We’re getting a lot of new Zibbet shops and it’s no wonder why since we won the 2013 About.com Readers’ Choice Award for Best Handmade Marketplace! First place!!
A warm welcome to all the new Zibbeters. Here are just 5 newly listed items from new Zibbet shops.
One way to find new Zibbet shops is to check out thenewest members of the Zibbet Community Hub which is where I looked to find new shops.
After reading about today’s Fantastic Five, use the Zibbet search to find nearly 150,000 more great products. Also check out the New Listings thread for April.
1. FAMILY TREE - Family Name Personalized Hand Stamped Pendant by MegsBrokenWings $30: Spring is here and I think of trees. This lovely family tree necklace can be stamped with up to 27 characters. The box chain is sterling silver. Meg’s Broken Wings opened shop on Zibbet just a few days ago on March 29, 2013.
2. ‘His Soap, Her Soap, Their Soap’ by Naturalana $9.50: Soap for everyone! His soap, her soap, their soap is a set of three bars of soap to please everyone. Made with essential oils and pure vegetable oil. The Naturalana shop opened on March 1st, 2013.
3. BIG BAGS OVERSIZED Weekender - School Tote - Beach Bag by SignsOfWelcome $50: Bring back the charm of yesteryear & reminisce of days gone by with this nostalgic handbag – reminds us of the old fashioned carpetbag. The large size will work well for a weekend bag, a beach bag, gym bag or school tote. This shop joined us in February 2013.
4. Butterfly hair clip by Vicky5Bow5 $10.99: Such a pretty hair clip for the spring months. The butterfly hair clip is made with an aqua fabric with gold stars and a vintage style button. Order more than one hair clip from this shop and the additional ones will be shipped free. Vicky’s Bows has been with Zibbet since Mar 14th, 2013.
5. Milk Glass Hen Dish by The Academic’s Attic $16: This vintage milk glass hen dish is adorably kitsch and retro! It would look fantastic on a kitchen table or a 40s inspired kitchen. Useful and decorative. The Academic’s Attic joined Zibbet on Mar 17th, 2013 and we love new vintage shops. Welcome!
very top image - Welcome Owl sign, hand Painted, on wood by afreistore $18
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Judy writes the ‘Fantastic Five‘ column where she features 5 Zibbet items every week. She is the owner of four Zibbet shops: Portable Graffiti Graphics, Portable Graffiti buttons, Proofreader, and Wild Goose Chase vintage, crafts and supplies. You can follow Judy on Facebook.
Tags: Fantastic Five, Welcome New Zibbet Shops
Vicki is committed to assisting her fellow Zibbeters improve their shops for successful online selling. She is the owner of five Zibbet shops: LOC Design Studio, Papa Spivey’s Trunk, A Stitch and a Prayer and Think Like a Fish. You can follow Vicki on Twitter and through her LOC Design Studio blog.
You are going to love Abby Colegrove, just 13 years old, from Dallas, Texas. Her business enterprise called the The Poly Shop displays her amazing sculptures she creates with polymer clay.Her creations include handmade sculpted polymer clay jewelry and the cutest dollhouse miniatures. We’re sure you’ll love her shop and her interview.Don’t you want to just bite into that carrot cake right now?Please enjoy the interview, leave Abby a comment, and then use the Share Tools so others can read it, too. Please spread the Zibbet Love!
My name is Abby Colegrove. I am 14 years old. I am currently homeschooled and have been homeschooled my entire life. I’m in the 8th grade.I’m the only person my age I know of who has her own online business, and I’m pretty proud of that. I also love being able to control everything I do business-wise, like designing my own website, banners, and listings. I also take my own product photos, and generally ship things myself with a little help from my mom.Since I was little, I’ve been interested in business-type things and used to play heavily organized games such as Restaurant or Store. Me and my little sister would put stickers on everything we saw and put it “up for sale”. Naturally, I’d demand to be the boss or manager. 
I’m also a huge geek, and so my favorite shows, movies, and books are ones that I’m “obsessed” with. I’m either obsessed with something or uninterested in it. So I own tons of “geek” items from my favorite series, such as Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games. Because the list of things I’m “obsessed” with could go on and on, obviously I can’t list them here.
Besides polymer clay, I’m interested in all types of design, and filmography, too. Colors and all the little details behind colors, such as complimentary colors, interest me greatly. I also love typography and fonts, and I love the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. (I’m an INFP, if you were interested.)One day I could be obsessed with a newly discovered hobby, and the next I could be bored with it (and then later become re-obsessed with it). It literally depends on my mood. I’m a very impulsive person.Well, because I make food jewelry, FOOD inspires me! 
I definitely look up to anyone who is under 18 who has their own small business and is even moderately successful. Every time one of these businesses or young entrepreneurs catch my eye, I’ll go and read up on them, and be inspired by what they do and what they CAN do! Things like that keep my business going, otherwise I’d just give up because “I’m just a kid and it’s too complicated for me.”As I listed before, I’m interested in multiple things. Fashion and Makeup are two things I’m currently interested in as a possible future career. I’m always watching makeup tutorials and fashion lookbooks on YouTube for inspiration. I also frequently experiment with new outfit combos and makeup looks.Besides fashion and makeup, I also love digital design, as in graphic design, web design, logo design, etc. Some days I’ll sit down and just make random graphics because I feel like it. I also like playing around with my Shop’s website a lot.
I love the friendly atmosphere. Everyone is so welcoming, so positive, and so kind. Especially the staff, which I’m very grateful for. I think Zibbet is MUCH more friendly and welcoming than other artist-centric sites I’ve worked with. I also love how Zibbet supports and even encourages young shop owners, which has to be the biggest reason I love Zibbet. Not because of the amount of traffic or sales, but because of the people involved in it. 
I use Facebook as my main way of promoting, and so far it has been successful. Not successful enough to satisfy me, but I will keep working at it. As I’m writing this, I have 110 Likes on the page, and hope it keeps growing! I also use Pinterest, and pin my items as I list them.I also have a blog that I post things on. Not frequently, as I often forget to post, but I do try to keep it active.I have even used free deals that I’ve found to get lovely business cards from Moo, including the free cards that come with your Zibbet account (which are SO brilliant, by the way).Promote outside of Zibbet! If you’re involved in the Community on Zibbet, that can get you a few sales, but you should definitely spread your reach much farther than that! If you work at it, you can really get your name out there! I would HIGHLY recommend making a Facebook page for your business and promote there, linking back to your Zibbet shop of course so potential customers can purchase your items. 
…a designer, cosmetologist, director…I have plenty of options that I’d be interested in in my mind. I hope that in the future I am not working at some boring old job. The idea of having a job that I do not enjoy sounds horrendous. So any job that I truly love doing sounds great to me. 
This week we have a delightful interview for you with Lisa Davis from Lichfield, England, UK. Her shop name is LisaDeluxe .You’ll discover over 400 gorgeous photographs of her work in her shop. We think she does a great job at presentation in addition to her jewelry expertise.Lisa has a love of contemporary silver and is currently designing a new range of silver jewellery. She is a trained silversmith re-discovering her silversmithing skills.Please enjoy the interview, leave Lisa a comment, and then use the Share Tools so others can read it, too. Please spread the Zibbet Love!
When I wasn’t upside down as a child, I watched my dad paint. He even let me put my little hand print on one of his huge oil paintings. He was an artist yet became a picture framer to feed us. That may explain why I couldn’t just be an artist. “It’s not a proper job”. So although I can’t remember a time I didn’t have a crayon in my hand – just like I can’t remember my 1st cartwheel (more later) I had to do something ‘sensible’ at college. As I still had no idea what I wanted to be, I did Retail Jewellery and Gemmology: I was already working part time in a jewellers (literally the first shop to answer ‘yes’ to my question ‘do you need a Saturday girl?’) and spent school holidays elbow deep in freezing water grading rough gemstones for my Uncle, a geologist and miner in West Africa.I’d always made miniature things though; teeny dolls clothes; tiny cross-stitch pin cushions; mini felt stuffed thingys - my art now is a small, detailed affair - so aged 25 with a toddler and a spinal problem, I retrained in Jewellery Design and Manufacturing (and looked for a new doctor) thinking, soon I will: be fixed; work from home: have exhibitions; do bread and butter repair work; buy a ramshackle house and do it up; recycle everything. Anything but a ‘proper’ job, we’d get by and happily.
I can still remember that eureka moment: my 1st day at college, after the magic that is soldering had happened to my copper wedding band (!) I began the mesmerizing process of filing square wire into a D section with a huge file - I’d fully expected the tools to be tiny, but no, you get man-sized blow torches, rolling mills the size of me and standard tools you’d see in a woodshop, the tiny stuff comes later. I remember thinking ‘This is what I’m meant for!”Plans are made to be changed though. Back in hospital for the umpteenth time I realised silver-smithing was not going to be physically possible. It’s taken me 20 odd years, numerous career changes; businesses I developed from my bed waiting for the next big operation that would restore me to health, procedures - needles the length of my foot, good job they were going in my back come to think of it, otherwise I may have baulked! - and hours spent in physio. Them; “Oh, you’re so lucky! so slim! Good muscle memory, this will be so easy!” me: “I used to do gymnastics.’ them “Ah, did you ever fall?” me: “Of course I did; I spent my childhood upside down and I wasn’t just cartwheeling.” Although I’m much better than I was, I’m still at home – good job I’m happy in my own company.
I spend way too much time at my PC trying to promote myself. Am I wasting it? Such a small minnow in a World Wide pond. Or a tiny fly in a huge spider’s Web. Apart from domestic chores, of which I do precious few, I think everything I do is creative in one way or another. I write, sew, draw, design houses for fun – all bells and whistles in case we win the lottery, or humble multi-functional one room barn conversions.Over the years, I’ve done illustrating and rendering for housing development companies and worked for a Spinal Charity creating their 1st website and newsletter. I am not always able to admit that there are limits. But I am never at a loss for something to do. I love reading – I feel positively rich when the house is full of new books - learning new things and as the pain is relentless, I can’t really pace myself, I spend my days pottering from job to job depending on how stupid I feel like being. My stubbornness is both a blessing and a curse. I’m just in pain – 24/7 debilitating pain, but at least I’m able to see the silver lining in everything. Like being in a wheelchair allows one to wear high heels and, if so desired, get the best seats at the Theatre!
Having an enforced slower pace means you can appreciate the tiny things that may go unnoticed when striding through life frenetically. I certainly wouldn’t have the technical drawing skill without the hours of practice I get. After actually designing and creating something - my next favourite thing to do is lovingly package something I’ve sold. Hurray! I’ve a brain chock full of ideas and the luxury of being able to make some of them happen.Inspired by a trillion things – I love Art Nouveaux, the Arts and Craft movement and too many artists to mention. Pinterest is an amazing tool for inspiration – addictive though, I have to limit myself to coffee break time!
If I had to pick one, it would be C.F.A Voysey, a man who applied his art to many elements from tiles to teapots and architecture to wallpaper, I think he was the 1st true ‘designer’ in that no matter what he worked on, his unique style shone through. My dad was the same, even a simple line drawing was unmistakably ‘him’. That’s what I’d like to have. An artistic ‘voice’. I’d certainly call myself a designer rather than an artist.You’d think that by now every romantic notion of moving to France and doing up a farmhouse into gÎtes, welcoming hikers in summer and skiers in winter; silver smithing to my heart’s content; feeling under hens for new laid eggs and making jam would have been firmly put to one side – oh no…you have to have hope don’t you? Dreams? Even if they never happen, you don’t need to admit that bit to yourself, you could easily go to the end of your days without having to be ‘sensible’.
I’m at a place now I really like. (not back-wise, I still yen for cartwheeling and my other great passion dancing) My toddler is grown and flown, I love everything about him but the facial hair! And – this bit is huge - I’m with my soul mate, - does happy dance – (in head, obviously). He has teenagers and if there was ever a benefit to being a paper hoarder or general craft ‘ho (©Lisa Davis 2013 - no seriously that one’s all mine) it’s that when one says ’’have you got an embossing tool?” I can say “what size?”My man is an absolute marvel and takes great care of me. His myriad ‘gifts’ to me are two-fold. Not simply the act of vacuuming, cooking etc…(great in and of themselves eh girls?) it’s the saving me from it. He gives me my ‘good time’ daily like a million tiny tokens of love - and I wouldn’t be able to run my Zibbet shop without his support and practical help. My ‘doing up a farmhouse’ dream has become ours and could actually happen as he’s a mean DIYer too.
For fun I’m drawing some of the front doors in our village – It makes sense to offer these as Christmas cards. See! I find it hard to switch my would-be entrepreneur brain off. I’ve even got a book by the bed called ‘can’t sleep, write now’. And I do. Even if I can’t always make sense of my doodles the next day!You don’t need super techy skills. Using Zibbet is easy. Setting up your shop takes no time. You can even import your listings from other sites – so cool! And the ‘customize your shop’ feature is fab – I have hot pink gift wrap so making Zibbet match my own colour scheme was not only useful but fun! To be honest, I’m still discovering new features. Using my Zibbet shop and community, I can interact with people who I would never get to ‘meet’ any other way. I’m socializing! (my Doc will be so pleased…ironic sigh)
So if the internet is my lifeline – Zibbet’s my sea anchor stopping me floating off into cyberspace. My Zibbet shop is somewhere I go daily; to tidy things up, tweak my keywords and list my newly created items. I have a policy of making at least one thing per day - I go to work like everyone else, often in my Pj’s or lying down if needs be but all I’ve ever wanted is to be successful. To make a living is not the be all and end all, but I’m still trying.If I could change anything about how Zibbet works, personally I’d like to list in GBP. The recent change to having photos on the same listing page will be fabulous. Zibbet is constantly evolving and the changes are intuitive, if I get stuck admin are able to help me with one clear sentence. Thoroughly good.
Oh and in an ideal world, I’d like at least the above the vertical scroll of the homepage to be ‘designed’ as it’s our collective shop window – and sorry, but some peeps pics are er…um…hate to say it but… well… they’re slightly, ever so, er…less than good. The home page should entice buyers and get them coming back again. To do this fairly Zibbeters could offer up their best items, be accepted - or advised on how to make their pictures more ‘clickable’ - and these could randomly picked for front page use.
It would be get your photographs as professional looking as possible. I’ve worked on this for over a year and I’m still not satisfied with mine. Use the Zibbet forums and ask advice, they’re a friendly bunch and help willingly. Also, prices. Try calculating a ‘unit cost’ as your wholesale price which includes your profit - in case a bricks and mortar shop wants to stock your things, they’ll add 250% mark-up - I kid you not. Industry standards for people buying from trade fairs is between 2.3 and 2.8 times the makers price. I don’t follow this as strictly as I should. I make unique items so have to buy small quantities of supplies from retailers, but I do try to. Just because you are watching Neighbour’s whilst knitting - or beading - doesn’t mean you charge less for your time for that half hour. You are effectively the CEO-to-mailman of your business. The hours you spend sourcing materials, promoting, driving to the post office and bookkeeping all form part of your unit cost, even coffee or tea go down as expenses (I need extra caffeine to counteract the drugs!) I started out way underselling and learned the hard way.
Oh and patience – I’ve yet to find my niche and wouldn’t expect a shop on my local high street to be in profit within a year. So I’m keeping at it.…better…no really… in my right mind I know there’s no operation or quick fix for my spine – but in my left (and I’m left handed so do listen) I still want my body back. Also, I’d really love a workshop as I would like to get to a point where I’m practiced enough in my silver-smithing to create a range I can market on Zibbet – proper designer jewellery, my own hallmark registered at last, ah, that would be fab. Working smarter, not harder applies so much more to me.Cheers all!Lisa x
I am looking forward to the warmer weather, being outdoors more and especially gardening. I am not looking forward to bug season. Yes, I know how beneficial bugs of most sorts are to the balance of nature but …
This week we have an exciting interview for you from Linda Sue Stage based in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.WigWam Crafts is a Native American Style Business. Linda Sue specializes in hand beaded jewelry. At Pow Wows you will also find her other items such as Dream Catchers, Crocheted Dolls and Blankets.In addition to selling her work on Zibbet, Linda Sue is available for beadwork demonstrating at PowWows and other events.Please enjoy the interview, leave LindaSue a comment, and then use the Share Tools so others can read it, too. Please spread the Zibbet Love!
My full name is LindaSue Spirit Eyes Stage. My husband, Jerry Raging Wolf Stage, and I are the artisans of Wig~Wam Crafts. We create beautiful hand crafted Native American inspired items. While we do carry dream catchers, crocheted items and bone hair pipe jewelry in our vendor stand, our main items that we sell on-line is my intricate Native American style bead work.We are the proud parents of Natasha, AmberDawn, Cassandra, Angel, and Wm. John. We are a combined family but we claim all of the kids as ours. The girls have blessed us with 8 beautiful grandbabies and 3 angel grandbabies. John is currently serving in the US Navy and did a tour in Iraq. We are also ‘parents’ to our four-legged babies, Cherokee Star and Lakota Star, our wolf companions.Due to the current economy, we are having to re-evaluate our current living standards. While it was depressing at first, we decided to make lemonade out of lemons and go into semi-retirement. So as of March 18th, we are leaving the 9-5 rat race behind us and travel the powwow trail full-time. While it seems scary, it is also super exciting.
When I’m not being creative (which isn’t often), I enjoy spending time with my husband and the wolves. We are looking forward to traveling and I have been researching various free campsites that have hiking trails that we can walk together on. When we are at powwows, I enjoy meeting new people that come into our vendor stand. I also enjoy doing demonstrations and showing the next generation various styles of beading. I also enjoy inter-tribal social dancing and women’s traditional dancing.I honestly don’t know what started me on this path. I just started beading one day and it stuck with me. My husband and others that I have talked with believe it might be the ancestors working through me to help bring traditions back. I love creating anything that honors our Native American heritage. Even though I am what is often referred to as mixed blood, I am honored to be able to be able to do this kind of work. We have no official tribal affiliations, we have been blessed to be accepted for who we are by many Native brothers and sisters.
This is kind of sad because the elder who took me under her wing, just left on her journey to the spirit world on Thursday, 2/28/13. Starr ThunderFoot was a wonderful teacher and took the time to teach me some finer points to both my beading and my dream catchers. She was a treasure and I wish I had more time to spend with her before she crossed over.I also want to give props to Mary Hipple of Wolf Den Dezigns for her wonderful talent of pattern designing. When you see many of my listings, you will see her name mentioned quite often. While I love tinkering with my own designs, Mary has such a wonderful gift for capturing a beautiful thought and turning it to beads. In fact, I love trying to combine her work into my ideas and creating something new and unique. But Mary’s designs are often the back-bone.But the most inspirational person in my life was my late father, Lewis B. Canfield, Sr. He taught me not to take any crap and to chase my dreams. He taught me the value of hard work at the early age of 5. Of course that was back in the day when parents had the right to teach kids to work.
Most of all of my passions revolve around the Native American culture and trying to learn the true traditions to pass onto my children and grandchildren. I also want to see a revival of the First Peoples heritage and for them to receive the respect that they are entitled to. I would love to see the history books re-written and the true beginnings of this country truthfully told.Now with the nomadic lifestyle we are adopting and adapting to, I look forward to seeing more of this country. My greatest hope is that in our travels, we find the time to visit Wounded Knee, SD to offer smoke and tobacco to those that were unjustly massacred.I just love the Zibbet community both on the site and the Facebook groups. It is such a wonderful support system. Everyone is so helpful and no one that I have ‘met’ on-line as of yet has yet to show a “ME” attitude. It is truly a comm-UNITY.
I would love to see Zibbet develop an application that connects our shops to our Facebook pages that would rival those of E**y and A*****e. Zibbet is such a user friendly site but right now those following the shopkeepers would have to leave Facebook to shop. And with the popularity of Facebook, we really could draw more buyers to Zibbet via an application.I do a lot of promotion on Facebook both of my own work and I try to cross promote. I make sure I “Like” pages as my page. The first line on the About Tab has my shop address. I tried to work Twitter and Pinterest but I am terrible at it. I try to post photos as often as possible. If people ask about an item, I give them the Zibbet shop link. I don’t even try to blog as I never know what to write about. When I set up at an event, I let people know that I have a Zibbet shop and give them a card with the shop address on it whether they make a purchase or not.
First of all, as hard as it is, don’t sweat it. I have found that when I really need a sale (or think I need a sale) it never comes. But then, out of the blue, I get a massive order just when Creator feels I need it the most. And even though Zibbet doesn’t have a major influx of “under cover mass produced” items like other sites have allowed to slip in, nobody’s perfect. So when you have a quick second, take a ‘work in progress’ photo. I honestly believe it adds credibility to your hand crafted items. Plus it also gives the potential customer a chance to get a feel of the work you put into your items.When in doubt, go to the communities and ask any questions you may have. As I mentioned earlier, everyone is there for each other.… a celebrated bead working artisan that events search out me out to attend.