Fox Brooch Jewellery Project

I've decided to try and blog about my jewellery projects once a month. Not only will it give me something to post about, but having to post about it will keep me making things to post about. I'm hoping it will help to keep the momentum up on both of them.

This month's project is a brooch I made for my grandmother at the beginning of the year. She loves foxes, and I found this little critter on Etsy.



It's quite chunky, so I thought the best thing to go with was a brooch. At first I was going to hang chain from the loops on the pin and dangle leaves like it was hiding among the foliage, but it pretty quickly became obvious this was unworkable. Whatever I hung from the chain would strike the fox, and probably damage it.



So I got rid of the chain. Not damaging the fox was a major consideration here, as was the fact that glass is quite heavy and I wanted to keep the weight of the brooch down or it could damage the clothes it was worn on. Being a hoarder I have lots of leaf charms. Glass ones were out, and the lucite ones were too big. I have several light metal ones, mostly in silver. However I thought the ones pictured above complemented the fox best, as they're quite small and in a sympathetic colour.

Because it was a woodland scene I wanted to add some flowers, and picked some tiny lucite ones because they're light. I went for red to go with the warm colour scheme, and added a silver butterfly for contrast.

And here's the finished piece.

Copper and Bronze and Brass, Oh My.

It's been a couple of months since I posted, and I have to admit it's because I've been sulking.

See, back in my early teens my brother gave me a rather fetching copper ring with a kind of ivy pattern engraved around it. I loved it, but unfortunately the thick green band it left on my finger was also how I discovered I don't react well to copper. Over the years I've avoided copper jewellery, even though I love the colour. I don't even think about it any more.

I don't think about it to the extent that I spent six months enthusiastically buying cute charms and chain in bronze and brass. 'Cos they'd be fine, y'know?

Um, no.

This is a piece I affectionately named The Clockwork Owl's Nesting Place, although I'm not sure if owls actually nest. It's one of the first watch plate pendants I made. The owl and the leaf are antique bronze, with a matching chain.

After wearing it for about a week solid, I started getting really itchy around the back of my neck. When I took the necklace off I noticed that around the clasp the chain had gone a lovely copper colour. So I looked in the mirror and saw an attractive green streak along the back of my neck. And then I remembered that bronze and brass are alloys of copper.

And that's when I had a sulk. I'd got all those charms and things with plans to make myself some new jewellery. The Etsy shop was really only an excuse to make more of the stuff than I could ever actually wear, but now it's going to be an outlet for all the creations I want to wear but can't. Some of my designs I'm trying to rework in silver, but a lot of what I've got will have to go.

Expect to see a lot of bronze and brass in my shop in the near future, and lots of posts where I try to figure out alternatives to chain and metal charms.

Out of the Blue

And then, out of the blue, someone bought a pair of my earrings. It's a cute little pair of dangles made out of watch parts, and I'll be making a trip to the post office tomorrow to mail them.

There's been so much else going on lately, I have to admit to neglecting Etsy a little bit. I've got finished items to list, unfinished items to finish, half-thought-out designs to work on.... Mostly its a problem of daylight - in that I need it to take photos before listing anything, and I also prefer working in it to artificial light. Hopefully things will improve now we're on the upward haul to Spring.

Last week I tried to put some glass charms on faux-suede cords, but managed to cut both cords too short so they're more like chokers. I'll try again this weekend, and use the original cords for bracelets instead. I also made some charm bookmarks the other day. No photos yet (daylight!), but I really enjoyed making them and am trying to think of people to make more for.

The end of the experiment

Adding everything to my Etsy search ad seems to have been more effective than limiting it to themed items. When my ad ran out yesterday morning, I'd had 4032 impressions in total. This led to 8 views, and one person favouriting the Victorian Lady steampunk pendant. Thats about a 0.2% click-through rate overall, although no one actually bought anything.

That means that during the portion of the week where I had everything up, I had a click-through rate of nearly 0.3%. So if I'd had everything up all week it could have led to maybe 12 views. Not a great investment at $0.36 a view, but worth bearing in mind next time I decide to advertise.

An experiment in advertising

Last week, I decided to do a little experiment with advertising on Etsy. For $5.00 a week you can have some or all of your items sponsored to come up as featured in searches.

It's still early days for my Etsy shop, so I thought I'd give it a go to see what happened. With Valentine's day coming up, I thought I'd promote my three Valentine related pieces. It doesn't seem like much, but it means that the maximum amount of impressions is shared by three items, rather than split between many. The ads have been running since last Friday, due to stop on the 10th. The stats so far aren't inspiring.

The ads so far have generated 1672 impressions - 1672 people have seen my items in a search, which they might not otherwise have seen. Has it led to added interest? Well, no.

So far I've had one view followed through from an ad. That's right, one. That works out as a success rate of 0.059%.

However, it must be said that I'm running this largely in isolation. I haven't joined any Etsy teams so far - there are some Real Life commitments I need to get out of the way first. My blog and Facebook page are brand new. I haven't joined any forums yet, and I've only just submitted pieces to the readers' galleries of UK jewellery magazines. I'm putting the  word out here and there, but I can hardly be said to be doing a major push on promotion. This is more in the nature of a control group - what kind of help does advertising bring without pushes from other sources?

As we've seen, not much. Does it mean I won't advertise again? Actually, I probably will. I've amended the advert to finish its run promoting everything in my shop - since there are $3.33 left of impressions to run in two days, I might as well. Whether it will change anything remains to be seen but at worst it'll gain me some visibility and I've had a couple of people add me to their circle this week.

And I'll probably promote again, if there are events coming up or if I've just put a load of products in my shop. $5.00 a time won't break the bank if I do it every so often, and you can stop the ad at any time. Plus it would be interesting to see if the stats change once I've started being a bit more proactive.

You never know, I might even sell some stuff!