Rebels Are We – The Design Work

Well – not feeling good today so I had to spend a lot of time sitting still!  That meant I pulled out my paper and pens and started actually drafting out the design I wanted to use for my new purse   It took a few pieces of paper (and more than one pen) to get to a point where I was starting to be happy with it.  Then I had some inspiration – I could do this work on my photo editing program!  Since the grid I was using to design with was originally from the internet I simply down-loaded it as a picture and started playing.

I’m REALLY glad I did.  The pattern has turned out to much more interesting than it probably would have been had I stuck with my paper.  I was getting TIRED of drawing and re-drawing.  Then again, this was tedius too – just not as hard on the hand.  I may have to look into getting one of those bead designing programs sometime in the next year…  Any one have any suggestions or ever use one?

Moving on – this is the main design!  I ran out of room on the grid – so the small hearts you see on the right will also be repeated on the left – I just wasn’t in the mood at that point to figure out how to make my grid larger…

That’s a 50×50 grid and, to my amazement, it’s no where near as big as I envisioned it might be when I actually started weaving it!

The design work is going to be pretty subtle because I chose a Christmas green that doesn’t contrest a ton with the black – but it works a lot better in person   I’ll just have to work on getting good photos…

At this point I’m debating expanding the pattern beyond the original design since this will be much smaller than I was thinking it would – but I think I’ll just stitch this and see how long it takes me to do this one side and go from there – I have a feeling I’ll decide that small is fine

Some interesting information…

As I browse the forums on etys I’ve noticed lately that people are complaining about there not being enough buyers out there on etsy.  Too many sellers, not enough buyers, is the complaint.  People are wondering why etsy doesn’t do as much promoting as some other big sales sites such as Amazon or Ebay.  I noticed it when I was looking in the Ideas section of the forum.  In particular from this post.

Now, granted, I didn’t really read the rest of the thread.  My gut response was that etsy DOES advertise.  No, not in the same way as amazon and ebay, but this is a MUCH newer site.  It’s been around for what – three years now?  And this is more of a grass roots movement than it is a big money glomer.  I mean, that’s the natrue of the site after all.  It exists to support handmade items which lend themselves more towards word of mouth exposure than big corporate ideals.

Plus, with the rapid growth of the site, the team at etsy has their hands full hiring new staff and doing everything they can to keep the site growing and improving.  Maybe, given more time, some bigger advertising will take place.  Sure, that would be awesome, but they need to be READY for the growth that kind of exposure would give the site.  Are they ready for that right now?  Doubt it.

Back to they DO advertise.  The team does an cooperative advertising program in which they set up spots for ads in newspapers.  You can read more about that here.  And, do to the efforts of the members of etsy themselves, etsy finds its self getting press time all over the place!  Go here to see some of that … including an interview with Fox Business News, Rachel Ray, and Martha Stewert, not to mention all of the newspaper stories!

So you may be wondering, “if this girl didn’t even bother to read that entire forum thread, why is she getting up on her soap box now?”  Good question.  Answer number 1 – I was tired and kinda grumpy the night I stumbled across that particular thread   Answer number 2 – I saw an article in the Storque today that made me laugh as I thought about the forum thread.  To quote them in just a small portion of their stats data from the month of August:

“96,100 new members joined the Etsy community, including 18,300 new sellers, both increases in sellers and buyers from last month.”

Hmm – by my calculator that equals 77,800 new buyers.  Or approximately 81% of the new members to etsy.  And that’s not even considering that most of the sellers on here, at least the one’s that I know, ALSO buy on etsy.

Makes you think don’t it?  Go etsy!!!