This bowl was intended to be a cocoa mug but it got too dry to put a handle on. So, I decided to try a new design on it instead. Do you like it? (Colors will be deeper and brighter once it’s fired)

I’m still working two part-time jobs, but one of them finishes up June 30. Hooray! I’ll be down to one job and no school - studio time!

Although I’ve been crazy busy, I’ve been able to sneak some time in the studio. I’ve been working on the color line. It’s nice to use the paintbrush again, like visiting an old friend. I’m also playing with colored clay. Here are a few things I created over the weekend.

I’m finishing up a cup of tea, listing items in my Etsy shop.

Etsy is an interesting place to do business. A lot of traffic comes to shops from the front page of the overall site, where they flash new listings up for a few seconds. The new listings ticker is constantly rolling, so if people don’t catch your stuff when it rolls through, they either need to be directed to your store by you or advertising, or be conducting a search for a specific item. That is how I sold most of my dotted spoon rests, through searches. It is important to put good tags on items so they’re found in searches.

Since a lot of views are generated from the front page of Etsy, I try to time my listings to times when I think people might be looking. For example, early mornings on weekends seem to get views, as do weeknight evenings around 5pm Arizona time. That still catches people who are at the computer at 7:00 back East. It’s all a guessing game. I put in the listing, then check back half an hour later to see if the item got any views. It doesn’t mean those things will sell faster, but at least people are looking at them.

I rearranged the store sections away from “lines” such as “The Color Line” and “The Blue Line” back to categories like “Cups and Mugs” and “Bowls,” etc. It makes better sense that way. It would be nice if an item could fit into more than one category. Maybe that’ll come in a future update from Etsy.