Books!

This big book project started with a huge piece of set paper that was left on the floor, ready to be folded and thrown away after a shoot last week. I hate throwing out paper, it always feels like a horrible waste, especially since this piece was almost all clean and the gray color Ned's using now is really beautiful.

So, I decided to cut it down and use the paper to make stab stitched books, it was too hot today to make anything that takes too much concentration and it was nice to work with my hand, cutting and hammering for hours.

While I was working on those, Ned and I were making jokes about selling the set paper to some perverts on ebay, who would want to own a piece of something the model's body touched, like this whole strange dirty underwear and a picture thing. So though we decided not to sell the paper on ebay, we did make another set of notebooks together, using the images from the shoot as decoration for the front of the book. I really like how they look and the idea of something physically present from the shoot get to be inside the book.

18 books in one day!

Damn! my arm rally hurts... but I think it was worth it!

Inspiration Bags freebi gifts!

I have 20 cool inspiration goody bags to give away to anyone who buy anything from my shop, each bag contains a lovely unique notebook, a mini set of inspiration cards (5-6 cards) and a hand painted book mark. Also lucky number 13 will receive an awesome surprise prize that's handmade by me and priced at about 30$.

This great goody bag can be yours with any purchase from my shop - just type in the code InspireMe in the "massage to seller" box when you place your order.

This coupon is available while supply lasts. there are 20 bags so be quick about it!

My store is: http://louchelab.etsy.com

Fierce - Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday word of the week was "Fierce" it reminded me of a part of a part of a golden dawn text I read a few years ago, describing a path through an ordeal - the whole sentence was:

The Fear of Darkness & of Death
The Fear of Water & of Fire
The Fear of the Chasm & the Chain
The Fear of Hell & the dead Breath.
The Fear of Him, the Demon dire
That on the Threshold of the Inane
Stands with his Dragon Fear to slay
The Pilgrim of the Way.
Thus I pass by with Force & Care,
Advance with Fortitude & Wit,
In the straight Path, or else Their Snare
Were surely Infinite.

It made me thing of a knight passing straight on a narrow bridge over a pit full of monsters. And how the best way going through a difficult patch is focus on yourself rather then on all the problems.

Experiment 02 day 2

I'm on the second day of the experiment of renewing 10 items a day. The first conclusion that I got is that it's not easy... if I want to renew something every hour it means sitting in front of the computer all day. I sort of do that anyway, but since I get up pretty late, and somehow renewing after 11:00 seem to generate a lot less views, it's really challenging to remeber doing this every hour, maybe I should set an alarm!

Since I didn't update this yesterday - there's a lot of items in the list...

Items renewed
Tuesday
3:30 The Key to your Heart - Art kit - 35$ - views 26
5:00 The Great Gatsby - Reader Kit - 27$ - views 21
5:30 Summer Birds ACO - 10$ - views 20
6:40 Greek Portrait - Original Painting - 40$ - views 17
9:15 Fly away Business card case - 20$ - views 27
11:10 Sewing Machine card holder - 20$ - views 41
12:00 O solitude - Original painting - 45$ - views 33 (it was also in a treasury!)
2:00 Rocky Raccoon - 22$ - views 27

Wednesday

2:00 Summer apple Art Kit - 35$ - views 14
3:30 Opossum sewing kit - 20$ - views 20
6:00 Heart - Original Art - 40$ - views 27
7:30 Little squirrle Notebook - 17$ - views 10
8:30 Spider Mum leather bound sketchbook - 25$ - views 14
9:15 Black Lilly - Minor Arcana Tarot deck - The Swords - 40$ - views 9
10:00 Spring Tricycle Glasses case - 28$ - views 8
10:30 Lone wolf notebook - 27$ - views 5
11:00 Art Nouveau Journal - 3o$ views 6

Item listed
Black Lilly inspiration cards - pocket size - 37$ - views 25
Saint Larissa - original art - 18$ - views 2
Sadness - original art - 18$ views 10
Larissa and birds - original art - 18$ views 7
Black Lilly inspiration cards - 80$

Hearts 1113 (how cool is that!)

Sales
So far none! which is a little disheartening, it feels strange spending so much time on etsy and nothing sell. Usually the last week of the month is slower for me, maybe this wasn't the best time for this experiment...

Money spend
Renewing 3.40$
Listing 1$
earned 0

I do hope it picks up soon!

I did however had a cool promotional idea after coming across this cool site, and I'm excited about working on it tomorrow!

Treasuries!

Good treasury night! I made one and got included in one! how cool is that!



This is a cool treasury I was featured in!



Check my Virginia Woolf treasury!

Project Renewal - day 14 (the end?!)

When I started the renewal project (renewing 5 listing a day for 2 weeks) I didn't have a result in mind, I did however wanted to make some sales after my store reached a total stand still, and I also wanted to try and get a sense of the best time to renew and whether it works best to renew in different times over the day. Also, I guess I wanted to be excited about my etsy store again, which was just making me frustrated because nothing sold for a while.

I think this experiment achieved all of the above. I made 8 sales in whole (not the best 2 weeks I ever had, but definitely, pretty good) 5 of those were on the first week and 3 on the second week, I don't know if this is a definitive answer about whether batch or spread is the way to go, but I think that spread is better, out of the 3 sales I had in the second week, non of the itemes were recently renewed.

Also, in the first weekend I had very little views or sales, so I decided to skip renewing on the second weekend, I don't know if that was a fact, maybe I was just getting discouraged toward the second weekend, but I do think people tend to shop more on the week days. As for what hours are the best - I really couldn't tell, it seem that every item had about the same ammount of views whether it was renewed in a batch or on it's own, or in the morning or in the evening. There's really no way of telling so far.

Documenting this experiment in the blog, did made me get excited again about the store, I crafted a lot and made a bunch of new drawing, and created a new item all together (the new inspiration cards, which took quite some time!)

Here are the over all numbers from the 2 weeks of experimenting:

Items sold:
Strange summer - Original art - 15$
Summer Birds ACO - 10$
Black Lilly inspiration cards - pocket size - 37$
The Black Lilly Deck of Tarot - 60$
Your Money or Your life journal - 30$
Love in the Time of Cholera - Reader Kit - 27$
Oliver the Fox - 45$
Past-Present-Future - a triptich - 40$

Money earned in those 2 weeks - 254$

Items listed
Red fox notebook - 17$
Mac the Moose - 22$
Black Lilly inspiration cards - 80$
Maps and Legends - Reader Kit - 27$
100 years of Solitude - Reader Kit - 27$
Son of a Gun Journal - 30$
Stand and Deliver Journal - 30$
The Black Lilly Deck of Tarot - 60$
Black Lilly - Minor Arcana Tarot deck - The Swords - 40$
Black Lilly - Minor Arcana Tarot deck - The Cups - 40$
Lone wolf notebook - 27$
Little squirrle Notebook - 17$
Rocky Raccoon - 22$
The Great Gatsby - Reader Kit - 27$
Punchline - Original Art - 35$

Hearts - 1095 (the day I started I had 1042, so that's 53 more, which is very nice indeed...)


Money spend:
money spend on listing: 2.80$
Money spend on renewing: 12$
Total: 14.80$

Basically I spend 15$ on renewing and listing, and made a little over 250$, which I think is pretty cool.

I'm going to keep up the experiment for another 2 weeks in which I'm going to play double or nothing, and spend 2$ a day on renewing 10 items. We'll see how it goes...

Two Dreams

A couple of nights ago I had 2 dreams.



In the first I was back in Israel, in my old job and apartment, hanging out with my friends, I was single again, and felt a lot like the way I felt when I was single, before I met Ned, in that crazy exciting phase after I came to realizing that I like it on my own. I was talking to my friends about the past 2 years trying to remember what was going on, how I came to be there, I couldn't remeber Ned or being in New York, I kept trying to remember, I knew I wasn't single, and that I didn't have a boyfriend, that something else was going on as far as relationship goes, but I couldn't remeber what it was.



The second dream was a strange erotic dream in which I was having sex with myself, I was on the couch in our studio and making out with myself, there was two of me, one was me like I am now an the other was different, but they were both me. Ned was working on his computer and was half aware of the two of us having sex. At some point he was trying to get involved but we kept pushing him out of the way.