Human Treasure (awww)

I'm in another treasury, which is the inspiration for my current posting. This one was put together by one of my favorite Etsians, who is a buyer-only and quality human being. She actually won the card "treasured" on my contest thread.

My contest thread has been an entertaining thing unto itself. I stole the idea from DennisAnderson, who probably stole the idea from someone else, but the basic concept is "last person to post wins a prize." I added to that "every 1000th poster wins a prize, too," since I want people looking in my shop as much as possible, and my individual card costs are relatively low. I'm not sure how many sales have been a direct result of this little promotion, but the human connection element has been amazing! I never expected it to be so much fun! There's a handful of regular posters who are infinitely entertaining, plus random people who come and go to keep things fresh. Rumor has it admin locks threads once they hit 10,000 posts, and I have to decide if I'm going to start it up again. I'm hoping the answer will be obvious once we get to 10,000, but for now, I'm a big mush of ambivalence.

Time to turn things off and head to my friend's house for Earth Hour.

Cut & Paste and Treasuries Galore

I need to make more cards. New cards. Birthday cards and "Get Well" cards and Passover cards. More choices! More cards for all! Might help if I stopped spending all of my Etsy time on EtsyChai. Say, "Ok, self, you've answered convos and updated necessary things, now back to your own shop! Go play with scissors! Krazy glue your fingers together and yell at your lightbox!

I have been in a lot of treasuries over the past few weeks, for whatever reason. I take screen shots (when I remember before they expire) for showing-off purposes. Now, I show off:

Printer and Purim: Fun with the Letter P

I thought I broke my printer. There was yelling and paper jamming and pulling and pushing and forcing bits of printer to go in directions that they did not want to go and forcing bits of paper through millimeters at a time and more yelling, but it all came out in the end! And it printed for about a day. And then things started looking weird and I thought it was a residual effect of my earlier printer woes. And people kept buying cards and I had to make them and print them and send them but they were coming out funny and I tried all the printer utility things to realign and clean the cartridges and I'd try printing again and it still looked funny and then I realized my color cartridge was running out.
OfficeMax and a fresh color cartridge later, problem solved. I feel pretty silly, but at least that's all it was.

Tomorrow night is Purim. I love Purim. I listed my hamentashen cards really late (last Friday), so I still have a bunch of them. Maybe I'll just give them to random people. Too bad I don't bake or I'd totally make real hamentashen and put them on the plates and give them to friends. That would be cute. Is it tacky to buy hamentashen and give them to people? Does anybody reading this even know what hamentashen are?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://etsychai.blogspot.com/
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oy!

Why am I "in charge" of the Jewish street team? Is it my infinite knowledge of street team starting? How about street team workings? Or even my deep ties to my Jewish heritage and the Jewish community both on and off Etsy? Nope. Not really. It's because I said "there should be a Jewish Etsy street team," and people agreed.

I'm not quite sure what the difference is between leading random groups and organizations (I did this sort of thing a lot in high school and at Oberlin) and, say, cleaning my living room. In one case, I'm all pro-active and go-get-'em and I have a decent natural sense of what needs to get done right away and what is better to put off until things are further along. In the other case, I separate my crafting papers into sub-categories in the middle of the floor and leave them there for easier access while a weird layer of old clothes, yarn, flat-rate boxes, broken small appliances, laundry, and other miscellaneous crap coats the entire area visible from the entryway.

But I've started a database of the Etsy Jew Team members. I finally got convos out to every person I have on "the list" (sorry about the "list" of Jews...I'm reading Man's Search for Meaning right now and it's a little creepy, but that's what it is) and I have a game-plan for where to go from here.

And oh! Right! I still have a shop somewhere! I have Purim cards in my head and the paper here and I even bought a circle paper cutter thing for the project, but I can't open the part where the blades are (stupid weakened body). I should just eat crow and wander over to my neighbors' and ask them. They're nice. They'll think it's funny/cute.

Hello Etsy Jews!

UPDATE: GO TO http://etsychai.blogspot.com!!!

If you've randomly stumbled upon this entry, I'm trying to start the Jewish Etsy team. This is the e-equivalent to holding a first meeting in my living room for lack of our own space.

Ok, let's get this party started. As soon as we have a name, I will make a blog on blogger with that name and we will move all communications there. The three proposed names are in the poll on the right. Please vote! If you have another name you want added to the poll, leave it in the comments and I will put it in ASAP. If you want to make a case for a particular name, you can leave that in the comments, too.

As for our team purpose/mission statement, here's what it looks like right now. Comment or convo me with any changes, additions or concerns. If I knew how to make this a wiki, I would.

Our team purpose is to promote Jewish community, Jewish art, and things for the Jewish holidays on Etsy. We will work to bring current Etsians into our shop as well as encouraging the greater Jewish community to shop on Etsy.
This street team will be open to anyone who has an interest in Judaism or in Jewish culture, art, or crafts, whether or not they themselves are Jewish. It will also be open to people who are Jewish or have an interest in being part of a Jewish crafting community regardless of whether or not the items in their Etsy shop would be classified as Judaica.

If anyone else wants to be a leader of this team, let me know. I have NO intentions of being a dictator here and the only reason I'm doing this right now is to streamline the process and get it going, so please say something if you have other ideas and opinions and/or want to take over or do things on any small or large scale!

Blogger!

I'm outgrowing my Indiepublic blog, and I'm already a Blogger girl for my pseudonymed writing blog, so here we are! I may move stuff over and back-date later, but or now, this is what it is.

I make things. Mostly card things. I sell them on Etsy. You should buy them.