So sales on Etsy died after I went to Canada. I'll admit this has been the most frustrating week I've had on Etsy since the start.
http://mannequinreject.etsy.com
It appears there's a problem with search/sub category pages not loading right/renewals getting pushed down to page 6 instantly/blah blah blah. All I know is that I haven't had a sale since August 27 and Etsy is supposed to be 1/2 of my income so I AM NOT HAPPY. But there's not much promoting I can do today because I have to be at work in an hour.
Besides, I spent almost the entire week trying to get my sales back. And nothing worked.
...so to make myself feel better I bought this from the UglyGerbil
Fuzzy Cthulhu Key Chain
I CAN'T WAIT TO GET IT IN THE MAIL!!!!!1111111one!!!!!! lol
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Fossils, Trilobites, and Canada, oh my!
So we can all see why "Fossils Trilobites and Canada, oh my" would have been full of fail for the Wizard of Oz, but for me...well...read on!
Fly my pretties! Fly! Fly!!!!!
Who remembers my top-secret classified beads that I was working on back in February? I'll admit, I ran into an unforseen problem right after I painted the said beads, which resulted in a 6 month drying process. Here they are before they went in the oven, back before I ever bought my Saab (Feb. 26)
So like I said, they came out of the oven, I painted them, went to Boston and bought my Saab...came back...they weren't dry...came back a week later...they weren't dry...put them on a shelf...month later...still not dry...back on the shelf...
I went to Canada just after my 100th Etsy sale and spent a couple days at the beach on Lake Ontario. Naturally I started poking around for sea glass. On the second day, I got more than I bargained for.
First fossil found in the wild. I'm seriously contemplating naming it Nemo in 2525.
I did find quite a few more, but the best was this large rock with several different organisms and at least one clear fish (by my index finger) ...or at least something with a skull and a spine. I was so psyched, and still am!
When we came back home, this reminded me of my secret trilobite bead project from February...and wouldn't you know they're finally DRY?
The genuine trilobite was one I bought at a rock show in 1990. He's almost like a pet. The white one and gold one are twins, but I'm keeping the white one. The gold one is for sale!
Fly my pretties! Fly! Fly!!!!!Who remembers my top-secret classified beads that I was working on back in February? I'll admit, I ran into an unforseen problem right after I painted the said beads, which resulted in a 6 month drying process. Here they are before they went in the oven, back before I ever bought my Saab (Feb. 26)
So like I said, they came out of the oven, I painted them, went to Boston and bought my Saab...came back...they weren't dry...came back a week later...they weren't dry...put them on a shelf...month later...still not dry...back on the shelf...I went to Canada just after my 100th Etsy sale and spent a couple days at the beach on Lake Ontario. Naturally I started poking around for sea glass. On the second day, I got more than I bargained for.
First fossil found in the wild. I'm seriously contemplating naming it Nemo in 2525.
I did find quite a few more, but the best was this large rock with several different organisms and at least one clear fish (by my index finger) ...or at least something with a skull and a spine. I was so psyched, and still am!When we came back home, this reminded me of my secret trilobite bead project from February...and wouldn't you know they're finally DRY?
The genuine trilobite was one I bought at a rock show in 1990. He's almost like a pet. The white one and gold one are twins, but I'm keeping the white one. The gold one is for sale!
Friday, August 29, 2008
100 Etsy sales!
So this is my big announcement that I hit the magical 100th Etsy sale mark!
And then I'm closing my shop for a week so I can go to Canada!
Bye!
And then I'm closing my shop for a week so I can go to Canada!
Bye!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Digging with Mom
Mom had the past week off, so we spent it doing lots of fun things...including our first bottle dig together since 1998. All those other times we went digging were different though...usually we would be walking through the woods and stumble upon a pile of broken bottles and pick through...but now we had a couple places to explore so we went out early.
The big Jewett City dump was the one that's been on my list since I pulled the crock out of the Moosup River, so we went there. It's been dug a million times and we didn't find anything but killer shards...so we decided to leave after a couple hours since a dig there is going to take a more concentrated effort. We did find a stick bug, which I've never seen in the wild before (science museums/pictures...but not up close & personal).
And Mom in front of a very large & hollow tree.
We drove out to Sterling for a picnic lunch and headed over to another spot that Nick told me about (Nick now lives in Beverly Hills, going to the LA Film School)...he said he and his father used to dig there when he was a kid. Well they must've found killer bottles because all we found were killer shards and a billion rocks, so actual digging with a shovel was impossible. It was a pile of glass and rocks. We left there after a couple futile hours and decided to head over to the dump I dug a couple times (and had an awesome dig with a friend back in April). When we got there, we noticed fresh POSTED signs...not like that ever really stopped me before, but the people who live across the street have posted/no parking signs all over the place too, and I don't really feel like getting arrested. Believe me, in all my years of exploring abandoned buildings with Zack and others, I've had my share of run-ins with the cops and luckily still have a squeaky clean record. This includes run-ins with security twice at Norwich State Hospital (and a high-speed car chase around the buildings...fun!)...so I figure my luck is going to run low pretty soon.
So we got coffee.
And then I remembered this tip that I got from someone on the Antique Bottle Forum who told me of a place that's in the town I live in. So what the hell, if today was going to be fruitless we may as well go explore some place new, right?
:)
So this new place has no decent parking. I couldn't pull my car completely off the road without going in a ditch, so I got as close to the ditch as possible and left half the car in the road. (Also have never been towed because of a parking error...knock on wood). Where's the dump? Mom was all gungho at this point and started digging a hole where there was no indication that there was anything there to dig. And a canning jar lid popped out of the ground. LOL.
But that was all there was to dig, so we just started walking the property. Found a dump full of plastic bags...that's NOT a good sign. Found a bunch of abandoned tractors, a plow dated 1878...these are better signs. Mom was digging test holes here and there and at this point I was just wanting some interesting pictures for the blog, so I left all the digging stuff with her and went exploring.
Found a car!
And then found 5 more!
??????
The last thing I pointed at in the last video didn't turn out to be a car after all, but a 1941 Frigidaire refrigerator. And there we found a dump. Mostly broken ball jars and metal pails...then Mom found a doll head (which I love finding doll heads in dumps, but sadly still not found a whole one myself)!!! She found some other cool stuff in the fridge, like a pale abalone shell with weird cut outs in it...the shell was in amazing condition considering that shells you find in dumps usually disintegrate in your hand, and this one didn't.
Still something was bothering me though, because the person who told me about this place said there was a turn-of-the-century dump here...and this dump was obviously a bit more recent. But now that Mom found a decent place, she didn't want to budge...and I was worried that my car would likely get towed soon. And the sun was starting to set. I figure we can almost always come back...so we started moseying on back to the car. And then we found two more dumps. One might be the previously mentioned TOC dump, but we didn't really have time to dig...though in the time we were poking around I found 41 glass canning jar lids. LOL. It was such a ridiculous pile (39 later found to be without cracks/chips) that we went a little crazy. The next dump had stuff from the 40's-60's. Something tells me we certainly haven't found everything there.
A tea tin left behind.
I piled up the lids, but all 41 are here. I haven't cleaned them yet so I'm sure as I find more broken/chipped ones that number will go down. And I did take many of the killer shards home, because I have an artsy idea in my head.
(The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company later became A&P, the grocery store...bit of history..)
What's this? (above & below)
PAT'D FEB. 16 97
PATENT PENDING
(Yes, this Jewett City shard was found in the town.)
Final finds, starting with Mom's doll head! (It had one complete glass eye, and the other was broken in half)
Ginger Ale bottle
All finds!
Mom's so proud :)
The big Jewett City dump was the one that's been on my list since I pulled the crock out of the Moosup River, so we went there. It's been dug a million times and we didn't find anything but killer shards...so we decided to leave after a couple hours since a dig there is going to take a more concentrated effort. We did find a stick bug, which I've never seen in the wild before (science museums/pictures...but not up close & personal).
And Mom in front of a very large & hollow tree.We drove out to Sterling for a picnic lunch and headed over to another spot that Nick told me about (Nick now lives in Beverly Hills, going to the LA Film School)...he said he and his father used to dig there when he was a kid. Well they must've found killer bottles because all we found were killer shards and a billion rocks, so actual digging with a shovel was impossible. It was a pile of glass and rocks. We left there after a couple futile hours and decided to head over to the dump I dug a couple times (and had an awesome dig with a friend back in April). When we got there, we noticed fresh POSTED signs...not like that ever really stopped me before, but the people who live across the street have posted/no parking signs all over the place too, and I don't really feel like getting arrested. Believe me, in all my years of exploring abandoned buildings with Zack and others, I've had my share of run-ins with the cops and luckily still have a squeaky clean record. This includes run-ins with security twice at Norwich State Hospital (and a high-speed car chase around the buildings...fun!)...so I figure my luck is going to run low pretty soon.
So we got coffee.
And then I remembered this tip that I got from someone on the Antique Bottle Forum who told me of a place that's in the town I live in. So what the hell, if today was going to be fruitless we may as well go explore some place new, right?
:)
So this new place has no decent parking. I couldn't pull my car completely off the road without going in a ditch, so I got as close to the ditch as possible and left half the car in the road. (Also have never been towed because of a parking error...knock on wood). Where's the dump? Mom was all gungho at this point and started digging a hole where there was no indication that there was anything there to dig. And a canning jar lid popped out of the ground. LOL.
But that was all there was to dig, so we just started walking the property. Found a dump full of plastic bags...that's NOT a good sign. Found a bunch of abandoned tractors, a plow dated 1878...these are better signs. Mom was digging test holes here and there and at this point I was just wanting some interesting pictures for the blog, so I left all the digging stuff with her and went exploring.
Found a car!
And then found 5 more!
??????
The last thing I pointed at in the last video didn't turn out to be a car after all, but a 1941 Frigidaire refrigerator. And there we found a dump. Mostly broken ball jars and metal pails...then Mom found a doll head (which I love finding doll heads in dumps, but sadly still not found a whole one myself)!!! She found some other cool stuff in the fridge, like a pale abalone shell with weird cut outs in it...the shell was in amazing condition considering that shells you find in dumps usually disintegrate in your hand, and this one didn't.
Still something was bothering me though, because the person who told me about this place said there was a turn-of-the-century dump here...and this dump was obviously a bit more recent. But now that Mom found a decent place, she didn't want to budge...and I was worried that my car would likely get towed soon. And the sun was starting to set. I figure we can almost always come back...so we started moseying on back to the car. And then we found two more dumps. One might be the previously mentioned TOC dump, but we didn't really have time to dig...though in the time we were poking around I found 41 glass canning jar lids. LOL. It was such a ridiculous pile (39 later found to be without cracks/chips) that we went a little crazy. The next dump had stuff from the 40's-60's. Something tells me we certainly haven't found everything there.
A tea tin left behind.THE FINDS!
I piled up the lids, but all 41 are here. I haven't cleaned them yet so I'm sure as I find more broken/chipped ones that number will go down. And I did take many of the killer shards home, because I have an artsy idea in my head.Found in Jewett City:
(The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company later became A&P, the grocery store...bit of history..)
What's this? (above & below) PAT'D FEB. 16 97
PATENT PENDING
(Yes, this Jewett City shard was found in the town.)Final finds, starting with Mom's doll head! (It had one complete glass eye, and the other was broken in half)
The shell, with weird cuts.
Ginger Ale bottle
All finds!
Mom's so proud :)Sunday, August 10, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
WTF stands for Watermelon Tofu Flambe
The backstory: Last week in the Etsy forums, there was a mini uproar over the usage of WTF??!!??!! as a forum topic title. Now...I've seen a lot worse for forum topic titles, remembering days before Etsy's language filter which allowed things like F*** me, F*** you, F*** your mom, Don't you know that Bob Dole reads the forums...etc. Without the stars!
Anyway. An Etsy seller got the equivalent of getting jumped over using WTF for her title. And I thought...well...WTF is just three letters, what fun could we have by coming up with a different meaning for it?
And so, another topic called WTF was born. It's still not safe for work, but it's so much fun! This turned out to be the fastest growing topic I ever created, with about 200 replies in about 2 hours. It was exciting to see a sort of WTF revolution. :D
Some examples:
Wild Tampon Federation
Walrus Termination Fund ( entertainingangels)
Wiggling Tickled Freaks ( McPrincessMaree)
Wino That Fell (KreatedbyKarina)
Walker Texas Fanger ( Krystan) --this one sparked a topic of it's own about a vampire Chuck Norris
Winking Turtle Fruitcake
Winona Takes Fashion and Wu Tang Flan (spamberly )
Mando and Lynda from Mando2 and ArmandoJavierDesign decided that the best of these was Watermelon Tofu Flambe, and created this leather cuff in honor of it :D.
Anyway. An Etsy seller got the equivalent of getting jumped over using WTF for her title. And I thought...well...WTF is just three letters, what fun could we have by coming up with a different meaning for it?
And so, another topic called WTF was born. It's still not safe for work, but it's so much fun! This turned out to be the fastest growing topic I ever created, with about 200 replies in about 2 hours. It was exciting to see a sort of WTF revolution. :D
Some examples:
Wild Tampon Federation
Walrus Termination Fund ( entertainingangels)
Wiggling Tickled Freaks ( McPrincessMaree)
Wino That Fell (KreatedbyKarina)
Walker Texas Fanger ( Krystan) --this one sparked a topic of it's own about a vampire Chuck Norris
Winking Turtle Fruitcake
Winona Takes Fashion and Wu Tang Flan (spamberly )
Mando and Lynda from Mando2 and ArmandoJavierDesign decided that the best of these was Watermelon Tofu Flambe, and created this leather cuff in honor of it :D.
Friday, July 18, 2008
I'm back!
Okay....maybe I didn't go anywhere to begin with. HA. First off, my apologies for not posting anything in over a month. The post office had me running ragged (and they still do, just not as often. lol) Mom ended up in the hospital the weekend of Father's Day because she had an esophagus spasm (which has the same symptoms of a heart attack, so the hospital wanted to make sure it wasn't one). We DID go up Lantern Hill about a week later with my grandfather (see Indy in the last post!), so here's some pictures!
Resting just before the top (490 feet).
Over near the silica mine after coming down from the top, looking for quartz crystals!
Mom found a turkey buzzard feather, which made her happy :).
Strange carved stone in the woods bearing the number 3. An old railroad used to circle Lantern Hill until about WWI, so maybe this is a leftover from back then, or earlier? There are several old foundations around the base as well.
BUTTONS. These buttons came from Mig, (my mom's boyfriend's mother). She's a professional seamstress but said she had no use for these buttons anymore, and some of these even belonged to her mother. I spent weeks sorting through these picking out ones I wanted to keep vs. ones I want to sell (keep an eye out on Etsy, these buttons will be making their appearance shortly!)
Oh yeah, and I went digging for an hour one day. I wish it could have been longer but all I found was half a doll head and a broken vaseline glass thing (heartbreakers!). I also found a tiny Listerine bottle.
FINALLY, I moved into my office area, so here's my new workspace! Yeah, it's crammed and tiny, but it will have to do. :)
This is the room I do my Etsy shipping out of, but that part of the room is not so photogenic at the moment.
To celebrate, I made some fruit-rollup "sushi" with home-made rice-krispy treat & gusher filling and fruit rollup. This was so much fun to make, not to mention now I know how to make my own rice-krispy treats (incredibly easy).
Number 107, my latest Steampunk creation! $35
And this beauty... I think I'll actually hate parting with it because it's so vibrant and colorful, not to mention one of my favorite colors! 1968 Remington Ten Forty Typewriter (works!) - $55.
So that's what I've been up to...busy month! I hope to post pictures of me outside the post office truck, but I actually don't have any yet. I'll be delivering my grandparent's mail tomorrow though, so they'll probably take some of me next to the truck :D.
Resting just before the top (490 feet).
Over near the silica mine after coming down from the top, looking for quartz crystals!
Mom found a turkey buzzard feather, which made her happy :).
Strange carved stone in the woods bearing the number 3. An old railroad used to circle Lantern Hill until about WWI, so maybe this is a leftover from back then, or earlier? There are several old foundations around the base as well.
BUTTONS. These buttons came from Mig, (my mom's boyfriend's mother). She's a professional seamstress but said she had no use for these buttons anymore, and some of these even belonged to her mother. I spent weeks sorting through these picking out ones I wanted to keep vs. ones I want to sell (keep an eye out on Etsy, these buttons will be making their appearance shortly!)
Oh yeah, and I went digging for an hour one day. I wish it could have been longer but all I found was half a doll head and a broken vaseline glass thing (heartbreakers!). I also found a tiny Listerine bottle.
FINALLY, I moved into my office area, so here's my new workspace! Yeah, it's crammed and tiny, but it will have to do. :) 
This is the room I do my Etsy shipping out of, but that part of the room is not so photogenic at the moment.
To celebrate, I made some fruit-rollup "sushi" with home-made rice-krispy treat & gusher filling and fruit rollup. This was so much fun to make, not to mention now I know how to make my own rice-krispy treats (incredibly easy).
The following are some product photos I took for Etsy that are not just photos, but also art! How fun is that? 
Avocado Art Glass Fruit Bowl & Candy Dish, $25
Avocado Art Glass Fruit Bowl & Candy Dish, $25
Number 107, my latest Steampunk creation! $35
And this beauty... I think I'll actually hate parting with it because it's so vibrant and colorful, not to mention one of my favorite colors! 1968 Remington Ten Forty Typewriter (works!) - $55.So that's what I've been up to...busy month! I hope to post pictures of me outside the post office truck, but I actually don't have any yet. I'll be delivering my grandparent's mail tomorrow though, so they'll probably take some of me next to the truck :D.
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