New Year's Resolutions, Dealing with Bookmarks, Metal Clay Designs, Etched Brooches, SRAJD Pinterest Board, Etsy Search Engine Tips, Instant Digital Delivery System, Photoshop Cool Tips and Tricks

I guess I’m supposed to be writing about New Year’s resolutions right about now, eh?

Truthfully, my December was so jam-packed including surprise visits from family that I didn’t really have time to consider any new year’s resolutions.

I signed on to take part in a RRR challenge with the EtsyMetal team.  RRR stands for “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle all the crap we have laying around on our benches and in our studios! Finish all those projects, use those stones we've been hoarding, take a look at that old sketchbook.”  It’s the “Use What You Have” challenge.  I’m going to set a goal of one RRR/UWUH piece per week.  So that’s kind of a new year’s resolution.  Wish me luck!

I also started organizing my computer’s bookmarks last week.  The idea is to NOT be on a page and go, “Oh, I’ll bookmark this now, just throw it on the bookmark bar… and then later I’ll sort out where to put it.”  Ugh!  That is stupid beyond all belief…. For me, anyway.

I am a person, if not of lists (which I am), then of folders.  So, using Chrome’s BOOKMARK MANAGER (I love it!), I’m organizing my bookmarks into folders such as:

• Blogs I want to follow
• Recommended Movies and Books
• How to Projects
• Things I May Want to Buy
• Videos I Like
• Bead and Gem Info
• Marketing Articles
• Photo-editing articles
• Photography tips

Now, what I need to do is each time I get ready to bookmark a new URL, I need to not just throw it in my bookmarks bar to be sorted later.  I need to right there and then put it into the appropriate folder. 

And now that it’s a new year, it’s time to look over the 2013 sales and see how I feel about certain aspects of the business.  Things like, is it worth it to stay with Etsy, eBay, my own website, etc.  I’ll report back here after I compile the info.

And I don’t think I ever showed you all the pieces I made during my last stint at Hadar’s studio.  Here they are.  A couple have already sold but most are still available.  Click here if you want to see what's still up for grabs.

Then I also listed a couple of etched brooches that had been sitting on my work table for about six months.  The text one is from a section of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem entitled “Sonnets from the Portuguese”. The other one is images of watch parts.

From the Internet (snippets I collect as I go):

If you’d like to check out some of the awesome jewelry by the members of the organization I founded for self-representing artists, click here.

Here’s an article from Etsy’s blog with a couple of tips to help improve your SEO (search engine optimization).  Because we all want to be found, right?

And speaking of Etsy, do you sell tutorials on Etsy?  If so, I hope you’re taking advantage of Etsy’s digital delivery system.  I love it.  For more info, click here.

Have Photoshop and looking for more cool things to do to your photos?  Here is an article of “70 Of The Best Photoshop Actions For Enhancing Photos”.  “The compilation consist of 70 of the best Photoshop actions collected from all around the web from photo effects to actions for even creating photo borders, An essential design resource for all designers weather your an expert or an beginner.” 

Even if you don’t have Photoshop, I’ll be you can do a lot of these in Photoshop Elements and/or Gimp.  Click here to read the article.

So happy new year, everyone!  Have a great 2014!