Weekly update. . .it's December

Well, it's December, this year has flown by and it's hard to believe it's almost over already. 😦 I have one event left for this year, hoping it will be a good one and hoping the weather gets better because it's an outdoor event and currently it's actually cold outside. 😏

I am working on refilling the Christmas color HP 3-in-1 display, along with restocking a few other things before Saturday. 

In annoying news goimagine has been under spam bot attacks. So, if you are a fellow seller just know: Goimagine's message center system is designed to let shoppers contact shops, because goimagine is a public marketplace anyone can create an account and message a seller. These spammers are using the "contact" button on your shop they do not have your email or phone number. The notifications are real the message is spam. 

Goimagine site support will NEVER use the message center to contact you, why would they, they have your email.

Goimagine does not process payments, if there was ever anything wrong with your shop's ability to process payments you would need to log into Stripe (the payment processor) and they will never message you in goimagine's message center because they have your email.

When you get an email notification it says, "a customer on goimagine has messaged you" in the subject line, the email says "You have a new message sent to you in goimagine." When you get the text notification (if you are signed up for them) it says "You received a new message through goimagine". None of them say the message is *From* goimagine, so never click any links inside message center messages that claim to be from "support".

Actually, just don't click unknown links, even if you receive an email from stripe or paypal or whoever do not click the link just go log directly into the site. If you do click one of these links and end up on a page asking for personal/financial info even if you do not enter info you should still run some anti-virus, anti-spyware checks, because the link itself may have some tracking or logging attached. 

It's scammer season, they ramp up in volume this time of year because they want to catch people not paying attention, they know we are distracted with holidays, family, travel, events, etc. so they try to take advantage and use fear tactics "threatening" your business don't fall for it. I know it's annoying to get a notification and get your hopes up that it's a sale only to find spam. I know it's frustrating that they just keep coming no matter how many are deleted there is always another. 😒 Now just for a moment put yourself in the shoes of goimagine staff, continuously monitoring the message center, chasing and tracing all these bots/spammers IPs blocking and deleting as fast as they can, constantly bombarded with reports, trying to respond and assure sellers that they are on it, all the while message boards are blowing up with people saying they don't do enough. 😟 I think they are humans doing the best they can against bots that don't sleep. I also think we should all try a little patience and grace this holiday season for all our fellow humans. 😇

Weekly update. . .Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is nearly here and while I am planning for a simple day at home there is still planning and shopping to do. I dug a turkey out of the deep freezer and found my gluten free pie crusts, so good start. 😉 

I am working on a new dragon but since it's a Christmas gift for family I'm not posting photos. 😅 I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. 

My final event of the year is December 7th and very local. 😇

Keeping it short this week, I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels (to those traveling).   

Weekly update. . .Christmas and dragons

I finished Christmas Dragon and he is gorgeous. 😁 I've done some shop reorganizing, changing out the "featured" products was overdue, while I was making changes, I created a special Christmas section for the front page with sub-categories for ornaments and stocking stuffers, in hopes of making it easier for shoppers/buyers. I am also making a bunch of stuff "free shipping" for the holidays. 

I am starting another dragon that is a gift and will not be photographed or posted, which is weird for me since I'm used to posting photos of whatever I'm making, but I want it to be a surprise for them so . . . no peeking 😊 

Today I am cooking turkey #1 for those that don't know my husband is a turk-aholic and we cook multiple turkeys in November, because there must be pre-turkey turkey. 😉 Today will not be the full spread of Thanksgiving but a turkey, yams, green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy and rolls, which is only about half of my full menu. 

In fabulous news my father-in-law's cancer treatments seem to have worked, we are supposed to wait until the 22nd for the full official lab report but his doc called him yesterday and said it looks like we are in for a Happy Thanksgiving. 🙏 I hope he's right but I'm waiting for the full report to really celebrate. 😇

Weekly update. . .holidays are coming

It is November and holidays are coming like a freight train, so it's a good thing I finally got around to noodling this week. 

And by "noodling" I mean making multiple batches of egg noodles for the season. I spent hours the other day on these 5 batches and one of them became beef and noodles for dinner last night. 😁 We'll just call that quality control testing.  

I did finally get some ok to good photos of the dragons and got them listed on rainbowmaille.com I am keeping them exclusive to #goimagine and have no plans to list them on etsy or michaels, even though there is not a single one listed on michaels makerplace. I feel like I may be missing out not listing them where they would be the only ones, but I don't want to cross-post them and take any chance of double-selling because they take so long to make. I may post future ones in different places but for now these 4 are only on my goimagine.

I made this cool graphic ad on adobe yesterday and I was really happy with it until I realized it only fits on pinterest. 😏 I wasn't paying attention to the template/sizing so that's what I get for being distracted. I did cut it in half and post it on fb and insta anyway. 😉 

On a slightly annoying note, etsy stats are always wrong, after nearly a decade you'd think I'd be over being disappointed and/or baffled by things that don't add up and seem to make no sense, but apparently it still bugs me. 😏 So, it says I got 3 favorites yesterday, but I didn't get any notifications of favorites, it says 7 listings were viewed but when I look at the listing stats it only shows 6 as viewed. Then there is this gem where it appears one of the items that was favorited wasn't actually viewed, so it was fav'd from a search page and the listing was never actually opened, maybe that's the "phantom" view. 😅

On a happy note, there are more dragons coming before Christmas, one of them is even Christmas themed 😎 and I think he's going to be gorgeous.

Weekly update. . .so done

It really is a good thing my next event is not for a month, I'm exhausted and disappointed, it may take me the whole month to recover. Although sleep, actual relaxation and "recovery" is not likely for me anyway I still have too much life stuff to deal with. 😔 I don't like to get too personal on the details, but like most people my life is complicated, I still need to get the water damage in my closet fixed, we are waiting to see if my father-in-law's cancer treatments worked, and I haven't made my usual tons of noodles for the season. I feel behind and mildly out of control in so many aspects of life right now. Like this morning my cats woke me up, not unusual, but cats don't know about the time change so it was 4 o'clock in the morning. 😒 

In more business-related related news, I got an etsy order while at the event yesterday, so as much as I want to nap all day, I really need to go make another rainbow boxchain. This week I need to get busy on re-photographing all the framed art and re-doing a ton of listings. I still have all 4 completed dragons, which will now need to get photographed and listed online.  

Weekly update. . .it was a beautiful day

It was a beautiful day with near perfect weather, although by the end of the day I admit I was hot and it's a good thing I always take a cooler of frozen water bottles and cooling cloth. 😎 The venue/location is great, the farm is lovely, there was a team of volunteers directing traffic and the whole thing was well organized. The owner is really nice and there were so many cool booths. I was pretty happy with my display, but 12 was definitely too many easels and I didn't end up using them all. 😅

It seemed like a good crowd, some friends came out to see the booth, which is always nice. 😇 The art got a lot of great compliments, to my surprise I still have all the chainmaille dragons, but several people took business cards and/or goimagine info. Also, I have another event next weekend so it's kind of ok that I still have all the dragons. 😉 I expect I'll see some familiar faces next weekend in Thomasville. 

Thomasville Winter Craft Festival 2024 

This week I need to double check inventory against online listings, I did deactivate the wire trees that sold, I need to shuffle the ones left in the book. I need to figure out how much of the art to take next weekend when I will be taking the full jewelry inventory and 3D printed stuff. Luckily the booth space is a little bigger and I can take all the tables and racks, plus it's indoors so I won't need the tent. 😇  

Weekly update. . .next week

Ok so the tick tock clock is about to run out on me, I only have 6 days left, technically only 5 because we set up the tent and tables the day before, so really only 4. 😟 In this final week of preparing and planning for the Elevate Artisan Market I still have to assemble 11 of the 12 tabletop easels, repack the show tote with the proper boxes, bags, packaging, price the art, figure out a booth layout, oh and actually pack inventory, etc. I still don't feel like I'll ever be ready, but I do have over 2 dozen paintings framed and 3 dragons I'm willing to sell. 😅 I've actually made 6 chainmaille dragons but I am keeping the first 2 and my husband claimed the blue one. 😎 

The purple one is shorter but because of the legs it's actually about the same number of rings as the green one, so they will all be priced the same. The red and black is the newest and I have begun a new version of blue. Although, I'm not sure I'll get a 4th finished before the event I guess it can be my work project in the booth. 😉  I've been considering making little cards for the dragons, description of materials and ring count type of info, but then I thought about "adoption certificates" with names and creation date. 😊 I think I may be overthinking. 😅 I also think my overthinking is just me thinking of ways to waste time I don't really have.  

I am really happy with certain paintings in their frames, they just coordinate beautifully, and the frames really finish the art.