Blog Feature and Giveaway!

WIN THIS ROSARY!

CherryBlossomsDesign was kind enough to feature me on her blog

and together we are offering one of my favorite rosaries in a giveaway!

Please visit her blog to enter in the contest. 

This Giveaway ends November 23, 2009 at 12 PM EST.

Good luck!!

Buy Handmade! Buy Seattle-Made!

Buy handmade this holiday season - buy Seattle-made from the EtsyRAIN team! 70 talented local artisans will be selling unique, handmade delights ready for gift-giving.

The EtsyRAIN Holiday Art &Craft Show will be held in the lobby of Intiman Theatre (201 Mercer Street) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, November 21-22. Two full days!

The first 50 people in line each day will receive a swag bag filled with awesome stuff from our EtsyRAIN members.

The featured charity for this year’s holiday event is Treehouse, an organization for kids in foster care, providing services that no other agency addresses.

Admission to the event will be a suggested donation of $1 that will go directly to Treehouse or an article of warm clothing for a foster child in need. There will also be a raffle for a gift basket filled with amazing products from the EtsyRain team.

http://etsyrain.com/

Facebook event link - http://bit.ly/3u5WGm

Win this Rosary! Twitter contest!

****THIS ROSARY GIVEAWAY HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO LACK OF PARTICIPATION. A NEW ROSARY GIVEAWAY HAS BEEN CREATED. SEE MY MOST RECENT BLOG POSTS FOR INFORMATION. THANK YOU*****


To celebrate Advent (a little early) it would be my pleasure to give this rosary a loving home. I will ship it to you for free if you win. Details about the contest are below, but first, here's a little more about the rosary you can win:

This is a beautiful, handmade rosary is made with Czech glass 6mm beads in a bright cherry red and clear crystal accents beads. Silvertone centerpiece of the Virgin Mary and Child and beautiful crucifix of our Lord. Aprox 17 inches in length when laid out end to end. Retail value $20 in my Etsy shop. Actual value, priceless!

Great care and thoughtful prayer is put in to all rosaries I make. Each bead is pinned and linked to the next with strong materials to last years of use. Please note this rosaries is intended to help facilitate prayer and are is meant to be worn as jewelry.

An organza pouch will be included for the rosary as well as a wallet-sized card with instructions on how to pray the rosary.

Contest rules:

1. Follow @prayers4theresa on Twitter

2. RT the following message no more than once per hour to qualify.

Win this #handmade #Catholic #Rosary for Advent! http://bit.ly/redrosary Follow @prayers4theresa 301st RT will #win! 1 RT/hr.

3. 301st person to RT this message will win. I will DM the winner with notification.

4. If there is no 301st RT, if the contest stops rolling, the giveaway will close with no winner and the rosary will go back up for sale in my Etsy shop.

 

Good Luck!

 

Facebooked!

I've resisted this long enough, I guess.  I finally set up a Facebook Fan Page for my shop.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Prayers4Theresa/180827847061

I don't use Facebook on a regular basis.  I find the website extremely difficult to navigate and irksome.  having people from my past pop up and find me kinda of freaks me out too.  But all the cool kids are creating Fan Pages so I should too, right?  I don't even know if I did it correctly (again, the site is a chore to make sense of!) but my items show up under the "My Stuff" tab so that's as good as it is going to get.  I don't know if I'll add any more pics or deal with it really.  My true loves are this blog, Twitter, and the handmade forums I read.  I don't really want to add another project to my plate, but I figured I'd at least create the Facebook page and get it over with.

LOL - can you tell how excited I am about this? 

So "Fan" me or "Friend" me or whatever on Facebook if you want to.  Just know I am not going to be very active over there. 

Treasured!

I'm thrilled that I have TWO items in this Treasury!  My bone hairsticks and my mini-holy medal pin.  All the items selected are a lovely reminder of Our Lady.

Yes, that is my hair, by the way.  LOL!

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=75507

Update to previous post

I just wanted to add a little extra to my post from yesterday about "Why I'll never be an Etsy Featured Seller." I hope I didn't ruffle any feathers about the One-of-a-Kind vs. Sell/Relisted comparison I was making.

It was not my intent to insult anyone who is lucky enough to have a craft that allows them to sell multiple quantities of the same item. I am honestly a tad jealous of you who do because it means less time taking photographs and editing them, less time writing and re-writing Etsy listings, and probably a larger profit because you buy supplies in bulk and at wholesale prices.

And I am not saying that my items, primarily being OOAK, are any better than yours for the simple fact that they can't be duplicated. I know that each and every person who creates something handmade works very hard to do so. I do not doubt that you work equally as hard as I do, if not more because you sell more and list more than I do. One of my idols in the handmade crafting world recently shared with me that she got an order for over 600 handmade silver rings which she wholesales to a jewelry mail-order catalog. She is a much busier and harder working woman than myself with my weird little beads in mismatched sets. I admire her and envy her all at the same time.

So again, I apologize if anyone felt I was boasting about my OOAK items. The post was meant to illustrate how I could never be an Etsy Featured Seller and that my OOAK items are a major hindrance to that goal. I did not intend to insult anyone.

Peace be with you all,
Theresa

I'll never be an Etsy Featured Seller

It's been long aparant to me that I will never be an Etsy Featured Seller.  Even if suddenly there was a run on rosaries and religous gifts (possibly the panic of 2012? LOL!) I'm pretty darn sure I still would not be a contensant in the running to be an Etsy Featured Seller.  There's one major thing holding me back from this Featured Seller dream - I don't make mass produced items. I can't twitter the phrase "sold and relisted" very often. 

I will admit I get jealous of those who can sell and relist their most popular items.  These are also the people with the numbers of sales that I can only dream of.  But I also hold a great deal of pride that I offer items that can't be found anywhere else.  I don't make normal "jewelry".   I make items to inspire prayer - and invigorate Faith.  I don't see how making cookie cutter duplicates would possibly be appropriate since Prayer and Faith are such uniquely personal things.

Out of the 11 different items I make, there are exactly two things which can be reproduced fairly easily as long as I can continue to get the parts needed - and those would be my Mini Medal Brooches and my Holy Medal Cell Charms/Zipper Pulls.  Everything else is One of a Kind (OOAK).

I love being able to offer my customers OOAK items.  No two rosaries will be alike.  No two bracelets will be alike.  No two beaded fobs will be alike.  I can try to make "matching" pieces if someone wants more than one item but they will probably only be similar in color.  Where's the fun and art in makng duplicates?

I have one customer who has purchased at least 10 fobs from me this year (and she has already told me she is ordering 12 more this Christmas) and each and every one of her items is truely unique and different from the rest.  She gives some as gifts but, funny enough, she keeps most of them for herself to adorn her own collection of purses - so no matter what bag she has with her that day she has her Holy Medal charms jingling merrily with her.  So while a lot of them are in various tones of blue they are each still individual and special.  And she knows that no other customer of mine will have another one just like it.

My beads are as unique as my customers.  My customers are not carbon copies of each other so why should their products be?  I specifically buy most of my beads from other Etsy sellers "destash".  They don't want or need the beads anymore so they sell them.  While it may not be wholesale pricing when you're just scooping up 10-20 random beads, having a good selection of beads means more to me than saving a penny or two.  I make up those pennies when I buy my findings in bulk. 

I enjoy the creativity of making items using random assortments of mismatched beads.  It keeps my crafting fresh and new to me.  I don't get bored of making the same thing over and over again. 

So I'm gad I'll never be an Etsy Featured Seller.  I'll take quality over quantity any day.  I'll take imperfect and different over carbon copies.  I'll take unique and made with love over mass produced.