Having New Eyes

One-of-a-kind & hand made Jewelry!

I have an etsy shop called CindysArts.  Never heard of Etsy?

Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items under Etsy's new guidelines, released in October 2013. (according to wikipedia) Why buy handmade? Well, you might think I'm a bit off, but I believe that when an artist, be it jewelry, music, photography, textiles, etc, puts their hands to creating something unique, they are sharing their actual spirit with you. It's a human to human connection kind of thing!

If you see something in my shop at etsy, link from this posting and use this 20% off coupon code (99plus) during purchase!! 100% of the money I make at Cindys Arts goes towards sowing the seeds of faith in the women's recovery program here in Coles County. Here's the link to my shop:

 

 

I offer metal jewelry that I've stamped by hand:

 

I also offer one of a kind, and limited edition jewelry that I've designed myself...

 

I believe Etsy is the best online source for unique, handcrafted gifts.  Just using the search function will give you lots of ideas!  For more information on how to use Etsy search, check out one of my previous posts:

 

Fill your shopping cart with one or more items, and during checkout on the right side, where you choose your method of payment, there's a button "apply shop coupon code". That's where you type in the code 99plus before your click "proceed to checkout".  20% will be automatically taken off your total for you.

 

ALL ORDERS WILL ARE FILLED AND MAILED within 5 days, and MOST ITEMS ARE CUSTOMIZABLE!!!

 

If you discover how awesome etsy is and want to give a gift card to someone to spend in ANY shop, go to

where you can purchase either an email or a printable version with a lot of neat choices on graphics.

 

 

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Our Favorite #etsyfinds

Joining Etsy

Dare I say the "C" word?

Since I sell jewelry online, yes, I must dare to say the C word. The "Christmas" season is an important one for sales and yes, I'm already planning for it!  My store is on the website Etsy.com.  It's a huge site where you can find just about anything hnadmade you can think of! My store is called Cindys Arts and if you get there and can't remember where my store is, just type cindysarts in the search window and you'll find me. There are also quite a few artists from YOUR neighborhood on there, and a way to find them through an etsy search engine.

 on finding exactly what you're looking for on etsy...

Etsy’s search engine is very effective.  You can choose between the categories of Handmade, Vintage, Supplies or all three.  You can choose what section of handmade items you want to search, from jewelry to needlecraft.  You can search by tags, titles, etc.  You can set price limits.  You can change how the items are sorted.

• For example. I want to find an antique locket. I start out by typing in antique locket and get 20,345 results! In the left margin I select vintage. Now I'm down to 4,222 results. In the left margin I further select jewelry out of all the categories. That cuts the number of results to 2,467. To further narrow down my results, I specify that I’m willing to pay between $1 and $25.  I'm down to 309 items, but that's still more than I want to wade through. So I type gold in the original search box, behind antique locket. Down to 164 items which I figure I can browse through fairly easily. But just for fun - I type in the words book, and bird, and come up with 9 results!  THAT'S easy to browse through!

The more specific you are with your desires, the better your chances of finding what you're looking for. For fun, if you have browsing time, you can browse by color, or flip through buying guides or treasuries of hand picked favorites.  Often you find stuff you never would have thought about. I love shopping etsy for the family members I don't know what to get - Wal Mart has pretty much run dry at this point!

Some of what I sell in Cindys Arts is hand stamped and personalized metal jewelry like this:

Another kind of jewelry I sell is limited edition, or one of a kind:

 

With the holiday shopping season coming up, I would so appreciate it if all my friends and followers would share links to my etsy shop!  (and Thanks in advance!) Before I forget, I want to share my daughter in law's etsy shop address with you - it's through managing that store while Jenn was in South Africa that I learned a lot of what I'm doing now in CindysArts.  Her shop is called PlusOneMinusOne and she sells hand stamped metal jewelry also, with years of experience!

All the money I make through CindysArts goes back into the community - and if you'd like to read about it, go here. 

 

Back At It!

As I do the work to start up a second etsy shop, I thought about posting some pictures of some more wall art I've been playing with in Photoshop!

 

New inspiration!

 

Using Your Photos in the Hallway

using vertical format photos for stretched canvases. Very striking when hung down a hallway!

(If you have your own photos, get ideas on how to use them in this blog - see what I've done with mine. Do you think you'd like to see my stretched canvases? 10x20 canvases available at Imagekind.)

I finished my remodeled hallway in the summer of 2013 with the help of my son, Mark. You can see below the row of white tile taped up with blue painter's tape before using liquid nails to make the ocean wave border.

One of the key features is the row of seven stretched canvases, each one from a photograph that I have taken in my travels.  I have 10, though only 7 at a time fit in the hall.  Below you can see what it looked like before we put up the canvas and tile - what a difference!!

There are several websites that offer occasional sales on stretched canvas - but you have to make sure of several things before using those sites.  1st - make sure the image size is big enough, or it won't be clear and sharp.  Each site gives recommendations.  2nd, you need to crop your image to the size of the canvas you want - Mine are 10" wide by 20" tall, an unusual size.  I had to make sure that everything I wanted in the picture, was going to be there!!  Some sites I've used are : canvasdiscount.com, simply color lab, easy canvas prints, red bubble, and imagekind.

If you don't want to go to the trouble, I have a lot of 10x20 canvases available at Imagekind.