Mettaville New Feature Artist on my Team

Alison Koh of Mettaville.  Part of my TEAM.  We have a new feature on Panda Wear's blog.  About once a month we will feature an artist in my "TEAM".  I have been selling my work online and have a great TEAM of people whom I consider my second family. Here you will learn about the artist and their work. 

Mettaville

Indigo Journal

All the artist were asked the same questions.  As for why she choose this as here business,  If you know Alison,  you'll know she love writing in journals.  She writes frequently, of many
things, ups and downs of life, recording the joys and sadness,​adventures and stories. Sometimes ​drawing, ​doodling, sometimes just a single word or phrase in a blank page.  Alison also writes to  seek answers, she would write her heart out, asking questions ​after questions ​and​ as she writes she will get some form of clarity.  ​ It's strange but if you ask any journal writer, you'll get the same answer, there is something about writing that connects you to a higher intelligence that knows and that guides you to a path of healing, learning, growing and taking you to a better place, one step at a time.  ​

Back in late 2010, she had an opportunity to attend a bookbinding workshop. The thought of making her own journals to write in delighted me. Then the big move happened, her husband and she with their cat, left their birth country, Malaysia and migrated to New Zealand in 2013. A new adventure and fresh start, she picked up where she left and here she is - making books.

A5 found here:  Butterfly Journal


 As for advise for someone starting out in her line of work, ​Practice. Practice. Practice. ​
Exactly what I would say.  Some things are universal, media does not matter.   Allison finds people love the larger version of journals (A5 size), as she does. ​​They are all fun to make! She loves the whole process of making a book from start to finish. ​

Alison sells both online and at local events.  She has a monthly market in Titirangi village every last Sunday of the month.   She has an Etsy shop - Mettaville & a Felt shop   She also has some of her books in East West Gallery in New Lynn, Auckland. Alison teaches workshops at the gallery from time to time and believes it is a fun way of meeting people.Mettaville accepts special orders.  Average turn around time depends on the request.  A safe time frame would be 1-3 weeks.  

Upcycled Pocket Notebooks

How to reach Mettaville and Alison

https://www.etsy.com/shop/mettaville

http://felt.co.nz/shop/mettaville

https://instagram.com/mettaville

https://www.facebook.com/mettaville

http://www.mettaville.blogspot.co.nz/

 

 

I hope you are enjoying meeting my team.  They are the Best! 

My shops:  Panda Wear Website
                   Cabochons and Supplies


Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  
Pinterest: Pinterest 
Instagram: Instagram

Summer, Are you enjoying the party?

August is here and it is hard to believe summer is half over.  Time really seems to have zinged by this year. I am enjoying the season and making the most of it.  We are finishing redoing the brick paver walkway by the pond in the backyard.  The vegetable garden is happy and still producing tomatoes.  Cucumbers are there so salads are frequent with my meals. 

 I have decided to join one of the local farmer's markets for the rest of the summer.  I will be at the Genesee Valley Regional Market in Henrietta.  The hours and address are here:  http://bit.ly/1gP5b2S


One of the recent harvests with carrot man. Below pic shows the full harvest with snow peas, kale, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes. 

My shops:  Panda Wear Website
                   Cabochons and Supplies

 
Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  
Pinterest: Pinterest 


Enjoy the rest of this beautiful season.  

Guess What....garden bounty?

My new shopping cart is working well for the website.  Very happy to have new traffic and from so many different places.  Visitors from over 25 countries and the majority from about 10 different countries. Surprised to see visitors from so many countries. 

and drum roll please......

The long wait is over.  My Vegetable garden has produced the first ripe tomatoes.  I harvested them this morning. these are the first two cherry tomatoes form the 2015 garden.  Behind them are kale and leaf lettuce, all going into a great salad for dinner tonight.    Prior years tomatoes were ripe by about the 10th or 12th of July.

This second pic shows the greens better.  I enjoy gardening.  Wish my father and his Mom were here to show them what I have in my yard.  Many thanks to both of them;  my love of tools and growing things is due to they love and teaching me when I was younger.

This is Genny From Charlotte, a stunning Sterling silver pendant. I collected the beach glass myself in Charlotte on Lake Ontario. To see this & many more of my creations, website link is below.

Have a happy summer day.

My shops:  Panda Wear Website
                   Cabochons and Supplies

 
Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  
Pinterest: Pinterest

New Shopping and Site Improvements

The Panda Wear website has just been updated.  We recently added a shopping cart to make the customer experience more enjoyable.  Fell free to to take a look around and let me know if you like it.  I was surprised it took about 2.5 months from start to finish to add the shopping cart.  It only went live after extensive testing.  Link at the bottom of this post. 

Here is one new section for gifts for the stone lover in you life.  It features gem trees and polished geodes.

http://bit.ly/1LaAHEI 

I am working on more gifts for the men besides there items.  looked at belt buckles but did not like my choices for setting.  working on tie chains and rings.  I have a few unisex necklaces. 
always happy to make a custom piece for the special person in your life.   

The jewelry designers will like the Cabochons section.  Also great for the bead embroidery people.  Many of my stone are natural on the back which makes it much easier to glue them for bead embroidery.  The stone at the left is turtilla agate.

http://bit.ly/1Gzbyfe 

New items are being added daily to all areas of the site.   There are several hundred to be added.  if there was a fast and easy way to snap my fingers and have in all done in a day I would go that route.  

Working on some new earring designs and a few rings and pendants.  my next show is local in the city of Rochester, NY. The Festival is August 16th.   It is the annual Susan  B. Anthony festival. this year we celebrate the 95th anniversary of the 19th Amendment! It is always fun way to spend the day.  I admire Ms.Anthony and all she accomplished for women.  More details closer to the event. 

My shops:  Panda Wear Website
                   Cabochons and Supplies

 
Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  
Pinterest: Pinterest

Hello Summer

Water lilies in my Pond

Well it is beginning of summer here in Rochester, NY.  Spring is over and it was a wild season. It started super dry and ended extremely wet with flooding in many counties in my area.  Hoping for summer to be more average and better conditions for all to enjoy the season.

My tomatoes are all flowering and I am waiting patiently for the cherry tomatoes.  they seem to be the early ones in my garden.  starting new lettuce seed this week.  regular planting keeps me in fresh lettuce until the late fall. 

Excited about the fresh raspberries this year.  It was a long winter and recovery for me.  Happy to say my last PT session was a week ago.  I am closer to 100% -  just need to build up my stamina or endurance.  Swimming for 40 minutes and still continuing  to trim and tone with my new diet.  Eating healthy is working great.  Not one of those fads, either.   I still have not taking any allergy medicine this year.  The first time in many years without the pills and the stupor that follows.

Today's raspberry harvest is shown at the left.    Happy for the garden to give me a a great harvest and something I work on every day.  Right after my second surgery, crutches and I would go out to look at the garden.

Another pic below to give proportion of the amount of beans, snow peas and berries.  still harvesting cooking greens and lettuce like crazy. 

My shops:  Panda Wear Website
                   Cabochons and Supplies

 
Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  
Pinterest: Pinterest

May the sun shine on your garden today.

Etsy, Why Handmade Left

My originally idea was  to blog about all the changes on Etsy over the past three years and the  impact to those sellers I have met.  I decided the post would be extremely long and might not be red through by most visitors. The topic will be broken up into several posts over the next few months.

They redefined handmade or change the legal definition of a word to suit themselves.   I believe they wanted to make more money so they decide to change their site TOU(Terms of Use) to reflect the new influx of sellers with commercial items that drop ship form foreign countries.



https://www.etsy.com/help/article/483
quote from Etsy's blog "HANDMADE items are designed and created by the shops that sell them. Because transparency matters on Etsy, we ask sellers to list shop members and share information about manufacturers involved in creating their items."


 I certainly can not speak for all of the sellers on Etsy.  I can speak for myself and the friends I have made there.  Yes I still know a handful of handmade shops on Etsy. Most I know have left the sinking ship.



As I used the site search by topic, key work and tag , I noticed hundreds of pages of items that were not handmade.  I started to discuss this on several of the teams I belonged to.  My discovery of the commercial items was not unique.  We being good site members reported the shops to the site as not in compliance with their TOU.  We waited a few days then weeks and the odd thing was the shops were still there.  In one case, the shop was on the front page of the  handmade section.  Many sellers had gone to other sites as a back up plan because they were afraid the buyers would leave Etsy.



I have a great group of friends and small business people I have became close with in the past few years.  We are online promoting each other through social media.  The group is Sellergroup.  We are a group of handmade, vintage and supplies buyers and sellers.  Please follow these links to learn about us.
Sellergroup  Pinterest




There are many sites the Hand made sellers have moved to.  I have tried several sites myself and now use my stand alone website as my main place I sell my work.   Here are a few of the options my friends have chosen:  Zibbet, Artfire, Indymade, Shopify, Bonanza, SupaDupa, Ebay, and Facebook groups. 

 To expand the audience of my sales and increase my customer base, I even tried selling jewelry supplies.  I listed my extra beads as destash supplies on Etsy.  The majority of my sales were during buying blitzes with the teams I was part of.  The impact has not been positive for myself, my sales or the majority of the seller of handmade I know.  This all began in 2012 when the site redefined handmade.

Hopefully you understand why many of us handmade artist have left Etsy.  Feel free to do an Internet search on Etsy, their stock and re-sellers (commercial items) to learn more.

My shops:  Panda Wear Website
                   Cabochons and Supplies

Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  

Vera Jayne - Handmade with Love

Vera Jayne

Handmade with Love

Vera Kirkpatrick started her business, Vera Jayne as a way to work from home while she home schooled her 5 children. Vera has had numerous handmade businesses before that but all of them involved craft markets and selling in brick and mortar stores.

Blue Baby Shoes

 

She wanted to start selling her handmade goods online. She wanted the freedom and flexibility of choosing her own working hours and still having time to do the things that she thought were important in her role as a mom.

Vera Jayne sells hand knits – scarves, hats and accessories for ladies and children and crocheted baby shoes. Vera has always loved creating and she started making these particular products as there was a demand for them.

As for advise for someone starting out in her line of work:

•  Running a handmade business is hard work. You start off creating and doing what you love but when the orders start rolling in, you need to move from a hobby (creating and selling the few things you create which brings a little income and job satisfaction) to running a business! 
•  Use all free social networks. Her favorite is INSTAGRAM and she have gotten many sales and wholesale orders through this venue alone. It is free! Vera also use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Wanelo, We Heart it, Keep, Polyvore
•   Keep learning – She reads as much as I can about handmade businesses and small businesses. There is a lot of information out there! Vera is constantly self evaluating her product photos and trying to better her skills as a crafter.
•  Interact – She interacts with many handmade businesses and has formed good friendships. We support and promote one another. We pool resources and help each other succeed.

 As for where to one can find Vera Jayne products,  several places.  At the moment, she sell on Etsy, Storenvy and a South African online site.    She also sell her patterns on Craftsy and Ravelry. Vera supplies a local wholesaler who buys her baby shoes and sells them along with a baby outfit (sold as a set) that sell in Brick and Mortar stores all over South Africa.  Her baby shoes are sold wholesale to an online shop in the US that stocks brands

Chartreuse hair elastic

Vera love custom orders! At the moment her turn around time is 7 days but with wholesale orders (big numbers), depends on the amount required.  During the busy months her turn around time may be 2 weeks.  Her most popular item is baby shoes. 

To contact Vera of Vera Jayne

Instagram

Email

Store

Facebook

Short and Sweet

Happy Hump Day.....  a few gem trees and geodes for you to enjoy. 

What's new in my studio?  There are some new copper pieces and a few pieces with some hand made glass beads. Also, working with another of the artist on my team.  The feature will be up this week. 

Here are a few Fathers Day gift ideas for you. Geodes are from $10-15 and the Gem trees are $15-20.  all prices are plus shipping.  

What topics would you like to see in future blog posts?  Looking for suggestions from my fans. 

My stores: Jewelry shop

                 Cabochons and Supplies

Facebook:  PW Facebook

Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  

Early June Garden Progress

Happy garden is part of a happy home and provides a healthy harvest.

It is early June and my garden is doing great.  I am enjoying lettuce, chives, snow peas, cilantro, swiss chard, kale, collards and radishes. We are enjoying growing many new crops this year.  Surprised some of them are quite easy. We are avid gardeners in my house.

Clematis vine in my climbing rose bed. The roses are slowing budding. 

For those wondering my Square Fair was great.  Many of families spending quality time there.   I plan to go back next year and enjoy the event.. 




Can anyone tell me what this plant on the right is?  It is edible and easy to grow.  raw or cooked it is delicious. 






One of my miniature roses showing off  it stunning color.  Gardens are pretty and enjoyable.  Feel free to start you own garden.  it is really easy and the most important thing its to keep the new pants well watered until fall.  this means water the day you pant and every day it does not rain for the first two to three weeks.

The summer and fall crops of tomatoes, peppers, leeks, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, beans, and broccoli and doing well.  It went for a dry spring with excessive heat to a super wet late spring. the temperatures seem to yo yo from 80's to low 60's when it rains.  Weather has been great for the greens and the cooler spring crops. 

This is an older rose bush next to my back deck.  it was severely damaged by the strong winter we had this year.  I am surprised to see it loaded with blooms.  Wish I could show the whole plant but rain knocked the petals off several of the flowers. This rose bush is about two feet tall.  It was over four feet all last year. 

One of my favorite plants.  This is a Peonie flower over some hosta leaves.  My Grandmother had two in her garden.  I am delighted to say I have had a second volunteer peonie of the single blooming type come up.
Happy growing to all of you.

My stores: Jewelry shop
                 Cabochons and Supplies

Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  

Square Fair this Saturday

Preparing for my first show of the year & 1st show of the season.  So busy packing and sorting this week.  Making the lists of what to bring, make and leave home.  Never enough room for everything.

This is the flyer for the event.For anyone local, in Monroe County NY or the surrounding area.

FB event

I will be demonstrating earrings and rings at the fair.  bring you friends for a great event.  Support small business in Rochester, NY.   Many one of a kind creations need new homes.

 One of many earrings style for sale at the event. 
great time to shop for your summer styles.  Orders will taken and free delivery if paid in full at the Square Fair. 



My stores: Jewelry shop
                 Cabochons and Supplies

Facebook:  PW Facebook
Twitter:  Panda Wear Gems  



We will have the featured artists and the etsy affect on handmade coming soon.