UNik Creations by Sara Aviva and Many Buttons

Bags, earrings, necklaces, pedants, it's all there, at UNik Creations. In this shop you can find tons of fun items that will add a little bit of fun to your everyday life. Her items are unique, one of a kind and are made from reused/recycled materials.

I have Diamond for your Pennies earrings myself and they are adorable. It's a shame I can't wear them myself, but I'm sure my friend will love them just as much.

Unfortunately this shop doesn't have enough sales to judge customer service by feedback, but from my personal experience, customer service is great. I got my earrings very fast and they came in a handmade box that I fell in love with. Policies are well written and are easy to understand, so there shouldn't be any problems there.

And this is a video where I'm talking about this wonderful shop. Enjoy :)

The Painted Sky and Nancy Jean's Painting

Paintings of birds, nests, farmhouses, all so lovely and bring so many memories to mind. In The Painted Sky I found many of them, all so charming and all painted very well and skillfully. These charming paintings are done in acrylic, which I personally love. Many artists don't like working with it because they think it's not as good and oils, but I personally like acrylic a lot better. First of all, they aren't as toxic (though I wouldn't try eating them). Vapors from oil paint are very harmful, which is why many artists who work with them get sick from it. Acrylic also dries a lot faster, which means it will not be all sticky when you will get it. So, there you go, these paintings are non harmful and are easy to handle. They will not smudge, stick to packaging, the dust will not stick to it.

Now a short personal story about birds. When I was little, we lived in this apartment with a bird nest over our door. For some reason these birds figured that it's a perfect place to raise a family, don't know why. As a result, our door was constantly covered in... bird waste products. We didn't want to harm them, but everything humane we tried to do to get them to move was rather unsuccessful. In the end, we were the once who moved. I wonder if these birds are still living there.

And going back to The Painted Sky. This shop has 100%positive feedback and it's not surprising. Besides the fact that these paintings are absolutely adorable, this seller is also very pleasant and has everything in place to make your shopping experience better. The shop policies are all in place and are perfectly reasonable, so if you like her work, you can buy it with confidence.

Etsy, Place to Buy and Sell Handmade

I found my way to etsy about a year ago. I found many great artists and a lot of great arts and crafts there. I haven't touched my account on Etsy for a while, but now I'm finally back and loving it. There are a lot of changes that make my life so much easier. Lets get back to basics though, what is Etsy? It's a site where people can sell anything that is art/craft as well as supplies for them. It works a lot like ebay, except this one is made specially for artists and those who would like to buy art. The whole site is organized into categories so that you can easily find your way around. Each seller gets his or her own store which also can be organized. Etsy doesn't charge much, it's $0.20 to list an item plus 3.5% after the item is sold.

Problems I had with etsy a year ago were few, but they are now fixed. It was difficult, for example, to have discounts. You had to sell an item for a regular price, charge the customer full price and after this payment went through you had to send the money back (this is how it worked with paypal at least.) Now, they have a new coupon system. You can create as many coupon codes as you would like and people can use the coupon code when purchasing from your store. This is such a great and helpful tool as it not only makes sales easier, but it can also help track customers. For example, you can create a coupon code specially for Facebook and promote it on Facebook only. When someone uses a coupon you will know where this customer came from. This can help figure out what sites are better to advertise on.

Another great change is apps. You can now add apps to your account and they can help you stay on track as well. One app I added is for international shipping. It automatically calculates shipping cost so that you don't have to. I can't begin to describe how hard it was for me to figure out sipping costs to put in my listings. Since I didn't want to charge people too much, I would end up sending the money back if the shipping cost was more than a dollar less than what I got.

Etsy is constantly improving, they do their best to help shops and teach sellers how to make more sales. I constantly receive very helpful emails from them with tutorials on how to take better pictures, how to promote, how to use their new features and much much more. Information I learned there alone is worth it.

I plan on using my Etsy shop to sell my original artwork while selling prints through Red Bubble. There are many people though who sell prints through Etsy as well. They make prints and sell them as they would any other item. I am too lazy to make my own prints however, so I figured I'd rather divide the load between the two sites.