When I joined Etsy as a buyer in 2007, it was a site dedicated to selling handmade, vintage, and supplies. Today, Etsy’s page title reads “Etsy-your place to buy and sell all things handmade, vintage, and supplies”. Recently Etsy made a reseller of wooden furniture (that they import from Bali), a featured seller on their site. Instead of admitting their mistake when this shop was proven to be a reseller, Etsy decided that they would call the shop a “collective” and allowed the shop to stay open. You can read more about this story here.
Etsy seems to have lost sight of their original vision, and now claims that handmade is just an “anchor”. Etsy is now home to resellers of cheap mass-produced items, and factories/firms hiding under the guise of collectives. Buyers are being deceived into thinking they are buying genuine handcrafted items, and honest handmade sellers are being pushed aside by resellers who can offer cheaper prices since their items are factory produced.
I love handmade things, and I also think it is wrong to knowingly deceive people. Etsy was once a great place, and I have not lost hope for it yet. This is why tomorrow (May 10) I will be participating in Protetsy. This is a peaceful protest against the new trend of allowing resellers and false collectives. My shop (along with more than 4000 others) will be closing up for 24 hours at midnight tonight. If you are a seller on Etsy who believes that the site should remain about genuine handmade, you can still join in the protest. Visit protesty.com to add your shop to the list. If you are an Etsy buyer, you too can participate by not purchasing anything from Etsy on May 10.
Will this achieve anything? Who knows. There are of course those who mock this protest, saying that we will go unnoticed, but to those people I’d just like to say it’s better to shout and put up a fight, than to sit back and do nothing.
Yep, I’m at it again. I’m fiddling with my website. I can hear people groaning “LEAVE IT ALOOOONE”, but I’m an artist; nothing is ever good enough for my standards. I’ve gotta always keep pushing to do things better. Not much of an update I’m sad to say. I’m mostly just popping in to let anyone who might be reading this know that I haven’t forgotten about this place. There’s a lot going on at home and my time is super limited at the moment.
While I am here though, I wanted to mention that there’s a sale happening in my shop right now. Make a purchase and save 20% by entering the code HS2011 at the checkout. Oh, and that includes absolutely everything in my shop. CLICK HERE to visit my Etsy shop and buy yourself something pretty, you deserve it!
I will be back soon with what will hopefully be a real update.
Much ♥ to you all.
It’s been a while since I’ve written here but man have I been keeping busy. Painting, drawing, making jewelry, and working super hard on getting the website up to snuff and it’s so sooo close to being finished. All the gallery pages are working now and I’ve added a few new pieces, and more are still to come. I haven’t decided if I’m going to add a customs gallery or not, since I haven’t made very many of them in a long, LONG time, but I kind of would like to show the ones I have made. We’ll see what happens with that, but for now I’m going to focus on creating, and finishing up my website.
In other news, fall is fast approaching. This is the last long weekend of summer, and I don’t know about you but I am quite bummed. I usually love the fall, but summer has been so great and fun this year, I’m sad to see it go. I’ve been working on making a few fall inspired pieces to get myself into autumn mode. Here’s a couple I’ve done so far (click on the picture to be taken to Etsy to see more pictures);
Fall Flower
Autumn Treasures
and more will be coming soon. I’ve also got some ideas in mind for some autumn inspired paintings. Although I am sad summer is coming to an end, I really do love the colours and the fresh air that comes with the fall. It’s all so very inspiring and beautiful. I’m hoping that this will be a season full of inspiration and creativity. Bring it on!
I have been keeping pretty busy during this crazy heat wave we’ve been having in Ontario. Of course most of that time I’ve been keeping busy, it has been either visiting someone/somewhere that has air conditioning (because sadly, I don’t), hanging out in my mom’s pool, or taking my little man to the splash pad. Between all of that though, I have also come up with a few new jewelry designs. I hope everyone likes skulls, because there’s quite a few skull pieces made, and more in the works. I never really thought I would do the whole skull thing, but they’re really neat, and make for some fun designs.
“Rock Star” for sale in My Etsy Shop
I am super pleased with how they turned out. The curly wires were made by hand and I quite like them. I’m hoping to use them in some future designs. I am really enjoying working with wire at this point. I’ll post some more of my skull designs in a later post. For now, here is a necklace that I made just last week. I love this one!
“Unearthed” for sale in My Etsy Shop
I call this piece “Unearthed” because from the moment I saw them those blue flower beads reminded me of pottery found among ancient ruins. I *love* these beads. I hope you’ve enjoyed these new designs. I will be posting many more soon!
