Weekly Inspiration

Autumn Delight!, originally uploaded by la Naváa.

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Holiday Shipping Deadlines

It's that time of year, holiday shopping season. Here are the holiday shipping deadlines for the 3 major US shipping companies:

• USPS Holiday Calendar
• FedEx Last Days to Ship
• UPS Holiday Calendar (.PDF)

Holiday Photo Props

As the holidays approach it's worthwhile to take some seasonal photos of your products. Whether it's holiday items like ornaments or cards or just your usual items a few props can make your product listings or advertising a little more fitting for the season. Here are a few ideas for simple props you can get at your local dollar store this time of year.

• Mini artificial tree, those between 6-12 inches would work well for draping jewelry on.
• Artificial wreath. The image for this post is of one of my platypus ornaments displayed with a 6 inch wreath laying on it's side.
• Silk poinsettas as a backdrop.
• Plain glass ball ornaments. I'd stay away from too many colors and highly decorated ones, solid colors will distract less from your own items.
• Wide metallic ribbon.
• Gift boxes.

And a few natural items that you might be able to find for free out on a walk:

• Pine cones
• Branches
• Evergreen boughs (be careful of pitch getting on your items or your backdrop if it needs to be reused)

Do you have any ideas? Go ahead and share them in the comments.

Weekly Inspiration

kk4a, originally uploaded by glassimo.

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Weekly Inspiration

PendantWireTwist3_4, originally uploaded by EarthlyJewels.

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Quick Tip #27 - Etsy on Sale

A few weeks ago I blogged about a greasemonkey script to quickly change prices on Etsy for sales. Well now there's an even better tool for this: Etsy on Sale. It uses the Etsy API to edit the prices on either all your listings or just those in a section and then automatically returns them to their previous prices when your sale is over.You can even schedule your sale in advance to give you plenty of time to promote it before it starts.

Handmadeology has a short tutorial on how to use this tool.

Weekly Inspiration

ship and ship, originally uploaded by memohelen.

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