Hello everybody! I was surprised to pull my own name out of the "hat" this week for the Feature Friday feature. I honestly almost put my name back in (seriously, like 30 minutes of thinking about it), then I thought, "well, everyone's going to have a turn eventually and you may as well just talk about yourself now and get it over with". :)
So, here goes:
1. Tell us a bit about yourself, your shop, and what brought you to the Etsy community.
I am a small-town (about 12,000 people) Idaho gal. I was raised on a farm (yes, we grew potatoes sometimes!) and have been around animals and agriculture all my life. I am a very versitile person: I can drive any kind of farm machinery there is, deliver baby cows in the middle of the night (ew, I know), play the piano, crochet doilies, etc, etc, etc. I currently work at Idaho State University as an Administrative Assistant and I'm looking forward to my early retirement. My husband James is pursuing a Master's Degree in Nuclear Engineering, so I'm relatively confident that I won't have to work once he begins to. yay! As some of you know, James and I recently bought a home and have moved us, our boys Gabriel and Benjamin, Buff (the dog), Gary (the cat), various fish, furniture and about a billion boxes these past two weeks.
The only shop I really have anything going in right now is
Allysattic. This shop offers glass tile pendants, similar to the scrabble ones that can be found on Etsy. I actually saw someone else making these and thought, well, I can do that, and "Wall-ah". I first joined the Etsy community in 2007, but I didn't do anything with it until late April of this year. I'm kicking myself now. I've always been a dreamer, and am always exploring new things. Etsy is a great way to offer one's "wares" to the world, and I was looking for an on-line venue.
2. Walk us through a typical day in your life.
I wake up every morning at 6:00 am. I'm the kind of person who does not use the snooze button on the alarm. If it is a workday, I get myself ready for work, then I wake up my 7 year old (Gabriel) and have him start getting ready for school, then I wake up my 3 year old (Benjamin) and get him ready for daycare. After that, I kick James (my third child, hehe) out of bed. I load everyone in the car and off we go. I drop Gabe off at school, Ben at the daycare, and James at the library or engineering building. Then I go to work. I'm lucky that James has the time to mail orders for me during the day if needed.
During work, I try to keep up on Etsy, attend a few Virtual Labs (very secretly, of course), answer convos, relist, etc. After work, I pick everyone up, go home, make dinner, bathe the kids if they need it, read stories, and put them in bed. Then, if I'm not too tired, I'll try to make a few things.
On Saturdays and Sundays, I try to take a few pictures of new items, and I also try to take it a bit easy. We go to local parks and arcades and do things as a family.
3. What market (group of people) do you see your items being for?
I originally thought my items are for the younger crowd, tweens and teens; but I've been surprised in that people of all ages like these glass pendants. When I was doing the weekly Artisan's Fair shows in a neighboring city, folks of all ages would stop and look at the pendants. Most of those who stop would buy one or several. :)
4. Name your top three:
- Books
Anything by Mark Twain
Anything by Anne Lamott (especially Bird by Bird)
Poetry by Billy Collins
(That was so hard. I'm an avid reader. I have 5 bookshelves in my home full of books that I've read at least once and you should see my shopping cart on Amazon.com!)
-Music
Anberlin
Brooks and Dunn
Yo-Yo Ma
-Movies or Television Shows
Napoleon Dynamite (If you want to get an idea of what small town Idaho is like, watch this one. Seriously.)
Project Runway
Fringe
-Websites
Wikipedia
Etsy
CNN News
5. Where do you hope your shop will be in a year?
I hope my shop is still going in a year. :) I have little monthly goals that I set for myself, and I must be setting my goals too low because I keep doing better than them, so that's good. I'm hoping that I will be able to get my second shop really going in a year. It's really, really sad. So sad I'm not even going to tell you the name of it. hehe
6. What is one of your favorite shops on Etsy?
Really? Oh man, wow.....uhm.....one of my favorite shops right NOW (I have so many) is
IMHDesigns. I love bags and clutches. And these are fabulous.
7. What projects are you currently working on?
I'm currently getting ready for an Artisan's Holiday Fair coming up on Nov. 20th and 21st. I'm so far behind where I wanted to be in terms of inventory it's ridiculous. I need to stop unpacking and make stuff, but in order to live, I need to unpack. Oh, the irony.
8. If I could have one superpower - what would it be?
Ok, I don't want to sound all "Miss America-ish" or whatever, but I would want the power to fix whatever people needed. Like you have cancer? Fixed. Need water in Africa? No prob. Lost your job? Let's get you one. Now, regularly, that may not be a super power, but I would want my fixes to be permanent. That would truely be super. Where I come from, you try to fix stuff once so you don't have to worry about it again. I know that's VERY rare, but eh.
Remember:
And maybe a nice handbag. :)
So, I am a pretty big geek, as is my boyfriend. When I stumbled on these nom nom cat dishes my basic reaction was: DO WANT. All of gabizoidal's things are super cute, and I have loved her shop for quite sometime. I have two of these on my Christmas list!
I always feel kind of silly considering buying jewelry on Etsy, but there are so many different styles out there that I know I SHOULDN'T feel silly. paintedmetal has created these effing GORGEOUS relic stacking rings in mixed metals. I can imagine wearing these, pretty much, every day. With everything. Everywhere.
Until Etsy, I never really thought about how I would decorate my wedding. I just assumed I would settle for things, because "my style" didn't exist. Well. HOLD THE PHONE. It does now. bunnywithatoolbelt totally understands how to design for someone a little more offbeat, her giraffe Bride and Groom cake toppers are so perfect for me, it hurts. I have them hearted, and everytime they sell, I go and re-heart the new listing. I hope she is still making them in a few years when I can actually buy them!
