Chunky Monkey Unisex Scarflette Collection Winter 08/09

Currently only available from my artfire shop www.liddesignsboutique.artfire.com

The Girl Collection - Frilly Scarflettes

Winter Mini Beret Collection

Etsy, Artfire, Crochet, and Pain.

So, I've had a busy two months. I have opened a store on the new handmade site Artfire www.LiDDesignsBoutique.artfire.com to run alongside my etsy store www.LiDDesignsBoutique.etsy.com . As yet I am waiting for my first sale, but the site is still in beta & traffic through there is alot less than with etsy.
Im working hard at promoting you can catch my tweets on Twitter under liddesigns, as well as news updates on Myspace www.myspace.com/liddesignsboutique .
I have been working on filling my Etsy store to have one new/renewed item a day. I have been working on improving the pictures by taking shots in my new GIANT lightbox with special daylight bulbs and then wanging them through Picassa & Photoshop photo editing to bring up the colours and brightness etc. It seems to be working, I'm getting into treasuries regularly, and last week I hit the front page for the first time! Still doing a happy dance from that one.
I have this slight crochet addiction at the moment, which is bringing on pains in my wrists (not good) My whole winter collection started with testing out felting crochet which progessed into a whole collection of mini berets in different colours and some were worked into with beads and sequins. This developed into a frilly scarflette design once the weather began to turn, which has since expanded with a chunky unisex range. I'm now working up a crocheted retro range of hats, in line with my retro silk hat line which has already been released in my artfire store.
I need to start thinking about spring & summer 09 which is going to comprise of sewn hats, purses and shoes, embellished with handstitched embroidery along the lines of Doodle Stitching.
Bringing everything together I am working on my own website which the entire ranges will be showcased on. www.liddesigns.com

Screenshot of my first Etsy Front Page 1st Jan 2009

A Good Start to the New Year

So I was pootling around today, clearing up from the NYE party last night, took a break for 5 to see what was going on in the world of Etsy, hit update on my Craft Cult item views page, which was at about 20 hits all morning & all of a sudden the first page hits read 357! With the next 2 pages totalling around 50 hits each. WTF!!?? I did a double take, figured maybe the Heartomatic was having a glitchy 5 minutes, but no, there in black & white in the space of around an 45mins from 2.30pm was a massive spike in views. So I hit Etsy front page to see if it was there, but it was nowhere to be seen, had a quick flick through the gift guides, but again to no avail. Hit on my shop & scrolled down the first page to find that my Ice Crystal hat had more than doubled in views! YAY! Or had someone played a crewl trick & just hit on my item over & over again?
Next stop the treasuries but there was no star next to a title, foiled again! Where do I go now? Hmmmmm.....
Then I remembered a non affiliated site called Feasty, which keeps track of featured sellers on the front page of Etsy. BINGO! Sure enough under the heading 'Front Page' was my hat!
But how did it get there? A secret admirer had hearted it on Dec 31st, could this have been a member of Admin making their own anonymous treasury, well I guess so! So thanks whoever you are!
Still holding out for the Etsyfrontpagers Flickr group to have woken from their NY hangovers & have started taking those screen shots by 2.30pm as none had been uploaded since 3am & I may be able to bathe in the glory once again! And to see what other lovely items it was paired with. Fingers crossed!
Woot Woot! Started doing the happy dance, my first ever front page!
And not only that but on the first day of the new year, is it a sign.........