Butterfly Chic Boutique Blog

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POLYMER CLAY

by Jill Kollmann

This is perhaps one of the most underestimated materials used by artists today.  Calling it “clay” is almost a misnomer, because it’s one of the most chameleon-like materials you’ll ever see.

Polymer artists work with one of more of several types of polymer clay. The most common uses for polymer clay include sculpture such  fabulous dolls, figurines, home décor items, and jewelry.  Polymer clay doesn’t dry if left out, so it’s easy to stop and re-start a project.  Completed pieces are cured in a regular home oven.  When sanded and glazed, some polymer work will have you convinced that it is glass.  Some mixed media artists use polymer with all sorts of other materials to provide additional color and texture to their pieces.

I am the jewelry-making variety of polymer artist.  I custom-blend colors and manipulate the clay to provide shading, depth, texture, and some cool special effects.  Polymer clay lends itself to being used with all sorts of metal leaf, alcohol inks, acrylic paints, mica powders, resin, colored pencils, stamping inks, and even kitchen herbs, to provide texture, shine, and color. 

I manipulate the clay by rolling, twisting, flattening, texturing with rubber stamps, and cutting,  All of these gyrations cause the clay to move around and reorganize itself.  If several colors or shades of clay are being manipulated together, we can get all sorts of beautiful results.  One of my favorite techniques is millefiori, or caning, in which long tubes of different colored clays are combined into a single tube, or cane, and then sliced into pieces that are all exactly the same.  Another of my favorites is “shadowing”, in which mica-laden clay is impressed with a rubber stamp and then the raised portions are shaved off, leaving a shadow that is absolutely smooth but looks three dimensional.

In the hands of an experienced artist, polymer clay can be made to look like the most gorgeous wood you’ve ever seen, the highest quality turquoise or amber, mother of pearl, opal, cinnabar, agate, quartz – you name it.  And it’s very light-weight, which means we can make a big chunk of something and it won’t weigh a lot – perfect for substantial jewelry pieces. 

Literally every day, polymer artists are finding new ways to use this marvelous material to create works of art that are beautiful, functional, and in some cases wearable.  Many of us are members of various polymer clay guilds including the Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy (PCAGOE)  - so come check us out!

This is the 1st of our technicalities posts and I’m very excited about them! technicalities will be mostly guests posts from other crafters about their craft. I hope you all enjoy it and learn something new.

By Julia
Yarnbeast.etsy.com
The question I’m most asked at craft fairs is, without a doubt, “Do you knit or crochet?” After I explain that I do both crafts. I enjoy the brief moment when the interested party congratulates me and tells me I’m a Renaissance Woman of all Yarn Domains (no one’s said those exact words to me yet but I figure it’s only a matter of time before that title is bestowed upon me) but I hide an ugly truth: I’m not all that good at crochet.

While I do make the occasional stuffed crochet pumpkin and cupcake, knitting was my first love and always will be. Both crafts are fun and have their technical pros and cons but what interests me are the way the two crafts just give off a different feel. These are my observations of my own abilities with either craft and by no means am I saying crochet can’t be intricate, time-consuming and lovely. Just not in my hook-hesitant hands.

*A knitting project is a long term relationship. A crochet project is a one night stand.

When I learned to crochet after a year of knitting, I could not keep my hands off it. I made doily after doily while my knitting needles sank further into my yarn pile, still clutching the stitches of some long forgotten project. But as the weeks passed, I grew tired of starting a new project every time I went to my yarn stash. The cell phone cozies and flower magnets were fun for a while but I yearned for something long term. I spent the next three months knitting an afghan. I still like to cheat on my knitting with some cotton yarn and a sexy green crochet hook but after two hours or so, I’m ready to go home to my two-needle honey.

*Knitting is scary.

A crochet hook is non-threatening. A long, aluminum knitting needle looks like something Xena the Warrior Princess would pull from her leather skirt-belt and use to stab an inspired-from-Greek-Mythology monster in the eye. A crochet hook just looks like, you know, a hook.

*”Knitter” is easier to say than “Crocheter,”

According to my spell check, “Crocheter” is not a word. I read somewhere there is a proper term for “one who crochets” but, as with all useful information, it has slipped my mind. “Hooker” has become a popular term among crafty people and, while funny to say in front of your friends at the yarn store, still raises eyebrows and prompts a giggly, awkward explanation to the general public.

*Crochet is like the baby sister showing her great aunt Linda her newest dance routine while everyone else takes pictures of her big sister Knit in her prom dress.

People tend to say “cute” when they see crochet and “beautiful” when they see something knit. I think this is a result of it being easy to create round, fun shapes with crochet while knitting lends itself to flat, sometimes elaborate designs.

*Crochet is portable.

The great thing about working on a little crochet project is that it can easily fit into a purse or even a pocket. You can work on a granny square while sitting next to a stranger on a bus. It’s a lot harder to work a sweater on 13” needles in the subway without poking your seat mate in the eye. That danger, and the clanging, show stopping noise of a dropped knitting needle hitting the floor can be more embarrassing than explaining why you just called yourself a hooker.

In the end, it’s great to knit and it’s just as great to crochet. Both crafts can produce lacy, cute, beautiful,, warm, or silly projects and being able to do either will probably impress whoever is eying you from across the crowded coffee shop. Personally, when it’s a rainy Saturday and VH1 is showing a Top Model marathon, I’m more likely to knit than crochet. But in the end, I’m happy to be a knitter who sometimes ignores spell check and declares herself a crocheter as well.

I am SUPER excited about this guest post. I’ve been meaning to touch on branding since I started the blog, when I stumbled across this post on the Etsy forums I HAD to convo Electric Boogaloo and ask if I could use it here. She very graciously said yes, and I’m so glad, she went way more in depth than I would have :0)

And be sure to check out her super cute shop too :0)

At my day job I work for a marketing agency and just finished an article about branding for software startups. It occurred to me that the same principals apply to building an online art/craft business. So I thought I’d share some of the tips on branding… I cut out a bunch of stuff about start ups and dealing with agencies etc. but the basic meat of the article is here:
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WHAT IS BRANDING?
Branding is the persuasive message that you send to customers at every touch point.

Humans tend to personify everything. We’re social creatures, and we look for everything from cars to laptops to have a personality. That’s crazy, a company isn’t a living person with its own personality, but it’s the way we’re wired. Or more to the point, it’s the way your potential customers are wired. So they are going to project a personality onto your business entity no matter what you do. That personality is your company’s brand.

The act of branding means that you are taking control and actively trying to shape what people view as that personality. When you control it, you can use it to make your company memorable in a good way – and ultimately in a way that persuades people to buy from and invest in your business.

So okay. What are touch points? Branding touch points are all of the obvious things like your logo, your brochures, your web site, and all of that fancy creative jazz. But it’s also things you might overlook: the design of your billing, the tone of every email and letter that is sent out, the way people answer the phone, the automated system and hold messages. Think of it in terms of your own personality: you are a very intelligent, nice person (we don’t actually know you, but let’s assume for this exercise that you are intelligent and nice). But if you wear giant red and yellow clown shoes, or have a habit of blowing your nose into your bare hand, or mumble into your shirt whenever you answer a question, people will roll those details into their picture of who you are.

It’s much easier to control your company’s brand if you start from the beginning, before customers and investors start forming opinions. Think about your touchpoints. If you make software then your interface, manual, training, help, and support are all touchpoints where you are communicating something about your company to your customers. If you sell a widget, then touchpoints include packaging, the product itself, customer service reps, sales, and even the invoices and inventory process for wholesale orders. And no matter what you are selling, every person in your company is potentially a touchpoint. Every time anyone says “So what do you do?” – that’s an opportunity to sell.

So branding really carries down to every level of everything that happens every day. It’s much easier to do this from the beginning. But you don’t need to throw money down a mysterious well to get started. You can do much of the work yourself, right now.

THE BRANDING WORKSHEET
Brand your company right here and now.
1. Print this out and fill in the blanks.
Imagine the perfect potential customer standing in front of you, ready to hear about your company. Fill in the blanks to form a brief persuasive pitch:
The Product:
You should buy ______________ from my company because ___________________________ _______________________________ and _______________________________.

The Personality:
We are a __________________ (forward thinking, cutting edge, innovative, high-energy, kind hearted, high quality, cost-cutting, family oriented, friendly, intelligent, high-class, elegant, comfortable, etc) company that ______________. (cares, pushes the boundaries, is here to make your life easier)

The Promise:
We promise that if you buy from us, you will be happy because now you can _____________________. (Stop worrying, feel good, simplify your life/job, impress people, etc)

Congratulations, you have just articulated your company’s brand.

2. List all of your company’s customer touchpoints. Every piece of communication that customers and prospective customers see:

3. Look at each of the touch points and ask: Does this touchpoint help make our brand promise? Does it convince people that we are what our brand claims? How can we change it to make it more persuasive?
Examples – redoing the forms, changing the tone people use when they answer customer questions, thinking about the wording of emails, making the software easy to use.

I want to thank Karina of Soap That Makes Scents™ at http://kreatedbykarina.etsy.com

For being my first guest writer for the blog. She did a great job on the article and I look forward to working with her again. Be sure to go to http://kreatedbykarina.etsy.com and check out her shop.

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*Tips On How To Sell Online*

After speaking with many craft persons in business, I hear over and over again that they want to put their work for sale on the Internet, but they don’t know how or where to begin.If you have ever browsed the net and ended up at other sites than the one(s) you were looking for in the first place, you know how easy it is to get distracted. This is even more true, when setting up your business on the Internet.An approach that I have found that works best is to start by making “to do” lists of the different online marketing avenues. For instance, your major activities should include:

* sell your work at online auction sites
* get listed in the major search engines
* seek links from other sites
* write articles to get publicity
* add affiliate programs to your site
* set up an organized email campaign to follow up with your site’s visitors.

Create a list of activities to be accomplished under each of those marketing tasks. Every day, plan to accomplish a group of tasks to promote your site. For instance, here are a few suggested actions to be taken daily:

* seek links from 5 craft related web sites
* post two auctions for your craft products
* resubmit your new web pages to the major search engines
* post an article to at least one media outlet about your craft site as publicity
* post a helpful comment on at least two discussion groups
* weekly, send an email newsletter to visitors to your site

I know many craft artists who never give much thought to marketing or planning offline or online. They just do the shows or get their store accounts and go along merrily until trends change and all of a sudden sales drop and they don’tknow what to do. With a little time spent planning, one can determine several alternative markets for sales. If one avenue slows down, you have other options for staying afloat.Answering the following questions will help you begin thinking about your marketing plan.

* What does your site do? What is the main benefit to your visitor? Do you want it to educate, entertain or sell? Do you want to create new prospects or stay in touch with regular customers? Do you want to attract more wholesale buyers? Are you looking for international buyers?

* Who is most likely to be your customer? What type of person is she/he? Example: age, sex, income level, education. Give serious thought to determining who are the visitors to your site(s). This is a big part of learning how it should be designed. You may have more than one type of visitor. For example, you may have U.S. retail customers, wholesale customers, catalog buyers, and international buyers.

* What other kinds of sites are your visitors likely to visit? For instance, if you make and sell quilts, people visiting your site might also be reached through sewing web sites.

You want your site to get visitors to do the following:
* interact with your site
* leave their contact information
* purchase something you are selling
* refer others to you

Create targeted goals for your online business and measure the results you get whenever you complete a phase. By working in measurable steps, you can pace yourself and track which efforts are worth pursuing further and which activities you should abandon. If you don’t work in stages, you may find yourself overwhelmed, scattered and consequently disappointed in the whole process.

Karina-
Soap That Makes Scents™
http://kreatedbykarina.etsy.com