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.Tags: Featured Zibbeters, Wig Wam Crafts
