Simple squidly

Squid sketch, Q. Cassetti 2012Kitty finally got the packing done with all her things moved to the dining room for us to move later this month to Northampton/Amherst for her. We had a quiet day—with Kitty packing and me musing. Alex was camping. Rob came back from Nascar for a nap and then to take Kitty and me to go hear Johnny Dowd at Felicias which was fun and always interesting as Johnny is one live wire. Johnny was celebrating his “25 yrs. in showbiz” complete with looped music, poetry and wry commentary. Not a crazy crowd, but everyone there was there to hear and admire Johnny, a rare bird who attracts a specific audience who want to listen and hear.

Tonight, there is a village meeting having some points about the Farmers Market being discussed, so I will need to be there to represent. I hope it’s brief….but you never know.

I discovered something very obvious, but very sweet between Etsy and Pinterest! If you have an Etsy store, you can “pin” your items in the store….and move them into “board” on Pinterest…with the image, text and even price moving over in a neat format. So, you can easily share and promote your store through Pinterest, and begin to see whatever you are offering up to become part of people’s scrap and personal reference information. Be cautious, however, as their copyright stance was questionable…though I am seeing via the web, they are getting more in line:

“Pinterest is a platform for people to share their interests through collections of images, videos, commentary and links they can share with friends. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides safe harbors for exactly this type of platform. We are committed to efficiently responding to alleged copyright infringements. We are regularly improving our process internally with the help of lawyers who are experts in the field of copyright.” from Pinterest

Here is QToo on Etsy. Here is QToo on Pinterest…as a fyi for Y O U. I am learning quite a bit from this  little experiment…and learning that sales can happen. We will see if the price point is sweet enough…or if a bit of refining might move the product. I am sure you are less than fascinated, but I am. There is something marvelous about this time when an entrepeneur can build a business, one brooch or one blouse at a time…and for a miniscule price, post those products to sell to the world if the design is right, if the audience is right, if the time is right, if the price is right. All these essentially free tools that help us take tiny risks to see if there is traction…and to see if there are “legs”. Then, there are the flash auctions like One Kings Lane and Fab.com who sell online—and are happy to take on a single item, handmade or design specific things. One could graduate from design school or an illustration program and create your own job versus waiting for one to fill… and, if you are wise, you create your own space, your own position, and not wait to be the square peg in the round hole. So much potential. So much wealth in these venues. Rich for ideas, rich for development and potential. What a great world.

As an aside, or did you love the Olympic Octopus yesterday? I did!