Here it is, my first official blog post. I've been told by a few folks that I should create one to help advertise/promote my Etsy shop, so here I am. Promoting. Go to my shop, yay! Does that work? No? Okay, let's see...
Find my shop here: www.etsy.com/shop/kellybean607
There you'll find a plethora of stained glass items, all handmade by me! I specialize in candleholders & vases, of both the mosaic and soldered variety, and am hopefully going to start selling picture frames soon. I'm always looking for new design ideas and am very excited when I find them.
I fell in love with stained glass when I took a class at a community college on a whim about 10 years ago. My first project was a 12x12" square with a circled mirror in the bottom left corner and orange & yellow "rays" to make it look like the sun. I was pretty stoked about it. My mom still has it, actually - next time I go home, I'll take a picture and post it here.
I then learned how to sandblast glass - my second project (which is in my garage) was of a purple butterfly at night, with the moon and patterns on the butterfly "blasted". I'll take a picture of that one, too. It's a great piece, but my brother accidentally broke the moon not long after I finished it and I've never been sure what to do with it. Should I fix it? If so, how? Should I just leave it as-is? It does look kind of cool...
After that I decided to try a mosaic piece and fell in love. It's 15x15", with a 12x12" mirror placed in the middle. Ladybugs, the sun, flowers and vines all surround the three inches around the mirror.
I had so much fun with that one, I decided to tackle something even bigger for my next venture - a coffee table! I found an old one at a Goodwill, with part of the top missing. Once I measured and got the right piece at Lowe's, I got started. I didn't have much of an idea of what I was going to do, except for some reason I really wanted a funky circular pattern thrown in there somewhere. Once I finished that, I got the idea to make the bottom a grassy area with flowers and ants, and part of the top like a night sky, complete with stars. The middle proved a little more difficult, but threw a few dragonflies in and managed to pull it off. The one thing I don't like about the piece now is the silly circle pattern in the corner, it doesn't seem to fit. Oh, well. To finish everything off, I found a (now pretty ugly) purple color and painted the remainder of the table. It stayed that way for years until I couldn't handle it anymore and painted it brown. I also added some edging and plexiglass around the design to protect it a little better. Up until just recently I was using it as my coffee table, it's now hanging out in the garage waiting patiently to be shown off again someday!
Soon after, I ended up moving to a new state and became super-busy with work and adjusting to my new life. My love for glass kind of went by the wayside. One day when at a craft store, I saw them selling cheaply-made mosaic candleholders and thought, "I can certainly do that!" - so I bought a couple clear tealight holders and started small. Most of my projects were given to friends and family as gifts until someone suggested I try selling them. This was before Etsy was around (or at least well before I discovered it), so I took them to the flower shop up the street. The woman was very sweet and agreed to sell them for me, with herself taking a small piece of whatever was sold. It was only fair. The only problem was they didn't really sell, so a couple months later she asked me to take them back because at that point they were just cluttering up her shop. I was back to square one.
Someone told me to try eBay, so I took photos of the stuff I had and listed a couple items. Nothing. I started to get discouraged. Then one of my friends asked me to custom-make a mosaic vase for her and insisted that she pay me for it. So I did. I got the bug again, especially for mosaics, so I hit up thrift stores in the area to find old vases in cool shapes and sizes. I began feverishly mosaic-ing things with no idea when or where or how I'd get rid of them. At that point, I didn't really care - I was just having fun. I was running out of places to keep them, though, so I started to look into craft fairs or renting spaces in retail shops. Problem was you had to pay money up front in order to do that and at the time I couldn't afford it. Cue frustration and discouragement again. Grumble, grumble.
Then one day my boss found out that I dabble in glass in my free time and told me that I should have a sale here at work. She was sure people would really love my stuff and would love to help me out. So, I packed up my boxes of creations and hauled them in. Within a couple hours I had almost completely sold out of everything and made enough to pay my rent for nearly the next two months! It was amazing. Not only was it a great boost of self-esteem, but it made me realize that I just need to keep working at it - because people do enjoy my work, I just have to find the right avenue with which to get the word out. That's where Etsy came in.
I opened my shop in 2010 and made my first sale not long after. Even though it was to someone I knew, it was pretty exciting. My first Etsy sale! Yay! A couple sales trickled in here and there, but it wasn't as rapidly as I was hoping. Once I got my first sale to someone I didn't know, I was encouraged again....but a couple months went by before I was able to sell anything else. Earlier this year I got the opportunity to custom-make a set of 5 candleholders for a stranger (yay!) and she loved them so much she ordered 5 more not long after! That was a definite encouragement boost. My sales come and go: for a period of time they'll be one after another, then it'll cool off for a few months. I am featured in many treasuries, which makes me very happy, and I've started using the Etsy Search Ads to try and bolster some sales, but I'm not quite sure how much it's helping yet. We'll see. Maybe this blog will help, too. ;) So far I've made it up to 20 sales. Not terrible, but dangit, I want more!!
Even if I don't have massive Etsy success, the one thing I can say is that I'm very glad I have great friends and family who love and support me enough to request custom pieces and refuse to let me do it for free. Friends who see my talent and encourage me to venture out and try to sell my art. Friends who pass out my business cards to their clients, who display their pieces proudly and "advertise" when asked where they got them. Friends who ask me to make candleholders for their upcoming wedding and post links to my page on their own blogs, encouraging people to head my way. It's a pretty great feeling, knowing I have people like that in my life!
But enough mush, let's get me some sales! :)
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