Seven Weird Colors and the Sellers Who Love Them

As may have become obvious to everyone, I have a massive thing for color names.  Here are some colors from Wikipedia's list with cool names, cool backstories, or both, and the Etsy items that are tagged with them:

The color: International orange, which appears in a number of service organizations' marks and on World Football League balls.
The item: Seven sellers have tagged eight total items as International Orange.

This hand-braided Maharan wool rug by mrsginther, who also has a great profile page, warns your friends of narrow stripes of high-atmosphere conditions.


The color: Fallow, one of the oldest color names in the English language, referring to the sandy soil of a fallowing field.
The item: It took some manual counting due to synonyms and misspellings of "follow," but there about 26 handmade items tagged with this color.

The porcelain Lucitano horse ornament by SandrasShop reminds your equestrian of his equally old and proud tradition.


The color: Mountbatten pink, invented as a naval camouflage color that only worked part of the day.
The item: Only one item tagged with this!

This crocheted poncho by HEraMade lets you blend in with crocheted naval sunsets.


The color: Fulvous, which chiefly describes birds and means "kind of tawny rufous burnt reddish orangish yellowish grayish, kind of."
The item: Seven sellers tag one item apiece with this color.

This print of an original acrylic breastfeeding painting by h0neyburn uses the name to describe the color of the outline of a well-fed toddler.  h0neyburn uses a lot of these color names; I keep seeing her stuff pop up as I search.


The color: Isabelline, apocryphally named after Isabella I of Castile, who vowed not to change her underwear until her husband had broken a seige; victory unfortunately took eight months, at which time her small-clothes were understandably no longer snowy white.  Isabelline or Isabella palominos, the very pale-colored specimens of cream-gene horses, are named for this tint.
The item: A whopping 39 items are tagged with the color name isabelline.

This plump crocheted heart by Sabahnur looks nice and clean against your hair on a headband, and if you have a cream palomino, you can match!


The color: Falu red, which is after a paint made of starch and very finely divided hematite, and is used to paint traditional Swedish homes -- a bit like haint blue here in the South.
The item: Five sellers use this color to tag a total of 11 items.

This set of twelve organza blossoms brings traditional Old World color to your modern garment.


The color: Urobilin, named for the organic pigment responsible for the color of urine (yum!).
The items: Four sellers win the "I didn't note the Latinate root" award, and perhaps ironically, all four items are so lovely I couldn't pick just one.

The elegant vintage-style glass and dyed jade necklace by thebeadedhound will have part of its proceeds donated to coonhound rescue.  The set of 8 shabby chic hairpins by hbs1406 are stunningly photographed and would be gorgeous for a fall wedding.

Instant Vintage

Available here.

What is it about this color combination that screams "vintage"?

I mean, naturally the color of the large plastic/resin buttons is very vintage -- I generally refer to that shade as "60's peachy pink," though from a quick consultation of that ever-handy resource, Wikipedia's list of colors by shade, I suppose technically it's coral.  (Random side note -- I'm that weird genetic anomaly, a colorblind female, so I can't actually distinguish a strong orange from a true red.  I have to ask M for a judgment of harmony if I'm designing in reds or greens, and it's made putting together the Mixed Media Packs for Ballet Llama something of an adventure.)

Anyway.  It's not the muted coral hue I'm referring to, but the combination of it with black.  Pink with black always looks either vintage awesome or modern tweeny "rock star" bleh to me, but this is a particular combination that M and some of my coworkers reacted to in the same manner.  Maybe it's the blue-black jet hue of the blacks that's doing it; that's also a very vintage-feeling color.

This, incidentally, is also one where I bit the bullet and included a photo on black, which may or may not have actually been a good idea:


But it looked too bizarre with black at the edges and white in the middle, and this gives a truer idea of the variation among the buttons, so this was the only way to make the contrast work.

In general, these aren't great photos. I'll need to rework the cropping, I think, and try for a deeper focus.

But hey, check out those great 1960s flapper-style rose beads!

As a matter of interest ...

While my suppliers are trying to calm everyone, the laws of supply and demand would indicate that turquoise prices are going to hit the roof again like they did in the 1980s.  China is going to be dramatically slowing its production of turquoise rough -- a couple of sources are suggesting that that country's output may fall by as much as 75%.


Available here.

While this is no doubt exaggerated, it has some interesting implications.  A lot of turquoise miners are going to lose their jobs -- but the loss of life in mining should slow too.  The environment around some of the turquoise mines should improve.

And as for what this will do in the jewelry industry ... well, turquoise was recently a Pantone Color of the Year, and it is still exceedingly popular, since it fits both the fruity jelly-bean shades that are in everything this year and the dustier ones predicted for next summer.  As the prices rise, we may see a surge in substitutes, like dyed or undyed howlite, which pleases me -- I much prefer howlite.  Turquoise may be found in fine jewelry more often than casual jewelry by the end of this decade -- as it becomes priced as a luxury, it may be paired with sterling, gold, and precious stones more often than leather, fiber, and bone.  That could conceivably redefine tribal/ethnic-inspired jewelry styles.

This will be interesting to see!

Unrelatedly, I am sick.  I do this every year, but usually I manage to weather it before the school year begins.  However, it's possible my body is still on California scheduling (UCR starts in late September) and thinks it's got plenty of time to be ridiculous.

Finding Changes

I like to delude myself that I make these posts so that when I'm rich and famous, my slavish scholarly fans will be able to date my work.  Also, I figure you customer types like to know I actually think about this stuff.

In the past, with some variations, I've used flat headpins and fishhook earwires, as such:


However, especially with doing all the bridal designs, I've occasionally ended up using ball headpins and French wires, as such:


Images courtesy Fire Mountain Gems.

I've just finally made the investment to switch over more or less entirely to the second option.  I prefer the look of ballpins, which give the effect of a tiny additional bead rather than a "stopper" -- and they mimic the look of hand-fired ones better.  Also, while I never believed all the people who told me this, the coiled fishhook wires genuinely don't balance quite as well.  Admittedly, I don't have problems with them -- and I send all my heavier earrings with rubber stoppers to solve any problems others with less beefy earlobes have -- but the ball-end ones give a touch of confidence.  And they're rarer, so I think they look more professional.

So I'll work through my former stock -- especially since there are some design types that the coiled wires suit beautifully, I just don't do them that often.  But overall, I've decided that it's going to be mostly ball-type findings from here on out.

With exceptions to be made, of course, for cool headpins like the enameled ones in these earrings:


Available here.

But ball earwires, anyway.  Although wrapping a colored wire over the coils might be cool ... I'm off to experiment.

Scribblegoat Press Release: Jewelry Still Best Gift, Say Designers

I wrote the following press release for one of my Etsy copywriting clients.  Please notify me in a comment if reposting or quoting.  The link to my client's shop is at the bottom of the short release, after the jump.  -Chelsea
 

Jewelry Still Best Gift, Say Designers

21 June 2011 – The classics still work best when you want to please and flatter.  For women and girls of any age, the traditional gift of jewelry is still a top choice for special occasions.

Mother’s Day, graduations, children’s birthdays – all of these are occasions when something that sparkles or shines is usually welcome, according to designer and online shopkeeper Linda Ann Stewart.

Business Chatter

Business-minded readers may wish to check out a recent Bullish column here: Doing Business with Friends and Still Having Friends (and a Business), by Jen Dziura.  You can find me "joining the discussion" (i.e., rambling to the faceless 'Net; that site doesn't have much comment activity and I was excessively lengthy) at the bottom of the article.

And check out some of the new jewelry items in the Steampunk Assemblage section of the shop.  Shown are a pendant, a necklace, and a brooch, ranging from clean utopian styles to gritty post-apocalyptic assemblages:

Turning the evil eye, or, Multicultural beads! Yay!

My favorite big-box wholesaler recently (and by "recently" I of course mean "four or five months ago") put up an interesting article which is a brief discussion of the history of "eye" beads in multiple cultures, including African and Arabian ones. Great resource for those doing multicultural steampunk, as I find that steampunk designs are often at their best when their cultural affiliation and their salvaged nature, if any, are subtle and harmonious parts of the design. After reading it, I'm thinking of working some agate eyes into one of my "steamsonae."

I've gotten some excellent evil-eye pendants in the recent past from Lorienna on Etsy. The items come from Ankara, but I've found her remarkably speedy, and the evil-eye glass items are handmade in Turkey:


And a weird pair of earrings for your pleasure:

Available here.

Multiculturalism in Victorian Accessories

Victorian clothing was slightly more resistant to extremes than we are sometimes led to believe.  Then as now, Paris was the center of the fashion world, where extremes of couture included (during Jane Austen's era) piercing the nipples and wearing sheer, dampened bodices so the piercings were visible through the clothing -- and the Parisian fashion plates we think of as our primary sources for Victorian clothing were to the dress of, say, wealthy English and German women in the 19th century as high-fashion magazines are to day-to-day celebrity attire today.
However, while dresses might stay plainer and more conservative than fashion plates show, worldly socialites wished to bedeck themselves in all the luxuries of Empire; colonial capitalists wanted to adorn their daughters in the spoils of their trade.  This meant both other parts of Europe, plus "the Orient" (Africa and the East). Yet, this article discusses, the Eastern woman was stereotyped to be the antithesis of everything a Victorian woman ought to be.  So how to combine that "exotic" allure with good, stolid Western virtue?

Accessories and trimmings.


Victorian outerwear mantles from the 1850s and 1870s, North African inspired, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose online exhibit of Orientalist clothing is here and as droolworthy as it is educational.

Hence, we get turbans worn for evening in the 30s, patterned Chinese and Japanese silks and velvet brocades in at-home and bedroom wear throughout three centuries (the wallpaper in the Ribbon and Ladies' Bedrooms at Woodburn is another great example), and mosaic jewelry, Etruscan Revival jewelry like the demi-parure below, and (I kid you not) chandelier earrings.


Image courtesy of Jewels at South Kensington.

Unbeknownst to most, cameos are actually an expression of, not Orientalism but definitely multiculturalism.  They're an old art form; there's a tale of Alexander the Great presenting his lover Bagoas with a cameo portrait in chalcedony.  The best place in the world to get cameos was (and is) Pompeii, where there was a school of cameo-making and where students sold their work to pay their tuition. Lava cameos, made from the remaining lava rock from the Mt. Vesuvius explosion, were most popular. Lava cameos were a frequent gift to sweethearts when a young gentleman just out of school finished his Grand Tour. Owning one meant that you or someone you knew had either been to Rome or paid an exorbitant amount for an import.

For more on multicultural Victorian accessories: Have a look at the references to African imported silks and the turban Algerienne (remember Algeria was a violently oppressed French colony at the time) in these 1844 fashion forecasts, and later, this discussion of Poiret's exoticized Edwardian hats and slippers.  And Beyond Victoriana has a wonderful analysis of what incorporating Orientalism (or the delightful neologism "Victorientalism") in steampunk actually means; I don't entirely agree with the discussion, because I frankly think the alternative to Victorientalism is whitewashing, but it is intelligent and anyone interested in Orientalism should give it a read.

Treasury Wednesday: And now for something completely different

This started out as a nice, pretty koi-pond treasury, partly because a lot of Japanese-inspired stuff was going to Japan Relief at the time.  Somehow it turned into "Dude!  Sea monsters!"

The next couple of Treasury Wednesdays are probably going to be under M's and my joint shop, Ballet Llama, partly because I was too lazy to log out and partly because treasuries are great advertising.  We've been selling a lot of awesome vintage '60s-'70s cab settings over there.

Anyway.  It's Weird Treasury Time (and this is on the list of my favorite treasuries I've ever done):

'Dark End of the Koi Pond' by balletllama

Weird, whimsical, wild -- fish.

Sea Monkey on Frenc... benconservato $15.00	Black and Gold Kiss... DesignsByAmbia... $59.00	Clever Fish Necklac... ISeeFaces $22.00	Three Sea Monster F... benconservato $9.50
Knitting Needle Cas... lenabrowndesig... $39.95	Original Watercolor... jaynesartgalle... $100.00	Kyoto Cuff Bracelet kelliets $40.00	ocean perch quilte... dreamscapes123 $499.00
All Natural Organic... RunningBugFarm $3.30	Tattoo Koi red and ... nivule $84.00	Invitados, Original... holli $1200.00	Black and Gold Sea ... benconservato $60.00
The Maximillion Bra... LondonAnaise $37.00	60x16 Large Custom ... NathalieVan $195.00	Pearl in Seaweed an... luckyduct $185.00	Striking Black and ... VividAnima $25.00

Treasury tool is sponsored by Lazzia.com A/B image testing.

Watch This Space: Writing Workshop Live-Blog

Since this seems like a Scribblegoat sort of thing, I will be live-blogging tonight's Etsy Success Writing Workshop in comments to this post.

I expect to be mildly critical, if only because I first heard about it through Regretsy, but I was surprised to find that their worksheet is exactly what I would have made -- the first half, anyway.  You can download a PDF of the worksheet from the link above.  The last question, the first-person narrative from the object's point of view, left me going "Really?  Really." and seems to belong in much more artistic venues than even the handmade business world -- the goal here is evoking emotion in order to sell, not evoking emotion for the sake of it.  But the first two are good questions: 1.) List three cliches from Etsy site copy you're tired of and rewrite one in a fresh and interesting manner, and 2.) take two pages of writing about yourself or your work and reduce it to Tweet length.  That's exactly what I recommend to my copywriting customers and to my college students.

The problem I expect is that the Etsy business model is sort of painfully whimsical, and I think that divorcing and developing the "business self" independently from the "creative self" is one of the best things a handmade-seller-cum-copywriter can do for him- or herself.

Anyhow, I'll be blogging about the Livestream feed with a probable combination of professional opinion and snark, starting tonight at seven o'clock Eastern, so watch this space!

UPDATE: Am now blogging! Click the comments below.

Five errors to avoid in your descriptions

This belongs in the word-choice-for-sellers series, I guess, or at least in the vicinity.  Why can't it go there?  Because I'm about to be spiteful and negative and not pull punches and Rena is lovely and sweet and generally a national treasure.

If you are trying to maintain a Positive Day, I happily invite you to scroll down and look through my tag list, there in the right column under my contact links, to look for something that looks interesting to read.  I'm not usually this nasty.  But I'm getting it out of my system today.

Still with me?  Okay.

Read on for a list of things never to do in an item description.

Colorways

Sometime in the last few months I read an article or blog post, which I cannot now locate, in which a jewelry artist mentioned having found a thrift-store copy of a book called something like Color Combinations for Oil Painters which she regularly used in her design process.

Longtime readers will be able to predict that I was a little mystified by this for a moment, because I am a Bad Artist, or at any rate one who apparently functions a little differently from most.  After some thinking, I realized that most of this is a result of my style: I generally construct around a focal, so the combination of colors I should use is in front of me and it's a simple matter of finding surrounding shades -- I can't remember the technical name for them; the shade and tint or highlight/lowlight of a particular hue, and I know there's a name for that.  It's like if I had a focal that was orange and leaf green I would select beads in blood orange and canteloupe, forest and mint to set it off nicely.

Anyway.  Even when I'm doing without focals or creating my own, I generally work from a "character" or a "concept" or a "story" (I am leery of these terms, and thus place them in scare quotes) rather than a color combination.  I make jewelry for the characters in manga I read, I dream up jewelry to go with suggested wedding themes in design blogs I run across, I pick leftover beads out of the cups in my bead board and make something with those to avoid sorting them back, I imagine my earrings based on the hairstyle they'd suit or what color M has complained about not having enough of lately.  I can come to the bead board thinking "Okay, aqua, brown and olive," as I did with this (older) piece:



But that's a challenge.  I suppose that means I should be doing it more.  But it's much more natural for me to start picking stuff out while my brain repeats "a dragonfly that landed in a glass of iced lemonade" (yes, really; I didn't have enough crystalline yellows for that one to work) or "Mempis city rain" or "that minute when they first come into Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring."  This is really just another part of my love affair with words: Color names are more inspiring to me than color shades.

If there happens to be any other designer like me, I have found this a handy resource: Randall Munroe's color survey worked out how people name various web colors -- sorted by colorblindness and sex-at-birth.

Other than that, I resolve that sometime this month I am going to take one of those jewelry color-choice tools and actually use it for an actual piece of jewelry.  So there, brain.

So there.

Tutorial: Wire-Wrapped Earrings

I figured I might as well do a free jewelry tutorial at some point, so why not the wire-wrapped bridal earrings from February?  They're a lovely simple, graceful, infinitely customizable design that can be made more or less casual.  And maybe I can get the photo onto Craftgawker (unlikely; they like their straight-on hero shots at Craftgawker, though it's much easier to be vetted in now, either because I've improved more than I realize or because they're no longer permitting Etsy post photos so there's drastically less competition).

Anyhow.

Free Handmade Jewelry Tutorial: How to Make Hand-Brushed Wire-Wrapped Earrings
suitable for bridal, formal or casual wear, with a subtle 14k brushed gold finish.

You will need:
- 8 inches (or so) 21g 14k gold-filled wire, dead soft
- 2 round 10mm beads
- 2 contrasting round 6mm beads
- 1 pair gold-filled earwires

- flush cutters
- round-nose pliers
- chain-nose pliers
- sanding block
-nylon-jawed pliers

The sanding block can be acquired inexpensively at your local hardware store.  As for the rest, get the good stuff.  Instructions after the jump.

A fresh venture

You may have noticed a new link over in the "Contact!" box to the right.  I have sort of leaped (leapt? leaped?) headlong into a new business area.

See, the president of the International Polymer Clay Association and the delightful Rena from Home Jewelry Business Success Tips, both of whom have published my series, have both kindly implied that they think there's a market for writing workshops focused on small handcraft businesses.

I'm considering hitting the local Michaels to see if they want me to offer such artist-focused writing classes, but until then -- I sort of set up an Etsy shop in one six-hour marathon of GIMP and word processing.

Consequently.

If you agree that text is vital to online selling, and would like to have me focus on your own descriptions with you to render them ever more readable and engaging, my services are now rentable by the two-hour commitment, at quite an excellent price; I expect I could see my way clear to offering a 10% introductory discount to blog readers, so simply mention this post to me and I will discount any service offered by 10%, refunded through PayPal.

I dream in black and burgundy

My customer's wedding was at the end of February, so time to show off the jewelry I made for her party!

Her earrings, wire-wrapped 14k gold fill with a hand-brushed finish.  I'd never actually done a brushed finish, so I allowed myself an hour or two to devote to learning the technique on inexpensive wire, and purchased a nice fine wire brush and file set.  I soon discovered that: (a.) it's really easy, and (b.) five minutes and a sanding block works better and looks better.  We live and learn.



I'm contemplating making up a tutorial for those.  Look for it at the beginning of April!

The bracelets were three-strand Bordeaux Swarovski pearl and black onyx with pewter toggle clasps and silver-plated charms made of crystal pearls with bead caps.
Lessons learned here:
(a.) Get the wrist measurements before ordering the supplies -- I think this customer may have gone handmade partly because she couldn't find anything ready-made to fit her very small bridesmaids.  I have a bunch of extra pearls.  But this is okay because I also learned:
(b.) Allow "wiggle room" in your pricing for stuff to sell out two minutes before you place your order.  That is not the originally planned clasp.  And I had to get the 6mm pearls much more expensively from Beadaholique when Fire Mountain Gems sold out of them since they were having a sale.
The clasp: an adventure.  I highly recommend this shop and this one for supplies; neither of them were selling multiples of the clasp, but they were both very prompt in telling me so!

I couldn't resist doing "vintage" styled shots of the jewelry.  This is the "winter" version, styled with browned leaves of flowering kale -- I desaturated, soft-focused and upped the dynamic color range for a sense of time and nostalgia:



And here's the "warmer" version, half-sepia-filtered, graduated-tinted, and soft-focused after styled with a litter of the deadheads from my apricot violas, for a sense of nostalgia, the warm blush of the beautiful and impermanent:


Pruning makes for great props. Also, I definitely want to do some more sanding of metal for the nice matte finish. 

The total of the jewelry was five bracelets and a pair of earrings: all in all, a good-sized commission, though if I hadn't been custom-sizing each one and thus redesigning a little, I'd have naturally gone stark raving mad on bracelet four.  But as it was, getting the same design with varying wrist sizes was an interesting challenge.  Much fun!

Fabric pearls through the ages

This is my fact for the day.  Not something you often think about ... fabric imitations of pearls. It's an interesting little fashion meme through history.

These are Japanese cotton pearls, from this NOS Etsy seller, whose prices are remarkably okay:


Photo copyright J.A. Hershberger.

Cotton pearls were made in the 1920s and are literally made of very tightly wound cotton thread with a nacre coating.

During the Victorian age, the finest evening toilettes might be accented with chenille balls, embroidered onto the fabric or strung in imitation of ropes of pearls:


Image from an 1870's Harper's Bazar, reproduced in Stella Blum's awesome book of plates.

All the round beading you see is chenille.  The effect was often quite luxurious and medieval-looking.

This does mean that soft fuzzy balls are perfectly acceptable for steampunk designs, historically speaking.  Hm.

So that would be today's unusual historical fashion thingy, for no better reason than that I've been thinking about imitation pearls what with the Swarovski I'm working with of late ... I like how they feel!  The weight of pearls is really hard to mimic, but those are heavy and weighty and rich running through your hands.  This is why I always let people pick up my jewelry at shows all they like:  I like my jewelry heavy, with the sole exception of earrings.  It makes me perceive it as more valuable.  Is this uncommon?

Texture in jewelry photography

Staged photos (style shots; the opposite, with item alone, is called a hero shot) in newer shops are often something of an object lesson in contrast. Which is not the owners' fault. Considering.  Have a look at these covers from Bead Unique magazine for the example new jewelry businesses have to follow:



I think that vine is the actual beaded piece on the left side ... though mostly by process of elimination ...

The cover shots are better now -- those seem to date from the early days (2005ish) when they clearly had no idea what they were doing -- and I call them out with all affection, because I love that magazine, but the insides are often no better what with the backgrounds being the same color or texture as the jewelry being photographed.

Which brings me, slowly, to my point: I think that texture difference is actually just as important as color difference in showing jewelry.  Here are some of my earlier photos, in (as best I remember) the order I took them:

The first one, the necklace, could be interesting, and I still think it's a neat composition, but it's really flat. The reason? There's not enough contrast between the construction paper and the metals, so those fade out, and the glossiness of the silk coin purse matches the glossiness of the beads too well. The sandalwood fan, the construction paper and the metals dominate the image with their softer, earthy texture that is appealing but not flattering to this piece, while the shiny silk and the shiny cloisonne compete, dragging the eye in different directions at once.  The white pearls then pop too much.  They're nice color choices, but the texture is all wrong.  I'm pretty sure that was the first jewelry photo I ever took.

The bracelet draped on the shell was one of my very first good photos -- and, not coincidentally, my first actual Etsy sale.  This one works because the color contrast is strong and the texture contrast is nicely layered: strong background to very soft shell to in-the-middle bracelet. The fade of the ivory silver desert sun beads (which apparently are made by firing a ceramic glaze over a sterling plate; pretty!) into the shell works because at the image's focal point, that rough grey debris forms a soft, but sufficient, color contrast and a much more marked texture contrast.  The black glass stands out because it's so silky and smooth next to the shell.

The pendant photo was after I switched to my pottery background but just doesn't work at all.  Part of the appeal of the piece in person is the way the organic wirework (that's still my favorite piece of wire-wrapping I've ever done) complements in shape and contrasts in texture with the matte Ching Hai jade it's wound around; unfortunately, the jade and the rim of that broken pot?  Exact same soft, earthy matte smoothness so you can't really see it.  The gleaming, saturated glass color and smooth wire work okay, though.  It might have worked if I'd laid the pendant in the concentric circles of soft grooves at the center of the dish.

That last one of the earrings isn't bad.  Now, I'd jack up the highlights a couple thousand times for more contrast, but the unique highlights of the pearls and their almost-smooth surface contrasts nicely with the soft brush lines in the pot, which also carry the eye back and forth between the earrings and causes their slightly different clusters to be perceived as a unit.  That one works.

I still do staged style shots, but mostly for Flickr and the blog:

This one follows that same rule of layered textures, both in the jewelry itself and the photo composition -- from the concrete ground through the table to the piece itself, it's grainy, glossy-smooth, soft, grainy, glossy-smooth -- and it's one of those that I am really and truly happy with after almost no editing, which is rare enough to be noteworthy indeed.