This week Zibbet is delighted to feature Linda Harrell from sunny Lakeland, Florida. Linda’s shop GalleriaLindaLoft, is a wonderful eclectic shop filled with handmade and vintage jewelry, home decor, accessories and vintage shabby chic.Linda keeps another shop on Zibbet strictly for jewelry supplies. If you need beads don’t miss her other shop GalleriaLinda.Please enjoy the interview, leave Linda a comment, and then use the Share Tools so others can read it, too. Please spread the Zibbet Love!
Originally from Indiana, I have lived in Florida for 25 years. I miss my hometown but not the winters! I grew up in the Purdue University environment, as my dad was a professor there. I met my husband at Purdue and now have a son at Purdue.Growing up, my mother was always trying new crafts and was a master at crewel needlework. Although I tried, I did not take a shine to needlework but always had an interest in jewelry. While in college, I truly wanted to pursue jewelry design as a degree, but veered off to the more practical career of commercial interior design. Even though I did not pursue jewelry originally, being in the art departments of Purdue gave me opportunities to explore and experience the vast array of thought and culture relating to art and design. I often made my own jewelry to match my wardrobe.As a young girl, I spent three years living in Brazil, South America, where gems were plentiful and everyone of every economic level sported the great Brazilian jewels from the ground, like amethyst, topaz, and others. I will never forget the excitement of these gems.
I work as a marketing communications consultant for small businesses and my job keeps me busy. My free time goes into jewelry design and even in my thoughts, I am mentally going through my bead stash and thinking up new creations.The sheer joy of creating something beautiful is my simple motivation. For some, it is paints, for others it is fiber, but for me it is beads of all kinds. Currently I am very inspired by vintage acrylic and Lucite beads and charms and love to incorporate them into my designs. My handmade jewelry designs are created organically through sorting through beads and materials for a striking moment of inspiration.Finding and purchasing such fabulous beads for my own designs inspired me to open a bead shop, whereby I could deflate my stock somewhat and share my discoveries. The problem is that I set aside much more than I list! Likewise, I so admire vintage jewelry so I have a shop for that too!
I have great appreciation for artists and designers who are able to develop a full-time business from their craft as their full-time career. It is hard to do and takes long hours. As an independent artist/crafter, one has to study and read about everything from business to accounting, SEO, seasonality, shipping, international regulations, and more. In addition, to make that all successful takes a lot of passion. Those are my heroes.I love cats and have Hamlet as a part of our family. Also, I very much enjoy helping other artists and crafters with their street-smart marketing strategies. I run the blog http://indieceo.blogspot.com/ specifically for offering a strategic look at how to market your crafts. I approach this marketing from a big picture perspective, which can help with understanding why you get the results that you do. I have had several artists contact me to say this marketing information was very helpful.
Definitely, without a doubt, the friendliness and transparency is what I love about Zibbet. First, the sellers and buyers are so great and helpful. Then, the admin are tremendous supporters of sellers. I love the open communication. As a professional communications person, I know that corporations who communicate frequently create a thriving atmosphere for their people. They have created a healthy community of creatives. Kudos to Zibbet is all I can say!The process once an order has been made could be expanded - printable invoices, searchable order list, sorting, plus having the “relist” record from a sale be an independent record so when you change something it does not change the record for the original sale. I know that Zibbet is coming out with upgrades and will be excited to see what they have in store for us.
I blog when I can, use Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I use TwitterFeed.com to feed to Facebook and Twitter the items I add, relist, or refresh. That is automatic. I have tried Google Adwords a few times too and I use Entrecard for my blog traffic, and, of course, word-of-mouth. One of the best and easiest promotional-supporting tools is to keep up with your SEO tweaking of your listings so people will find your shop through Google and Bing searches. In addition, I will be trying my very first local artist show. After selling online since 2006, I am stepping out to try new things.Work on getting your own traffic through promotional methods. Keep up with SEO. Be active in the Zibbet community to get to know others, and keep your shop interesting, full, and beautiful at all times!Working towards becoming a full-time jewelry designer of handmade – fully utilizing all the opportunities for selling handmade, such as art shows, trunk shows, home showings, online, etc…. I want to bring affordable contemporary beaded jewelry designs to the world - every woman should have this privilege!Tags: Fetured Zibbeters, Galleria Linda Loft
