Texas Artfire Guild

Howdy from HotTexas

2011-08-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

I dont know about yall but I cannot handle the heat and the drought! It makes me lazy and sweaty, two combinations that I cannot abide. Only good thing is we havent had skeeters down in Houston this summer. Yea!

I m sure other parts of our glorious state are green and lush ( or arid and dry) depending on if You are east or west Texan. Our State has so many different geographic locales! We are all gearing up for our fall shows in our local areas, you may get a chance to visit our booths in a nearby town. We would love to meet ya and have a big iced tea!

I know that I m doing Shows in Humble at the Civic Center Sept 15th weekend and New Caney 11/12th this fall. I d love it if our other members would post where they will be in the comment section for our readers to find us this fall. We would love to meet you and show you our hand crafted items. ( I bought a pen from Scott last year at one of the shows we did together, earrings from Heather and I still love them!!) Workmanship is even better in person.

Come on yall post your shows!!

What good is a blog If we dont Update it???

2011-06-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

I would like to say we are simply showing yall how not to do things in a funny offhand way, but honestly as a Texan, I cant lie to yall.

I been under the weather. Sick as a dog, my hand went kaput and I had to have surgery to repair nerves in the wrist and hand. and Dr Doofus left the stitches in on to of the nerves he pulled back so it took extra long to heal. A month of waiting to get worked on, a month of healing and two months of checking back of oopsy... I aint a happy camper. So here I sit, voiceless, saleless, frustrated and unable to list, take pictures and motivate my guild into action. What a spring! I had to talk my Mr Man into vacumming or emptying the dishwasher LOL.

For those of you who sell online, you can imagine what not using your dominant hand for four months is like. No keyboard, no listing, emails, replies, packaging, creating, photographs, editing and so on.

For those of you who buy online, you might think we just whip this stuff together and have it sitting in boxes around our houses or studios. Ready to go. We have to carefully count, process, print, package your beautiful item and tote it off to the post office.

(small part of studio)

I have a studio of supplies ( 3000 jars and trays) all are very tightly sealed and storage of my 300 pieces of made jewely In zippered bags no less, plus all my work benches and tools. ( ah the joy to create has come back even if I cant hold a hammer yet!!)

Thus endeth my blogger of the day... boring or not...

Cow Girl Up... Rodeo Time Who has a chili recipe??

2011-02-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

It is Rodeo time down here in Houston.... in between freak outs because it got cold for a couple of days, we have chili cook offs for the Livestock show and rodeos in Humble and Houston.

I Never Ever make my chili the same way twice so I couldnt say what mine is.. prolly boring. But I d like to hear yalls ..even yall northern folks and especially the folks to the west of us. I heard NM and AZ has some special kind of heat in their chilis.

We have a winner!!

2011-02-01T09:31:00.000-08:00

Our guild Contest has come to an end..

we had five entrants who answered the question of which six flags flew over the Great State of Texas over a Five hundred year period... and which shops were flying these flags. It took some detective work...

Lisa P is our winner!

We want to thank the other entrants: AndreaTJewelry was the qucikest entrant, Glasstastic Treasures, ValDawn, Jitme, and of course Lisa. Thank you all who took time to learn about our heritage and our arts in our studios! Yall come back, now ya here?

Tutorial: Personalize Your ArtFire Collection Widget

2011-01-28T17:37:00.000-08:00

The ArtFire Collection Widget is a great tool for embedding a collection on your web-site.

Have you ever noticed the link in the center of the Collection widget footer? If you click on the link, it returns a search of ArtFire items with that tag. Wouldn't it be great if you could relate that search to your Collection theme? Well, you can.

This example reads "Handmade Gifts" and clicking the link will take you to an ArtFire search for "Gifts".

But this collection happened to be a Texas ArtFire Guild collection and I prefer to have the link bring up a search of Texas ArtFire Guild Members items.

Instead of pasting the code directly to my blog post I paste it first to a NotePad document. Don't try to use a Word document because it will really mess things up.

This is what the last line of the original code for my collection widget looks like:

This is another example of what the last line of your widget code could look like:

All I need to do is replace the original search information: modules.php?name=gift_hub
with the search term I want to use which is:
texasartfire.

I also want to change the link title to display "More Selections from Texas ArtFire Guild". So I need to replace the words:
Handmade Gifts
with
More Selections from Texas ArtFire Guild .

This is what the code looks like after I made my corrections:

And this is what the footer of the collection looks like.

If you want to see the link in action, check out my blog post "God Blessed Texas Collection".

I have several tutorials on my blog. Click here for the Tutorial list page.

I also take suggestions for Tutorial topics. You can leave your suggestion in the comments.

2011-01-28T17:28:00.000-08:00

God Blessed Texas

Curated By: JewelrybyCher...

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

Time is ...

2011-01-28T09:30:00.000-08:00

Time is Running Out....to enter our contest.

You don't have to be an artfire member to participate in the contest.

Yee Haw Happy New Year Yall!! Its our Contest time!!!!

2011-01-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

Rose Pen Hand Turned and carved From JmMCoy

Earrings from TheGemmedGiraffe

Individualized carved key chain from CNewcomb

Contest

As yall know, our guild is becoming more vibrant and active, so we thought we would do a little contest to set things off for the New Year.

Our Guild Roster

Our members are participating in a scavenger hunt of sorts and we have fabulous prizes for the winner! It's a collection of products from some our talented and generous Texans.

The way this works is YOU have to find the six flags that flew over Texas in our rebellious past. They are flying as a widget/flag in the front page of 6 shops out of all of our guild members. See roster here. You have to submit your answers to us by January 31st.

BUT they have to be in order and which shop is flying that particular flag (ie cctexan3 _____flag) IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. So I reckon yall are going to learn a little Texas history while you are at it.

Submissions should go to the Guildmaster in Artfire

We will keep them and if there are more than one correct answer, we will randomize the submissions and let the computer draw the winner.

Please feel free to blog about this in your own blogs and twitters and facebook, we love attention! let us know who you are and we will try to follow yall in kind.

We wish you a Happy and Prosperous New Year! God Bless Texas!!

lampwork and black beaded cha cha bracelet from cctexan3

Hemp Dog Collar from SonoraKays

Update on our Texas Contest for January

2011-01-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Final touches are being made for the contest!!

we need a widget maker badly! I cannot do widgets for the studios. please email me via my artfire studio
http://www.cctexan2.artfire.com/ if you can be our superhero! thanks

Just a quick tease

2010-12-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

er, that came out wrong. However yall know me, foot in mouth.

Our first guild wide contest will begin Jan 1. Members: go to the yahoo group for details.

Readers, we will run it month long. We figured yall would like to combine a scavenger hunt with a bit of Texas knowledge and why we love Texas!

In early January, certain shops will be flying something and you have to go look for it. when you spot all 6, you have to put them in the chronological order of both the item and the Shop flying it. Check back on this blog for the items.

We will have prizes for the first and second place responders. We will randomize all the correct responders and draw from there.

Pictures to follow soon, but they are all handmade by some of our talented Texas artisans. We thank them for being so gracious!

Hey Yall, need some followers to the Texas artisan blog

2010-12-09T13:46:00.000-08:00

Hey Yall, need some followers to the Texas artisan blog

Yep its a pity posting. We have only 14 followers of our ginormous blog about the art scene, selling online, helping others and contests where you can cool prizes of hand crafted items like burled oak pens, gem stone jewelry, leather cuffs ( dont ask) and other snazzy things.

We would love to have more followers, retweets and shares and I am not shameless when it comes to promoting other artists.

it is here , where ya standing reading this right now...hehe

I will personally giveaway a piece of my jewelry to one of the supporters of that blog. You wont know what number, but we will put it in a randomizer and draw a name. Goal is to get to 300 who are serious about life online selling, networking and who can read. LOL

Help us get there! Purdy Please.

there is a separate contest for who comments the most in a two month period. Guild members are not eligible.

thanks yall!!

Stress over the Holidays

2010-11-30T10:53:00.000-08:00

As a self emlpoyed artist, the stressors of daily living seem to pile up real quick: family, work, doctors visits, children ( they seem to always need to eat dont they?) car repairs, cleaning, creating, managing, promoting your craft, craft shows, learning new techniques ad infinitum.

So whats a gal to do? I prefer to continue to work until I am so exhausted I bite everyone's head off or fall into exhaustion. I realised last year this was not the way to handle it ( for me) It may work for you though heheh.

I have learned to break projects into manageable bits and write them on a day planner so I can see progress. If it is all swirly in my head, I get confuddled and make mistakes. I also have a stressor on a subconcious level. Therefore, writing it down takes the stress away.

Meditation is another way that I relieve stress. Even if you do it for five minute increments throughout the day, it helps you focus on your breathing, lowering your heart rate and becoming in tune to the world around you. I have visualized a dark crevice and go there, feeling and being one with the world even if for a bit. Amazingly refreshing.

I try to avoid toxic people or snarky threads cus I get sucked into those always. I am a wet paint toucher. I find that not letting my expectations exceed my limitations helps as well. "an unexamined life is not worth living" is a truth I believe in. I know that today is going to be my past tomorrow and I will not get it back. How do I want to spend those precious 24 hours?

Sales are important, but not to the point that I cannot create. I have spent more time lately promoting and working with others than I have in solitude with my gems and metals. I am planning on spending more time with that and listing ( I go in spurts) Unpacking my studio after the move, I was so excited touching the stones .... that is sad that I have neglected my friends. They give me purpose and comfort in creating. So that is what I focus on in these times.

So how do you deal with it?

Texas On Fire At Artfire

2010-11-29T05:11:00.000-08:00

Texas On Fire At Artfire

Curated By: Divine-Defini...

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

More New Members! Welcome!

2010-11-18T23:00:00.000-08:00

This is so exciting! More new members to our Texas ArtFire Guild!

1. Roxy And Things - Roxy says: "I provide handmade, handcrafted, bridal, custom, vintage and vintage redesigned pieces to customers like you. All of my jewelry arrives at your door in special packaging, whether a gift for yourself or someone else."

Checkout these beautiful 14kt Gold Filled Earrings with Chunky Adventurine!

How about this one - Glass and Gemstone Multi-strand Neclace!

I absolutely love your 'torso' display! I want one of those!

Lovely - Sterling Silver Breathe Bracelet!

2. Polkadot Toadstool - Cherie says "My art is mostly in creating of characters in the form of art dolls, fantasy, or anything else I feel inspired to give a personality to:-) Recently I also started making miniatures."

Ohoo, how lovely - Dollhouse Doll Miniature Child in 1:12 scale one inch scale

So pretty - Fairy Queen or Goddess necklace in tan with some sparkles

Oh, no, the space aliens are here! Miniature Space Alien in his spacecraft

3. Dougal's Doo-Rags - Bio reads "My dogs love their bandanas, and soon people noticed the cool patterns and fabrics. I started making them for neighbors, friends and co-workers, and now I make them for you! I also make catnip pillows, using organic catnip. Kitties like to huggle the pillow while on a nip trip."

What a cutie this one is (dog and bandana)! Snowflake Dog Bandana with easy Velcro close

My cat would love these! 5 Animal Print Catnip Pillows

Love this one! Patriotic Flag Dog Bandana with east Velcro Close

4. Sonora Kay's Creations - Bio reads "I have been weaving dream catchers for about 10 years now, of all shapes and sizes. I also make jewelry from hemp, and I have recently taken up playing with beads and wire, which have been incorporated into my designs.

The dream catcher earrings and pendants are all hand woven with beading thread. I have been creating and selling my work for close to a decade now at craft shows, consignment shops, online, and by word of mouth."

These are so beautiful! Holiday Pearl Necklace

Picked one I would love to own! Antiqued Copper Earrings with Green Accents OOAK

Wire Dream Catcher Earrings

Well, I picked all the ones I want, now you go visit their shops and pick the ones you want! Have fun visiting and be sure to add their studios to your Market. And tweet those items you really love!

How to put Your Best foot Forward

2010-11-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

I thought that a good discussion would be about photos ( the bane for many of our existence) for selling on line.

I spend hours taking pics to get 10 good ones for 3 items LOL! I have gotten better over the last 4 years with the help of others and I am ALWAYS looking to improve. It is great to stay teachable. It will help one develop and evolve with the technologies that can be over whelming.

the photo is what draws people into your studio ( if they find you on TheFind or googlebase) which are shopping sites. All of our items are submitted to these engines. So I think to myself, how am I comparing to some of those pics? well, truth is, that I don't compare well enough. If you ever sneak a peak at the back section of my studio cctexan3, you will find some awful pictures. Until one day some wonderful person told me about Picasa.com

I had been using my MSN pic Manager for editing, but it just isn't the same when you try out a better editor. what do you use?

Also, you might learn your camera and how to use the macro button, the white balance and how to open your shutter ( or close it). I'm still struggling with that stuff too.

Sara did a thread on photos here:
http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=forums&op=view_topic&tid=1508

tony has one as well: Photo Q and A
http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=forums&op=view_topic&tid=11188

let us know what you do, or what you are struggling with, maybe we might all learn something new! Love and Peace Yall!!

Free Ads for Contributors to Our Blog!

2010-11-14T14:07:00.000-08:00

To all guest guild member contributors we will be running a free ad at the top right hand column for one week.

Scott, the Mad Moravian, will be featured today and run until next Sunday.

This is our thanks for contributing a post to our guild blog.

In order to be a contributing blogger you will need to be a member of the Texas Artfire Guild on Artfire and you will need to join our Yahoo group.

If you want to get your free featured ad contact me about posting an article here.

Four More New Members! Can You Say Welcome?

2010-11-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to four more new members to the Texas Artfire Guild!

1. Reans Forte - From Grapeland. The bio reads: "All of my products are handcrafted by me in my Texas home. Customer satisfaction is our NO. 1 goal here at Rean's Forte. I have been making bath salts and glycerin soap bars for approx. 5 years. I love to pamper myself and believe that everyone should take the eime to indulge in a true luxury of a warm. relaxing and calming bath. It does a mind, body and spirit good."

How about this awesome travel pillowcase in a Texas theme!

You can almost smell the Spearmint scented Mineral bath salt!

2. Ravnys Nest - From Round Rock. Bio reads, "I have been making jewelry, frames, painting, and taking photographs for a while now and I truly love all that they entail. I love every aspect of art and the tiny details that make each piece unique and one of a kind, be it a beautiful necklace for yourself, a frame that holds a beautiful photograph, a painting or any other hand crafted item. There is so much beauty to be seen in the broad array of colors, textures and points of view in this world and I try to bring it all into my work."

Won't you love to keep your trinkets in this elegant, decoupaged box? Very nice.

Or hang your trinkets from this one! Cool!

3. Remarcs - From Dallas. Bio reads, "I have always enjoyed reading (post school days) and had a tendency of losing my store bought bookmarks. I started making my own beaded bookmarks, this grew into making earrings. I have told myself I would stop at just bookmarks and earrings (even though I know the combination is odd!) but I have dabbled in necklaces too."

Wow! These are silver interchangeable earrings, there is another set of feathers to interchange! Very pretty!

Very trendy peacock earrings!

4. Sweet&Sassy - From League City. Bio reads: "Meet the Sweet & Sassy Girls..... (we won't tell who is sweet & who is sassy!)

TxParrotGirl (R) ....relocated to Texas from Louisiana...loves the beach and all things tropical...likes to read and thinks Jimmy Buffet is the king!

JLady Create (L) ...relocated to Texas from South Carolina...has a gift & talent for crafting just about anything, esp. scrapbooking... enjoys a good book and is also a Jimmy Buffet fan!"

What a really cute idea! Wish Bracelets! Want to know more? Visit their studio!

Now this is a really nice keychain!

Give a shoutout to our new members by visiting their studios and tweeting or sharing on facebook!

The Stars at Night...Are Big and Bright...

2010-11-12T05:08:00.000-08:00

The Stars at Night... Are Big and Bright...

Curated By: SassyClassy

ArtFire.com

Fine Art Paintings

Thanks to Sassy Classy for this one!

Honoring All Veterans!

2010-11-11T06:10:00.000-08:00

Many Americans mistakenly believe that Veterans Day is the day America sets aside to honor American military personnel who died in battle or as a result of wounds sustained from combat. That's not quite true. Memorial Day is the day set aside to honor America's war dead.

Veterans Day, on the other hand, honors ALL American veterans, both living and dead. In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank LIVING veterans for dedicated and loyal service to their country. November 11 of each year is the day that we ensure veterans know that we deeply appreciate the sacrifices they have made in the lives to keep our country free.

Our thanks to all men and women servicing today, you are in our prayers daily. And to all those not with us today who gave the ultimate sacrifice we offer our thanks to God for their service and prayers to their families.

Scheduling tweets, one-time and recurring

2010-11-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

Some of us have lives that don't allow us to tweet several times a day, but we do have some blocks of time during the week to do so. It's not as effective to do a tweet dump all at once, as folks will have forgotten about us by the next time our tweet window comes around. This makes the ability to schedule tweets into the future a real blessing.

There are several sites around the web that allow you to do some sort of scheduling of tweets. There's a nice post over on LimeExchange that covers them. The sites listed are: HootSuite, CoTweet, FutureTweets, Twaitter, DynamicTweets, Taweet, TweetSched, and Tweet-U-Later. I've looked at 3 of them (HootSuite, Twaitter, and Tweet-U-Later), and I'm probably going to be using two (HootSuite and Twaitter).

I do my tweeting in batches. I get up on Sunday morning and check my Artfire guilds. Some guilds do weekly promotions boosting individual artisans or themes and I use Sunday morning to do my part in the promotion. I set up my tweets for the week and prepare any blog postings I'm going to do.

My current method is to tweet one artists' shop for the week, with a link to it, and to tweet a different item each day for a different. Doing the tweets by hand each time is going to take a lot of time and risk typos, etc. In order to reduce the likelihood of such mishaps, I need the ability to store draft tweets and schedule them into the future. A really nice thing would to be able to schedule recurring tweets, so that I set it up once and it goes off and runs.

Recurring tweets are slightly frowned upon in the twitter world if you do not tweet something else between consecutive postings of a given tweet. So, be careful when scheduling recurring tweets. Schedule two different recurring tweets at 12 hour intervals and you'll be less likely to incur Twitter's wrath.

I've been using HootSuite the longest and it does everything I want, except recurring tweets. Once you set up your account with them (using your twitter account), you'll be able to hook in other social media websites. I currently have twitter, facebook and linkedin tied into HootSuite. What's the benefit of that? You can send your tweets as notes to all of your social media websites at once!

When you login, you'll see a compose message area at the top of the web page. In that little text field, you type in your tweet. When you click in the text field to start typing, the area will expand and you'll see icons for your social media websites, a shrink button, a calendar button, a save button, a send now button, and a count for the number of characters you have left in your tweet.

The social media website icons let you select where you're sending your tweet (or update), the shrink button lets you save space by shrinking any links you have in your tweet. The calendar button lets you schedule a tweet into the future. When you click it a calendar pop-up appears and you can choose the date and time that your tweet goes out. The save button lets you save a tweet as a draft. Saving a tweet as a draft lets you re-use the same tweet over and over and over, without retyping. I love that capability! I use it all of the time. I'll set up a bare skeleton tweet and save it as a draft. Then I'll grab the url for an item I want to promote, bring up the saved tweet and add the url to the tweet and then schedule it or send it right away.

There are probably a number of features to HootSuite that are available that I'm not using at the moment. Play with it and see! Oh, there is also a free HootSuite iPhone app, so you can schedule and read tweets on the go.

I've just barely started using Twaitter and mainly because it lets you schedule recurring tweets. This site also wants to tie directly into your twitter account. When you login, you'll see a tweet entry area on the website with "send now", "save draft", and "schedule" buttons. There are also "shorten url", "spell check", and other buttons, too.

The schedule button has been the most important for me so far ( in the two days I've been on the site). When you press it, an area drops down with "one-time" and "recurring" buttons along with a day, time and timezone area. The "one-time" and "recurring" buttons are self-explanatory, and additional options appear when you select "recurring". You can choose daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly for how often the tweet will recur. You also set the end date for the last time the tweet will be sent. You can choose "no end date", "end after x number of occurrences", or "end by" with a calendar pop-up so that you can choose the ending date.

I've just set up one recurring tweet with Twaitter so far, and it worked. The first tweet got sent out a day later than I expected, but I'm certain I mucked it up somehow.

Finding Balance

2010-11-09T10:04:00.000-08:00

I recently read article in an Art Jewelry Mag which discussed how to divide up the day ( or week) called the 3 Ms.... Making, Marketing and Managing.

We all wear many hats as business owners. As humans we also have to balance the other parts of our lives: family, volunteer work, church, sports, fitness, meditation time, cooking cleaning, having fun etc.

How can we balance that all? I personally spend too much time at one or two of those and it cuts into all parts of my life. Working from home makes it doubly hard because there is no quitting time, no boss expecting X by such and such time. Having said that , I dont know how yall do it working a regular job and doing this stuff at night!

As for the 3 Ms, the author ( whose name eludes me) stated that it should be:

4 hours creating ( making)

2 hours Managing ( book keeping, shopping for materials, inventory, picure taking, listing, emailing customers etc)

2 hours marketing: advertising, ( I suppose online and IRL ) tweeting, facebook, blogging, networking

I suppose somewhere in there we should sleep and eat.. but how can one person do it all? I am guilty of spending too much time online. I flip flop between listing and pics and marketing. I cannot remember the last time I sat at the bench with my metal and torch!

That is where networking has paid off for some of us in my opinion. I have built a following on twitter and facebook and LinkedIn for cctexan3. It took a year to get to that level though. My friends retweet or share what I post and I do the same for them. I am of the belief that this guild can do the same for the members.

Obviously some are more active than others, but that is ok. We can help one another, bank the Karma points and cover more areas. Some of the Guild members have HUGE followings, it works well to use them in collections, tweets, shares and so on.

But also we need to help the newcomers who do not understand how AF works. There will be more posts on this in the blog.

The new guilds will be out sometime in January and we will use that one. I will have new abilities as guild master to reach each of you via emails and links. in the meantime, use the following link to join the yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/texasartfire/

So how do you find balance? I am totally undisciplined and would love to hear how yall do it!

Welcome to Three New Members!

2010-11-09T06:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to three more new members!

1. Jenn Stuart Creations
Lovely, lovely creations indeed! Jenn is from Round Rock and loves what she does!

Simple Gold Filled Necklace with Fabulous Faceted Topaz Briolette.

Stunning Sterling and Fine Silver Necklace with Amethyst Briolette

Aren't these stones gorgeous!

2. Beads Of Grace - Our business began when my daughter would take the jewelry we make and show it to all our family and friends and would make sales. Beads Of Grace is in Mount Enterprise.

Hot Pink Bracelet

Saints Who Dat Earrings

You will need to visit the shop to get a closeup of these unique Saints Who Dat earrings!

3. Something Shiny Art - Wayne says " I work with lapidary, glass fusing, wire wrapping, metal fabrication, metal clay, and other distracting shiny objects." Wayne is another Austin Artisan.

Sea of Tranquility - Stabilized Turquoise Wire Wrapped Pendant

Viking Knit Bracelet

Beautiful work, Wayne!

Visit their studios and be sure and tweet your favorite pieces!

Black To Basics

2010-11-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

Black to Basics

Curated By: NoveltiesByNora

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

Thanks, Nora, for another collection from Artisans from Texas!

Learn Something New!

2010-11-08T05:47:00.000-08:00

Learn Something New!

Curated By: robanstudio

ArtFire.com

Indie Design

What a wonderful collection of sources for learning new things! I do so love to learn new thing and usually try my hand at everything I see! Completing one project at time is very difficult for me, there is always one awaiting my return!

Thanks to Roban Studios for putting this collection together!

Collection from Texas Artfire

2010-11-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

she walks through the fair

Curated By: mockingbirdst...

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

Three New Members!

2010-11-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

Special Welcome to our three new members so far this month!

1. Sky Girl Card - Beautiful cards that she mades with a Cricut diecut machine.

Left to right is a custom Thank You, Pink Rose Love card, Fall Tree Thank You

She only has few but give her time to get Artfire figured out and please visit her shop and tweet your favorites!

2. Viking Jones - Lovely handmade jewelry. She used a woven technique for some of these lovelies, sounds verHere are a few that I love.

Left to right - Dragonscale Chainmaille Bracelet, Turkish Roundmaille Bracelet, Stepping Stones Chainmaille Bracelet

Be sure and Tweet your favorites in her shop!

3. Lady Artisan - Beautiful handcrafted leather journals, leather matchbook notepad holders, and even a leather scroll pendant. She also does custom items to fit your wants and needs. My favorites are the Steampunk journals!

From left to right -Steampunk Jouranl Temporal Displacement Book 2, Steampunk Pamphlet - Time Respite Leather Journal, Faux Leather Scroll Pendant

What clever names! Please visit her shop and Tweet your favorites!

Keep checking back as we get new members we will be doing posts about them!

Thanks To all for the Chat

2010-11-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

I am so pleased the chat went so well ( all things considered with the platform)

Before I forget, everyone needs to tag their items with Texasartfire so we can find one another's stuff and it will help with contests or sales/promos.

We did get some things hammered out for the organization of the guild, members who are strong in certain areas, and sharing our strengths, that will make it more fun to do this guild stuff as well. No one person is alone at this!

From what notes I took, here is a list of who and what they want to do

ThunderMoon is our graphics designer
NorasNovelties will be one of the lead curators of collections. When we find out about a collection for the guild, we all need to promote and twitter, comment and rate it. AND ask our friends to do so too. Ask for retweets, reshares in your promos. Plus use the hashtag #texasartfire when tweeting.
CNewcomb is the contributor for twittering for dummies (Me!!) Cus I don't know hardly anything about it myself and I gather many of ya'll don't either. Thank you Chris!
PrissPotQuilts is going to be one of the thread starters (and boosters) for a weekly promo thread. We ALL need to promote in there. It will be in the regular contest thread section. Any help we can give her is much appreciate.
Chris is going to do a Facebook fan page for the guild. I'd love a facebook regular page but only one can administer it and that would have to be a commitment. Anyone up for that?
There is a group we did on Yahoo, for easier chatting. Contact Sherry's Jewels or Chris about getting in. Sign up page here:
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=42879/*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/texasartfire
Betty (countrylady) is obviously our blog Queen and I so appreciate it. As I understand it, there will be guest bloggers on all sorts of topics. so this thing should be a hopping. I suggest you subscribe by emaito the blog and/or remember to check in daily here. ( if ya want)

If you have suggestions for contests, promos or craft fairs, post over in the yahoo. I fear we will lose the forum posts when the new ones go up next year, so use the yahoo group for any new info.

I'm certain that I have left out some folks and I apologize. comment below so I know what areas you are willing to commit to.

We need:

1. An official emailer of collections, info and so on b/c not all members have time or skills to get to where they need to be. Some of our group are very very ill but want to stay in the guild. Some had closed down. Therefore I have made a new email list and we all should have each others addys just for giggles. But the official "info " person will send out the links, updates, whatever. One of us will write it (like nora with the curation) or me with updates, and the Info Officer (LOL) will disseminate to the group.

2. Facebook /fan page? who ever takes this job is the only one who can post under the AF tag and we want someone committed to spend at least a few minutes a day posting and letting us comment.

3. Flickr.com group for our photos (the more places we get seen the better) use the texasartfire tag there also.

News From Artfire Staff

2010-11-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

I recommend that everyone take a few minutes each day to 'Check In' and go visit Staff Announcements in the Forum. We need to keep abreast of what Artfire is doing to help us and make the site the very best for us to sell our handiwork.

Some of the 'must read' topics under Staff Announcements are:

Marketing Changes for November by Tony -

1) The goal for November for all marketing ( SEO, SMO, Common Good Partners, emails, paid ads, etc.) is 100 million impressions of ArtFire ads/items/pages or marketing messages.

2) 100% of net proceeds from new Pro Sign ups (over our current projection for November) will go to shopper marketing budget increases. The more Pro's who sign up, the more money for marketing.

Holiday Stress by Tony -

This is an excellent article especially for new members who are going to have their first "Holiday" season!

Shop Local Artisans On Artfire by Kevin -

Be sure and go to your "My Studio Location" under My Account and update you location. We only have a few more days to update location before this is implemented. This will be a big plus for each of us, giving local buyers the opportunity to purchase from us.

These are just few of the topics available and we need to stay up to date by reading new forum topics as they are published. This will help you make good decisions for your studio.

The Artfire Staff is wonderful to work with. They are very good at responding to our questions and working with us.

Welcome to Texas Artfire Guild

2010-11-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

This is our new blog for the Texas Artfire Guild. We want to invite everyone in Texas who has a Studio on Artfire to join our Guild.

We are very proud of the creative abilities of Texans and want to share our products with the world!

In this day of "junk" from around world entering the United States, we want to offer unique, useful and decorative handiwork that will last a lifetime!

Mission Statement:

A community of Texan Artisans networking to create group success. To promote our handmade products and share ideas. To educate, teach and learn from each other. To share how to make, how to manage and how to market our unique and creative products with honor, charity and integrity.

Come join us and get started today promoting the best business practices and reaping the rewards from your hard work.