I'm trying to solidify some sort of store image. I let all the polymer clay stuff expire, and I'm leaving it all as craft faire fodder. I'll still be working on my magnets and globbers and whatever (plants and dragons, oh my!) but unless I feel the price point can be over 10 or 15 dollars, it's not worth it to list them in the shop. When I get a bit more comfortable with skinner blends and canework, the flowers and dragons will probably hit that price point.

For now, I'm focusing on jewelry. I still have several projects I'd like to finish, so I'm working on all those before going back to the clay. But I really enjoy messing about with clay, so I won't stay away long.

My love for chainmaille has reemerged, so that's what I'm doing at present. Desiging a ring at the moment. The first try is pretty good, but needs work. I'll put up a picture when I finish it. It's almost what I'm going for, but has some pesky details to iron out.

I just wanted to post something to say that I'm still alive and haven't given up on Crifmer Creations.

We're having our bathroom redone at home, so the past month or so has been crazy with preparation, and now the house is five shades of disarray... couple that with limited funds for supplies, and I haven't been doing much crafting.

I need to finish that telephone wire piece I was playing with and figure out a better clasp, and I have a couple of other projects in mind. One of them being a housing for that art glass my mother gave me.

I got a very nice compliment on my style choices for the two marble pieces I did, and it's been in my mind lately. I was going to skip over to some other technique-oriented piece, but I have this luckstone, see... at least, it was called a luckstone. It's green and I can't remember what the real name of it is. But I'm getting an idea to do a cage for it as well. Once I clean up my work area a little and get my equipment in order, I'll start messing around.

Advertising

Now that I've got stuff in the shop, I have to think about selling it.

You can post in the Promotions forum of Etsy until your fingers fall off.. it seems to me that that's really not an effective way to advertise. Yes, people probably go in there looking for new items and deals and such, but it looks like there're far more sellers than buyers frequenting that forum, all trying to promote their product. And most of the promotion threads are firesale threads. Bah.

Really, to promote effectively, you need to first find your market. That's one of my bigger hurdles. I make jewelry..... and anything else that comes to mind. So far I've got a bunch of funny face magnets, some globber figurines (of which I will be making more. I like them.), and some random jewelry. We're talking at least two separate demographics.

So I need two different ad campaigns. One focusing on the humorous polymer clay products, and one focusing on the jewelry. And then perhaps a third "general" campaign that just elicits interest in the shop.

For each campaign, I'll need a button, square, banner, half-banner, etc etc... I think there are about seven different sizes of ads I can have. Generally, we'd want these to be static, but animation has its place - button ads, for example, can convey a lot more information if they're animated.

For the moment, I threw together a quick animated button ad. I then quickly made a LOT of bids on Project Wonderful for $0. Probably kind of cheesy, but what the heck. Most of the sites may never display it. I figured I'd try a shotgun approach and see if anything happened.

I will budget money for advertising eventually. The nice thing about project wonderful is it may not actually cost that much, and you get what you pay for. I like their "infinite auction" system. So when I have all my ads, I'll put together some campaigns and actually pay for advertising. Until then, I'm using this guy to do some free bidding and get the hang of using Project Wonderful.

Introducing the Globbers!

Just a quick note to announce a new section of the shop:

The Globbers!!

That little purple guy I previewed before now has some friends, and they're all live in the shop. I enjoyed making them, and I have ideas for more. We'll see how it goes, though. Right now everything's still running up the flagpole to see who salutes, if you know what I mean.

I also got my silver mica powder and have been trying out a recipe for faux balinese silver. It doesn't really look like silver, but I'm told it definitely resembles metal. Maybe pewter. So I'm on the right track. Still looks good, anyway, and I'll be doing a few quick silver-ish things for the shop. Little silver pots for things.

Have to go finish the marble ice pendant now.

Marble Ice update

I remember saying yesterday that I'd have a preview of the new pendant today.

Our boiler stopped working sometime last night, so I've been home all day waiting for the tech to get here. While the situation is not the best, I did manage to be productive, and I have five globbers getting ready to go live on the site. I like doing the globbers. Maybe this will become my signature "thing." It's certainly easier to market than magnet faces and random jewelry.

Speaking of random jewelry, here's a pic of the new pendant:
As you can see, it's going to be bluish, hence Marble Ice. I thought it would be a nice companion to the other one. Those beads in the middle are the only beads in the piece, and I think they look rather nice. This one's going to be pretty, and I'm really getting the hang of wire weaving. The next pendant or two will be net bezels for my malachite attempt.

A friend of mine suggested I do up a bunch of these kinds of pendants for renaissance faires. This is the sort of thing that appeals to the fantasy/medieval people. I should know, being one of them. I already had the idea of marketing to the live action roleplaying crowd, but for some reason ren faires never occured to me. Naturally, the ren faire stuff wouldn't use colored wire. Beads, yes, but no color wire. You can get away with crystal or glass beads like that, but that sort of colored wire could not have been made back then. But that's in the future, when I'm a little better at this. Right now I'm still experimenting, but I like the results.

Hopefully this piece will go live in less than a week. As I get the practice, I'm getting faster with the weaving, so if I really sit down to do it, it shouldn't take me more than an hour or two to finish.

New items and a preview!

Alexi (that yellow alien I previewed earlier) is finally live in the store, along with the Marble Fire pendant. The companion piece, Marble Ice, is coming along well. I'll preview that one tomorrow.

Today is clay figurines!

The first guy is a failed attempt, but only in that it wasn't what I was trying to make. My brother asked me to do one of the Raving Rabbids (from the Rayman Raving Rabbid series of video games.. if you haven't played it, try it out - they're hysterical) as a keychain. Well, the actual conversation was a suggestion that I do a magnet, and the keychain idea sprang from there. Unfortunately, I got the head all wrong, and he's not Rabbid material. But he IS a pretty funny-looking rabbit, so I'm going to finish him up as an Easter figurine.

The other figurine I managed to finish last night introduces a new section to the store: Globbers! Globbers are blobbish guys made of goo. They can change their shapes a bit, but since they're only mostly solid, they can't hold a definite form for long. I got the idea yesterday, and I like how the first guy came out. This is something I'll be playing with for a while - my "Smurfs," if you will. They also have pets called blobbles, but I haven't made one of those yet. Maybe tonight.

I heart St. Patty's Day!

Okay, so this has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, really. I had wanted to make a few things for the day, but didn't think ahead enough.

I am, however, trying to make some Easter stuff, and discovered a very humbling thing: I can't make eggs. For the life of me, I can't seem to make a decent egg shape out of polymer clay. I was trying last night to make egg beads for some earrings, and they all came out looking pretty not good. I used the last of my faux marble mixture and made a couple of egg-esque beads, and those look kinda nice, but they're not quite what I wanted. But after sanding and buffing, they'll do. I'll take some pictures when they're baked. I'm going to keep trying, though. When my mica powder gets here, I'm going to go crazy with the balinese silver, and I want to do some nice silver eggs. Not to mention traditional decorated easter eggs.

So instead of showing you what I'm not doing very well, I'm posting a picture of something that came out very nice. There is a wonderful tutorial by Eni Oken that teaches how to make these delightful woven double heart pendants. I wanted to try it out since I first saw it on her web site, and Valentine's Day was the perfect excuse.

Since I didn't have any fine wire at the time, I decided to go with colored art wire. I like colored art wire, and my girlfriend likes pink, so it works out. The bead in the bail was originally going to be the focal bead, but it's too thick. You need a flat bead to fit between the hearts - although with a little creative design you can use any shape bead. I just hadn't thought that far ahead since I was following a tutorial. It was given to me (along with the two silver beads) by her aunt and I thought she would really like that I put it in the pendant. The actual focal bead I made myself out of clay to match the bead in the pendant.

I want to make more like this for the store, although various other shapes. Not necessarily hearts, and not necessarily pink hearts at that. I have a lot of nice flat beads now that have no project to attach to. I have a lot of other nice beads I'd like to do something with, for that matter. When I get done with the second marble pendant, I'm going to try another double shape pendant. I enjoy weaving and I like the look of woven wire.

I also took the plunge and ordered some sterling silver wire. We'll see what comes out of that.

Marble Fire Preview

I was in New Orleans last week, and came back with a lot of ideas. We'll see if any of them make it to physical form.

I finished the first pendant using those faux marble stones I made.

This became insanely difficult toward the end. First, I made the stone way bigger than the tutorial cabochon, so my wires were all the wrong sizes. Improvising is actually one of my strengths, so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. However, you can see in a lot of places this meant that I had little room to work with, and weaving in tight spaces is... not fun. But boy did it give me practice!




As I completed the cage, I realized that the top and bottom portions were not connected - which meant that it could pry open very easily and bend all out of shape. So I had to close the huge gap in the middle. I was already planning on incorporating beads into the next pendant, and I didn't really want to do any more beads on this one, not wanting to draw away from the black beads at the bottom. But I needed to do something simple. I already had my frame done, and connecting another piece of guide wire would have been more work than it was worth. So I figured out a small bead pattern and thankfully, it turned out all right.

As you can see, the pictures are not so good. I have to retake them before I put this up in the store. But they're good enough for preview pics, so here they are.

Once again, I find myself wondering about pricing. I'll be cruising etsy today trying to find comparable items to see what other people are asking for. My girlfriend said it should be $35, but she just tossed that number off. I'm not sure, but she insists it should be in that range.

Any thoughts?

Preview time!

Some work in progress pics.

I've been working on the Dance Around the Sun project, and already it's not looking much like the tutorial. My frame wires are too short because the cabochon I'm working with is waaaaaaaay too thick. I made stone-shaped beads rather than flatter oval cabochons. It's coming out nice, though. I think having to improvise is helping me understand the process and the order in which to build the frame. The next one will be better for all the guesswork and trial and error I'm doing now, since I'll be able to better map it out ahead of time. I'm really enjoying making this type of pendant and I can't wait to grab some more art wire this weekend... I'm going to give the marble another try, and I'm attempting malachite this weekend.

So here are the progress pics:
It's weird, that first pic should be flipped so it's horizontal. It's that way in the actual picture, but Blogspot is flipping it. Weird. Like all the preview pics, these are just quick snapshots from my work area, so the quality won't be quite as good as the real display photos. You can't see the bail in these, but the bail's nice. The exposed wire on the bottom will be woven/wrapped in red. I should have this done in a couple days. Don't know if it'll be sale-quality yet, but I'm betting not. The clay cracked a little during backing, and while I'm doing a good job of hiding it with the wire, it still may not pass my quality test. We'll see.

The Best Blog Daily Thinker Award

It's nice to be recognized.

I'm new to both etsy and the crafts I find myself enjoying, and already I'm meeting some very nice people whom I hope to become friends with as my journey continues.

I'll admit I'm a little insecure about all this. Insecure about any talent I may or may not have, and insecure that my shop will fail miserably. Insecurity is based in irrational thought. I enjoy the craft, and I like the things I've been making. My girlfriend likes the things I've been making, and my family and friends seem to think they can sell. So I tell my insecurity to go stuff itself and I keep on creating.

Also admittedly, it's very very helpful to have support from strangers and peers, and that happened for me earlier today. I've been pimping my wares on the Promotions forum, and it's actually kind of fun, but I don't know how successful it will be, ultimately. But I've been receiving some kind words for the magnets, which is nice. And now I'm receiving recognition for my blog. I was surprised and flattered when weeknit sent me a convo this afternoon letting me know. If you haven't visited weeknit's blog, you should go do so. It's a very good blog. And visit her store while you're at it. Her finger puppets are absolutely adorable, and I'm pretty sure they'll be part of my holiday/gift shopping this year.

So here's the award:The Best Blog Daily Thinker Award!!

It works a little like this: Pay it forward. Pass it on to ten or so other blogs you think are deserving of the award.

Unfortunately, I don't read many blogs anymore, so I don't really have ten, but here's a few that I'm following that I really enjoy:

Beadwork By Amanda
Belua Designs
Dorset Hill Beads
Piggy's Little Shop

They're all good blogs, and I kept my list to etsy/craft-related blogs. Go read them, and go read weeknit's blog. Share the love. It's helping keep my insecurities at bay so I can keep crafting.

I'll put up a preview of said crafting tomorrow morning sometime. Going to do some clay work tonight while waiting for Lost (and during the commercial breaks), and I'm in the middle of learning a new pendant style that will regularly appear in the shop.

Preview and experiments

The latest project I'm working on is a wonderful tutorial up on Jewelrylessons.com called Dance Around the Sun. I'm taking the name a little literally and doing it with orange and red art wire. I think it'll be pretty, and I'd rather use the materials I have than buy more silver colored copper wire since I don't have any in the right gauge. Once I get the hang of this stuff and start adapting to my own designs, I'll buy the good wire.

Anyway, I'm also experimenting with faux surfaces in polymer clay because I think it's neat, and I'd like to be able to make stuff that looks really nice - malachite or turquoise jewelry, for example - but isn't so expensive. I got these two really neat books on faux materials and I'm starting to try out the techniques. I'll link the books later since I don't have them with me and can't remember their names offhand. The first technique I'm doing is white marble.

As you can see from the pictures to the left, it didn't come out as well as I'd hoped. The clay isn't, well, marbled enough and there are way too many black veins. It sorta looks like a bleached pebble more than a marble cabochon. But that's okay. I think they'll make nice focus stones for my Dance Around the Sun tries. The first guy is going to follow the tutorial as faithfully as I can. The second guy will be more my own design, an experiment to see how well I can adapt the technique. The second guy will also probably be a different color.

I also finished a new face this morning. He still needs a name, but I'll introduce him to you anyway:

As a prominent member of the Graegon warrior caste, this guy to the left was the natural choice to lead the mission to Earth. Tough and resilient, he commands with ease and always looks after his people. He is charismatic, noble, dyslexic, and deathly afraid of chickens.

He's pretty much done. The preview picture gives him a slightly different expression, which is interesting. I'm going to tweak him a little when I get home, but I like the way he turned out. If you think of a good name for him, I'd love to hear it.

The etsy forums

So now that the store is up and running, one has to think about promotion.

Luckily, there's a forum on etsy specifically to pimp your store, and boy is it crazy.

There's so much posting going on that you put up a post and it gets lost within five minutes. But there are also lots of "show me your store" threads going around, so you can just post in all of those. Be sure to check out the other stores in said threads, though - it's only fair.

And on that note, I love etsy. I love that you can find such a diverse range of products online through this wonderful marketplace. I think I added about five new favorite sellers just from fifteen minutes on the Promotions forum.

But the store's been seen and actually favorited by a few people, so it pays off. And it's free - can't beat that.

Once the store's been around a little and I figure out its identity a little more, I'll know where to go to promote my stuff. I mean, the heads are fun and all, but there's so much I want to do with the hobby. And I'm just getting started with the jewelry stuff. Unfortunately, that side of things is a bit more expensive to mess around with than the polymer clay. But I should have a few new things done soon. They'll be on the blog, even if they're not good enough to sell.

New items!!

The store is open! Yay!

I have to admit I'm a little nervous. Now we see if anyone actually wants to buy what I have to sell. In the meantime, I work on more stuff.

We have in the offering three versions of my first necklace/earring design and six face magnets made of polymer clay. Pictures below of my two favorites, Aloysius and Reginald:

Getting started

I'm trying to get the shop in shape this weekend and list my first items. It's definitely going to be a learning curve. I think I'm doing it right, but I can't really tell. The paypal account is all set up, and my shop policies look all right. Now I have to get the item listings up and hope for the best.

Etsy is a remarkable thing. It's really one of the best things to happen to craftspeople and business in general in a very long time. I'm approaching it from a part-time perspective. All I really want is to subsidize the hobby. If I turn out good enough to make a profit, then so much the better. From the business side of things, it'll help me get some basic business skill experience under my belt while I put together a plan for the game store that I want to run one day.

I'm interested to see how this goes. The first batch of items will be modest, but I'm ambitious and improving quickly. Hopefully I'll be able to offer some very nice things.

Now I have to figure out how to get some nice pictures here at work since I left my good backdrop material at home.

A good start.

Welcome to the Crifmer Creations blog!

We'll have musings on the hobby (many hobbies), notes about Etsy and business stuff... and previews and looks at various projects. With pictures. We like pictures.

I guess I should tell a little about myself and what Crifmer Creations will be all about.

I'm Chris, Crifmer on the intermenet. I work in computer operations, and I am a very crafty dude. Crafty as in glue and popsicle sticks. Not the other kind of subterfugal crafty. Although I can be that kind of crafty, too.

I got into jewelry making and wire work a few years back but had to put the pliers down for a little while. I recently picked them back up and found I can make pretty things. I like to make pretty things. My girlfriend also likes me making pretty things.

I've also been into clay for... a very long time. When I was younger I'd make all sorts of stuff out of plasticine. I wanted to go into claymation, and I still might now that the tools are more accessable and YouTube is not just a fad. These days, I've found the joy of polymer clay and I'm having a ball.

I think Crifmer Creations will be more clay-oriented with jewelry on the side. Mainly because clay is less expensive, so I can do stuff with it right now as opposed to shelling out for the wire if I want to sell nice things. I do like making fashion/costume jewelry. I think the stuff I've done so far looks good, and you don't have to play a lot of money to get nice looking stuff. "Why play an ace when a two will do," as a wise dragon once said. I think most of my jewelry stuff will be with homemade beads and colored art wire. I like colored art wire. It's not expensive, but you can be very creative and expressive with it.

For now, I'm still finding myself as an artist. I'm making a bunch of clay head magnets that I think will be a regular feature in the Etsy store. I like making the heads. I also have other "product line" (for lack of a better word) ideas in the works. While I'm not restricting myself as an artist, not everything will go in the Etsy store. There are a lot of wonderful polymer clay artists out there (take a look at my favorite sellers for some) and I don't want to step on any toes.

Well, welcome to the Crifmer Creations blog. I'm sure I'll have more interesting posts later on.