The US Government doesn’t see that stuffed animal, that dress, that blanket/quilt, that hat as ‘art.’ They see it as a manufactured product which must be labeled. Their stance is that the ultimate consumer must know who to contact in the event of a product failure. They also require labeling sufficient for the manufacturer (artist) to identify which of their products may be involved in a recall.

Some of the things that are required on the label are the manufacturer’s name, location and date of manufacture, contents and care instructions.

When I first started out, I thought, “What a COLOSSAL pain!” And, in fact, all these labeling requirements forced many, many people out of business when they took effect. But you may already know how stubborn I can be…..

Labeling has evolved over my time in business; both the process and the mind-set. I’ve worked really hard to market my shop and my brand. I’ve labored to have the name, iKnitQuiltSew, mean quality, durability, style and value. All of a sudden, my label may be the most important element of any piece I produce. How does the buyer care for this item? Who made it? Where can I get more of these? What’s it made of? All of these questions are answered on my label.

My labels started out on off-white blanket binding. It worked, but it was so big and the edges frayed so easily. The latter required a lot of finishing. The whole process was such a chore and I needed to streamline and simplify. I’ve finally gotten it down to professional looking and manageable. So here’s how you can do it too!

You will need an iron and ironing board, scissors, computer/printer/scanner, iron-on transfer paper, photo software, light colored satin ribbon (I use white 5/8″ wide) and a sewing machine or needle & thread. The first thing to do is compose the contents of your label, remembering that there’s a front and a back. The front of my label has my shop name (with the copyright symbol), my zip code (location of manufacture), USA, the month/year of completion, and my shop website address. The back of my label has care instructions and item material content. There’s nothing preventing you from using interesting fonts and colors, but don’t get too carried away – you’re working in a really small space.

If you lay your file out in columns, you should be able to get three or four labels across, and the column structure will make them all the same size. Type the front of the label first, skip one line, then type the back. This will give you ample room for cutting later.

Once you’re happy with your text, print your label(s) on bright white paper (that way the background won’t scan) at a good resolution (I change my printer to the “text with photo” setting). Once it’s printed, scan it to turn it into a .jpg. Open the .jpg with your photo software and flip it horizontally. It needs to be backwards on the transfer paper so that it will print frontward on your label. Then, open a new text document and place the picture in it. Set the margins as narrow as you can to cut down on wasting transfer paper, then resize the image to fit your ribbon. The rulers on the side and top of the screen are a huge help when doing this! When your happy, print this on transfer paper. You should have something that looks like this:

Now cut out each front and back label so that you’re left with lots of little pieces.

Place the labels face down on your ribbon about 1″ from the end. Make sure they’re straight! The transfer paper I use requires a hot iron with no steam. Be sure to follow the directions on your transfer paper for good adhesion. My transfer paper requires heat for 20 seconds, and I’ve never had a problem scorching the ribbon during this step. Here’s what the label looks like after ironing and peeling off the backing.

Once the label has cooled, fold it in half. Turn the cut edges together toward the back twice (this gets the unfinished edge inside), then stitch it in place with a sewing machine or by hand.

Now all that’s left to do is to sew it into your item, making it truly finished!

I just wanted to share with you a short contest I just ran on my facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ShendoeCeramics) that was super fun and easy for my friends.  I was just about 16 people shy of my 2011 goal of having 400 fans, so I ran a contest asking for existing fans to share my site and if one of their friends became the 400th fan, then both of them would get one of my handmade porcelain necklaces.  It worked wonderfully and in two days I had my winners!  To say thank you to all of my friends on Facebook for participating, I gave them a coupon code for my etsy ( FRIENDS11 ).

Just thought I would share this idea with all of you … feel free to use the coupon code and join my FB page.

Thanks for being part of the handmade community,

shen…

www.shendoe.etsy.com

Preciosa Ornela is part of the Preciosa Group, which is one of the worldp’s most significant producer of glass products. Its tradition reaches into 16th century. The boom of glass industry in Northern Bohemia is dated in the second half of the 19th century, when Czech glass became well known and established as first class quality product. Preciosa Ornela has been established in 2009 and produces mainly beads and pearls.

The exclusive Czech two-holed Twin seed bead is oval shaped with dimensions of 2.5 x 5 mm and it is available in two glass materials: crystal and black. The wide range of currently available color finishes on the two-holed Twin beads will inspire you to make infinite color combinations like the ones shown in this article, or at photogalleries on Flickr – just click the images.

With the new Twin bead from Preciosa Ornela it is possible to create unique spatial shapes, original structures, lacy designs or even costume jewellery. If you like to, you can become a fan of Preciosa Ornela on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/PreciosaOrnela where you can get some very interesting news.

By Beverley Start, Polymer Clay Artist

October 5 2011

Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of a project and look up to see that my usable clay pile has been gobbled up by my scrap clay pile. With a little creativity and a lot of nece$$ity I found a few solutions. Here are a few of my ideas on how to turn scrap back into usable clay.

1. Roll it out and use it! – Scrap from any project can be turned into a brand new masterpiece just by putting it through the pasta machine a few times making sure to keep the lines of color in the same direction every time. What this will give you is a beautifully colored striped sheet of clay that can then be cookie cutter-ed, sliced, rolled, or molded in to new pieces. Check out some examples here.

2. Make grey. – Hunks of all-colored clay can be run through the pasta maker or food processor until it becomes a uniform shade of grey. Use it to make a sculpture which can then be cured and painted. Click here for an example.

3. Make black. – Old or leftover clay can be blended using powered black pigment (purchased from any craft store) and clay softener in a food processor. I just put little bits of each in until it’s the consistency and shade I need.

4. Use it as filler. – When making something that requires strength try using some old clay as filler. For example if I were making a picture frame I might make it from filler clay and then cover it with decorative clay. No one will see the inside.

5. Make tags or gift cards. – Sometimes when I roll a piece of scrap through the pasta maker I notice patches of beautifully swirled color and I’ll cookie cutter it out to use as a tag for a special gift. Click here for examples

I’m sure there are tons more ways to use up left over clay but these five are my staples.

Code of Federal Regulations

Title 16: Commercial Practices, Part 23 – Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals and Pewter Industries

This discussion will briefly discuss part of the above regulations, the entire Part 23 can be found online as the e-CFR™. This will not be the entire regulations, but a summary of the pertinent parts. For this particular discussion, I will limit the discussion to only those parts regarding metals. Future discussion will focus on gemstones and pearls.

These regulations are applicable to anyone who produces a product that is …”fabricated from precious metals (gold, silver and platinum group metals), precious metal alloys and their imitations.” Thus these can be construed to also include the precious metal clays or any plated or filled metals.

Gold must only be used to describe items that products that are composed throughout of an alloy of gold of at least 10 karat fineness. The gold regulations include definitions of what is Gold Plate, Gold Filled, Gold Electroplate and several other terms. The real cruxt is that the Artisan can not use the word Gold to describe the product made, unless it is composed of at least 10 karat gold content. The fineness of the Gold must also be included, the fineness can only refer to any component of least fineness. Thus a product made of two different finenesses must be called the least fine.

The term “Sterling Silver” is restricted to describe an industry product that is at least 925 parts per thousand silver. The alloying metal is not restricted to copper. The term “Coin Silver” can be used to describe a product that is at least 900 parts per thousand silver.

Platinum Group Metals include platinum, iridium, paladium, ruthenium, rhodium abn osmium. Platinum must be at least 950 parts per thousand platinum to be called platinum. This applies to all of the group metals.

Simply put, if your product does not entirely meet the minimum quality to be called gold, silver and/or platinum you can not use that term in any part of your name or description of the product. There are no exceptions for these regulations based on size or type of the jewelry producer. Those of us in the Artisan jewelry industry must follow these regulations.

Before I made the cabochons (today), I had finished my commissioned ring for a geologist who works for an oil company that has many wells in Indonesia.  This man got some rough diamonds from a mine there.  I made him a bracelet featuring 7 of his diamonds.  This is a ring with another of the rough diamonds in a bezel setting on top of a map of the area where the diamonds are found.  The diamond actually is on top of the mine location.  The colored map is visible through clear resin that holds the bezel in place.

John

We try to promote as many of the posts and listings as we can on various groups around facebook to help get the maximum exposure for each product, but sometimes time gets away from us and we miss a few. So our developers created a recent products tab on the HAFshop

If that wasn’t enough he added a featured vendors tab as well! Every time you refresh this page a new set of vendors pop up from our lovely list of artists.

With the competition out there you need every advantage you can get to exp0ose your work to the world. That is the great thing about automation, now you can be assured that every product you list will end up on our facebook page for our almost 4000 friends. If you haven’t taken the time to like our page please do as every bit helps.

We have taken automated promotion to the next level as well, every listing is automatically submitted to StumbleUpon and Digg. Every listing is also tweeted to our over 110,000 followers on our various twitter accounts. This type of promotion is needed in this day and age to keep up with the fast pace of social media.