Out damned spot.

mothers love

I was planning a big post on the subject of Attributes, Etsy's new tagging system which at this stage doesn't do a whole lot except frustrate and confuse people, but will no doubt soon be the default setting. Instead of drawing out that whole post here, I'll just link to my forum thread on the subject. A few descriptions have some debate surrounding them -retro seems to be a hot ticket subject; for me it's anything that's garish, mass produced and cheerful (sort of a respectable kitsch) coming from the 50s to the 70s. For other people it's something that's referencing a previous style period; technically making Greek Revival (an architectural movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries) a retro style. Which it very much isn't as far as cultural perspective goes- it's more neo-classical. You can see why this is annoying/frightening/confusing people. Anyway- it's all over on the thread.

antique bobble buttons

The backgrounds post is coming, I'm just shooting the last few images and then it'll be up by the weekend. My sincere hope for this backgrounds post is that not only will it help you to showcase your work to the best it can be, but it will help you to showcase your shops true identity. In a marketplace where more and more sellers are doing what they can to appeal to a mass market, we're losing shops that have that individual spark. The spirit of a handmade item is being lost in the public demand for generic repetition and factory-perfect finishes. With my backgrounds post under you belt you'll be able to flog a washer on dental floss and still look original and different! (Relevant attributes or not.)

Isis Reborn

The weather has been glorious the last few days- giving me an even harder dose of spring cleaning fever. Lately I've been feeling myself awakening from something- to say it's like shrugging off a cold would go part of the way, to say taking a warm bath after a long cold exorcism would be getting closer.

1930s jewelry case

All my shabby bleak Victorian stuff seems to me so cold, dead and sorrowful. I collected it under my artistic eye of what I was attracted to at the time (last 4 years) but I've long realised that all came from a haunted place in me- even now as I sit here decorating this post with recent images they all seem to me so depressingly dark- I want to re-shoot everything in my shops. Looking around the studio it's like looking at someone else's belongings; I'm not the person I was 6 months ago, but though the persona has changed, the possessions still advertise what once was. I feel haunted by my own ghost.

Pendants in progress on the studio table

It's not all doom and gloom though and I don't go down without a fight and a serious amount of swearing. The haunting won't last long- there's plenty of resistance left in me yet, mostly in the form of a box of garbage bags and a pot of white paint. Spring has sprung.