New Year New look

I've got a new look for my Etsy shop for the new year. I've made a new banner which I absolutely love, and plan some new packaging to go with it. After trying various designs and layouts, I opted for a more subtle look with turquoise rather than the bright colours seen above. However, it turned out that another Etsy shop already had a similar styled banner, so it was back to the drawing board.

When I first decided to change the look I initially intended to keep the brightly coloured spots, change the grey background for a brighter turquoise, and incorporate some photos of items currently available in my shop. But I had a real problem with the red circles. They looked great on the Seashore site I was working on, and looked lovely when I uploaded them to Flickr, but when Etsy got hold of them, they looked truly awful!

I tried everything I could think of to rectify the problem; saving to various file types, using web safe colours, toning down the contrast, but nothing would remove the dark outline and squiggly pattern on the surface of the circle. It looked very much as something viewed under a microscope; lots of wriggly worm shapes. The larger circles weren't too bad, but the smaller ones were very noticeable. I think they looked more pronounced against the turquoise than they did against the grey.

I ran a search in the Etsy forums and discovered others who had experienced the same problem with red, especially when used in conjunction with a darker colour. It seems to occur when Etsy compresses uploads and only affects certain colours. Red is the main culprit, but only if there is a block of colour, and at first it appeared to only affect warm colours. But after much experimenting by uploading different coloured spots on test banners (hope no one was viewing my shop at the time) it transpires that it affects red and royal blue the most, and purple and pink to a lesser degree. I tried replacing the red spots with orange and although it was a good clean colour, it didn't look right with the other colours.

I wasn't going to be beaten and spent hours trying various combinations, but I just couldn't get it to look right. So in the end out of sheer frustration I ditched the circles altogether and opted for the plain turquoise background. But as I said above, it turns out the layout was seen by some to be too similar to another person's banner. The colours, font, and photos were entirely different, but the layout was the same. Although the other shop owner didn't mind in the slightest, agreeing with me that it was a very basic layout, and was happy for me to leave it as it was, it didn't hold the same appeal for me anymore and I wanted to change it.

I tried various layouts, but couldn't get it to look significantly different, so I went back to my original theme of circles. Accepting there was no way around the red problem, and not liking any other substitute colour, I decided to keep it simple and use complementary tones of the main turquoise. I think the result is more in keeping with the way I envisage taking the style/look of my shop.

As is often the case, things that start off as an annoyance can often turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The resultant design is not only different, but I actually prefer it to the previous one. I'm also in the process of ordering some beautiful new packaging to match the new colour scheme. So all in all I'm very pleased with the way it's turned out. :)

Another First

Don't you just love first time experiences... providing they're good ones that is! But even bad experiences can teach us such a lot. In fact I'd go so far to say that it's the bad experiences in life that offer the most valuable lessons. I've certainly found I've had my biggest growth spurts during times of adversity!

But enough of bad experiences. This experience is a good one, and one that I hope will yield a growth spurt for my Etsy shop, because I've just discovered that I've been featured in my very first Etsy Gift Guide!

This particular gift guide features freshly emerging shops that have been open for six months or less and/or who have less that thirty sales. It was AMIdesigns who first brought it to my attention by telling me she had suggested me for it. Thanks Alison! I then popped into the gift guide thread and rather cheekily suggested myself too! I think one or two other UK members might have mentioned my name as well. So thanks to anyone who did that I haven't mentioned. They're a great bunch over on the Etsy UK thread, always supporting and promoting each other!

In fact we're having a special UK promotional push in the run up to Xmas where we are promoting two UK Etsy sellers every week, and the current lucky seller is none other than AMIdesigns so please do drop into her shop and take a look at her wonderful range of jewellery, not to mention her new line in Xmas decorations! They really are fab!

So, Etsy get to choose which particular item they feature, and they have chosen my Ruby Tuesday Red Czech Glass Bellflower Earrings:


You can also check them out here along with the other lovely items featured in the Freshly Emerging Shops gift guide.

New Necklace

I made a new necklace for my Etsy shop today... the first listing I've made for a couple of weeks. I figured it was time I got my finger out and actually made something rather than just re listing existing stock. I'm really happy with the result; a gorgeous vibrant poppy button adorns a reto styled hoop strung on a mix of red vintage glass and black seed beads.

Retro Red Poppy Pendant