Inselly is fun

I don't know if anyone reading this is a jewelry crafter/ seller like me. I've been on Etsy for a very long time. For the most part, I really like it. It's easy to use, and it has a lot of good, new features that have only made it easier to use the last few years. However, other things have changed over the years as well; the main thing that I've noticed is that creating the right tags, titles and descriptions to get noticed among thousands of listings has been more difficult than ever. Perhaps when searching something like a turquoise necklace, one of mine may not necessarily have been in the first few pages, but I knew that at the very least I would always be on the front page or near the front page when people were searching by the "newest" category. Now, I don't even have that assurance. If I don't list my item correctly, I might not ever be seen. I can't help but wonder how these changes affect the buyer as well. I've occasionally searched my items with very specific words that I've used so as to find a specific one, and sometimes those items don't appear at all on a relatively short list of results, two or three pages long. As a buyer, I would want to see all my options, not just the options Etsy deems most worthy. Ah, the days of a smaller, easier to navigate marketplace. Etsy used to be like that. The last time I tried selling jewelry, I got involved in some smaller marketplaces such as shophandmade.com, dawanda,com and a couple others that I don't even recall the names of. What I do remember is that I enjoyed these marketplaces because I had the sense that my jewelry was at least being noticed. I can't yet share a full experience on inselly because I haven't seen or looked for many opportunities to connect with other sellers yet. Often that is what can make the experience the most fun of all. However, at this phase, I'm interested in two things, spending less time on my shop and actually selling something. The first one is a big bold check with inselly. This may not be as good for buyers because less time for me means less info for them, however I imagine buyers can reach out and ask for whatever additional information they like. I like that I only have to post one picture, a brief description with sizing information and price. Most of all, I like that I don't have to obsess over SEO (search engine optimization). It appears that I can tag each item as much as I want, and I don't obsess over the title because I'm not even allowed to post over a certain (brief) number of characters. Fine by me. Of course, even the time I am spending there, isn't wisely used if it doesn't eventually lead to sales. Time will tell on that one. Just wanted to share my experience. I believe inselly only allows 100 free listings, and I will probably post at least that much. Want to check out what I have so far? Come take a look at If you have a shop yourself, feel free to share it, as well as your experience on inselly, here in the comments. Thanks! -Stacy

New listings posted

This is not normally something I plan to post here, but I was excited to show you the finished product as it appears in a listing. I now have two of them up on my website. Please come take a look Green double strand bracelet Earth tone double strand bracelet Thanks for joining me in this crafting endeavor. It was a lot of fun. -Stacy

The Makeover Review

Remember in my last post I talked about me and some other online jewelry makers doing a makeover challenge with one of our pieces? Now that I think of it, that was during a time when makeovers were all the rage. There had to be at least a half a dozen makeover shows on television. Makeover your body, makeover your wardrobe, makeover your home, makeover your family, and so on and so forth. Does that you job your memory? Well, while I admit that we can sometimes get carried away with such things, there is something very alluring about a good makeover. I've found the most recent challenge I presented myself to be very satisfying. Now, for the results. Here are the before:

And here are the afters:

I know these are difficult to see, so I will try to show some greater detail of the finished product results below. Here are some more of the before pictures:

And here they are after I made some changes:

Basically, I kept the general color scheme, but added many, many more beads, more variety in type, size and style. This was a perfect opportunity to use from my grab bag of beads (see second photo.) Sometimes when my bead board gets messy, and I don't necessarily feel like putting each stray bead back in its place, it goes into the grab bag. It's not the most organized method, but sometimes if I don't clean it all up in some manner, it won't get clean at all. At least pieces like this provide an opportunity to use those beads, giving me a reason to shirk my responsibility of properly cleaning up. Heh heh.

Adding beads, of course, was necessary because I changes each one into a double strand bracelet. I did enjoy making these, but I admit they were more work than I thought. Each bracelet takes roughly the length of time it takes for me to make a necklace, and I think probably more. It was tricky to get each strand to line up well, and trickier still to not allow much wire to show. I am happy with how they turned out. The bottom line for me is that I'd rather wear these than the bracelets they were originally. Let me know what you think of this style. I may make some of these available on my website, but if I do not and you are interested, just drop me a line. I imagine I could let these go for $15 a piece. Thanks for joining me in this process.

Starting with introductions

Since this is my first post, I'd like to start by introducing myself. My name is Stacy, and I am owner to the relaunched and renamed shop on etsy, Poetic Notions jewelry, formerly Design by Sunzeri. After beginning jewelry crafting again after all these years, I've found that I love it as much as ever. However, getting views and learning SEO is a completely different endeavor as well. I've been told my many, many people that it's no longer as simple as posting pictures and descriptions of your work and letting the customers come to you. You need to direct traffic to your shop, and that means social media. To be honest, my first thought was that this is just more work, but then it occurred to me that social media includes blogging, and that sharing my process with others who enjoy crafting or just enjoy jewelry might actually be a lot of fun. Now, I'm excited about it! You can find my shop at Here are some photos of my most recent creations. Now, the reason I am adding these bracelets are because I had more fun than usual with these designs due to their complexity. The photos are all of the same bracelet, but when you look at it from different angles, it doesn't look like the same bracelet. I've been in the habit of creating practically only necklaces, and I've been making simple designs, usually something a little different at the neckline and then continuing up to the clasp (end) with something repetitive and predictable. This process usually provides a lovely result, but what I found is that I had more fun with the less predictable design used in the bracelets here. I did pay attention to the overall look to make sure it was cohesive as I went. For instance, if I had chosen to add light green as one of the repeating colors, I tried to use it uniformly. Same goes for other colors and types of beads that I used, but I didn't necessarily know what my next bead would be. I made those choices as I went along. Another thing I've found with this type of design is that I enjoy wearing it more. If it's a bracelet I'm wearing, I often twist it around on my wrist, examine the beads with my eyes, feel them. I appreciate the complexity. There sometimes dozens of types of beads in a design like this, not just a few repeating ones. If fact the first piece of handmade beaded jewelry I purchased, was a double strand bracelet in a design like this. I bought it from a friend, the same friend that introduced me to beading. She took me to a fabric store to pick out a craft container, beads, wire,clasps, and we got together at her house where she taught me how to make my first necklace. That was the beginning of it all for me. I was hooked. I wore that first bracelet a lot, until I lost it one day in San Francisco. I hope it made someone else very happy. It meant a lot to me. Anyway, I had just had this wonderful evening creating designs such as these, lovely double strand bracelets, when I came across a shoebox of older bracelets I had made, very simple and not super exciting designs. The toggles on them are kind of expensive and running in low supply. I used to avoid restringing something whenever I could because of the extra time needed to dedicate to the task, however I now think that if I'm not satisfied with a design, it's kind of a lost opportunity not to restring. Here are some photos of the bracelets I came across. To my mind, they are begging to be restrung. When I first started out on etsy, one of the fun challenges presenting on one of the teams I was an active member of, was to restring a piece of jewelry into something better. I was so fun, and I never forgot it. That's exactly what I will be doing here. I'll keep you posted on my progress. Thanks for letting me share.