Jennifer Love Beads

Name Jennifer Mu

Location JenniferLoveBeads

Business Name Santa Clara, CA
Describe what you sell. Semi-Precious Beads

What are the best sellers in your shop?
Tourmaline, Topaz, Apatite

How do you market yourself?
What is your target market? My target market is individual jewelry artisan

What do you offer that sets you apart from the other supply sellers on Etsy?
I sell high quality and unique beads that are hard to find anywhere else

What is your “real” life like- kids- animals- job-hobbies- interests:
I work for a financial service company as a software engineer. Married about 5 years ago and no kid yet. I like hiking, travling, BBQ, and play Texas hold'em

Where can we find you on the web?
I have a store named jennifertuzi in eBay and an online store www.jenniferlovebeads.com ( still in construction)

Any offers you want to give blog readers?
I would like to provide free shipping for blog readers with order more than $100.

Lil Cubby

Name
Mary Ayres

Business Name
Lil Cubby

Describe what you sell.
My daughter Sara and I sell handcrafted items for babies and toddlers. I am the designer and create all the items we sell. My daughter takes care of everything else. We embellish onesies, t-shirts, tank tops, diaper covers, burp cloths, and bibs with our original designs and we also make booties - lots of booties!

What is your real life like?
My kids are grown. My parents live with my husband and I. We live in the country. It’s very beautiful here. My hobbies are sewing and crafting. I have a small room that has floor to ceiling cabinets that are filled almost every craft material available and even some that are no longer available. I love old vintage items, especially buttons, ribbon and lace. I have many jars of old buttons. I just can’t resist them.

What is your process?
I love monotone print fabrics that look like solids. I consider them to be like paint. I have all the colors. When the fabrics are appliquéd on the baby items, they have so much more texture and life than solid fabrics. I’m a big fan of rick rack. I’ve always loved rick rack, even when it wasn’t fashionable. Maybe it’s still not fashionable but I think it’s fun. I use little bits of rick rack in my designs whenever I can. I also like to add pieces of ribbon, buttons and hand embroidery. The finished designs have more of a three dimensional look with all the different textures of the materials. The booties are made from wool felt, fabric and ribbon. I like to find fabrics that have a different look, like a leopard print, or skull and crossbones - something unexpected. But I also love traditional fabrics, like linen and chenille.

Business Goals and Vision...
My daughter and I want to keep our business small and personal. We love the interaction with our customers, trying to create something special for each person. My short term goal would be to continue spreading the word about our designs to increase our sales. My long term goal would be to do this full time. We want the business to grow but not too much.

How do you market your business?
An article about www.lilcubby.com was featured in our local newspaper. We currently have a two page spread in Crafts ‘n Things magazine. The article is called “Turn Your Passion Into Profit”. We have a shop on Etsy and that’s where we have gotten the best response about our business. You’ll find us there at www.lilcubby.etsy.com. A few people have put links to our Etsy shop on their blogs and we’ve participated in a couple of give-aways on blogs.
Do you subscribe to any business related blogs, zines or magazines?
I subscribe to Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion magazine. They feature artists and their homes. It’s always full of unique, very creative people.

What inspires you?
I’m inspired by almost everything. I love to go through catalogs that come in the mail. I’m always tearing out little pieces of catalogs and magazines and I keep them in my idea box. Whenever I need some inspiration, I go to the idea box. I can always find something interesting there.

What are two of your favorite things from your shop?
One of my favorite things in our shop is the monkey birthday shirt. It’s simple and fun. You can find all of our birthday shirts at http://www.lilcubby.com/birthday.htm. My second favorite would be all the booties. When I look at new fabrics now, I contemplate whether or not it would look good as booties. I guess if I really have to pick, my absolute favorite booties are the white chenille ones. I love the nubby texture. They have a vintage look to them. You can find our booties at http://www.lilcubby.com/babybooties.htm.

Am a fan of these places...
The websites that I frequent most are www.reprodepot.com (they have wonderful fabrics that you don’t see other places), www.paperaddict.com. (I love Basic Grey papers - the textures are great!), www.purlsoho.com (more great fabrics but these are more contemporary), www.blueridgemist.com (wonderful natural scents), and www.yourATCstore.com (interesting little finds).

Find seller at...
You can find my daughter and I at www.lilcubby.com and www.lilcubby.etsy.com. Please come visit us.

NinjaPrints- Welcome to Etsy

Name
Henry Clayton

Location
London, UK

Business Name
Ninjaprints

Describe what you sell.
I generally focus on photographic prints and canvas works, preffering animal and landscape pictures over anything else.

What is your real life like?
Real life eh? Well currently living a relaxed and totally skint life looking for a new job having recently been laid off. I live with my girlfriend of 3 and a half years in London along with a few friends and my miniature zoo.. Pets, well theres the two black cats, two Yemen chameleons with the attitude of a disgruntled pensioner, two smaller Pygmy chameleons, two leopard geckos who are rather friendly, three little tree frogs and a giant millipede.Hobbies are mostly based around the animals and photography to be honest, though we do often go to festivals. At some point I would like to drop last Christmas' belly and get back into Taekwon-do which I have practiced for the last 17 years! Other than that I did spend a year as a volunteer working at London Zoo in the invertibrate conservation unit, which was a total blast.

What is your process?
Main tool is an Olympus E-500 digital SLR and some cheap macro filters from E-bay, though some co-operative pets does help a little as well.

Business Goals and Vision...
My business has literally just started up and is proving to be very hard for me to make any progress with, though now certain works have started selling which has been a real confidence boost (not on Etsy though so far) In the long term I would ideally like the business to pay me a full time wage and allow me to purchase new kit for my camera, decent printers and perhaps even a trip out to Madagascar.

How do you market your business?
So far I have simply run off a few hundred post cards with some nice pictures on and some business cards and dropped them through peoples letter boxes, the can then use the post cards if they want. Further than that a few forum signatures is as far as I have got. Perhaps if funds ever come rolling in I will be able to push the marketing out a little.

I will hopefully have some works up for display shortly in Brixton, there are four places asking me to display work there at the present, now its just a matter of covering the cost of prints and frames etc..

What inspires you?
My biggest inspiration is quite simply the bizzare wonders that nature can put together, lizards, frogs, insects and wonderful landscapes. It has always been that way for me for some reason, but I have no complaints.

What are two of your favorite things from your shop?
My current favorite works are a collection of three pictures taken through a rather dusty sunset a few weeks ago in Portugal at Boom festival, the sunset was so hazy and the rays of light really caught themselves in the dust, the hippys wondering in a dazed state gave the overall picture a very zombie holocaust feel. This picture collection I am selling as a limited edition of only 10 prints in each colour (black and white or sepia). So far I have had a few orders placed for these and only have a few remaining, hopefully I will see some of the cash soon (hint hint). But overall I love the shot myself and hope to have 1 left over for myself! (top picture)

My next favourite is the Portrait of a Dragon, I was very pleased at how this picture caught the contrast and showed up the detail of my Chameleon, not so sure she liked the camera though! I am going to be editing the sale of this one soon as I found it looks great on a big canvas, hopefully people will want one for themselves. (second picture)

Who is your favorite musical artist?
I have been listening to a lot of different music recently, though usually I end up listening to the "Empire of Cat" or "Sublime". I am not really tied to any specific genre though I usually hate most pop music and R & B.. old stuff is good ;)

Am a fan of these places...
In regards to Etsy I love my friend Heidi's work: www.heidiburton.etsy.com she has a real talent for very quirky cards and pictures, having received some at Christmas before I can vouch for them being brilliant! Most of the rest of my internet efforts are spent looking through www.deviantart.com my various reptile and praying mantis forums and caught in the evil webb of facebook.. Etsy does however have a superb collection of art and I enjoy looking through it when I have the time.

Find seller at...

www.ninjaprints.etsy.com

You can find my online shop and gallery at www.ninjaprints.com although regretably Paypal broke my shop recently and it is not currently working, so if you see anything you like just drop me an email! Otherwise if your a local Londener I will be displaying works in Brixton over the next few months, details of where on my website in the near future!

Beautiful Bridget

Name
Kim Ferrugia

Location
Springfield, MO

Business Name
Beautiful.Bridget

Describe what you sell. handcrafts bright and colorful crochet items such as pure cotton scrubbies, apple jackets, coffee cozies, iPod pockets, scarves, and washcloth and dishcloth sets.

What is your real life like?
My hubby and I have been selling online across many venues for over 9 years now. I'll never forget the day we both got to give our notices at our jobs....it was so exciting but SO scary also! We had no idea what was going to happen and really took a step out in faith that everything would work out and it did. One of the greatest blessings was that we've been able to be at home with our children while they've grown up. At the time we quit our jobs and started our home business I had just had a baby about 5 months before and it was such a joy to be able to be home with both her and my older daughter. Now everything has grown into such a smooth routine and I have been able to free up time for myself to run my business on Etsy as well.


What is your process?
As you may have guessed, I absolutely LOVE to create! My hands are always busy...if I don't have something to occupy my hands, I will fall asleep in 15 minutes...so I make things ;) My creative genius (am I allowed to call it that?) usually comes out late in the evenings while my oldest daughter (missindie on Etsy) and I get together to watch our favorite reality TV shows...our "mother and daughter" time which I cherish more than anything else in life. My primary craft is crocheting, I've enjoyed doing it since my Mom taught it to me when I was a young girl and now as an adult I get ideas that pop into my head for new creations or I see things that I like and make my own crochet versions of them. There is nothing that feels better than hearing how someone else is enjoying something you created!


Business Goals and Vision...
Right now I'm still just a small potato on Etsy and so I am hoping to make it through the holiday season with plenty of orders and plenty of time to get them made. In the long term my dream is that my daughter (who is missindie on Etsy) and I can grow our businesses together and really get this thing off the ground!

How do you market your business?
I've mostly been relying on word of mouth for advertisement. I do try to participate alot in the forums and have joined many street teams on Etsy such as Etsyhookers, EtsyMoms, Christian Artists Street Team, Trade-a-Holics to name a few. I also try to leave my business cards wherever I can and use my products out in the public so that people can see them and inquire about them.

Do you subscribe to any business related blogs, zines or magazines?
Not yet but I do try to learn as much about business and my brain is constantly running trying to come up with new inventive ways of running my business.


What inspires you?
Let's see, what inspires me....my family of course, a quiet room, soft music, bright colors, the changing of the seasons, the holidays....I pretty much find inspiration in everything. I love going to my favorite craft stores and feeling and touching all of the different yarns...like I said, inspiration lies in everything.

What are two of your favorite things from your shop?
I think my two favorite things are my apple jackets: (top picture)
and my coffee cozies: (second picture)

Am a fan of these places...
www.GudonyaToo.etsy.com

www.Missindie.etsy.com
www.BubblySensations.etsy.com
www.SSSJ.etsy.com
www.MommysLittleHelper.etsy.com

Find seller at...
www.beautifulbridget.etsy.com
www.beautifulbridget.com

Retired Records

Name
Karen Dengler

Location
Cincinnati, Ohio

Business Name
Dengler Designs

Describe what you sell.
Functional art made from recycled record albums and the covers. Items include painted record bowl, coasters, wine rack, totes, purses, wrist cuffs and pendant necklaces.

What is your real life like?
I have 3 dogs and 2 cats, all from rescues. I am married for the past 11 years, and have two daughters, my husband is a firefighter. I work part-time as a social worker, currently working with older adults in a mental health treatment program. I facilitate therapy groups.My interest include, hiking, camping, rock climbing I love being outdoors. I also have an organic garden with vegetable and herbs. I also enjoy good wine and hanging out with my friends at home or going to an art opening or new restaurant.

What is your process?
My process is fairly loose, I usually am inspired by an album or cover and make a design that coordinates with it for my bowls and purses. I heat the albums and then cut them to make coasters and pendants. I am experimenting all the time and continue to change my process and I go and learn. I have no special tools that I use. I try to incorporate as much recycled material as I can into a project. For the straps on my purses and totes I recycled belts.

Business Goals and Vision...
Short term is to have enough inventory this year to get through the holiday season. I have been also working on some new designs. My long term goal is to have made 100 different items from the record and it’s cover.

Who is your favorite musical artist?
When You Were Young, by The Killers.

Do you subscribe to any business related blogs, zines or magazines?
http://www.parkandvine.com/
http://nvisionshop.com/ two of my favorite stores here in Cincy.

What inspires you?
I am inspired by nature, minimalistic design, influenced by art deco design. I love bands like The Killers, ie: modern rock . I love walking in the forest and get excited by the smell of skunk, horses and fall leaves on a sunny day.

Am a fan of these places...

Recently discovered: RighteousNiteOwl.etsy.com

NancyGamon.etsy.com

aBreathofFrenchAir.etsy.com for my bath & body

Spiderbite.etsy.com

Seagoddess.etsy.com

Find seller at...
RetiredRecords.etsy.com