Trunk Show is This Week!

Remember to join us this week Tuesday, Nov 30th and Wednesday, Dec 1st at 8pm EST for our Annual Holiday Show in the Virtual Labs. You can find us there in the Moon Room. Each night we will have a unique line up filled with our members offering great deals for your holiday shopping. Anyone can attend so spread the word and invite your friends. Hope to see you there!

Holiday Trunk Show Announcement

Frosty the Snowman by Yarnabees

The time is coming for our 2nd Annual Holiday Trunk Show! This year we will be having a two night event on Tuesday, November 30th and Wednesday, December 1st both at 8pm EST. Why two nights? Well, this way more teammates will be able to participate and more people will be able to attend without the evening getting too long.

Now that you know the basics, it's time to sign up! All Lab Rats members are invited to participate and present their deals. Check out this link if you would like to participate. Everyone else is invited to shop! So join us in the Virtual Labs Moon Room for this fabulous event.

Time to dust your shop?

It's only reasonable that the focus of most shops is their items: making or acquiring them, taking those awesome photos, writing titles and descriptions, and toiling over tags.

But just as bricks-and-mortar shops need routine cleaning and maintenance to stay fresh and interesting, Etsy shops deserve an occasional tidying too. Some handy links take a look at making the most of those non-item shop elements:

  • An effective Shop Announcement

  • Writing an Engaging Profile

  • Shop Policies that Work

Meeting Tonight!

Don't forget - our September team meeting is tonight! That's 7 EST in the Sky Room! Sky room - so the pictures is a sky. Get it? The point remains - meeting tonight.

Reminders

Hope all our Lab Rats are having a fabulous weekend! Don't forget that today is your last day to enter the Treasury Challenge. We'll be announcing the finalists and opening voting for the top treasury tomorrow. Also tomorrow is a team meeting at 6pm EST. Join us to get any of your team questions answered and to chit chat. See you there!

Team Meeting

Finally - a team meeting! Yay! We'll be meeting in the Virtual Labs Sun Room on Sunday, August 8th at 6PM EST. Hope you all can make it for this friendly get together.

Meet Your New Committee!

By now you all should know that we have a fabulous new team of Etsians taking over our team leadership. Here we all are - Sara from BySaraLynn, Karen from AuntKarensCreations, Rose from SevenSails, Erika from UniquelyEJewelry, and Lori from GrayFlannelDesign!

Now just what do we all do? Well, many of us will be the blogging for the team. Rose is our Blog Coordinator with Lori, Sara, Erika, and Karen contributing. We'll even have guest bloggers on occasion! Karen is our new Membership Coordinator taking care of all the member organization behind the scenes. Rounding it out we have Sara as the Committee Head to organize us all together. We are looking for another Lab Rat that would love to join our committee and lead up a Twitter team to tweet from our team account about upcoming labs, new team members, useful links, and other team happenings. If you're interested, let us know here.

We're always looking for ideas and participation so feel free to contact any of us with questions or thoughts on how to make this team better! We're glad to be rolling again and so happy you've all been patient with us during this transition. 

A Brief Hiatus

Hello guys!

The blog will be taking a little break, as we are doing a total overhaul on it. New ideas, new look and new writers - so exciting :-D

While we are working behind the scenes on bringing you a more awesome blog (blawesome), here are some updates on what's going on.

We have LOTS of new helpers (thanks!) on all parts of the team.

Our Blog Team is:
Rose of SevenSails
Lori of GrayFlannelDesign
Erika of UniquelyEJewlery
Liz of DzyMsLizzy
Sara of BySaraLynn

Our Twitter Team is:
Jane of jmliss
Trisha of PixieDustFineries
Lisa of Paperbullet

Our Facebook Team is:
Malarie of itsastitch
Sara of BySaraLynn

Our Flickr Team is:
Miki of duckfoot
Malarie of itsastitch

Our Forum Writer is:
Sara of BySaraLynn
(sidenote: here is our April Forum Thread, come by and say hi anytime!)

I (itsa) will also continue to hold the Virtual Lab meetings, and keep up with our Team Page on Etsy. I'm also in the process of making some tutorial videos on being successful on Etsy, so keep an eye out for those in the future.

Should you have questions about a specific part of the team, or suggestions for somethings, be sure to contact someone from the above list ^ to make sure the question goes to the right people. I'm happy to take questions, but I am also only 1 person, and can forget about things from time to time.

We will NO LONGER be using our Facebook Fanpage. We are switching to a Facebook group, which will allow me to message the entire team, and is better about alerting members of discussions and posts. Be sure to request to join if you haven't already!

If you have a request for something you'd like to see on the blog, twitter or a tutorial of, post it in the comments! We always love input from our members.

Be sure you're tagging a few items in your shop with the tag "labratsteam", as well as any tweets you want the team to see with the hash-tag #sqk - doing this makes it easier for us to find you!

Thanks to everyone who offered their help in some form, I truly appreciate all the help, and if the positions were filled before you asked, I put you on a list of "back-up" (essentially), should we ever need more help or a replacement.

 

Blog Buttons, Tutorials and more!

Hello team! Hope you all are enjoying warm weather and left over Easter candy.

First things first, we need a blog button! I'm going to turn that over to you guys to create. I'll make a little contest of it, the winning creator of our blog button will get a feature on Facebook and an extended spotlight on the sidebar of our blog! The guidelines for creating our button:

• It should be relevant to "Lab Rats", whether it feature rats, science or the virtual labs - whatever the name means to you.
• It should be 200 pixels wide, and 150-200 tall.
• It needs to be turned in by Saturday, May 1st.
• To turn it in, leave a link to the photo in the comments section of THIS entry. I recommend uploading it to flickr or, if you don't have a flickr account, imgur.

Other than that, be creative and have fun! Once we have all the entries, we'll do a member poll to pick the winning design!

 Moving right along, I'd just like to let people know our little tags and stuff, in case you were new or not sure.

On etsy, use the tag labratsteam on a few items to be seen. I will tell you right now that I when I look for photos to feature on the blog, I search those pages!

On twitter, if you want the team to see something, use the hash tag #sqk. Stick it at the end of a tweet and we can find it!

And lastly, tutorials! If you can make something totally awesome, or feel like you are an absolute EXPERT on something (photos, utilizing social networking, how to approach blogs/boutiques, etc.) send itsastitch a conversation with your idea and we will work out the details!

You guys rock, keep making those treasuries and being awesome! Stay tuned for the next few weeks, we'll be announcing our SUMMER challenge and our next virtual  lab meeting.

Can't wait to see those blog buttons :-)

Mosaic Monday: A Little Silly

Before I get into our Mosaic Monday, I'd like to congratulate Lynette of LuvEweKnits as the winner of our Spring Giveaway! Thank you to everyone who entered, and thanks to the lovely members who volunteered to partake in it! We'll have another giveaway in the Fall.

Anyway, onto Mosaic Monday - it feels like forever since I put one of these together! In honor of April Fools Day (coming up on Thursday) our items are just a little silly and whimsical, for a smile.

1) Cookie Monster Brooch by CuteButGeeky
2) Ahoy There Sailor Suit from zwzzy
3) Winkie Emoticon Decal by Squier
4) Just Dance Greeting Card by 2ndcoming
5) Please Don't Pee Pee On Me by mizkatie
6) Kung Fu Kitty by TexasBeadz
7) Wannabe Punk Rocker Necklace by glassali
8) Bunny Fingerless Gloves by funkisockmunki
9) Bottoms Up Blank Birthday Card by SimplyInvitingCards

Enjoy :-)

And The Winner Is...

NIGHTOWLCRAFTWORKS!

Congratulations! Thanks to everyone who entered and voted! We will be having another challenge in the Summer, and we're planning a Giveaway for the spring! Keep your eyes peeled :)

Mosaic Tuesday: Because This Week Is Wonky

I did actually make this yesterday, but my day was so crazy, what with the Trunk Show (which was fun!) and such, that I am posting this today.

Theme: Earth

A large collection of just some rats who are having deals this week! Look around in all the shops for great Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals abound.

Also letting you guys know two more things:

1) We will be annoucing the top 5 for the Team Challenge tomorrow afternoon/evening!

2) We will not be updating the blog/twitter Thurs-Sat, enjoy the holiday with friends and family (since the team is mostly American)!

Lab Rats In The Storque!

Hey guys! I was so proud and excited to see our team made it into Etsy Find's: The A-Team, which showcases a few teams and some upcoming events/discounts they have going on.

We will be having a trunk show in the Virtual Labs on Monday, November 23 at 7pm, so be sure to come by, as this is FANTASTIC promotion for it! Sure to be some buyers in the house (myself being one of them).

Congratulations, team!

IMPORTANT!

 *I know I just e-mailed this to everyone, but I wanted to put it elsewhere too, just in case*
Hello wonderful members!

I had to reschedule our meeting. It will now be at 12pm EST tomorrow (instead of 9pm!).

We will be discussing how to fully utilize twitter, facebook, flickr, blogging for your etsy shop. We have lots of great advice and tips picked out, as well as people who know their stuff when it comes to these venues.

Please come by if you can, and invite anyone in - it's not a private meeting and there will be lots of great advice. If you can't make it, there will be a blog entry later this week on the same topic.

Hope to see you there!

Member Review

Happy Sunday, Rats!

Just letting you know that Allysattic and I will be review members this week, and deciding on those we feel are not active within the team. Please don't worry, we don't plan on removing people who have made a point of telling us they have been busy or something similar, we are reviewing members who joined the team, but have made absolutely no contributions or efforts to be active within the team.

Those members will be contacted later this week, letting them know of their removal to the team. We want our team to be full of quality members who truly enjoy the team and what it does. It's not about having the largest team, it's about having fabulous members!

Check back tomorrow for Mosaic Monday & enjoy your Sunday!

Annoucements and Such

Just popping in to say a few things!

• Our very own rctees is in the Etsy Voter! Please be sure to vote for her Mighty Oak Tee!
• Our meeting is next Thursday! Please be sure to come by the Virtual Labs' Moon Room at 7:30pm on the 24th to get to know members AND discuss preparations for the holidays.

Stop by tomorrow for some great items in Wishlist Wednesday!

Rat Spotlight

Happy Sunday, Rats. I know most of you are still in bed, but it's nearly 9am where I am so it's rise and shine.

I wanted to speak out on a feature we just added to the blog. If you scroll down the sidebar, you'll see a new piece has been added - the Rat Spotlight. This was a random choosing from our member list (good ol' random.org) for a member's Etsy Mini to appear on the sidebar from Sunday-Sunday. This will be a weekly occurrence, so each person will, eventually, get a chance. This week it is alyssakaycollections.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday & long weekend. Don't forget to scroll down and check out all of the awesome deals some of our members have going on. Check back tomorrow for Mosaic Monday!

Annoucements & Such

Hey Rats, just a couple of notes:

• We (itsa and Ally) have been asked over and over again about a team tag. Yes, we have one! Please tag at least 1 item in your shop with "labratsteam", you can do this for every listing or just one, so long as it's in your shop somewhere.
• I have scheduled our FIRST Virtual Lab team meeting! It will be held Thursday, September 24th at 7:30pm EST and be an hour-ish. I know not everyone will be able to make this due to location and schedules, which is why the meetings will shift month to month, allowing different members each time. If you can make it, come by! Judging by the poll, we will get to know members and discuss holiday preparations. It'll be fun! It's being held in the Moon room in the labs & yes - there will be video.

Thanks!