Keep track of Etsy treasuries you are featured in!

Attention Etsy sellers! Lovely Craftopolis now offers an easy way to keep track of the Etsy treasuries you are featured in. Just type your Etsy username and voilá - you can see the treasuries you are featured in. This also includes the Treasury West.

You can also see who hearts your shop and items and features in Etsy gift guides.

Made it to Etsy frontpage today!

The things that make you happy! I thought my days at the frontpage of Etsy was over, since I´m not that active anymore. But look what lovely friends send me today - a screen cap of the frontpage with my Little Mermaid necklace.

Still celebrating.... :)

Little Mermaid - wirewrapped necklace with turquoise, aquamarine

I really don´t have the time, or enough material at home, but I felt I just had to play with wires again. This pendant is made of left overs, both chains and bits of wire. It´s all made with stones in soothing turquoise and sea foam green. And the size and shape of the pendant is perfect for a shirt with a button open or a v-neck top.

The pendant and chain is adorned with a collection of stones - turquoise, alexandrite topaz, chrysocolla and malachite. Attached to the pendant you also find jade and a beautiful shimmering aquamarine. From the extension chain hangs a lovely faceted chrysoprase briolette. It´s a collection worthy a little mermaid!

The patina gives the necklace a nice feeling of old times.

Size: pendant, including bail, 6cm. Chain 42-46cm
Material: turquoise, alexandrite topaz, chrysocolla, malachite, jade, aquamarine, chrysoprase, oxidized sterling silver.

You´ll find it listed in my Etsy shop: www.suzyqjewelry.etsy.com

Bright sun brings urge for bright colours

I´ve been creating tiny intricate stuff for some time now. But the bright sun, inspired me to make some plain colourful pieces for my Suzy Q Trinkets shop.

Normally I don´t like to just string my jewelry. Bores the /&%¤ out of me. But these I actually enjoyed making.

Sometimes I get an image in my head and can´t get rid of it until I create what I see. And it was just like that with this simple design.

I saw a plain row of smooth beads only interrupted by one single silver bead.

Eventually I had made 5 desings out of that idea. All different, but with the single "interruption" in common.

I´m lucky to have two shops, one with intricate designs with only precious materials and one with more simple designs, sometimes made of vintage plastic beads.

See more pictures in my shop: www.suzyqtrinkets.etsy.com

Emerald Isle necklace

This months Team Wire Artisans Guild challenge "Emerald Isle" and my longing for spring really came together in this necklace. The image I got in my head when thinking of "Emerald Isle" was green meadows full of spring flowers.

I tried to work on a celtic inspired idea, but the meadow image kept popping up in my head. So here it is...

The original idea was to make a pearl chain. I have a strand of really beautiful spring green freshwater pearls. But somehow I felt this flat diamond cable chain suited the necklace better. Perhaps I will let the customer choose.

Material:
925 sterling silver and 999 fine silver chain, wire and findings. Peridot briolettes and a round smooth citrin bead. Oxidized and tumbled
Size: Chain measures 16". Pendant 1"x1.2"/2,5x3cm

See more pictures at www.suzyqjewelry.etsy.com

Spring colour explosion!

The winter is finally letting it´s grip of Sweden go. The snow is melting with an amazing speed and out comes snow drops and those tiny yellow flowers I don´t know the name of.
All these spring feelings have made me long for strong colours. And is it just me or is Etsy flooding with lovely jewelry in strong colours?
Browsing around today I found some favorites I just have to share.

First Pinkdragonfly98:













Lulubugjewelry:











Missrubysue:

1400 hearts!!

Woke up feeling loved today. 1400 people have marked me as a favorite on Etsy.com. 1400!!!

I know Etsy is a big community, but I never thought I´d get that many hearts. I will celebrate by browsing aroung Etsy hearting other sellers. I want more people to feel like this :).

Let´s make this a "hearting" day!

WHITE LILY - more innocent white jewelry

Today I´ve been struggling with making my tiniest earrings with this technique ever. Just be happy the ugly words I used while doing it are´nt wrapped into the design.

First I had the intention to make the swirls a bit differently. But I couldn´t manage to get the wires to fit into these tiny drop shapes. So I used a very familiar design in the end.

I´m pleased though. They look so fabulous on and I´m proud to have achived this even though they are so small. The drop are no more than 0.66"!

I named them White Lily due to their innocent appearance. Actually my name, Susanna, is hebrew for white lily. At least I´ve been told so... :)

Material:
925 sterling silver and 999 fine silver wire and findings. Oxidized and tumbled to a nice shine. Freshwater pearls and rock crystal rondelles.

Size:
1.77"/4,5cm including earwires. The focal part is less than 1"!

Dreaming of summer meadows

I´ve added a new necklace to my Etsy shop. This necklace really is an expression of my dreams of summer and spring.

Last night it fell another 4" of snow so the winter keeps holding a tight grip of Sweden. My kids love it though. The snow castles they´ve built in the garden are amazing. But yet, my cat and I agree upon one thing - it´s enough now. Let the spring arrive!

Well, back to the necklace, I´ve tried to wove all that longing for warmer days into this pendant.

It´s a medallion like pendant with a beautiful butterfly, surrounded by a swirly pattern set with spring colours. The pendant is very light weighted though it gives a dense expression. It looks gorgeous togheter with anything purple. And I guess a plain white shirt will go nice with it too.

I had many thoughts of adding more tiny pearls and beads to the chain, but I decided to keep it plain, not to loose the medallion feeling.

Do you agree with me on that decision?

Material:925 sterling silver, oxidized and tumbled to a nice shine. 925 sterling silver butterfly charm from Bali. Pink amethyst, peridot and white freshwater pearls.

Size:Pendant 1.2"/3cm, 1.6"/4cm including the bail. Chain is 16"/40cm

Côte d'Azur earrings

Quote from Wikipedia about Côte d'Azur:

"The Côte d'Azur is one of the first resort areas in the world. It began as a health resort for ailing British tourists at the end of the 18th century.
With the arrival of the railroad in the mid-19th century, it became the playground and vacation spot of British, Russian, and other aristocrats, such as Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, when he was Prince of Wales."

Imagine all the beautiful clothes and jewelry women brought with them to wear at their walks at the beaches during those eras!! And the French Riviera have continued to attract the rich and beautiful. Just look at the Cannes Festival. A parade of beautiful clothes and jewelry.

With this pair of earrings I tried to make something small and dense - like some 19th century earrings. And the dangling part are no more than 1".

I can easily imagine a beautiful woman wearing these, sun tanned, with bare shoulders sipping a colorful drink. Perhaps a

Material:
925 sterling silver and 999 fine silver wire and findings. Oxidized, handpolished and tumbled. Beautiful sea blue apatite and fresh green peridot.

Size:
1.57"/4cm including ball post, the dangling part is 1"/2,5cm high and 0.70"/1,8cm wide

Visit my shop for more pictures: www.suzyqjewelry.etsy.com

Grand re-opening of The Wire Artisans Guild Etsy team store

♥:♥:♥ VALENTINE SPECIAL ♥:♥:♥

HAPPY VALENTINE!!!
My husband surprised me with some hidden gifts. He´s off with the kids skiing, but he had hidden his gifts under my pillow. So sweet of him!!
I´m having a ♥:♥:♥ VALENTINE SPECIAL ♥:♥:♥ in my shop too. Some of my favorites has been put down 50%. So treat yourself!
♥:♥:♥ Love to you all! ♥:♥:♥

Link to my shop: www.suzyqjewelry.etsy.com

One month with Google Analytics

Now I´ve had the possibility to view my visitor statistics on my Etsy stores through Google Analytics for a month. And I love it! It’s perfect to see the response to my shop activities.

I can see from my figures I´ve been having an average 100 visitors a day to my http://www.suzyqjewelry.etsy.com/ shop. And during this month a total of 2780 visits. I have nothing to relate to, but it feels like a good enough number for me.

My bounce-rate (the number of visitors who just visited the front page of my shop) are 40%. Same thing here, don´t know if the figure is good or bad.

The best part of the statistics is to see referring sites. A great way to note if a marketing or social networking effort paid of in visits. Hardly surprising Flickr and my Swedish web page are the major sources for my visitors.

The visitors I have almost covers the world map when I look where their IP addresses are registered, apart from the west of South America, Africa except South Africa and Zambia and most parts of the Arabic world. The biggest source are USA and of course Sweden.

Share your figures if you want to! I´d love to see which countries you attract to your webpage, let it be a blog, Etsy shop or ordinary home page.

I´m still amused by my only visitor from Zambia...:)

Fabric + jewelry = TRUE LOVE!

Right now I´ve got a thing for jewelry with textiles, lace and embroidery-like solutions. And suddenly I see it everywhere. A trend perhaps?

I´ve tried to figure out what it is that I like about the usage of fabric in jewelry. And it must be the textures and the contrast between hard and soft, if the jewelry also are made of metal. Fabric and metal makes a great clash between cold and warm. Since I´m a swirly girl, the usage of scrolls, vines and flower embellishments could also play a part…

My favourite jewelry designers using fabric are Tinctory ( http://www.tinctory.etsy.com/) and Edera Jewelry (http://www.ederajewelry.etsy.com/).

Tinctory stands for a more strict, modern look. I just love her choice of colours – always great against the base which is oxidized silver. Edera jewelry are more like traditional brocade, full of intricate patterns. I always dream of wearing her jewelry with Versailles or some other “little house” as a fond…

Two designers that recently started to experiment with fabric in their jewelry are Eclettica, (http://www.eclettica.etsy.com/ )and Meristem (http://www.meristem.etsy.com/) .

Both Eclettica and Meristem are gurus for me when it comes to colour – and now they impress me with their courage to experiment with fabric too. Check out their latest pieces and enjoy the fantastic work - fabric included or not.

So will fabric reach my jewelry? I might tie a descrete ribbon bow on a pendant soon. But that´s as far as I will dare to go I think…:)

RETURN OF INNOCENSE - new necklace

This is a piece I started sketching on as my contribution to The Wire Artisans Guild challenge ART NOUVEAU. But somewhere along the way it travelled in time and ended up more as an EDWARDIAN piece. But the two styles where very close to each other in time.

The Edwardian era are sometimes referred to as the “belle époque”. Swirly intricate designs where common and platinum and pearls where highly preciated.




Read more about the Edwardian era and the jewelry of that tim at “Antique jewelry at Topazery”.
Even if this necklace doesn´t fit as an entry for the challenge, I like it a lot. So swirly, and intricate.

With this piece I wanted to give more density to the style I usually have, and I really think I managed to achive it. Even though it took me more steps than usual.




As you can see on the pic showing the sketch and the finished result I made some changes while creating as usual. And at first I left the piece shiny but decided to oxidize to enhance the detail.

This piece is so feminine, in a way women strived to achive in the past millenium, so what name could be better than the titel of the old ENIGMA song RETURN OF THE INNOCENSE.





Material: A lot of sterling silver went into this piece! 925 sterling silver wire and findings. Hundreds of tiny 1mm 985 silver Karen Hill tribe beads. Cultured white fresh water pearls.Oxidized to enhance the details.

Size:Chain 11", pendant 3" including bail, 2.5" without bail and ring.

1300 hearts!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, I´m so exited! Scaring my neighbours right now with my own wild celebration choreography.
I´ve reached more than 1300 hearts at Etsy. When someone save you as their favorite shop you get a "heart".
I´ve been waiting so long to take the step past 1300 hearts. And been having so many defeats. Just when it was 1299 it dropped down one or two hearts. People must have been cleaning their saved favourites after Christmas perhaps.
But now I reached my goal!

Tasty treasury - peaches and raspberry!

Yes, I got myself a treasury!
It was a long time ago since I made a treasury. So I was surprised when there suddenly was room to make one right as I opened up the Treasury at Etsy.
If you never heard of a treasury before, it´s a possibility for Etsy users to pick their favorite items and make a collage with them
Normally I have a theme planned for the collage - and I have already picked items and saved them among my Favorites. Now I had to come up with something quick - and Peaches and raspberry was the first thing that popped into my mind. I guess I long more for summer than I know :)

If you have the time, pop by and add a comment:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=33314

Sleeping Beauty - fairy tale necklace

Here it is - the Sleeping Beauty necklace I blogged about earlier. Now it´s finally been put together. It looks almost like my sketch, I only did a few changes and added the draped chain on both sides. The design needed more balance.

I got the inspiration from an illustration of Sleeping Beauty by William A. Breakspeare. So beautiful and with an oriental touch. You´ll find the illustration here.

Material:925 sterling silver, 985 and 999 fine silver wire and findings. Pink and purple amethyst, vesuvianite rondelles and white fresh water pearls.Size:16"/40cm. Focal with chains and briolettes 4"/10cm.

What I don´t like about making necklaces is that I haven´t found a great way to take pics of them. Got to buy me some kind of model and experiment more with angles.

See more pictures of this necklace in my Etsy shop.

Featured in magazine

It´s a strange feeling to see yourself in a magazine. I never get used to it. But it´s fantastic to see your pieces displayed and to have someone writing about your business. This is an article about doing business on Etsy.

Etsy is something new to both sellers and buyers in Sweden. When doing a search I can only find 49 Swedish sellers at Etsy - it should be more! I hope this article will help others to take the step forward against opening their own Etsy business.

I also hope this will make me find more Swedish customers. My customers mostly comes from US, UK and France. It used to be Australia and New Zeeland but for some reason I´ve had no buyers from those countries since spring.

If you have an Etsy shop, where do your customers mostly come from?