Happy Valentines Day!

I hope you had a fun Valentines Day! 

I gave my husband the traditional "love gift"- a couple of cans of Foster's Beer, yes you heard me correctly!  Class act here!  We did go out to lunch, so that was nice!

Speaking of Valentines Day, I love pink & red together!  It probably all started when I was a little girl (just a few years ago), and I dressed myself in a pretty pink dress and put on my favorite red shoes.  I proudly showed my Mom my outfit, and she had a look of horror on her face!  "Pink and red don't go together!".  (Well, it seemed that dramatic at the time, not sure if it was all that bad!)  So I promptly switched to my basic black patent leather shoes.

Maybe I'm  a bit rebellious, but I don't think that's why I love pink and red together!  I just do!

So I thought I'd grab some of my pink & red to show off on this special day.

Happy Valentines Day!

Love from Jen

Vintage Jewelry

Brilliant Rhinestones

Goldtone and Aurora Borealis

Retro Sarah Coventry

Classic Sarah Coventry Brooch

I love vintage jewelry!

Brooches can add that extra touch to a dress, coat, hat, and so much more!

Clip earrings are so versatile!  Use as clip earrings, shoe clips, one as a pendant, even hooked to spaghetti straps to turn your favorite black dress into something new!  My daughter added some of my sparkly vintage clip earrings to one of her prom dresses instead of wearing other jewelry!  Her friends loved the idea!

I've seen several beautiful Etsy shops that upcycle vintage jewelry and turn them into new pieces!  I'm eyeing a charm bracelet from one of the Etsy shops, it's full of gorgeous vintage jewels!

Maybe you're lucky enough to have your Grandma's old jewelry box full of her wonderful jewels!  Bring new life to them.  And if not, just stop by my shop! I try to add new jewelry everyday! http://www.jenscloset.etsy.com/ .

Enjoy your weekend!  So happy we're having a "heat wave"!  Over 30 degrees today and sunshine!

Jen

My Recent Etsy Purchases

From Sewfaithful

How cute is he!!?

From Mariapalito

As you know from reading my blogs, I do attempt to craft!  I haven't shown you my lastest, but I guess I should!  It should have been a simple little hand sewn felt heart, easy, right!?  Wrong!  More to come on that.

But onto better things!

My latest Etsy purchases start with the cutest fabric Easter eggs (but I think they look cute any time of year) from http://www.sewfaithful.etsy.com/ such high quality and the price is so reasonable (she could definitely raise her prices with such a great product!).  I love the way it came in a simple cellophane bag with a pretty pink bow.  I must mention the gift tag, even that had stitching on it, so cute!

My other purchase was from http://www.mariapalito.etsy.com/ .  I bought two cute valentine cards (one sent to my sister and her son, and one to my older daughter).  I also ordered the cutest little pink felt owl.  I'm just going to have him hang out with me on my desk to brighten things up!

So there you have it, more great Etsy shops! 

Enjoy your day!

Jen

Etsy Treasury Team Challenge/Made Front Page on Etsy!

All about copper and includes my tray!  Congrats to all!  Go Etsy Vintage Team!

Shipping International

I love to ship internationally!

I've shipped all over the world! 

Only 3 problems I can remember happening.  One was a jewelry shipment to Germany, it took forever for her to receive her items (and I had shipped to her several items before with no problem), but, like 2 months later, she finally received it!

Another was a very heavy shipment to Switzerland.  This great guy was buying beautiful china for his girlfriend for Christmas.  It got stuck in customs, but he did receive it in the nick of time for Christmas!

And the third, is a shipment to Italy.  I've heard Italian customs are terrible, and learned first hand, when my shipment was held up for quite awhile.  This was a huge order of milk glass, which she finally received, but she has since ordered more from me, and I'm guessing that has also been held up.  This customer even said she knows Italian customs are known for being very picky!

When I'm listing and item and know that it will weigh under 4lbs (including the box and packing material), I will go ahead and add the Canada and "Everywhere Else" shipping quote.

If it is over 4 lbs, the post office rule is it must ship priority mail, which brings the cost weigh up.

No--I have not checked in UPS or Fed Ex yet, but I'll be researching that info for sure this year!  What I've learned so far, is that USPS is still the least expensive for shipping international.

I created an excel spreadsheet with the weights and cost for Canada and "Everywhere Else".  I usually use the cost for Australia since that's one of the highest rates.  That way if it is less, I just refund the buyer.  I also state in my listing that if the buyer would like to give me their country info, I can get an accurate quote for their country.

Okay-back to the spreadsheet.  What I did was to get my rates from http://www.usps.com/
I have a column for the weight, Canada, and I usually check one of the higher cost, such as Australia.  I need to get it updated, since the last time I updated it was at least a year ago.

So that's a bit about international shipping.  I will talk about the customs forms next.  There's one for regular international shipping and then the one I use for anything over 4 lbs, which is a bit more detailed, but very easy to fill out.

Enjoy your weekend!

Jen

It's Time For Jen's Crappy Craft Tutorial!

"Hey Jen, when are you going to do another crappy craft?" 

Yes, you've be asking for this for so long, I thought it was time to show another Crappy Craft from Jen!

You see, in my mind, when I see something pretty, I think...."maybe I could do that".  But it never works out quite the same!

The artistic stuff really passed me by!  My Mom could do everything, from the 70's decoupage, needlepoint, knitting (won blue ribbons for her afghans), oil painting, I could go on and on!  Both of my daughters, Lindsey & Katherine, are amazing artists too!  I called Lindsey (27) an old soul!  Lindsey creates the most gorgeous quilts, she can whip up the cutest outfits on her sewing machine (she has a fashion design degree), designs jewelry (she had 2 shops on Etsy), knits, crochets, and more!  Katherine, well, I call her mini-Martha (as in the notorious Martha Stewart)-yep-kind of scary when she's decorating cookies or cupcakes.  I don't even try to help her!  If you need a handmade greeting card, Katherine will create the most adorable cards!

So, back to me!  Nope, it passed me by!  But that doesn't mean I won't keep trying!

There's an Etsy shop I just love.  Can't think of the name right now, but she inspired me to try to create something!  So off to Pat Catan's I went, and $70+ dollars later, I had a bag of stuff!

So I took these cute cardboard heart shaped boxes, painted them, sprinkled them with glitter, and adorned them (that makes me sound creative when I use words like that) with pretty strings of pearls, lace, pastel buttons, and more!  I only burnt myself a few times on the hot glue gun!

I don't think they're too bad-for me!

In fact, I had so much fun, I'm going to make more tomorrow!  Oh..I do love to cook, and so that's a great way for me to use what creativity I do have!

Happy Crafting!

Jen

Twitter's Down! Now what do I do!?

pretty brooch from jenscloset

think spring!

I've blogged about Twitter before!  I love it! I love my twitter friends!

Well, right now, Twitter is down!  I only had a chance to have a quick chat with a few of my friends before the darn "fail whale" appeared!

And yes, I haven't forgotten I had promised step 2 in my shipping info!  This week for sure (yeah, right!)!

Twitter please come back soon! I miss my friends!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week-with or without Twitter!

Jen

Whoops

I know you've been waiting for step two-sorry!  I do have a draft just about ready, so hopefully this weekend I'll have step 2 for you!

So I hope everyone has a great weekend-and don't forget, it's Martin Luther King Day on Monday!

Jen

Shipping Step One

As promised, here's step 1 in shipping fragile items:

Invest in a $40 official U.S.P.S. scale!  You can order it online at http://www.usps.com/ or our post office actually sells them too!  These are helpful for not only weighing fragile, heavier items, but I use it for getting my shipping information for my jewelry that I sell.

You'll notice a box in my picture too.  That's just a smaller box that will fit on my scale that I've packed with some packing material to simulate the weight of the item with a box/packing material.

I will place my box on the scale and then the item.  I usually figure it's still going to be approximately 1 lb more when it's all said & done.

Next thing you'll need is the handy dandy shipping information that can also be obtained at http://www.usps.com/ they have the rates for priority (which is what I usually use), parcel post, and 1st class (I use for my jewelry).  Remember...USPS shipping costs are going up soon!

I'll stop here and explain more about that tomorrow, including international shipping information.  (If you haven't started shipping internationally, I do recommend it; I've had so many sales from international buyers).

Stay tuned....and Happy New Year!!

Jen

Happy 2011!

Happy New Year!

One of my New Year's resolutions is to post more often on my blog. 

I'm going to try to do more blogs about things that might be helpful for those who have Etsy shops.  A few ideas I have is to show a step by step on how I pack fragile items.  Also, how I figure out my shipping costs.

And so much more!

I hope the New Year is fantastic for everyone!

Jen