My Brush With Greatness

I hear Andy Rooney is retiring from 60 Minutes so I get to relate this story once again.

A long, long time ago when I was much younger and less hideous, me and my BFF worked in the same building were 60 Minutes is taped. The DEA also had offices in the building and we were always getting bomb threats long, looonnnggg before 9/11. This fact has nothing to do with the story I'm relating. Just thought I'd mention it.

So. . . it's Friday night. My and BFF are all tarted up and ready to dance the night away at the Copa. Really. We were going to the Copacabana. It was that long ago. We're outside the building trying to hail a cab and Andy Rooney walks out and tries to hail a cab too. Well, we were not gonna stand for that. We were there first. We walk out onto the street and act as pretty as we can. It doesn't take long before a taxi screeches to a stop in front of us.

The taxi pulls off and the driver slows down a bit and asks, "Hey, do you girls know that guy?" He indicates his rearview mirror.

We turn around and see Andy Rooney chasing the taxi down the street, waving his hands and yelling. He chased the cab for the whole damned block and, lemme tell ya, the blocks between the avenues in midtown Manhattan are very long.

I turn to BFF and say, "We're gonna be on TV. 'Doncha hate it when young tarted up girls steal your taxi? I know I do!'"

P.S. We did NOT steal his taxi. We were there first. He shoulda worn a mini-skirt and glitter make-up.

Yeup, that's how I remember it. Except with much less tables. We went there to disco the night away, not watch a show.

Still Trying To Find Ways To Make Money

. . . that don't include being pushy and obnoxious. I've started re-listing on Etsy. I am re-listing the jewelry as new items as an experiment. Etsy used to list according to recency, which meant you had to list as often as possible to show up in a search. They have changed their search from recency to relevance. I am not sure how that works. If you list your item as 'earring, chandelier, crystal'-- pretty standard search terms-- and 100 other sellers use those same terms, how does Etsy decide who will be listed on top and who will be listed way on the bottom?

So far I have found that the only difference the relevance search has done for my items is to drop them more quickly from the top of the search page. They still show up near the top of the search page when they are first listed but they drop very quickly thereafter.

The one thing this new Etsy search thingy has done is to make me write really boring descriptions of my items since Etsy insists they use item descriptions as part of their relevancy algorithm. Soooo. . . I am now going to delete the earrings I de-listed and add them again one by one with new, boring descriptions. Let's hope that helps. Here's the first example of a boring listing. Contrast and compare to the other listings. See what I mean?

Over at Artfire I've gotten a whole lot more looky-loos in one day than I ever got on Etsy. This could be due to the fact that I had to ask a question in their forums. Talking in the forums tends to drive up views since people wanna know where the hell your coming from and what kind of crap your selling. Here, take a looky-loo at the crap I'm selling on Artfire.

Ya know, one of the ways I can try to sell more of my crap is to stop calling it crap. Must work on that. Got a list going now.

• Smile
• Say "Hello"
• Don't call your jewelry "crap"

Yeah, I'll be on my first million in no time!

Today's beauty shot is a mosaic from Chest of Hope, a money raising art project for cancer. Well, not for cancer, that would be stupid. Nobody's for cancer. If anything, it's an art project against cancer. You all know what I mean.

I Needed You, My Invisible Friends!

Yesterday's Astoria Market Fair was a major bust. The time before I made enough money to cover the table and the beer and food me and Hubby ate and drank. Yesterday we sold a total of no earrings, no bracelets, no necklaces and no boxes. Making a grand total of negative one hundred and ten dollars. That's table, food and beer. We still had a blast. There were live bands. The first, a cover band, rocked out. The played Led Zep, Steve Wonder, Bon Jovi, Earth, Wind and Fire, The Doors-- all the songs old folks like me and the Hub could groove to. Except P-Funk. There was no bop-gun to shoot Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk with.

And, as always, the other vendors were the best. Friendly, lovely people quick to lend a hand and give advice. The painter next to me told me she made a thousand dollars at Astoria three shows ago but she barely made table the last two show. "That's how it goes. Sometimes you make a killing, sometimes it kills you." I'm a little bloodthirsty, I'd like to kill and kill again.

Another thing I'd like to do is to somehow get this show mobile. I'd like to be able to pack my crap up, load it on a luggage rack or similar and haul it by public transportation all by my lonesome. This will require me to buy something else. I have decided that I cannot buy another damned thing for selling jewelry until I make something selling jewelry. In the beginning I sold lots of stuff but, not only did I put every dime I made right back into "the business", but the month of September was a big, gigantic bust making me quite leery of sinking more money into an enterprise that sells nothing.

What I am going to do is open up a second internet storefront. This one with Artfire. From what I understand, Artfire is free for a month and then you get to choose from a Basic Plan, which is virtually free, and a Pro Plan, which is 11 dollars a month-- no listing fee or percentage paid. On Artfire I plan to list my boxes, necklaces and bracelets. Earrings and pins will remain at Etsy.




Now all I gotta do is figure out how to take nice pics of the boxes indoors. And how to sneak in links to two sites instead of the one Etsy site. How's this picture?

Crass Self-Promotion Only

So far I've finished making all 6 boxes and have filled the boxes with cute stuff. Right now I am sifting through all of my earrings, bagging the ones that are not getting re-priced and re-pricing the others. Because it would be pretty stupid to do it the other way around.

This is all for tomorrow and my second time at the Astoria Market. I'm expecting the traffic to be even lighter than the last time due to all the rain that's been predicted. If you're in Queens tomorrow swing by. Unless you're a crazy stalker/ serial stabber. Then stay away.

For those of you who refuse to click on links, the address is:
Astoria Market
At the Main Hall in Bohemian Hall
(Next to Beer Garden)
29-19 24th Avenue
Astoria, NY 11102

Also for those of you who refuse to click links here's another one for you to ignore. Don't click. Nothing can make you, you link ignoring superstar. You never liked the letters 'a', 'h', 'r', 'e' or 'f' any way.

This Is Not A Paid Advertisement

In the mail yesterday was the mother of all jewelry-making catalogs. The Fire Mountain Gems and Beads Jewelry Makers Comprehensive Catalog 2011-2012 is almost fourteen hundred pages of jewelry making porn.

The first page-- first page! and several pages thereafter are dedicated to metal clay. Metal clay involves a lot of tools, which is bad enough, but the clay cost more than silver wire-- and I can't afford silver wire. So I super can't afford the clay.


And my ability to buy silver has fallen. The Astoria Market will most likely be a bust. It's supposed to rain and rain and rain. People don't usually go to gardens when it rains, even ones where beer and not plants is the main attraction.


The Hofstra fair is looking not at all doable. Real life in the form of expensive tree removal, expensive glasses and a death in the family (sad and expensive) has drained my set-aside money and I won't be able to swing the $125 fee. And after I spent so much preparing for it. I don't feel too bad about those expenses, though. I've used everything I purchased for the Hofstra deal at Astoria Market, except the folding table.

I've also learned that there are tons of Fall Festival Fairs, many indoors. I'll be looking into hooking up with some of those. Now, if only I was able to get my traveling earring show up and going without having to bother Hubby. All I need to do is learn how to drive and buy a car. Or figure out how to get all that crap on a public bus and/or train.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be in my bunk. With my catalog. I hear it has a new Swarvoski crystal effect centerfold!

5 Things I Didn't Know Two Months Ago

1) The Portuguese Man 'O War isn't a jellyfish. It ain't a fish and it ain't jelly neither. They are a collection of organisms. Like a whole colony of crazy-looking stings.







2) Your homeowner's insurance can drop you for no reason at all and without warning. Me, I think there may have been a "no cursed Indian Burial grounds allowed on property" clause.

3) Melissa and Jenny McCarthy are first cousins. Their fathers are brothers. If you ask me, Jenny should have passed on a few skinny genes to Melissa and Melissa should have shared some of her I'm-not-a-retard genes with Jenny.








4)Laughing Cow cheese wedges are real cheese and not processed cheese stuff, like my other favorite "cheese"-- squeeze cheese (you may know 'squeeze cheese' as 'cheese in a can'. You can stop that now). It is not processed cheese stuff but real, good old-fashioned, really bland tasting cheese.





5) Cloisonné is like stained glass work in miniature. Those are actual soldered pieces of metal inlaid with enamel. Ancient cloisonne used teeny, tiny gemstones.


EDITED 9/27/11 Removed broken pic.

One-Handed Tutorial: Endless Series Update

There has got to be a better way. These one-handed tutorials made on my bed (I'm telling you-- mattress + ass = fusion. It'll happen one day) in terrible light make for some god-awful tutorials. Plus, I never remember to spruce up my stubby fingers and grubby fingernails. That's before even mentioning the fact that when I get into a groove when making something, I forget to take pictures for the garshdanged tutorial! That's right. The very reason why I'm making the piece of jewelry is for a tutorial and I can't even remember the most important step in the 'tutor' part. I end up taking apart something to do it over again.

The above is to show the pain that I go through for you, dear reader. Notice the singular? That's because I know there's at least one of you out there. Hey, if you don't mind, lemme practice on you a bit for Sunday, since it's only you and me here. We'll get to the tutorial, I promise.

Hi! How are you? Do you see me smiling pleasantly? Yes, yes- I made this tutorial all by myself. You say you want to copy it? Why? It's freaking terrible. There are other Tree of Life tutorials out there made by people who know what they are doing with nice manicures and unstubby fingers and clean fingernails. WTF is wrong with you anyway? Oh BTW, wanna buy some crap at my Etsy shop?


Hookay, gonna need more work on my people skills. Maybe start right off with a pitcher of beer. Beer makes me friendlier. Now, why are we here again? Oh yeah, the Tree of Life pendant tutorial. Tree of Lifes are nice because they're pretty simple and straight forward but can look really fancy once they're done. The one in the tutorial doesn't look fancy at all. It was the best I could do one-handed.