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In our consumer driven society, it can be so much easier to order some factory made goods.  They look the same, they smell the same and let’s face it, they are usually consistent in quality.  All of which lend itself to the McDonaldaztion of America.  Sometimes there is a place for mass produced good.

Why not save a place in your house for hand crafted goods?  Pottery is one thing that comes to mind.  Plenty of potters around who sell their goods at weekend fairs.  What about toys?  Crave something other than plastic?  You might be luck, plenty of crafters make cloth dolls, toys, and wooden blocks.

Does it seem more expensive?  Sure.  But they aren’t mass producing their goods.  They are handcrafted, paying taxes here, and often are of great quality.   And you get to support a small workshop.  Tucked into corners around any large city, they preserve the old crafts.

One of my great loves is making paper.  Unfortunately, my Seattle soggy climate does not lend itself to producing large quantities of paper.  It’s nice making it for my personal use though!

All that fussing around with crafts has made create afghan’s, pillows, crocheting and now Lore Bits and their fridge magnet cousins.  I hope you will find them an excellent addition to your home and game table.

Do you hand craft something that could be ordered from a giant factory?  Send a picture and description,  I might feature it on this blog!

Laura

Note:  My humble game counters have been rejected by www.boardgamegeek.com because they aren’t for a specific game.  Then they rejected my company, because the game counters were rejected.  I’m sure they have a specific rule in place that supports that.  It’s an extremely large website, that I had hoped would provide a tad bit of traffic for the Kickstarter.   But alas, it is not to be.

One more mountain that I need to overcome.

No wonder so many people create their own game review blogs.  I didn’t even know they had that rule.  In addition, they have an old school thread system that I hadn’t seen in over 10 years.  I’m sure it would be a nightmare to migrate everything.  My suggestion?  They should check out BuddyPress for a solution.

Good thing that many more places are welcoming to upstarts like me!

Etsy filed to be a public company today.  I guess that explains why a small store like mine gets ignored.  Oh, but I can promote my goods.  Just pay a tiny fee.  Looks like there have been a lot people doing that from the looks of their S-1 statement that they filed.

I wish them the best of luck.  But if they are in search of someone to pay their filing fees and all that fine stuff, I’m out of there.  Not that they would notice.  I’m sure Paper Butterfly Forge isn’t on their radar.

I’ve helped prepare filings for public companies before and worked with auditors before.  I know it isn’t cheap.  Never mind the millions of sellers they have.  What are their sales?  I’m willing to bet the listing fees exceed the total sales.

A recent ABC news article said over 65% of the sellers make less than a hundred dollars a year on etsy.  I can’t say I was surprised.

It’s clear that some of the products on sale there are made in a factory.  Too many available, too perfect, photoshopped and completely not hand made by artisans.  The last time I checked the glass dome there were over 36,000 results.  I’ve seen products listed that were labeled with Daiso labels. (Japanese Walmart)  I’ve seen supposedly all hand made products with over 200,000 sales by one person.

Earlier this winter, they changed the rules, so you could hire workshops or FACTORIES to produce your products.  You only had to design your product.  Yah, that’s a factory folks.

I guess that the end of the day, I don’t want to pay for some finance whiz’s yacht.   I’d rather buy my own yacht.

Hey guys, we are getting ready to launch a kickstarter campaign for Lore Bits.  What are Lore Bits?  Totally awesome game tokens that are made from tint, glass & actual metal.  Notice there is no cardboard and no printing.  How do they look?

Shiny!

So far we have about eight colors and are researching and experimenting with tint.  If you have a suggestion, let us know.

Game on.  Laura

I was trying to find out how many shops were on etsy.   I found a search box for shops.  When the search box was empty, it showed over six million users.  I’m not sure if that includes purchasers or if it’s just shops.  But it certainly explains why it’s so difficult to be found on etsy.

You do need an outside sales funnel pointed at etsy for it to be really effective.

One of the webinars that I attended for etsy; suggested that you should have at least 200 products listed.  Unless you are doing one of kinds, that would be difficult for most people to stock.  It’s time and materials invested into a hope and a dream.

What do you think?

I’m adding a new product in the next few days.  Golden Shimmering Magnets.  They are fun to make, got a lovely glow and look preeeettttyyyyy……

I’m getting some other colors lined up and hope to have a full line of shimmering glass objects.

They will also be available without the magnets…. Perhaps called Lore Bits?  Game counters and money galore.  Still working out the deets on those.  Should I just make them a plain gold, silver or copper?  Or should they have a denomination. Either way it should be fun!

I have a few different interests and hobbies.  I apologize for intersection of madness and creativity that pops up here.  The shop is a mishmash of products that I make.  Some virtual, some irl, or rpg.  I’ve been told you really need to have specific shops on ebay and other places to sell stuff.

I can’t handle that.  I’m not an insect.  I don’t specialize.  I write for part of the day.  I create for part of the day.  And I design for part of the day.

Please visit my mad shop from time to time.  Don’t hold it against me if there are CPA spreadsheets right next to a BOO! Halloween sign that I made last Halloween.

I’ve redone and redone this website.  First it was a writing blog.  Then it was dead.  Then I found out I could still get the url.  I revived the zombie site.  Then it did crafts.  Then it did role playing game stuff.  Now, it’s my basement of whatever survived the flood of my imagination.