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That is how I would describe my busy-ness this weekend.
I have spent most of this weekend putting together and shooting my exciting new range of Pure-ity Rings. Check out these:
Pure Envy Pure-ity Ring by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry
After taking my sister’s advice and squashing up the spacing between the words I’m rather happy with how well these rings have turned out.
Pure Jerk Pure-ity Ring by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry
I had a stroke of genius the other day. At the last-minute I decided to put a different coloured ring around the “border”, for want of a better word, the same size as the cabochon.
Pure Shit Pure-ity Ring by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry
I’ve also been trying to get into the habit of almost daily Etsy listing renewals as well as keeping up with my Twitter. My day job has been pretty full on this week so I really had to force myself to not neglect Glamour Twinkles during the week.
This weekend I’ve made a couple of new necklaces, Etsy bound, natch. I’ve used a somewhat simple necklace design that allows me to use my favorite skull and crossbones charms as well as the little guns I ordered a while back.
Enjoy your sneaky preview of Glamour Twinkles Jewelry Pure-ity Rings, they’ll all be available in my Etsy shop very soon.
The colour of love, rage, danger – red speaks to us all over the place. We see red stop lights, red stop signs, we want red hair and those prone to anger see red everywhere.
Instead of seeing red, Glamour Twinkles Jewelry will have you wearing red.
Red Gothic Pagoda Earrings by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry, available from Etsy
Don’t get mad, get glamoured. Imagine the radical redness of this statement Red Adjustable Beaded Bauble Ring, matched perfectly with the Red Rosebud Gothic Pagoda Earrings.
Amaze!!
Story in pictures:
Pure – Work Implements
Instructions stated “place BLOB of glue onto the front of the design”. Ooops!
I wrangle the blob into a nice even layer
Push the cabachon onto the image, pushing out any pesky ruinous bubbles
After the glue dried, I trim the cabs
Here we have glued rings, note still drying glue on top of shiny cabs
Lo and behold my first attempt at Glamour Twinkles Pure-ity Rings
Gold Ice Charmed Ring by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry Copyright 2012
…a picture is, worth 1,000 clicks, I mean. Poetic and cryptically clever. It is every online businesses’ dream to get 1,000 clicks and I can personally attest, it takes around 1,000 clicks to edit every single photo I have online. Well, those that I want to look fantastically polished and professional. Today’s post: every thousand click photo in all its screenarrific glory, the behind the scene process.
First, the choice. Oh so many,. I generally look for the photo that has the brightest white background. I’m still stunned how bright it is in the light box when I shoot the photo and how dark the photo turns out once I get it on my pc to edit. Nevermind….
Choices
Now I have the chosen one…
The Chosen One
This little photo needs some levels adjustment I love Levels. It brightens up the white background without losing the detail in the jewelry item. Like so…
Levels
And now we need to brighten this sucker up. Brightening it loses some detailing but Contrast seems to bring it back again. Dunno how it works, it just does. See…
Brightness and Contrast
Now lets lightening up that pic just a smidge and bring some colour back into those beads with Hue and Saturation. This secret weapon has something called Lightening that gets rid of any stubborn shadows in the corners.
Hue and Saturation
Golly, that’s an awful big photograph. I think I’ll crop it down to a more internet-friendly size. Setting the crop size…
Cropping
That’s better…
Cropped
Now we have something to be proud of. But it still needs some tweaking here and there… secret work being done behind the velvet certain (bangs, crashes, kabooms)
Last minute tidy
And I give you, The Chosen One.
Red Blue Green Charmed Ice by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry Copyright 2012 - left facing.
Note the name of the photo. Apparantly you can inbed the copyright name in the photo to protect against anyone who may use it for "nefarious" purposes. They can still take it but you have proof of it being yours. I'm still working on doing that...I can't track down the blog that I read it on. D'oh...
Now, I only have to repeat all those steps for the right profile photo, the left profile photo, the front facing photo and the backwards facing photo. And I have to do THAT for all of my rings. I’m going to be a very busy Twinkle…
Related articles
- What You Don’t See (glamourtwinkles.com)
Little bit of a trick “Behind the Twinkle” post tonight readers. I haven’t finished the earrings of which I soon will speak. Actually, I have Twitter to thank for helping me write the future Etsy description I’m going to use. Let me explain:
Last week I put in an order with Craftrunner. My charms and pendants arrived two days later (fantastically speedy service!). A couple of days after that while messing around with some feathered earrings that weren’t looking very glamour twinklesy, I tried out my new charms, namely “pistols” and “flowers” and BAM! The clever pun earrings are born – sans a proper range name. Sneaky earrings peak below:
Guns n Roses Feather Earrings by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry - soon to be available on Etsy
They might’ve been inducted in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, and now you can wear ‘em in your lobes: Guns and Roses Feather Earrings. Chortle to your heart’s delight over the name. I certainly did. My only problem is how to attach guns. I can’t decide which style I prefer, gun pointing downwards; or gun balanced across ways. And my question was somewhat answered on Twitter:
Behind the Twinkle - Twitter Assist
And thanks to @justhadto I now have a clever little joke for my Etsy description.
Below are the Rosie Crucian Feather Earrings. Rosicrucians are a group of sorts. Their name comes from the rose and the cross, hence the Rosie Crucian moniker.
Behind the Twinkle - Rosie Crucian Feather Earrings
The rose pendants I used here turned out to be much bigger than I thought when I ordered them from Craftrunner. Luckily, I’m fairly easygoing when it comes to exact measurements so I just adjust the jewelry design in my minds’ eye and everything turns out A OK.
During my sisters jaunts to the UK she sent me a link. But not just any old link. It was a link to a bead catalogue. The shop? Only the bestest little bead shop containing the coolest beads in the land Beadworks. She instructed me to go through the shop and choose whatever I wanted and she would get it for me. Naturally I would pay her back when she came up with the goods. So I go on my webby way, clicking and printing out stuff I wanted, and after converting to NZ $, falling to the floor in a financial faint, I trimmed my dream shopping list down to the most special of special beads that I knew I couldn’t get here in EnZed – you know, all of the good ones.
Oriental Butterfly Necklaces by Glamour Twinkles
Among my order were some fantastic copper enameled butterfly pendants. Being somewhat of a butterfly fan (not the real insect kind though) I could not resist having these pendants in my stable. When my sister arrived back to the Land of the Long White Cloud and showed me the pendants I noticed, with mild alarm) they were much, muchbigger than I imagined. Too big for me to think of what to do with. And so these pretty little (well, large) pendants sat in their little sealed baggies until I could come up with an idea for using them.
Peach and Turquoise Oriental Butterfly Necklace by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry available on Etsy
One day, while flipping through Vogue back issues (don’t I sound like a lady of leisure) I noticed a necklace that had a very familiar look to it. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what is was…. oh my goodness. It was an exact replica of the Oriental Butterfly Necklace.
Yes, I blatantly copied someone elses work. What’s more, I’m blogging about it ONLINE! Isn’t imitation the highest form of flattery? No, I’m a big fat copy cat. Or, I’m making something that was once only available to the rarefied Vogue reader available to the normal average gal on the street. You or I for instance. And that, dear reader, is the story Behind the Twinkle.
O Pixelr, how I do Love Thee,
Trendhunter – I want to try something different t to get “Likers” on my Facebook Page from this blog. I guess I could harass peeps that like my blog posts, inviting them to “Like” my Facebook. Did you know it takes 7 attempts before someone will notice your ad or Etsy link or post… It’s one of the lessons from my marketing mentor Andreea Ayers.
Purple and Blue Charmed Ice Ring by Glamour Twinkles, available on Etsy
In other news, I’ve been reading a great little magazine from the people who bring us Trendhunter, called “Exploiting the Chaos” that you can download for the handsome price of ONE TWEET – giving you a doc-chock full of people who made it against the odds. Did you know that Fortune mag came on the market during the Depression? Me either. It’s full of info and factoids that made me go: hmmm, things that make you go hmmm, hmmm, hmmmm – got that song in ya head now, doncha?
Chained Heart Earrings by Glamour Twinkles available from Etsy
So, back to Likers vs potential customers. Yes, that’s what I was getting to in the opening paragraph. I don’t want to offer free jewelry if you Like Glamour Twinkles Jewelry, I want something quirky, kitschy and more Me-Like (pun most certainly intended). Something’ll come to me.
I’d been feeling a bit guilty because I thought I’d been in new business rethink mode for the past 2 years but I realised it’s only been since last September – I found an old Fishpond book purchase receipt in my old emails. It was for my Fishpond order of How to Make Money on Etsy by Timothy Adams, and it was dated 15 September 2011. Not that bad – knowing how S L O W L Y I generally work on any Glamour Twinklesy related tasks that I loathe doing (FB, I’m talking to you now).
In keeping with my new media-mindedness (have you seen my media friendly photos?) I’ve decided to do something somewhat creepy, in a market savvy way. I don’t know about you but I have some Twitter people who have become TwitStars to me. They are all creative people, living the dream of spending much of their working time creative fantastic jewelry, modelling the coolest of street wear, and are generally pretty cool people (to me). But I want to know how they made it this far. What does a typical week in the life of one of my TwitStars involve? Brilliant Idea#253 stalk their businesses online (see, creepy behaviour).
- Do they blog, how often.
- Do they Tweet/Facebook/Tumblr? How often?
- Where do they advertise? How many sales do they have?
- What’s their ratio of “Likers” to sales?
It’s all very interesting to me and I will enjoy learning about their business ventures online. Yeah, its kinda creepy.
ANZAC Day, it’s a day of remembrance, a day where soldiers proudly wear their medals. I actually find medals interesting. I recently learned that they must be in a specific order on a uniform, and that the colours have great significance. Also, during the Anzac parade you are allowed to wear the medals of your relative if they have slipped this mortal coil. My apartment building is actually on a flight path and every year I hear the air force jets fly over. Actually, this is New Zealand, we don’t really have much in the way of “jets” so our military helicopters fly over my building for the dawn service. What does all this random history have to do with Glamour Twinkles? A lot… well, a little bit actually.
Not so nice bracelet, chock full of potential Glamour Twinkles Jewelry pieces
I had done my Equip and Diva pilgrimage and purchased the above (yucky) bracelet. But, looking past at its ordinary blandness, I could see great potential. I snapped up two bracelets and went home to pull them apart.
Attaching chains to the top and bottom of the hearts I was struck with the “emblemness” of the earrings. At first I’d made the earrings using the same gold plated chains. Yawn. They looked nice but the world is full of “nice” jewelry pieces. I wanted “interesting” earrings. Rummaging through my stock I found thin silver plated chains and, affixing them to the bottom of the medals I had created Emblem Earrings.
The name has caused me confusion. Whenever I make a new piece I generally have a name in mind, and no matter what, I always remember it. Until these earrings came into being. In my mind they’re called emblem earrings or medallion earrings. I always get the names mixed up. But I’ve got to think about names that potential customers would search for on Etsy. I don’t like my chances of someone jumping on Etsy to search for medallion earrings. Not that emblem earrings is any more likely to be searched for, but I have to call them something. They remind me of medals so the medal name stays.
I’ve hit 100 items in my Etsy shop! Happy Hundreds Day, Glamour Twinkles.
Nothing viewably exciting to report to my little fan base. I’ve been chipping away at my mountain of To Do Tasks this week. It’s all boring behind the scenes stuff – updating Etsy tags, uploading some new photos for random items and editing my fabulous new media friendly photos for my e-course. I know, I know, I started the marketing e-course in January (damned blog making my procrastination a public concern).
Work in progress, getting that white background...
I’m not completely happy with the first lot of media photos I took last week, so I’ve spent some of this lovely long weekend shooting more photos. I will have high res white background photographs on my media page if it kills me.
Trialled a flash for this shot. Kinda like the look of it...
Actually, I’m rather enjoying shooting the photos. I even dug out the instruction manual for by beloved Pentax I-10. I’m definitely NOT enjoying trying to “style” or “pose” necklaces and bracelets for their portrait. I ‘m looking for photos tat scream “oh wow”. At the moment my photos say “meh”. Ands I don’t want to use filters and showbiz effects on the finished product. I want to do as little photo editing as possible to achieve a plain white background.
It makes me appreciate a great jewelry photo. I used to look at photo of a diamond ring and say “so?” Now I look at a photo of a diamond ring and say: how the heck does that not have any shadow, no reflection of the photographer, even, crisp white background and on and on and on.
Behind the Twinkle – Tattoo Necklaces
Sadness is when something previously “alternative” becomes main stream. Like tattoos. Now every man and woman and their dog, sport tattoos*. In fact it’s weird seeing someone who doesn’t have tattoos. But, they’re not for everyone. And quite rightly so. Imagine having a removable tattoo… hey doesn’t some Kiwi girl have something like that in an Etsy shop?
Why yes, yes she does.
Being the owner of 10 rat-a-tattoos (that’s tat-speak) I also have a number of tattoo magazines. Not the naked chick sprawled on a motorbike kind of magazine but the respected Inked Magazine, Tattoos Down Under, et al.
Tattoo Necklace by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry, available from Etsy
Reading through said tattoo mags, noticed a recurring theme: butterflies, diamonds, hearts, sparrows, and skulls are popular images and just so happen to be jewelry charm staples as well. Well, they are in my wacky world. So I hit upon a charmingly ingenious jewelry idea: remove able tattoo jewelry.
Alas, the sparrow is a rare jeweled pendant charm and only having 10 sparrows in my NEST I could only make 10 necklaces. And one for myself, natch.
My Tattoo Necklace
They were a hit at the last fair I attended and I only have 3 necklaces left – in the entire wide world.
Tattoo Necklace - Rose Heart by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry available from Etsy
So above you see all that is left in the Tattoo Necklaces by Glamour Twinkles Jewelry range.
*Not advocating animal tattooing ever!!
