Bottle Challenge!

 

 Earth Day at it's finest! We were put to a challenge over at Tinker Lab, to make something out of plastic bottles! We took one bottle to see all that we could do with the parts and went wild! I took care of the cutting and then let the kids take it from there! We were able to make a total of 5 things from ONE bottle! Here is just a hint of what we made and I will share the rest later! The 5 things we did make were:
Bracelet, Ring, Pendant, Flower, Pencil Holder.

Here you see my daughter modeling the bangle bracelets we made!! They are so cool and even fit me! We used our corn syrup paint, since we had so much leftover AND this was a project for kids to do. If an adult were to use spray paint, these would come out SOOOO COOL!

~Michelle!~

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Craft in a Minute! Lacing Food

 

Today's Craft in a Minute is so simple and so fun! I like to make special snacks for all of my kids and I always try to avoid just throwing some stuff in a bag. This week I wanted to try something different and went with our recent lacing fun we had last week. I purchased Twizzler Pull and Peels and separated them into individual strips. Then I used straws of different consistencies to make holes in fresh fruit and Voila! Perfection! For snacks at home, I use the longer Twizzler straws and the kids have so much fun, but for snack it was just the right size!!
Snack and Craft in a Minute!!!

~Michelle!~

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SIDE NOTE:
Undergrad Fab is having a SHOPBOP giveaway on her BLOG, head on over!!
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Customers Love It!

I thought today would be an AWESOME day to show in photos, my gallery of a few of my favorite customer photos! Enjoy and hope you all had a great weekend!

Thanks so much everyone! Have a great day and be sure to check out my Buy One Get One Shop SALE!!

Monday Reminder and a Winner....

It's that time of the week again! Time to freshen up our shops and give it a new look! Let's go ahead and change up those featured items!! I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day! I had a lot of fun and the weather was foolishly almost Spring Like! haha! Unfortunately before all the pink and red was out of the stores, the pastels of Spring and Easter bagan to arrive! So my featured Items will be bringing in the pastels too! haha! If you can't beat them, join them!

Now it's time to announce the winner of my contest! BooksByRachel come on down!! Congrats on your 10.00 gift certificate to my shop! Just email me at MichellesCharmWorld@Gmail.com and I will send you back your code for buying up your goodies! Yay! Happy Monday everyone!!

Monday Morning

Monday morning is here! Time to enter your shop and change up those featured items! What theme are you going with? I decided to stick with a simple and elegant black and white theme.

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend and this week brings everyone much luck and good times along the way!

The weekend weather had us playing outside a lot and the melting snow made for some seriously messy times! hahaha!

The local antique mall had me dying for some new goodies, but I just couldn't make up my mind! These vintage canisters would look GREAT on my kitchen display shelf, I just couldn't bear to use them! So for now they will be at the top of my list if they are still there when we go next week! haha! I figured I would give myself enough time to think about the purchase first and I have to see if anything from my destash shop sells, once I list it! (That's my spending money shop! haha!)
My studio phone is so boring and blah, that I have been dying to spice it up with something totally fabulous and begin adding a little more decor to it. These phones totally caught my eye! I would love one in pink, so I'm checking a huge antique mall this weekend, if it's a no-go then I am going wiht the mint green!

Social Networking....Do You?

Retro 80s Computer Necklace by MichellesCharmWorld 16.00

With the dawn of the computer era being a great place to shop, it seems that most of our advertising if not all should be online. There are just such a sea of places, it's difficult to know where to start! The easiest of all of these was the blog! It's easy to set up, but the difficult part about it, is keeping it fresh daily! I usually spend breakfast time and clean up of the dishes thinking of what to blog about. If I have a thought in mind, but i've blogged that day, I will usually type it up and save it for posting another time :)

On to happier thinking! There was once a time that I had no clue what-so-ever Myspace and Facebook were and in fact I really wanted nothing to do with them, they were a hodge podge of stuff I just didn't understand. Then there is Flickr, Of course just as I get into the swing of it all a new thing comes up and it's called Twitter. I feel like they are popping up everywhere and anywhere! (feel free to add me on anything by just clicking the links to my profiles).

The question then becomes, how do I make these sites work for ME? I know you all are thinking that! To me, Myspace is still a black hole and I needed a lot of help for my site to still look as less-than-stellar than it does :) To make this site work for me, I really had to find someone that knew the ins and outs way better than I did and that's my cousin! I have several people that are in my niche market that i'm related to and see quite often, so in exchange for putting my Etsy mini in their profiles they get free goodies every now and then. This has helped me a TON! They have loads of friends and the time to spend hours on this site! For my part, I send out bulletins on sales or really interesting blog posts, but I try hard NOT to spam my friends with too much of the bulletins. I remove people that seem to post them non-stop. The newest thing i'm trying is switching around my profile picture every now and then, What make some people click may not work with others! I'm going to start copying and pasting my blog posts from here onto the blog there too, just to give it a little more of a not abandoned feeling! Myspace gets me some pretty good sales from first time Etsians.

Typewriter Necklace by MichellesCharmWorld 10.00

With Facebook, I feel a bit more comfortable, though this is NOT the place to start if you don't have anything else. People cannot view your profile unless they are your friends and customers usually don't want to add you as a friend since Facebook is a lot more personal than any of the other sites. I pretty much use this site to connect with my friends (old and new) Family (far and near) and Etsy shop owners. To get the word out about sales or new items I use the status bar at the top and I also post a NOTE to my profile. Facebook gets me a lot of blog traffic in the end and a few sales if that from sellers.

Camera Necklace by MichellesCharmWorld 13.00

Flickr is defiantely my friend and where I have been most successful! Be sure to follow the rules though! No shop information or links, no for sale verbiage (sold, see my profile, for sale) and not a strictly commercial site (only things for sale photographed). If you break these rules, you risk getting shut down. YES it happens, and it has happened to friends of mine. AND I was one of the lucky ones that got a warning before being shut down. I was able to fix it all up straight away and i'm doing much better now! Just keep it personal too! There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the warnings vs. the shut downs, so play it safe. The admin on this site is verrrrrrry verrrrrrrry slow in getting back to you about anything, so be sure you allow yourself enough time if you need to get a hold of someone. It seems that my studio shots and ones of my supplies seem to get me the most traffic and people into my store that do in fact lead to sales. (remember my previous post about where my sales came from). I keep alot of my family photos visible to only certain people though, just to keep it on the safe side. The key here is to be active in the community. Don't be greedy! I love to join groups, add my photos (Not millions at a time, that is a huge turn-off) and chat in the discussions! (I really dislike seeing tons of photos from someone in group pools and no active participation at all in the discussions). COMMENT on other peoples photos! If you like when people write nice stuff about your goodies, wouldn't you want someone else to say the same about yours? It's common courtesy online people :) That's all! I think the networking aspect of this site is what makes it my favorite, but oft neglected little pearl in the oyster.

Tweet Tweet Bird Bath Ring by MichellesCharmWorld 7.00

Finally Twitter! This one is super easy to use, once you figure out there is no deep down secret! haha! You just post what is on your mind, what you are doing, what you re looking at etc. and read what everyone else is doing. Tweeting is a lot fun this way. I can say for sure this one has lead to 5 sales in the month or so that I have been there. With here try NOT to spam everyone with your shop link and items 24-7. That gets annoying and gets you unfollowed. Don't add people and then unfollow them and then add them again when they unfollow you. It's not a game on who can add the most people.

Movie Queen Video Camera Necklace by MichellesCharmWorld 15.00

Next on my list is testing out You Tube, I need to make a video first and then I will see what happens from there! That's about it for me! Have any other sites that I should be checking out????