ACEO 365 - No.5,6,7

Three new ACEOs, all drawn in pencil and painted in watercolours :)
No.5 (meercat)

No.6 (rabbit)

No.7 (bird)

If they are not in my Etsy shop already they will be very soon!

Buttons (lots of them!!)

Yesterday I bought 2 boxes of old buttons from Reeman Dansie auctions in Colchester, there's a great selection of colours, fancy and plainer buttons in them but they are all muddled up in the boxes so there's lots of sorting to be done!

I'm planning to keep some of my favourites for my button collection but will be selling the others in my Etsy shop. Some of the buttons will find their way into my Bags of Ideas and Mini Bags of Ideas crafting kits but the sets on cards and some of the other fancier buttons I am planning on selling separately.

I posted some questions in the Etsy forums, but thought I would ask them here too - so if you can help it would be great to hear from you! When I list the buttons to sell I would like to be able to describe them as best as I can but I don't know anything about where they came from. They are mostly (if not all) vintage - does anyone know how I can date them more accurately or is this not very important to people buying buttons? I can guess at ones that look art deco or from around the 60s say but could be completely wrong!

Also I would like to be able to say what the buttons are made of - what should I look for to tell if they are bakelite/ celluloid/ newer plastic/ glass etc?

Here are some pictures of some of the buttons I've sorted so far which might be useful if you think you can help me!

Pick of the week... Craft Count and free advertising

Yesterday I was introduced to a new website called Craft Count. It's a really interesting site for Etsy statistics on the top sellers. You can view the top sellers overall, by country or by category. As well as just being interesting to see who the top sellers are it's a great way to discover Etsy sellers you have never come across before!

The site is not officially launched for another week or so, but until the 31st January they are offering free advertising! I thought that would be a great opportunity to try online advertising so have submitted an advert which will be on for the next 3 days. As I have never tried anything like that before I'm interested to see if it leads to increased views/ sales. I will let you know in 3 days time what I find - I'd be curious to hear if anyone else has experience of advertising on sites like this too.

If you would like to find out more about the free advertising go to the EtsybyNumbers blog.

ACEO 365 - No.4

Just a quick post for now of my latest ACEO; No. 4 in the series...

As with my other ACEOs it is for sale in my Etsy shop :)

ACEO 365 - No.2 and 3

Here are the next 2 in my series of 365 ACEOs for this year:

The originals of both of these are for sale in my Etsy shop.

This year is turning out to be a good year for Etsy treasury features - my work has been featured in another treasury! :) This time it was my Storytelling of Crows ACEO in a treasury titled Pearled Snowflake by buttercupbloom.

ACEO 365 - No.1

One of my many art ideas for this year is to make lots of new ACEOs - 365 to be exact! I want to try to reach a total of 1 ACEO for each day of the year - although that will be reached by making more than one some days and none on others.

The plan is to make ACEOs on any subject and in any medium as a way to experiment with different ideas. I also want them to be produced a bit faster than my usual watercolour ACEOs which can take several hours to paint.

So here is ACEO No.1; a postbox painted in gouache on collaged postage stamps and envelopes on mount board.

The original ACEOs in this set will all be for sale in my Etsy shop.

A treasury feature...

I've just had a nice surprise finding that my Autumn Wind bookmark has been featured in a treasury on Etsy. You can see the treasury in full here - curated by nemeton, it's full of lovely items from the UK!
I'm off now to sort the photos I took this morning of my cotton bags outside in the snow. They should be ready to list in my Etsy shop later today. All this snow we've been having provides a good opportunity for photographs! :D

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! After a nice Christmas break (which seems to have gone even quicker this year) I am back to work. I have lots of exciting plans for this year which should keep me very busy!

There are brand new supplies kits ready to be listed in my Etsy shop....

I also have ideas for new artwork, including Hexley illustrations. You can look forward to seeing some of that soon - I will also be posting some works in progress including sketchbook pages.

The first thing I have to complete this year though is backing up files and sorting reference photos on my computer - a long and frustrating job but it definately needs doing! Once that is done I can get on with the more enjoyable work of creating things!

Let's hope that with some hard work and a bit of luck 2010 will be a good year!