Monday Spotlight On: Sandi Nenga of Quiddity Designs

Today's interview is with Sandi Nenga of Quiddity Designs on Etsy.   Sandi, why don't you introduce yourself?
By day, I’m a mild-mannered sociology professor. No, I’m kidding. By day, I’m a snarky, irreverent, high-energy sociology professor. I research the sociology of childhood and youth, which basically means I spend a lot of time trying to experience the world the way a middle school or high school student does. Yeah, sometimes that makes me crazy. To try to find sanity again, I design jewelry at night.

Crystal and Silver Necklace with Olive Green Navette Drop

Tell us three other things about yourself.
I want to be a telepath when I grow up.
I’m not a telepath, so I guess that means I’m not a grownup.
I know what you’re thinking–don’t laugh at me. Oh crap. This means I’m a grownup, doesn’t it?

What’s your medium and how did you get into it?
I’ve always loved jewelry and wanted to learn how to make it, but could never find time to take a class. One day at a bookstore I started leafing through a beaded jewelry craft book and thought, I can do this! My first attempts at wire wrapped jewelry were rather sad, but fortunately, I bought another book and tried again.

What’s your favorite thing you’ve made?
Right now it’s the Lapis Lazuli Silver Seaweed Necklace in my store. I’d had a bad day and just wanted to pound on something with a hammer. The next thing I knew, all that frustration had turned into this beautiful, shimmering necklace.

Lavender Pearl and Silver Drop Necklace

From where do you take inspiration?
Usually from the silver and stones themselves. I’ll pick up a pretty stone and think, how can I best show you off? But when I’m stuck, I’ll look at jewelry making books and browse Etsy to see if a shape or a silhouette inspires me.

Name one piece of art you wish you’d created and why?
I wish I had created a lovely, water-wise flower garden. I love flowers, but I live in Texas which is currently in a horrible drought, and all the water-hungry plants in my yard are dessicated/dead right now.

What are you doing when you’re not crafting?
It depends what time of year it is. During the school year, I’m teaching, doing research and grading. During the summer, I can often be found doing ethnography at a summer camp, trying to blend in with the high school or middle school students. I also am a proud reader of trashy books (especially books about telepaths).

If you had to give up your medium and pursue another, what would it be and why?
Why? What do you know about Madame Esmeralda? No, I don’t want to give her up. She predicted I would be a telepath someday and I believe her. In here. *taps forehead solemnly*

Silver and Apatite Earrings

Tell us about a time you were making something that came out better than expected and how it happened.
Actually, it was a custom order. A customer asked me to make some earrings that would match a necklace, so I sent her a design for a bead and a circle dangle. She suggested putting the bead and circle on a short length of chain so they would swing and move more. I tried it and it was such a great idea that many of the earrings in my shop now have that chain element.

How would you explain how to do what you do to an eight year old?
I make pretty, sparkly things. See? Hey! Come back here with that necklace! No, you can NOT put that on a CAT!

What’s your favorite part of the process?
To design, I usually pull out a bunch of stones and silver shapes and arrange them on a mat. Then rearrange. Repeat a trillion times until I find a design I like. My favorite moment is when I execute the design and it looks even better than I had thought it would.

Red Pearl and Silver Bracelet

One random thing you think people should know.
People who know random things are more interesting than those who know orderly things.

Where can people find you and your work?
Shop: quidditydesigns.etsy.com
Facebook: facebook.com/quidditydesigns

What did you want to be when you were ten?
I don’t remember. But when I was 11,  I wanted to own a women’s clothing store that sold pants for every occasion. I was going to name it “Outskirts” and the logo was going to be a skirt with a diagonal red line through it. I did okay sewing vests and shirts, but I never could figure out how to sew pants well so that dream had to be put to sleep... I mean taken to a farm. It’s living happily at a farm. A dream farm. Yeah.

Stuff I'd Love To Try: Recycled Magazine Coasters

I have a ton of magazines around my house.  From the free year subscription of Real Simple (my personal favorite magazine) to my husband's issues of Game Infomer to all the copies of Glamour my sister got me for Christmas last year, I am continually tossing magazines in the recycling bin.

Being the artsy type (obviously), every time I have to toss another one in the bin to make room for the three more which have just come in the mail,  I get a little sad inside. My absolute favorite way of creating when I was a teenager was making collages.  I would get posterboard and rubber cement and cut apart all my issues of Seventeen and Cosmopolitan and make everything from color collages to dramatic poetry.  

So even now, as I am thinning the herd, I find myself thinking, what could I have made with this?  Could I have made envelopes for my cards? A new collage (for the first time in a decade)?  Could I have tried an entirely new (to me) form of artwork by saving these lovely, beautiful, colorful magazines?  And then I toss them in the recycling....

Recycled Magazine Coaster Tutorial

Then I came across this tutorial on How About Orange, a blog full of wonderful crafty, upcycled craziness, and so now, every time I go to toss out more magazines I stop and think, maybe next time I'll make coasters...and just maybe I will. 

I haven't yet, but now that I've posted this, maybe one of you will.  And if any of you tries sealing them (with Mod Podge, perhaps?), let me know how it goes. 

Feature Friday: The Soap Experiment

I first got interested in soapmaking back in November, when I took a trip with my in-laws and husband to Brevard, NC for a weekend of camping.  At a little sort of head shop in town, I found a bar of lemongrass castile soap that smelled absolutely amazing.  My mother-in-law bought a bar for me and one for herself and when we got home I started washing with it right away.  It was fabulous and creamy and my skin wasn't dry and scaly for once.

So I toyed with the idea of soapmaking for a long time, all the while continuing to buy fantastic bars of soap from fellow Etsians such as Mr. Kitty, Happy Hound and Sacred Suds, all of which were wonderful and different in their own rights.

Finally, a I picked up a few books, ordered the stuff (lye included), and made my first batch. It was a somewhat success.  It came out alright, but the cheap fragrance oil I used nearly seized the batch and the scent has faded (the soapiness part is actually creamy and cleansing and I'm still using the last few bars).  The second batch came out with oily patches and I've put aside to rebatch.

One of the soap molds made by my father-in-law, waiting to be opened.

Then I started reading about sodium lauryl sulfates and the fact that most soaps are actually detergents.  Plus, I couldn't find a shampoo I was happy with as they were all drying out my scalp. So I made my own, adapted from a recipe on the internet, and with rosemary and eucalyptus essential oils.  It came out better than I could have hoped.  As a matter of fact, the first batch only has one bar left.  My husband and father-in-law both love it because they can wash their hair and bodies with one bar.  My mother-in-law loves it because it gives her hair texture and body.  My BFF loves it because it has cleansed her once oily hair and for the first time in her life, she doesn't have to wash it every single day (which is bad for your hair, if you didn't know).

The second batch of shampoo soap.

So I think I've found something to pursue. I am presently tweaking my shampoo recipe and my FIL was kind enough, being a master carpenter, to knock me together a couple of two pound wooden soap molds.
Now the second, twice as big batch (rosemary-lavender scented this time) is waiting to be cut up and set out to cure.

It's interesting how my art has become my work and it looks like my hobby could be headed the same way.

Stuff I Love: Repurposed Books

I love books and read often.  But some books are just too boring to keep or aren't the stories you hoped they'd be or are simply too old too and falling apart to be of much use.  These Etsy sellers have taken book that weren't good for much else and made them into art.

This book purse from Bibliobags could hold your keys, cell, wallet and perhaps even a small paperback!

A folded sculpture from RecycledReads is a great reminder to be crafty and wonderful inspiration as to what to do with an old book.

Bringing new meaning to the term 'bookmobile' this one from  TheShophouse is just too cool to hang over a babies crib.  Put it in your workspace and watch it drift lazily in the light.

Can't decide if you want to read the massive tome, "War and Peace"?  Have a drink instead.  Then, hide it in this book safe from SecretSafeBooks.

And there is even more awesome stuff.  I'm going to have to do a two-parter and continue this another week.  One could probably decorate an entire house in things made from old books....and if I had the money, I just might.

Less Talk Tuesday: Bookshelves

From davidgarciastudio.blogspot.com

From apartmenttherapy.com

From architonic.com

From blog.hgtv.com

Note: I know it's "Less Talk" but I wanted to inform my lovely readers that I'm moving things around a bit.  Less Talk More Rock Wednesday's are now Less Talk Tuesdays.  Treasuries will now be on Thursday an on Friday I will try to write something of worth, feature a tutorial, etc.  Saturday's will still be the intended time to put up the Illustration Friday sketches. Thanks for reading, even as this blog gets through it's growing pains!

Stuff I Love: Knitting

I don't knit in summer, because it is always so blessedly hot here in North Carolina, but today it's so overcast and feels cool (it's 76 Fahrenheit), I could almost pick up a knitting project and maybe start a scarf or socks.   So here are a few knitting related items in honor of the (slightly) cool weather.

Knitting Takes Balls Hand Embroidered Hoop

Police Public Call Box Yarn Bowl

Strong Leprechaun Sock Yarn

Hand-knitted Cream Aran Chair Slipcover

Tutorial: Keeping a Marketing Journal

Ever been looking back over the Google Analytics for your Etsy shop and noticed a spike a few weeks back but had no idea what caused it?  After a seeing a few of these and never being able to figure out the cause, I decided to start keeping a marketing journal.

I like to keep mine in a decent sized Moleskine notebook because I like to write things by hand (and it makes it easier to use self-created symbols to mark trends).  However, you could also keep a binder and print out your pages or you could probably make an Excel spreadsheet, if you're good at that kind of thing, but using Excel is going to make it harder to keep notes in the quantity you'll need.

First and foremost, I mark the first several pages for Notes only, so I can write down things like symbols I use, marketing websites, popular items in my shop, or whatever else you might want to note separately.

Second, I began to date pages, keep the top half blank and marking a section of the bottom half as "Results."  Under results, I then marked three more sections: Google Analytics, Etsy and Other.  In Google Analytics, I have six selections: Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site and New Visits.  Under Etsy I marked: Shop Hearts, Item Hearts, Number of Sales (# Sales), Dollar Amount of Sales ($ Sales), and Circles.  Under the Other Heading I put: FB Followers, Twitter Followers, Blog Views and Blog Followers.  Of couse, you can edit this to fit what marketing outlets you use.

Now, I keep this journal with my computer and whenever I do anything that might have an effect on my shop (relisting items, spending mass quantities of time in the forums commenting, linking to my shop on Twitter, making a blog post, building a Treasury, to name a few) I make a note of it in my journal.  I also have shorthand abbreviation (FB for Facebook, TW for Twitter, K for Kaboodle, etc), that I use to save space (all of which are marked in the Notes section at the beginning).

 At the end of the day (I stay up late) or the next morning, I then gather all the data, using color-coded pens.  Green symbolizes an increase, red a decrease, and gray means no change.  If a number has risen for two days, it gets an arrow beside it pointing up.  If it's risen for three or more, it gets two.  The same goes for falling numbers, but with the arrow pointing down.

 The whole process doesn't take more than five minutes each day from start to finish and now I can keep track of what is making a difference in my shop traffic!  Just keep in mind that it's important to keep up with everything.  I will often make notes beyond my numbers if I see in Google Analytics that I got traffic from a specific source, or if I was featured in an unusual amount of treasuries that day.

Hope you find this useful in bringing success to your Etsy shop!

Less Talk, More Rock Wednesday: Doors

From now on, on Wednesdays, I'll just be posting a couple images of something I love.  It could be an artist's work, architecture, typography....anything really.  From this week forward, there won't be much if anything written before hand--just pretty things to look at.  And I will always try to link where the image came from, to the best of my knowledge.

But before I shut up, I'd just like to inform you that I'm featured on Grace Louise's blog right here and that you should go read it and enter to win any four cards from my shop.  You know you want to.

Now. Where was I? Ah, yes, doors.

From http://aliceiswonderful.tumblr.com/

http://frommoontomoon.blogspot.com/2011/02/doors.html

http://vi.sualize.us/view/67460826deeccad9a2d898314fb89eca/

Treasury Tuesday: I Can See You Now

Today's one of those lovely days of the week where you don't have to read much, just look, as long as your eyesight is up to par.  Today's treasury theme: eyeglasses.

'I Can See You Now....' by cursiveart

A collection of all things eyeglasses...

Cute Nerd - 5x7 print munieca $8.00	3 x laser cut acrylic G... SVJewellery $5.00	sunglass case -sunglass... thezakka $26.50
Monster with glasses - ... lulufroot $20.00	Silver Ox Book Locket w... LeslieShields $16.00	Vintage Eye Glasses Pur... ByHeart $36.00
eyeglass monster origin... nervousonion $10.00	12 bendable brass eyegl... TimeAndMateria... $2.50	Eyeglasses number 3 - o... ANDstudio $35.00
Japanese Echino Ni-Co F... fabricshoppe $9.00	CLEARANCE- The Cleaver:... bfantasy $15.00	FUNKY glasses necklace ... bRainbowshop $35.00
Vintage Men's Eyegl... 2BoredBunnies $28.00	Original Oil on Canvas ... megsmither $430.00	Busy Blue Octopus 5 x 7... Lipeony $8.00
Eyeglass Chain Necklace... CreativeGypsy $17.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Thursday Spotlight on Julia and Wayne of Belle Terre Soaps

You've seen their products on my blog before, I've mentioned meeting Julia at craft shows here in town and their soap is in my shower.  Juli and Wayne are a husband and wife team who are trying to live a simpler life, more organically, closer to their food and the environment.  To get there, they started a small hobby farm in the North Carolina foothills and established Belle Terre, their little soap company.

Tell us three things about your soap.
1. Our soap is handmade by us using organic ingredients.
2. We buy the ingredients for our soap from a company called Mountain Rose Herbs. They aren't the cheapest but they share many of our values and pay a living wage to their employees.
3. We only use essential oils to add scent to our soap. This means our soaps contain no synthetic fragrance oils, making our soaps 100% natural. In short, we think being clean should be natural!

Unscented All-Natural Handcrafted Soap

How did you get into making it?
We started making soap because Julia has super sensitive skin and can't use chemical based store bought soaps. After buying natural soaps for a couple of years, we decided to try making it ourselves. We had lots of fun and got great feedback from friends and family with whom we shared our soaps. From this point, the idea of Belle Terre was born.

What’s your favorite thing you’ve made?
It is hard to pick one thing because it changes depending on what is going on. Some days it is our rich, creamy lotions that make my skin feel so soft. At the end of a long day though, it is definitely the bath salts. In early spring when it is cold and windy I never let go of my vanilla lip balm.

From where do you take inspiration?
We are both inspired by nature. Whether it is the scents of wildflowers, the incredible work ethic and commitment of our bee colonies, or the breathtaking landscapes that one finds meandering through the Appalachian foothills we find limitless inspiration and renewal in our natural surroundings.

Lemon Sugar Scrub

Name one other soapmaker you admire and why?
Krugs Eco-Logic. We share many of the same values as Erin from Krug's Eco-Logic. Also, she has been gracious enough to share with this fellow soaper when we have had questions. It isn't often that you come across someone who is willing to share with a competitor. It really speaks to Erin's class and professionalism.

What are you doing when you’re not crafting?
We both work full time, so normally we are working our "day jobs". We are also working on converting 6 acres in the foothills of NC into a sustainable hobby farm. These two activities keep us fairly busy when we aren't crafting.

Four Pack Orange All-Natural Handcrafted Lip Balm

If you had to give up your medium and pursue another, what would it be and why?
For Julia, this would some sort of crafting with fibers. For Wayne, he would rather be farming.

Tell us about a time you were making something that came out better than expected and how it happened.
Ok, so Julia is the creative one and deserves credit for 99% of the cool stuff we do. However, one time a customer requested a bath salt for her boyfriend. She was looking for something a little more masculine than our Lavender and Rose offerings. Wayne decided to play around with some essential oils we had used in one of our holiday soaps. The result was a combination of Virginia Cedarwood, Scotch Pine and Fir Needle that makes you think you are taking a bath in the middle of an ancient wood.

Who is one person living or dead, famous or not, who you wish owned one of your bars of soap and why?
We have both lost loved ones who we cared about a great deal and who will always be an important part of who we are. These were individuals who were taken well before their time, and before they had a chance to fully explore and enjoy the bounty that life has to offer. Sharing our craft with these individuals would be very meaningful for many reasons, but most importantly, to let them know that we are alright.

What’s your favorite part of the process?
Our favorite part of the process is selling at markets and festivals. We so enjoy when a customer picks up a bar of our soap, takes a deep sniff and exhales a sigh of wonder at the purity of the smell. Knowing that you have created a product that people really get excited about is a wonderful feeling.

One random thing you think people should know.
Dogs make our lives better.
(Sidenote from Jessica: I totally agree with Wayne and Julia on this.)

Avocado Oil All-Natural Soap

Your shop address/facebook/Twitter/blog/website. Etc.
website: http://www.belleterrenc.com
store: http://belleterre.etsy.com
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/belleterrenc
blog: http://belleterre.wordpress.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/belleterre
pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/belleterre


If you could have one superpower what would it be?
 Patience. Anyone who thinks this isn't a superpower is goofy.