Make It March: under construction

Oh me, oh my! It's almost a week since I last blogged! I have been "being creative" I promise but not in a tangible "handle it in your sweaty mitts" type of way - I've been virtual creating aka on the internet.
I've spent the last week creating a virtual social network for a local artists' cooperative, the Blackberry Artist's Society, and now it's ready to unleash on the general public. I've opened twitter and flickr accounts, set up a blog and facebook fanpage ..... and then magically interconnected them with auto-updating. This little lot logged around eight hours at the keyboard time! Not a quick process.
Now that it's all set up I just need to create content, mastermind a blogging schedule and promote the giftshop.
Be a dear and link to us! The details are in the nice bookmarking Follow Me button below from Social Follow!

mwah mwah xox

blogging tips

me, at work, blogging as if my life depended on it

A quick post to bring your attention to some great hints and tips from AliciaMae on the Blogfire, the Bloggers Guild of ArtFire bloggers blog (phew!). She's running a series of articles on how to set up your blog.

Check out the latest on tagging your blog entries and see the previous article on how to alter the layout of your page (which the more astute of you will notice that I have followed!)

Thanks Alicia

speed and efficiency?

design-a-day April 08 set

Aim;

to promote to and share with a wide audience

 

Materials;

1 flickr slideshow (group photographs together in a set and then click on the slideshow function on that set's page, grab the embed this code)

1 ArtFire Rapid Cart

1 blog

1 ByHand account

1 Twitter account and associated twitterfeed from your blog

 

Method;

Create a new blog post on ByHand, incorporating your flickr slideshow (embed as html).

Below your description insert an ArtFire Rapid Cart with some of the items in the slideshow for sale.

Publish your blog entry on ByHand, checking the twitter and front page options if desired.

Check the 'publish to your own blog' option.

 

Summary;

A quick slideshow attractively presents your work, and the Rapid Cart provides a one click buy now option for interested parties. Your work is presented to three different audiences.

.... all in one blog post

ebbandflo

Buy Handmade

 

time goes by .........

 

... not slowly enough sometimes. How many other mums out there are trying to cram 27 hours-worth of duties into a measly 24 and still trying to grab some restorative shut eye too?

Although weekends are traditionally thought of as leisure time I've yet to met a mum who thinks on that wavelength. For me, it's just a time of the week when I have more family members in the house (and under my feet). Instead of having just one relative to wrangle, I have two. Now luckily additional family member J is quite handy at combining activities with junior member T so I can boot both of them out of the house at the one time, making space for such exciting projects as housework, cleaning toilets and floors, and homework from my further education course. Woohoo! I can also rely on Family Member J to come up with edible meals over the weekend too.

But this weekend was different. It was a long weekend for a start, then school decided to tack on a Pro D day at the end and Family Member J was jet-lagged so I felt guilty at throwing him into domestic stuff immediately (tho' if we'd all been flying back at the same time I guess I would have ended up being responsible for feeding us, jet lag or none!).

So I've had very little time to get anything done. If I'm working sensibly I try to kill many birds with one stone (squelch) so blogging via ByHand is a useful option in terms of getting my message out and reaching a wider audience. I still haven't cracked my marketing strategy but blogging is in my current armoury so I need to do it regularly. Once I blog it's tweeted out via ByHand, Blogfire (from my other blog, thank you Alicia for setting this up) and TwitterFeed, and thus appears on Facebook too. There is also a very useful function within ByHand which allows you to post from your account to you blogger or wordpress blog. So for one blog post I can potentially reach five different audiences.

An efficient use of my time methinks! (and I made a sale from my ecrater shop which I never really promote too!)

portable knitto whizz gadget thingy

I come from a family of gadget-lovers, so this nifty little package has my portable knit brain drooling with delight. I first saw it on The Twist Collective's blog (yes, home of The Sylvi coat which I will be attempting sometime before I die after I've located a stash of Thick and Quick woolease large and cheap enough).
It measures approximately 5 inches by 3 and a half inches, and contains tape measure, stitch markers, crochet hook and scissors. It is allegedly airline compliant ...... but I'm not sure I would risk it.
I am falling for it, it would make a great addition to my portable crafting kit but somehow it's just not as pretty as my MeringueShop wristlet that I currently tote all the contents listed above around in!

Maybe I'll just ask for it for a birthday!
Available on pre-order here or badger your local yarn shop.

nothing new here ......

.... but something useful here, thanks to a very worthwhile blog post.

If you are using Twitter to announce your current status to the world at large then this little tool, TwitterFeed, will be a great addition. Let Sixth and Elm walk you thru adding your Etsy shops and blogs to the automatic update schedule and make promotion just a little bit easier!

"skookumchuk" - miniature flotsam art brooch in wire, glass, freshwater pearls and fibre
available here