Wednesday, August 13, 2008

How to Join a Flickr Group

Click on the Join Button from the Group Front Page. When the Group administrator approves your request an email will be sent to you.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Etsy Order Status

For Purchases:
Log in to Etsy.com; click on 'Your Etsy' at the top of the screen.


Choose 'Purchases' from the left side


On the right side is the order status. For more information on the sale click on 'View Invoice'


For Sellers:
go to your 'Sold (orders)' and update the checkbox when you ship the item.

How to Purchase on Etsy







Saturday, July 12, 2008

How to Make a Treasury 101

Etsy's Definition of a Treasury:
The Treasury is a member-curated gallery of short-lived lists of 12 hand-picked items each (plus four alternates). It functions as a high-demand (and pretty!) promotional tool that many devoted Etsians fight to get. Members can feature their favorite items, items selected on a theme, or just however they like. The Treasury is not intended for self-promotion, but instead to acknowledge and share the many cool things for sale on Etsy. Admin often choose an exceptional Treasury list to promote on the home page and occasionally make them to tie into Storque articles or special events and occasions.

The Treasury will open to new lists when the number of total lists is below 333.


To see when that will be, sort the treasuries by Expiration; then count back.


When list 333 is close to expiring ~ Do Not Click the Refresh button!
Instead, click the treasury page number.



Sometimes it can take upto 10 minutes for that expired list to actually drop off of the lists. Wait Paitiently. Do not close or refresh. The only thing you can do is click the number. Turn on your sound, it makes a noise when a treasury is deleted or drops off of the list.
When it drops off this is what the boxes will look like.
Type in your title, be quick the boxes will disappear.
Remember to click 'Create'


To fill your treasury, get the Listing Id's from items.


Type or Paste them into the boxes in your treasury.


Once it is filled, you can rearrange the items.




Treasuries are usually 2 days, a random number of treasuries are lucky and last 3 days.
If you create a treasury and it won't let you fill it; exit out of your browser and try to go back in. On rare occasions, you will not be able to add any item numbers.
When there are a lot of treasuries created at the same time, occassionaly some will dissapear for a short time or for good.

For more Information view the Storque Article.
Newbie Advice on Creating a Treasury by Winklepots.
Visit Etsy Treasury to view current treasuries.

Arrange Shops Featured Items

Want to change the items featured on your EtsyMini? Log in to 'Your Etsy'; then under 'Currently For Sale'; click the Featured Star for the items you want to show on your EtsyMini.
Choose one by accident? Click the star again to remove.


Change the order of the items under 'Featured in Shop'

Add Etsy Shop Mini to Your Ning Site Page




Paste your EtsyMini Code into the box and click Save.

Taking Pictures ~ What works for me

Do not use the zoom. Get as close to your object with no zoom. The colors and quality will be a lot better.

Purchase White posterboard for the background; for my white objects I also have light blue, yellow, light pink and neon green.

I use a light box (Photos of my Box), but it isn't needed.
For small items, curve a piece of posterboard in front of a window with lots of sunlight (not direct light). You can use pieces of cardboard like this post by donnapool Donna's Taking Pictures Tips

With a light box ~ Manually set the white balance with a sheet of extra bright white computer paper.

Change the EV Shift to a brighter setting (mine is at +1.3) ~ it makes the photos brighter before editing them on the computer. I learned how in this Storque article, bright-light-big-color-using-ev-and-white-balance

Set camera to the Macro Setting for upclose objects.

My camera (not a new fancy one) allows you to save the settings based on previous photos you have taken. When I get a photo that the color looks really good and it is easy to clean up, I save it so I can easily go back and start from that point the next time.

Here is a blog post on how I remove the background on my photos.
White Background Blog Post

My color is usually pretty good, but I do add brightness and contrast to all of my photos.

I am not at all an expert, just thought I could offer what has been working for me lately.

Square Photos with a Knockout White Background




















I am by no means an expert. This is how I do my backgrounds, there are 100 better ways; this is what works for me. Hope this helps you find what works for you. :)

Add a Color Background to White Objects

PhotoShop Elements 5.0 ~ Edit and Enhance Pictures
If your background is a different color than the object, use the 'Magic Wand Tool' to select the background color. When it is selected hit Delete on your Keyboard.

You may have to repeat this step on different areas of the photo.

Select the whole object again, using the 'Rectangle Marque Tool' (Square Outline)
Zoom into your photo and clean up the edges with the 'Eraser Tool'
Depending on how picky you are, this could take hours or a couple of minutes.

I play with this step for hours!

You can also change the background to white (or any color) using the 'Paint Brush Tool'
Choose the color you want to paint down at the bottom; the top color is what will be painted.

You can see I have done both on this picture Deleted some of the Background (checkerboards) and changed some to White.

Now that your background is white or deleted, you can add a color using the 'Paint Bucket Tool'
Choose the color you want it to fill down at the bottom; top square will be the filled color.
It will paint it on the color you click on. If you click on something by mistake, Ctrl+Z will undo. :)