Etsy, Here I come.

What Happened

2011-05-08T18:49:00.003+02:00

My mother-in-law’s most important jewelry status statement was her 1 ct diamond ring. The stone was mounted in a fairly standard 1950’s white gold prong setting. I was pleased to inherit this ring.

Several years later two of the prongs began snagging my clothes. The lateral photo shows noticeable air between the prong and the girdle of the diamond. After 60 years of use it was time to reset the stone.

It is my stuff so I saw off two of the triangular shaped prongs to dismount the diamond. Then I start to check out the stone: Cut – old style with truncated culet; color – a little yellow, probably G; purity – clean, vvs; weight – 75 pts. Holy Cow! It is not a 1 ct diamond. What happened to the missing 25 points?

In 60 years many things could have happened to this ring including that, maybe, the diamond had never been a full carat. Certainly I was disappointed not to have a 1 ct diamond but this had been a gift and much appreciated. The situation would have been very different if this had been a client’s ring.

Part of my job is to take in used jewelry for repairs, remodeling or remounting. Sometimes the work is carried out leaving the stone in place. Sometimes the stone needs to be removed from its mount and reset. There is a lot of trust from all parties involved.

In the end what happened is that I remounted the diamond, my diamond, just like I wanted it. Compression formed 18K yellow gold band and 18K white gold filed mount.

Everyone that sees the ring thinks that the diamond is enormous. I think that it is probably a bi-color – G and F. Kept clean, it seems to be a drop of sparkling water.

Counter Blog to Jamie Hall’s Cuttlefish Casting Blog

2010-03-09T17:26:00.008+01:00

Cuttlefish bone casting is a form of gravity casting and was used thousands of years ago by the Chinese and the Greeks, among other peoples. Logically the method was developed in geographical areas that were near the sea or ocean and therefore had access to cuttlefish bone. Landlocked areas used clay, sand or tuff stone for gravity casting. Gravity casting is still widely used throughout the world today.

I studied with Maestro Baiocco who had worked for Bulgari making signet rings. Bulgari used lead and indio models with no undercuts to impress the design into the cuttlefish bone. Maestro Baiocco produced one signet ring from scratch every day. Actually he produced it in 4 hours, went off to the horse races and came back to the lab shortly before closing time to give the ring it’s final polish. The procedure is: make the mold, cast, file inside of ring smooth, place on steel ring mandrel and use steel hammer to compact the metal, file inside to final ring size, file outside to desired shape, hollow out the form and finish. This technique can be instant gratification and is useful for producing that one missing part for an object that is in consignment today.

The Maestro’s tips: 1. Place a thin curved strip of zinc across the sprue opening. The hot metal will instantly melt the zinc and the flow will be quicker and smoother. 2. Never cast on a cloudy day. The additional atmospheric moisture causes more vapor release and therefore more porosity in the metal.

I do agree with Mr. Hall when he says that “it can be a very temperamental material to work in”. It is difficult to get repeatable results. And the weight of the casting is up to the gods. But seeing as how the cuttlefish bone texture remains quite popular as a surface texture I, and many others, cheat a bit to get controllable results.

Very simply one does a few carefully prepared castings of desired shapes and then makes a rubber mould of them.

These wax pieces have the cuttlefish bone pattern on both sides and can be used for bracelets, necklaces and earrings. The long, narrow, half round wax wire I generally use as the central part of weddings bands with smooth lateral borders. I have used these elements, on client’s request, to make many jewelry items.

This custom order is just hot off of my work bench and you can see more photos here (link). The client specifically asked that the bracelet base have the cuttlefish bone texture. The bracelet is 7 1/2 in (19 cm) long, 1 in (2.5 cm) wide and weighs 77 grams. My estimate as to how much gold would be required to make the bracelet was 71 grams and was calculated using 1 mm as the average thickness. This meant that the textured base needed to be 0.8 mm thick or less. Also the inside of the bracelet was to be smooth.

Here is how to do it. File and sand flat 2 or 3 cuttlefish bones. With a soft brush eliminate the powder from the bones veining. Dust talcum powder onto both sides of a 1 mm sheet of pliable wax and place the wax on the cuttlefish bone.

Using disposable thin latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, press the wax into the cuttlefish bone design. Press firmly and in small areas to get a good impression on the wax. Gently remove wax sheet from bone and cut out the shapes and sizes needed.

So I always have cuttlefish bone in my lab, whether it be for a quick cast or to rob nature’s design.

Through a Glass, Darkly...

2009-12-03T12:35:00.020+01:00

In taking photos of my jewelry I have generally used a setup where the object is placed on non-reflective glass elevated above a gradient background. All of the photos on my web site were done in this way, which gave the site a homogeneous look and a “serious” gallery exposition for the jewelry. For Etsy I wanted more casual and more light-hearted photos and when I think of light I think white. I would like for at least some of the background to be white.

To do this trial I used a foldformed pure gold and fine silver pendant. The pendant was photographed on the following backgrounds and in this sequence:
+ on non-reflective glass elevated above a white background.
+ on non-reflective glass placed on a white background.
+ object placed directly on the white background.
All other possible variables such as lighting, exposure time, white balance preset, etc. were kept constant. As one can see from the photos below, placing a support of glass under the jewelry will darken the background.

Above are the results after importing the original photo into PhotoShop and doing some corrections. I want a white background. So I chose a background point on each photo and using the curves tool, arbitrarily brought the R, G and B channels up to a 245 value (255 being white). Using curves the shadows were set at a value of 65.

The results were a bit harsh for the two photos that had the darker backgrounds due to the glass layer so I re-photographed the pendant both on the elevated glass and on the glass placed on the white background. But I placed a small piece of white on top of the glass so that I could see it in the upper left corner in the viewfinder. I could have cropped this out but have left a small amount in the photo to show how this was done.

Here are the original, un-corrected photos and below them are the photos after PhotoShop.

This time the background point to be brought up to white was chosen from the small white area in the upper left because I know that this should be white. Again the curves tool was used to bring the point’s R, G and B values up to 245 and the shadows were set at 65.

The moral of the story is that, yes, using a layer of non-reflective glass, either elevated or placed directly on the background, will darken the background in the photo. But by photographing the object placed directly on a white or partially white background the light areas can be corrected to white. Also, a small, croppable white sample placed on to of the glass can be used as a valid color correction point.

I have a page on my web site that explains the techniques that I use for jewelry photography.

New Years in July

2009-08-01T09:01:00.002+02:00

For studio jewelers in Italy August represents the end of the jewelry making year. Metals, stones and findings dealers close for the entire month. Some have advised us that they will not reopen until the second week of September. The newspapers do not even quote the prices of precious metals on the financial page.

We dust down our bench and take in the scraps and filings for refining. There is a last rush to finish any outstanding work for clients and consign. Then all precious objects and materials are gathered up and put away and the vault is closed.

So the end of July is a time of summing up and analyzing how the work year went and the time to make resolutions for the coming year.

This past year I spent more time at the computer working on self and site than making jewelry. I have become much more computer and internet fluent but all of this activity has not translated into dollar signs. Hence my first resolution is to set up more selling venues, both in physical galleries and in on line shopping sites.

One of my past years projects was to list my site in directories. This has had positive results as far as referrals to my site but the visits have had a high bounce rate. And it does take time to research for and about the directories and write up a statement that fits their format.

Referral visits with a low bounce rate and that viewed more pages and spent more time on my sites were from my blogs, my flickr and other pages where my profile and photos of my work are present. I think that the logic is that the visitor sees my photos and reads some information about me and the techniques used to make my jewelry and they click the links to my sites because they want to see more and, maybe, want to know how much this type of jewelry costs.

This reasoning brings me to my second resolution, which is, to enrich my blog and flickr presentations and to regularly participate in a few select forums and related internet galleries.

My third and last work resolution is to renovate my personal web site.

So, Happy New Year! We will see each other in September when the next jewelry making year begins.

Front Page Listing on Etsy

2009-06-15T18:27:00.002+02:00

On Saturday, June 6, at 10 p.m. EST, one of my jewelry pieces – a silver wolf head ring – was put on the front page list made by Etsy. YEAH! True, probably 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening isn’t prime viewing time but my store has only been open a couple of months and is still quite small (only 12 objects) so I felt real good about having been chose for a list.

With Google Analytics I was able to follow the ensuing activity on my site. Briefly, the following happened. On June 6 the store was visited 14 times, on June 7 it received 415 visits and on June 8 it was back to 14 visits. It was one gigantic peak on the graph.

Not one sale resulted from this activity, but both store and item hearts increased nicely. Craftcult.com has a heart-o-matic tool that permits one to see who has hearted the shop and the items. It was interesting to discover that of the store hearts 86% were from other Etsy sellers and of these 2/3rds were other jewelry stores, like me. Only 17% were Etsy users or possible customers. The situation is somewhat different for who hearted an item. Here 65% were other store owners of which only 1/3rd jewelry stores and Etsy shoppers moved up to 35%.

As many of you do, I try to increase my visibility on the internet through Flickr, Facebook, my blogs, participating in several forums, ecc. with the intent of driving potential customers to my selling venues. I frequently have the sensation that this activity results in a discussion between colleagues and does not involve my target audience of clients and galleries. So it was heartening (intended pun) that some types of exposure on Etsy will catch the potential customers attention.

The View out my Jewelry Lab Window

2009-05-26T09:15:00.004+02:00

A few years ago a friend made an addition to my modest collection of roses. His gift was a rose plant by the name of Rita Levi-Montalcini which I planted by my jewelry lab window. It is a floribunda and blooms constantly and profusely ten months of the year. The blooms are an attractive pink with yellow and coral tones. And, unknown to my friend, the name of the rose had and has personal meaning to me.

I first heard the name of Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini when I was working in a brain research lab in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the head of what we considered to be our rival lab for funding and scientific exposure. Dr. Levi-Montalcini had already identified the Nerve Growth Factor and was internationally known as a dedicated scientist.

My next near contact with Dr. Levi-Montalcini happened several years latter when we moved to Rome, Italy. An Italian colleague from the lab in the U.S. was then working in Dr. Montalicini’s new Laboratory of Cellular Biology in Rome and he said there would be a job opening for me. But I had fallen in love with making jewelry and changed careers.

Dr. Levi-Montalcini has since been awarded the Nobel Prize (1986) for Physiology and, in particular, for identifying the Nerve Growth Factor. She has been appointed a life-time senator in the Italian Parliament. Recently Dr. Montalcini celebrated her 100th birthday with the mayo of Rome. I look at my flowering rose bush and think how well it represents the long and fruitful life of Rita Levi-Montalcini.

In Italy, roses bloom first and best during the month of May. And this is the best time to pay a visit to the Rome’s Rose Garden. The Roseto Comunale di Roma opens the 17th of May this year, the day after the winners for the best new roses have been chosen in the yearly, internationally know contest.

Two are Better than One

2009-04-28T16:45:00.005+02:00

My Etsy shop is open. So, together with my home site, I now have two jewelry selling venues on the internet.

While reading the Etsy instructions and rules regarding the setting up and use of a shop I ran across this notice: "You may not post links/URLs to other venues where you have the same items for sale that are listed in your Etsy shop. This may include your personal website if there are items for sale." Holy Cow! I definitely would be posting my personal link so this would mean I would need to make new designs. And I had already re-photographed the jewelry on my site in a more Etsy style. It looked like doubling shops would double the work.

But this story has a happy ending. As I began organizing the Etsy shop positive aspects of having two shops became evident.

1. Reproducible jewelry can be displayed on both sites by changing metals. For example, my personal site has a small selection of bronze pendants and rings, which I am now making in sterling or fine silver, at basically the same cost, for my Etsy store.

2. I had, and still have, too many very similar items on the home site. Now I can move the redundancies to the Etsy shop.

3. When my personal site was set up I did not fully understand the importance of text and it's role for SEO. As I move jewelry to the Etsy shop I rewrite and lengthen the text. With minor modifications I can also use this richer text for similar jewelry still on the original site.

4. My personal site is largely organized by the technique used in making the jewelry: embedded, foldforming, etc. The Etsy shop jewelry listings are divided in sections: rings, pendants, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, etc. I think that this double form of listing will give more opportunities for my jewelry to be visible in search results.

5. As space opens up on my personal website I can begin to insert newer work. This possibility has stimulated the creative process and exciting new pendants, rings and bead-pendants have been made or are in-progress.

I have no idea how successful the Etsy shop will be. For now I have been pleasantly surprised by the discovery of the many possible synergies between my two on-line jewelry shops. So yes, two are better than one.

Rings for the Earth Exhibition

2009-03-24T17:14:00.009+01:00

I have just seen the Rings for Planet Earth Exhibition at the Alternatives Gallery in Rome, Italy. Fourteen international artists made one or more rings centered around this theme. There was beauty for the eye and food for thought. Here is just a taste of what I saw.

Stefano Marchetti
“Nuvola Nera di Smog” – “Smog Cloud”
It is, it really is – a disgusting, black cloud on a precious gold round (ring).

Yu-Chun Chen
"Natura Morta" – “Still Life”
The graphic use on jewelry of the themes depicted in Still Life paintings, such as the symbols for life and death, brings to the wearer the awareness of the fragilità of our lives and the earth’s existence.

Rita Marcangelo
“The slow wasting away of the Earth Ring Series – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”
The rings have a strong visual impact and precisely express the artist’s thought.

Jantje Fleischhut
“Planet Earth - Little Botanics”
Even if the rings are partially made from found plastic objects, the overall effect is like a song of celebration and praise for the earth.

And, as always, I enjoyed visiting the gallery which has a fascinating display of work by jewelry artists.

Rita Marcangelo is co-founder and curator of the galleria. The Alternatives gallery is located in the center of historical Rome. If you are planning a trip to Rome I would encourage you to include a visit to the gallery in your scheedule.

Jewelry Photography III - Pixel Power

2009-03-10T17:40:00.016+01:00

I think that this will be the last time that I write about the photographic aspects of presenting jewelry unless I run into some thing major with the photos. But I did want to talk about sizing in the sense of number of pixels per side.

The photos for my jewelry store on-line are 457 x 457 pixels. Flickr recommends a 500 x 500 pixel size. Etsy says that 800 x 800 or 1000 x 1000 pixels would be best so as to have good definition. I asked on a forum how others managed this re-working over and over again of the same photo. MetalRiot had this to say: "I make one high resolution version of each image and the resize them down as I need to. Do you use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements? There is a batch feature in those programs that will let you apply the same action to an entire folder of photos. So you could make them all 1000 x 1000 for etsy, and then run batches on them for the other sizes you need. That way you can do a large number at a time, and you can even walk away from the computer while Photoshop opens, resizes, and saves the new versions (into a new folder, so you still have the originals)."

So there it is. Do the curves - contrast and color correction - crop, size to 1000 x 1000 pixels and save as a RAW file. Down size as needed.

Here is the result of a little experiment I did. This is the very same photo of a set of earrings saved in the 4 different sizes. I know that I need new glasses but all of the photos seem to me to have a reasonably good definition. What is clearly visible is the change in the background and over-all color saturation as the pixels increase. Oops! Not much change visible at all. I assure you that the color change is very visible when I put the photos into a Word document and when I print them. I wanted to show you this but when I upload them to the blog the blogger program makes all of the photos 200 x 200 pixels (if I read the htm languare correctly).

I just checked the photos on Etsy and the large product photos seem to generally be 430 pixels per side, which is no where close to the recommended 800 or 1000. If this is true what is the sense of me worrying about sizing the originals larger? I hope that some kind reader can dissipate my confusion.

By the way, Bench Jewelers Conference & Expo announced the Passion Award jewelry competition.The entry form and photo submission is done online. The photos are to be jpeg or jpg format, no discussion about slides or digital origin and "the quality of the photo will NOT be taken in consideration while judging". They made it so easy that, even if each entry costs $35.00, they had my money for 2 entries within 30 minutes.

Jewelry Photography II

2009-03-03T11:34:00.006+01:00

For my jewelry web site, Forms, Reinvented, I wanted to use good definition photos on a classic gradient background with defused lighting, not exactly floating the object but certainly making it the center of attention.

I feel that I made a huge investment of time and money to become as competent as I am in jewelry photography. I researched digital cameras, lenses, light tents, lighting systems and photography software. Then I bought the equipment and constructed the set-up. You can see my present set-up at flickr. Next came many hours learning to use the camera, adjusting the lighting, learning the basics of the software and doing trial after trial.

I have been pleased with the results and all was good with the world. The photos were nice and I would just transfer some over to the Etsy shop. But other Etsy sellers have brought to my attention that, frequently, on Etsy it is the background that sells the object. The background sets the atmosphere and explains to the client what the jewelry will do for them. Will these earrings be fun to wear? Will this bracelet startle my friends? Will I feel elegant wearing this pendant? Is this talisman magically powerful? Will this ring go with my green outfit?

I am including photos of one pair of earrings on different backgrounds to illustrate how the background can change one’s perception of the object. Every person will automatically choose the photo that they like best. So even if it is the same earring in all of the photos the background does make them more or less attractive to us and does influence one’s willingness to buy the jewelry.

Obviously this has complicated the organization of my shooting sessions as I need to change the background several times for each object and not all objects go well on the same backgrounds. Arrrrgh.

Jewelry Photography I

2009-02-24T11:19:00.001+01:00

I have rings, earrings, bracelets, pendants and talismans made and ready to be sold. So what is taking me so long to set up this Etsy shop and get them on the market? The photos are the obstacle.

I hope that this does not turn into a rant but I’m sure that it will take me more than one blog to explain what I feel are jewelry photo requirements for the internet presently and to which standard I must comply.

Let me start with the number of photos to be taken and manipulated. An Etsy store presentation allows for one main photo and 5 thumbnails of each object. That makes 6 photos. To get 6 valid photos one must do a minimum of 2 exposure settings per view. 6 times 2 makes 12 photos per object.

I import the photos to a photo software for final selection, two clicks of contrast and color correction, cropping, sizing and preparation for web and devices.

I am presently planning on showing 20 objects in my shop so am looking at taking and elaborating 240 photos. I can see no way to batch process them so it looks like a mountain of time and work to me.

What's in a phrase?

2009-02-17T12:11:00.001+01:00

When I decided to set up a shop on Etsy to sell my jewelry and write this blog, I needed a blog name. Spontaneously I thought to use the phase that expressed my intention, “Etsy, Here I Come”. It seemed light-hearted and original enough to attract readers.

Original, did I say? During the process of setting up the blog I seemed to run across the etsy here I come phrase interspersed on other web pages so I decided to see how frequently it was used. For the phrase “Etsy, Here I Come” a Yahoo search came up with 472 pages and the Google search showed 664 pages. The pages were mainly of blogs or forums. Just like me.

I will need to make sure that my jewelry is unique and makes my store special.

The Road to Etsy

2009-01-26T18:31:00.003+01:00

I make and sell jewelry. I make rings, earrings, pendants, bracelets and talismans in bronze, silver and gold. I sell the jewelry both on (http://www.loismartens.com) and off line. Seeing as how I make considerably more jewelry than I sell, I am constantly looking for new venues.

Etsy is the big one. Over the past five years I have gone to the Etsy site and printed out the many pages of information for sellers only to trash them a few days later. Why? Probably because I felt that my production did not fit in for design or prices with the jewelry that is offered in many of the shops.

I think that it is time for me to stop being a snob and verify if my jewelry is marketable in a popular venue.

This blog will be my journal recording my progress in becoming a seller on Etsy.