Going To The Chapel

I hear wedding bells ringing. These little sock monkeys, aptly adorned in royal blue to coordinate with the wedding party, have been invited to A.'s wedding next year. Notice the heart on the back of the heads? They will be given a place of honor, wired in amongst the blooms of the bride's bouquet!

The Bead You Need Branches Out

Notice anything different? New shop! over on ArtFire. So now i am running two shops. Neat thing is, i have them both signed up on Google Analytics, so i can compare how they are doing in terms of numbers of views and such.

The etsy outlet, if i understand these things correctly, is geared primarily for searches within its own site. So mostly, a person isn't going to find my stuff unless i've sent them to it via my own promotion efforts, OR they happen to be on the etsy website. I think etsy claims to have a membership of 10 million people, so that's a lot of shoppers.

ArtFire, however, seems to push their seller's items on google, so theoretically more people from off-site will happen upon my stuff. According to The Answer Bank, there are 250 million plus people surfing the net on any given day. I like them odds!

Papillon Beads

One of my recent custom bead orders called for a papillon likeness. Something about the expression of the one on the right reminds me of a French porcelain figurine. The one on the left is more of a cartoon version. I'm new at dog bead renderings and it has been a little frustrating, taking several attempts to get something not coarse and clumsy.

That Crazy Cat

I had to come up with a cat bead for a wonderful customer. And that is how this cool design was born, and i'm cazy about it. I want to spend a few days working out some more color schemes for them. But the kitty beads have to wait until i get about 20 sock monkey beads made! More on those in a future blog post. The red crazy cat is available now in the shop.

That Crazy Cat Lady's

Sock It To Cancer

I've been really busy lately with custom orders, and it has been a lot of fun. This pair of sock monkeys sport a yellow ribbon and initials "H1" and "H2" for a couple of girls who are fighting cancer. I'll talk about the Beads Of Courage Program in an upcoming blog post.

The yellow Astro bead and blue green BandOSilver beads are in the shop now. I'm working on cat beads, bird beads, dog beads, dog tags, and blue wedding sock monkeys this week (photos soon).