Author Archives: leslie

Facebook Me

I've set up a page on Facebook, you can find it here. I link to my new items and put up some pictures. All good stuff. I also have been experimenting with some online contests. Follow me on Facebook to find out more.

What I really want to write about today is Etsy's new Facebook feature in which when you heart an item a link pops up under the "heart this link" that says "facebook this item." Very, very cool.You have a chance at link an item for your friends to see, it could be a neat way of telling friends "hint hint I'd like this in large for my birthday" or it could just be a fantastic way of linking to an item so lots of people can see it.

I read on the forum (I know I know, I hate taht plce but can't resist  a link to it from twitter) that a lot of people were looking at this as spam for their facebook account. In a way I suppose if you abuse it, it is, BUT I look at it form a customer's perspective and not a seller's perspective, as in "How cool is it that I can link to all these awesome items?" Etsy should have rolled this out to  buyers and not so much sellers. It hink that etsy sellers are an easy sold to target. Let's face it the buyers spend less time on the site than we do, they might spend hours browsing the items but they aren't listing items and don't have the same involvement on a day to day basis that sellers do.

What I'm saying is this: wicked cool feature but not so much for sellers, email that stuff out to the buyers etsy and yo've got something cool on your hands. It would b nice if you set it up so we could send a link to Twitter in the same breath. I tweet way more than I facebook.*

SO if you are a buyer on etsy or even a seller, go on there and heart a few items today and put them up on your facebook for the world to see. Sellers get your friends to SIGN UP for etsy today and start linking to items!

*artfire has a tweet this item link on the left side of each items page, pops up with a micro url and some text already in it, I'd love it if they did a facebook link too. It's super easy to use.

Book blocks, glue and leather

Whew. In addition to mowing the lawn* I managed to finish that fat stack of 7 hedgehog/ moleskin notebooks I've been sitting on for close to 2 weeks. The elastics and envelopes went in in no time and pressed for a few hours. In that time I glued 6 more blocks into leather covers.

I pulled the finished books out of the press, signed and dated them, stuffed business cards in the pockets and then shot pictures. Edited said pictures and then listed all the items to my artfire shop. It went smoothly and everything looks good.

Thursday I visited my friend in Swampscott and she had been hoarding some paper and advertising posters for me. I walked away with 20 or so posters and about 2 reams of paper. I'll be able to use the guillotine to chop them up into nice matchbook notebooks. The posters are already chopped to size and will be stored until the next time I make a big batch of jotters. I also got some plastic posters that I use for jigs. I set up a jig to make covers with some of the left over scraps as the spine with some great backer board as the cover. I picked up some 30×40 sheets of backer board at the Charette clearance sale in Woburn.So I'm going to try out some new books and stitches. Fun stuff planned.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Western Mass to help a friend set up an ArtFire and an Etsy shop. I"ll spend the afternoon testing out my skillz.

*no small feat considering that it's rained every weekend for the last 3 weeks and I've not been able to mow for that whole time. The grass was halfway to my knees and I"ve got an electric lawn mower… It wasn't pretty.

Tweetbook by BAstiano


Tweetbook
Originally uploaded by B a s t i a n o

Bastiano's work on flickr is always something I look at, I spent a day not long ago going through his stream and was amazed at the fantastic work. The covers are upcycled office envelopes that have been elaborately decorated and stitiched. The binding is amazing. LOVE these books.

Jotter Notebooks on Artfire Great Shades of Green with Unlined Paper


More New Jotter Notebooks
Originally uploaded by lessherger

These jotters almost didn't make it to Artfire. I'm so in love with the shades of green on the covers of these notebooks these almost remained mine.IF I didn't already have a box full of jotters these would have been mine. My loss is everyone's gain 'cause they are on ArtFire here.

You can also follow the link to the images of these on Flickr and see more pictures of jotters and other notebooks.

Still Needing a Pocket and Elastic


Still Needing a Pocket and Elastic
Originally uploaded by lessherger

I decided to try out a new backdrop for my pictures. I”d ben using the back side of an old coffee bag, that worked very well but lately I felt it was too distracting. IN the past I had used a different burlap bag and it had a tighter weave and was less fibrous. Also it had a large stamp on the back that said Ivory.

In the past I’ve used a white backdrop, which was a simple piece of white posterboard. I liked that very little. It also made getting a good clean shot difficult but made macro shots easy.

I wanted something that keep that rough recycled look but was a little cleaner than the burlap. I found it in kraft paper.