Anticipation...New finds ready for new creations for my shop

The spoils of my gem show spree, I've already got several ideas for these lovelies...

The strand at the front already inspired these...more to come!

Starting to feel the Fall

In South Florida, it will still hit 90 for a few hours of the day, and be humid enough to frizz anyone's hair, but the edge has come off the past few days. Just a touch, enough to hint that the reprieve is on the way soon.

Here's a sampling of some items on Etsy matching that mood of the start of the seasonal change:

On Time Management and Organization - some help from MooreMagnets

I've mentioned I joined the Aspiring Artisan's Guild this past spring - a great group of like-minded Etsy shop owners looking to improve and grow our small businesses. It's a nice team - lots of helpful people, events, motivation, and a great sense of camaraderie (yes I had to look that up to spell but it was the best word).

One of my teammates is April of MooreMagnets. (She also has a supply shop, LessMagnets, and that name makes me smile).

April has been on Etsy far longer than me - her avatar is one that most anyone familiar with the Etsy finds or front pages would recognize - her iconic magnetic pens help define her and her brand.

But she is mostly known for her magnet boards, like this lovely pink pastel one:

On her blog, twitter, and within our team forums, April is a great advocate of time management, which is so important for any small business, and also fits well with her brand: Boards, Magnets and Message Centers, all tie together with her central theme of orgnaziation, all born from a need to find a better way to help her children display things safely and (presumably) attractively.

Her blog is really well organized, and has taken full advantage of a lot of the widgets and tools to really tie it all together that I hope to "borrow" from!

Please visit April's Moore Magnets Blog to follow her Time Management series, I hope you will enjoy her frank and focused style as well as her tips! You will also find links there to her FB/Twitter, and website as well.

Revisiting the park

Earlier this summer I visited the nature trail at the south county park - a real nice escape from the normally congested South Florida environment:
http://aeridesdesigns.blogspot.com/2011/07/trip-to-park.html

I went back this past weekend just to walk around and see if I might find anything new. I'll start with a nice butterfly picture (another Daggerwing I think), but I do warn you now the other critters are an acquired taste - a little beyond the backyard.

This elegant crane is one of a few that hang out around the lake:

Had a little stare down with this grasshopper - he was huge - probably 3" long. Just look though at the beautiful colors on him:

Ok this guy...made me jump back a little...I think this is an anole lizard. Pretty big (definitely over a foot including that tail) and very aware of me while I captured these pics...Ok so I had the zoom on but still...The scaliness around his mouth has him looking so prehistoric to me:

I'll make another trip back later in the fall and see what else pops up then!

Fall Themes - Creating for the Season

Every month Etsy publishes a guide for the coming trends and themes, for shop owners to be prepare their items, pictures, titles, tags, and treasuries to be more fitting with the Front Page and Finds themes that the admin team will be looking to promote.

With my jewelry, that usually means making sure my gems are tagged for the appropriate birthstone (For September, Sapphires will be featured more often). Heading into fall, I picked up a few new leafy pieces to incorporate into my items.

First, I found a nice sterling silver leaf charm, and added gems of Garnet, Beer Quartz, and Citrine in a fall color combo:

Next, these fun little earrings feature carved orange moonstone leaves. I paired them with a small "pumpkin orange" carnelian stone:

I've had these little silver butterfly charms for a while now but wasn't "feeling" a design to make them work. I decided to put lots of smaller stones - again with the fall colors of garnet and citrine - and hung them from bali flower-accented earwires. So, both a nod to the departing summer and a welcome to Autumn in one design:

Here in South Florida we don't get much of an Autumn, and it will feel like summer for the next month or two, but it's still fun to let myself be inspired by the thoughts of a changing season.

My 2nd feature on the Etsy Front Page - 7/30, 5am!

Courtesy of this lovely Treasury from one of my fellow AAG Team shops, MilkandHoneyHandbags, I woke up to a notification of my 2nd time on the Etsy Front Page! Ok so it was 5am on a Saturday, not exactly the busiest time of day, but still brought more than a day's worth of traffic in to see my shop in that hour! Quite a thrill.

(in case you weren't sure, those are my garnet earrings in the middle)

You can visit the actual T Over Here...

Adding to my shop - starting with August Peridot

First, I promise I really have added a several new necklaces and bracelets lately! I'm getting more "balanced" with my inventory, and on track to hit my goal of 200 items by the start of the holiday shopping season - just made it to 160 today with some of these new additions!

Since Peridot is August's birthstone, I added the gem all over these mini chandelier forms that just arrived this week (and yes I'll be thinking of other gem combos for more of these):

You know by now I love garnet. I linked together a teardrop and circle of silver for a simple modern design....

And I liked it so much I made it with Iolite too!

Finally, these mini silver teardrop quads are so pretty and elegant I just added a citrine and voila. Of course I'm considering doing something with these pieces and some garnet too.....hmmmmmmmmmmm