break and to allow the creative juices to flow.

The UK seems to get fashion trends ahead of the US and it’s always lovely to see what the colours of the upcoming season are going to be. I’ve noticed lots of ochre and camel so far this year and it’s always good to have complimentary pieces in stock.

I also have a bunch of larger events this fall, which I’m super excited about, but it means I have a lot of work to do in order to have sufficient variety and stock levels, in addition to my Etsy-listed items.

One of my events has specifically asked for me to bring additional stained glass pieces in order to add this as an offering to their fair and I have some great ideas for small wall hanging pieces. I’m excited to get started on these and it will give me an opportunity to try out my glass saw that I bought a while ago and am yet to use. As I work on them, they’ll be posted to Instagram.

I’ve created a selection of small pendant necklaces. Sometimes a larger pendant might not work with a neckline and in this case, a smaller one works perfectly – giving just the right amount of sparkle to an outfit.

I also want to expand my offerings beyond pendant necklaces and the couple of chainmaille necklaces with glass accents that I have done to date. My sister particularly always has lovely layered necklaces, so I am going to try and create some that incorporate some glass pieces. I also love natural beads and this seems a great opportunity to create unique longer pieces and diversify from pendants.

I’ve had great feedback about the little heart keyrings I started making this spring, so these will also feature in the fall and winter selections available. I’ve also made a new little display just for them!

Also available this fall, which weren’t last, are an expanded selection of earrings with sterling silver findings. My dichroic studs in particular have sold very well with sterling silver posts and I want to be able to offer these in person at my events.

As always, my in person events are a great opportunity to connect with some of the local customers I’ve met in the past few years and show the new items in person. Dichroic glass is one of those materials that is very difficult to photograph well and although I feel I’ve made great strides in this, I still regularly get feedback and reviews that the items look so much nicer in person versus in a photograph. This of course is great for a customer, when their purchase is even better than they thought, but, it’s lovely to be able to show the full lovely, sparkliness in all its glory in person!

How to Clean Sterling Silver Jewelry

Whilst taking photos of my pendants, I use a sterling silver necklace, to show how it looks on a chain, as it would be worn. I just went to take some pics of new items ready to list when I noticed that my sterling necklace has developed some tarnish.

Is it gold or silver?! Or brass :(

Few people know this, but, I used to be an electrochemist. I even got a PhD in electrochemistry, back in the days before my son became my priority.

Ah! Those were the days!

Anyway, did you know that you can clean sterling jewelry at home, really quickly, really easily? It involves an electrochemical process.

When silver 'tarnishes', what's actually happening is that the surface of the silver is having a chemical reaction with the air. Here is the equation for it, because, I can't resist a 'little' bit of science.

2 Ag_(s) + H₂S_(g) → Ag₂S_(s) + H_2(g)

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. How do you clean it and get rid of that black coating?
It involves a few very simple items, all of which you have in your home, right now, I'm betting.

You will need:

A piece of aluminium foil. (you'll have to excuse my British spelling, I can't bring myself to spell it the American way).
Table salt.
Baking soda.
A tray. (perfect use for a leftover PF Chang's takeout container!)
Boiling water.
A tarnished piece of silver jewelry.

Lay the foil in the tray and add a shake of baking soda and a shake of salt. Not a light sprinkling, a little more, as if you were flouring a board.

Add the boiling water. The baking soda and salt will 'fizz' a little.

Hard to see, but there are bubbles where the substances are fizzing on the left

Then, add your silver item

Working its magic

Bubbles will form around the tarnished area. You might also smell 'rotten eggs' - that's the hydrogen sulphide gas coming off.

Give a few minutes, then, voila! Dry your item which should be pretty and sparkling again!

Tarnish free necklace!

 Super easy, agreed? You will never need to buy expensive silver cleaners again!

Why I Love Dichroic Glass

Dichroic glass is amazing stuff. It was originally used in space applications, then someone discovered it made gorgeous jewelry...

Here is an unfired piece to show you exactly what happens with it when you change the lighting and angle viewed from.

I love it - you never quite know what you're going to get and even when you fire it and it doesn't turn out the way you expect, the result is often even better...

New For Spring!

I love to try and add new products. Some are big hits quickly, like the studs I now sell more of on Etsy than anything else, and some are more of a niche item, like the glass buttons. I love them all though!
This fall I will be having a lot more stained glass items available, but, for Spring, I have been making new things including key rings and bracelets.
I found a super cute heart mould and thought it would be perfect for a Valentine's teacher gift, but made a few more, and also added some other colours into the mix, making them ideal for friendship gifts, end of year teacher gifts as well as cute tokens for mums from small children.

The bracelets I just love. They feel super romantic and have little flecks of dichroic glass in them, so the white ones particularly look like opals. I also created a rosy hint one too. These would make wonderful bridal jewelry or great bridesmaid gifts.

I also did another variation on bobby pins - I now have a selection of single pins. I had a few singles at Christmas and they sold very quickly - people liked being able to have a couple of different colours, so, I have a bunch that are singles. Some of them have 'friends' available, but, most are one offs. Perfect for those who just pin one side up and are looking for a touch of sparkle :)

The best part? I get to bring them all to a craft fair I'm participating in this weekend at Cordera! If you're in the area, stop by!

My Gifting Submission!

Following on from my previous post, I finally came up with my gift submission for "Jane the Virgin". I hope they like them! They are an amazing purple kaleidoscope effect in dichroic glass, with sterling silver ear wires. Fingers crossed!

Celebrity Gifting!

I have finally taken the plunge and signed up to do a 'Celebrity Gifting'. I was accepted into a really cool group last year, called The Artisan Group. They work to promote small handcrafted sellers in Hollywood, by gifting products for use on TV shows by stylists and also through the gifting lounges at award ceremonies and through the press that are in attendance.

The group I am a member of is a juried group, so you apply and they either accept or reject based on your brand and product.
The group operates as a networking group also and some of the other sellers are super helpful with marketing tips, as well as other business information.
Then, they offer opportunities to 'gift' your product for use. Some might say "hang on, why would you gift your items?". Well, it's about exposure. There are so many sellers out there, so many talented artisans and this is just another way to reach people you might not otherwise, unless you know someone! It's also about a little bit of personal pride - that someone thought your creations were cool enough for TV!

So, the gifting I'm doing is for "Jane the Virgin" and of course, just because you send something, there is no guarantee they will use it. It just might not fit with the wardrobe, or the characters they are styling, but, it's a great opportunity!

Now, I need to figure out what to send! One tough thing about making one of a kind items is the difficulty in reproducing items that make it onto a TV show, so, I will just have to do the best I can on that front, but, again, that's also a beauty of not mass producing items either....

Super excited! I am so lucky to be able to do what I do! There is nothing better for the soul than creating something you love and then getting to share it with others.

How To Be Found On Etsy

When you sell on an online platform such as Etsy, your biggest challenge is being found. When people search for products, are your items showing up in those searches?

Whilst good photography is key to someone actually clicking on your item, the more important concept is showing up in searches, and, realistically, you want to appear in the first 8-10 pages of items, because, that's the point at which most people stop scrolling and move onto another search term, assuming they didn't find what they liked.

For very crowded categories like jewelry, it is vital to review your listings and try and improve where they appear on Etsy. Ideally, you're aiming for the first 3 pages.

People talk a lot about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, and here are a few tips for this.

Firstly, you will need to think in terms of 'tags', or short descriptors of key points of your items.

For example -

Autism Pendant - https://www.etsy.com/listing/217857480/autism-awareness-fused-dichroic-glass?ref=shop_home_active_6

If you were searching for this item on Etsy, which terms would you use?
Autism Jewelry? Autism Pendant? Puzzle Piece Necklace?

That is exactly what I'm talking about! You want to think about the terms you would use in order to FIND the item and those are the terms you will use to describe it.

There are several places that the Etsy search engine looks when trying to figure out which items to show to someone looking to buy a specific item.
It looks in the description, the materials, the title and the actual tags section. You are going to want to make sure that your descriptors are in these sections, as much as you are able.

Luckily, there are some really talented people out there who have created nifty little tools for you to do this without having to spend hours searching on Etsy itself. My favourite site right now is Tools For Etsy.

On this site is a page called WALL-E, that when you click on it, it gives you the options "Am I Trending" and "Are My Listings Relevant". The "Am I Trending" one is, in my opinion, for those sellers who are so well connected, that they get hundreds of 'favourites' on their items within minutes of listing them. I like the other option "Are my Listings Relevant". Here is the screenshot for how this looks...

In the shop name, you enter your own. In the keyword or phrase box, you enter the search term you would use to find your item. So, for mine, I will search my own store and "autism jewelry"and I will select 10 pages, because that's realistically when people will likely give up looking and search for another term, or will have found what they're looking for. Enter your terms and wait for the page to work its magic!
Here are the results -

So, firstly, it shows that when these terms are searched, there are 4584 listings that were found and in the first 10 pages of search results, 8 of them are mine.

Now, that particular item appears on page 4 of the search results, which, in my opinion, is pretty good! It also shows where my tags were that helped the search function find them. One place I really overlooked tags in the past was in the title. I never even considered that I should max out the title characters of my listing, but, as you can see, I managed to fit 6 tags into my title and those help an item be found in searches. Keep in mind that you will rarely get more than one item per page of search results. The Etsy search algorithm is supposed to prevent that (it's called 'bunching') so that a buyer gets a good variety of sellers and items in their search and one seller does not get preferential treatment, although, that has been a criticism of recent changes, that some bugs exist that are causing bunching in results. I personally have not seen this in any of the searches that I have done, but, the forums on Etsy are regularly updated with complaints and updates to this.

So, what do you do if your item doesn't come up in any searches? Well, this tool has a nifty feature that it will show you what tags the top listings are using. It will give you the top 100 tags - for this search, here they are -

Of course, this is not a guarantee, but, if you ensure your listing has some of these top tags in both your title and in your description, then the chances are, you will improve your item's search position. Remember that of course, optimizing for just one search term will not help your item for other search terms, but, it can certainly help.
I have still not figured out a way to get my items to show up in the basic search terms for words like "Pendant", but, that is where I consider what I'm aiming for. If I am more specific, I am more likely to feature in search results and if I am less specific, I am less likely to feature. Although for a smaller store like mine, I am happy to do that.
Remember too that it's not just tags that will improve your standing. Etsy does consider other factors in where it features particular listings, including how many items you have in your store, how active you are on Etsy, how many sales you have, how many views and favourites your items and store has.

After working through this tool with a bunch of my listings, I am seeing more traffic and sales by a considerable margin, so, it's been a great tool for me.

There is one thing for certain though, if you don't come up in searches, it doesn't matter how good your pictures are - no-one will know you are there....

Have you tried this? I'd love to hear your experience!

A HUGE thank you to tools4etsy.com, they're amazing. What a great site!

SALE!!!

Rather than having individual promotions for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, I am rolling them all into one big sale!

This will be the only sale I will be offering for the remainder of the year. Now is the time to get those unique Christmas gifts! Remember, all my listings are one-offs - once the piece has sold, it's gone. I sometimes have similar items, but not identical, so, if you see something you love, snap it up!

Use code THANKS2014 at Etsy checkout to take 20% off your total purchase!

The full link to my Etsy store is here - www.etsy.com/shop/dragonglassusa

Happy shopping!

Product Photography

Over the past couple of years, my photography approach has changed considerably.

I started off using a piece of wood flooring (a sample from Home Depot) and I took the pictures outside in natural light. I had lots of problems with this approach. Firstly, the pictures had shadows on them. The light also didn't really show the dichroic glass I use very well, it was almost too sparkly and you couldn't see the detail. I tried indoor pictures, but, the light would give a yellow tinge to the pics and the colours would look 'off'.

Shadows...!

Then, I switched to a piece of granite (a spare piece from where our bathroom sinks had been cut out from), but, it looked much too busy and distracted from the piece itself.

Busy background

I then switched to a while background, but, even this had its problems. The light problem was hitting me again, as was the shadow issue. Also an issue was the shade of white, depending on the light. I was spending so much time having to edit the photos for brightness, that the pictures didn't look cohesive in my Etsy storefront. I also felt that the white background was a little boring.

Grey background (even though it's white)

Glass presents so many problems when trying to photograph it. The reflective issues are great. It is also very difficult to truly show the depth of the colours and internal texture of dichroic glass, which is really beautiful.

I have now switched to using a wood-like floor tile. I also, after 2 years, discovered that it is best to photograph dichroic glass with no light on, in relatively low light, and against a non-white background.

Loving my current set up!

I bought a little pop up 'studio' from another local crafter and it's the perfect surround. I also found that my camera would decide if I needed a flash, unless I was able to manually override it, which I do with the help of an additional flash, that I simply turn off by the switch.

Simple, but works!

This brings me to my current style, which I'm really happy with. My Etsy Store looks cohesive and clean, but highlights my products perfectly.

Store looks somewhat cohesive

My tips for product photography -

- Use a background that has some interest, but not so that it detracts from your product. Your product needs to 'pop' at your potential customers.
-  Think about how your Etsy store looks - does it look messy and uncoordinated or does it look cohesive?
- If you have a digital SLR, here is your opportunity to use it! Even the pre-programmed settings can produce great pictures!
- Crop your pictures to show a view you want and have several views of your product, including a close-up and a picture with your product next to something of standard size so that your potential customer can see how big or small it is.
- Your pictures are all that your customer sees in an online setting, make them pop! Take the time to get great pics!

Share your tips for product photography!