Blog

Just want all my readers to know I have two blogs.  This one (attached to my website) is for jewelry related posts only.  

My other blog (on blogger) includes the same info but also has a lot more... some jewelry related, some not.  Check it out here.

There are many benefits to buying handmade and particularly buying directly from the artists themselves.

When you buy directly from an artist, you can have all your questions answered by the exact person who made your jewelry. This is the person with the knowledge of the materials and techniques used, the person with the knowledge of the proper wear and care for your jewelry, and the person to turn to for special requests or if a problem arises.

I decided to expand my patina testing to include sealants... as in how do certain sealants affect certain patinas.

What is a duplicate content filter?

A duplicate content filter is a way for search engines to weed out sites that have content that's exactly the same.  After all, if you search on "torch enameling", you probably want a a variety of choices rather than the first ten to be exactly the same site.

I recently ran across these great videos by Cyndi of JewelryFX that do an excellent job of explaining Etsy promotional listings.  

Cyndi's explanations makes sense and she doesn't have those 5-10 minutes rambling introductions like some video tutorials do.  Her instructions are right to the point and don't waste time.

Cyndi also has blog posts that go along with (or are instead of) the instructional videos.

I'd like to thank those who are providing additional information and suggestions for my testing.  These first two rounds of testing were not definitive in any way and there's still lots of tweaking and more options to try.  

I’ve been experimenting with fusing fine silver.  Before I begin sharing, here's a bit of background info on the differences between fine silver, sterling silver, and Argentium silver.

Fine silver (also known as pure silver) is 99.9% silver.

There are many DIY photo cube tutorials on the internet and I'm adding one more now.

For this photo cube, you can use any size box that fits your needs. The one in my example below was made out of a necessity to fit into a particular space (12 inches wide).

I hate having to set-up and tear-down my photography arrangement based on what I'm doing each day.  Wouldn't it be nice to just have a little corner space set up at all times for when I want to shoot a picture?

Need another internet way of wasting time? Check out Google Trends.

You put in a keyword (or keywords) and see what’s trending on Google (what others are searching for on Google and what country they’re from).

The website "About.com" says: “This isn't a measure of searches, but it is a measure of what people are talking about on the Internet.”