Yellow Enamel Pansy Necklace Picked for Treasury

Ginghamgrlva aka Gingham Girl has created the Smiling Pansy Faces Treasury

I love Pansies and our Yellow Enamel Pansy Necklace was picked for this treasury.

Left to Right and Top to Bottom

Yellow Enamel Pansy Necklace
Shop: BlissStreetJewelry

Hand Painted Pretty Pansy Note Card
Art By Aimee Joy

Gingham Pansies Pot
Lil Chameleon Designs

Pretty Pansy Tea Cozy
Ginghamgrlva aka Gingham Girl

Pansy Hand Painted China Dresser Tray
Porcelain Heirlooms

Paperback Book Cover with Matching Bookmark; Pansies
QuiltSewCover

Pansy Face
Edeeotr

Pansy on Egg
Natashakaj

Pansies Afgahan
Barbara's Afgahans

Purple Pansy Scarf
Telford Silk

Beautiful Table Runner
Embroidered Dreams

Hand Felted Petite Shawl - Pansy
Elena Makes Things


If you don't know what a treasury is you may want to read this

What is an Etsy Treasury?

Etsy defines it as - curated galleries handpicked by the Etsy community

So for those of who who don't know what a Treasury is lets start with the basics.

Etsy started as a handmade community for artisans to sell their creations. The Site has since expanded to include Vintage goods (at least 20yrs old) and supplies. It is the largest site of it's kind with sellers from all over the world.

So many sellers and so little prime exposure. On Etsy the front page is a goal for many sellers getting on the front page insures lots of views. Being in a Storque article, featured seller, Gift Guides and the Main Gallery all get you views, and hopefully sales.

The Main Gallery on the front page is 12 items picked by Etsy to showcase their sellers. It's hard to miss and instantly drives traffic to a etsy shop. If you look in the forums of etsy, you will see tons of threads about the Front Page (FP). How do I get on the FP? Why is it all the same Sellers on the FP? Rants about the Front page. Currently there are 4,561 threads dedicated to the Front Page.

One way to get there? Treasuries. Picked by Sellers. If you are lucky enough to get a treasury slot. You can pick one of your own items and 11 others plus 4 alternates. 16 items in total. 12 For the treasury page and if something sells the alternates get put in the empty spot.

Treasuries are other sellers saying "I like this item" or "this is front page worthy" at it's best. It is being honored by other sellers. Great treasuries (chosen by Etsy staff) are featured on the front page. Of course even the best treasury doesn't always make it. What is the saying? it was an honor just being nominated.

It isn't easy getting a treasury spot. People set up and wait for it. With just 333 spots they fill up quickly. So Etsians wait for one to open up. Craftpolis created a clock, two just to figure out when there will be an open spot. It doesn't always help. If you get a treasury it lasts for only 2 days.

With competition steep to get a treasury and steeper to get to the front page gallery being chosen for a treasury is a good thing. Something to tweet, blog, and basically share. It says somebody liked my item enough to promote it.

Sacred Urban and Bliss St.

“What’s in a name?

That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”

~Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

Bliss St Jewelry as a company has labor intensive one of a kind pieces along with hand assembled and vintage Jewelry

As a result I created a line called Sacred Urban and a page Sacred Urban.
It is where all my artisan jewelry can be found

For 1000 markets where only my artisan jewelry is I debated for a while whether a name change is in order or not. In the end I decided that a clear and defining line was important. For months the lovers of handmade jewelry has known us as Bliss St. Jewelry on 1000 markets. Today the name changes officially to Sacred Urban.

A new shop was created on Etsy to reflect the change. Sacred Urban is now up and I am listing my Hard Candy Collection.

While Sacred Urban is a part of Bliss St. On Etsy and 1000 markets Sacred Urban will represent our one of a kind and artist made pieces.

We will still have Vintage Jewelry on Bliss St on Etsy

Wonderful ideas are brewing! Watch for our new creations
~Carolena Costa

The Insane Artist Myth

There are many romantic scenarios of the solitary artist. Living alone in a loft, with plenty of lovers of course. The misunderstood artist who can not create and be in a relationship, the working spouse just doesn’t understand. The all consuming artist the one that does nothing but breathes, eats and sleeps art. Basically lives his or her art. The latter is the most favorite of patrons. It feeds in to the myth of artist being so different that they are insane. It also raises the value of art. It raises the adrenaline rush, which quickens the blood and loosens the wallet.

In no small way the gossip spreads.

Before Hollywood gossip there were artist gossip. Did you know Van Gogh cut off his ear? Picasso was known not only to save his hair but that of his son’s. Oh and Hemingway….could that man drink! Gossip still goes with art today. Yet gossip, even odd behavior, does not make you insane. It’s good press. That’s all. Ok maybe it’s just press.


Today we know that Van Gogh is like to have been an epileptic. The depression that he wrote about was by some believed to be manic depression. If he had either or both would he be…insane today? Or would he be part of the thousands that take medication or are otherwise treated? Hemingway was an alcoholic. Know one? Are they insane? OK Picasso he was nuts. you got me there. Or not. We could take apart each artist and see what made them tick, what “damage” we could find. Yet that would only lead to post mortem therapy (possible- many famously dead are on twitter, go ahead check) or it would lead to us finding out simply that artists are human. Each with their own quirks, manners and abilities.
The equation artist = insanity or artist =odd or that artist = solitary or artist =broken is wrong. And a bit insulting because it is much too simplistic.

What the insane artist myth mean to an artist? ….Next time.

Filigree Butterfly Featured in Treasury

A Treasury called Sweet September Fade was created by Vintage seller Comfuzzled.

It includes my Vermeil Filigree Butterfly Swirl Pin. (lower left hand corner with the heart)

This Treasury is beautiful. So well done. There are at least 4-5 things that I want from it.

Still haven’t been able to get a treasury myself. I should check more often. There are so many items I would like to include.

My Venus Ring is a 1000 Markets Staff Pick.

My Venus ring was picked as a staff pick on 1000 markets! They called it stunning. I missed my opportunity to take a screen shot (next time I will think of it sooner).

(via Bliss St on 1000 markets)
Like many woman Venus was divided by her different roles.

There was Venus Genetrix ("Mother Venus"),Venus Felix ("Lucky Venus"), even Venus Kallipygos ("Venus with the pretty bottom"), and the list goes on, an epithet for each the different facets of the goddess

Venus Ercina was the Venus of untamed or wild love in other words, erotic love. Literally it means "queen of the heather" an untamed rose that grew out of the rocks.

This sterling ring unearths an image of powerful beauty, vulnerability, and complexity of female sexuality in the simplest form I could think of. Inspired by Jean Leon Gerome and done in the Art Nouveau style.


The Venus Erycina Erotic Love Ring can be found in my shop on 1000 markets as well as in Bliss St Jewelry.

Books

Found this on Facebook on Charity Maas Sloan's Notes. Every thing written by me is in blue italics. <--- Like this! I of course am all the X's After all it is my list.

If you want to see Charity Mass Sloan's just check it out click on her name.

A room without books is like a body without a soul." --Cicero

Have you read more than 6 of these books?

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?


Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES (Or BLOG) . Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag 20 other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X (I also read Eyre Affair, not by Bronte but fun book)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X (all but the last book)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible X (It was really good, a bit heavy on the sex and violence)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X (First "adult" book I read)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - (out of 42 works I have read 28)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien-X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X (I loved it I also read the other books in "a trilogy in five parts",
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X ( Love Steinbeck)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll- X (Also read Through the Looking Glass)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X ( all of them )
34 Emma-Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (in my to read pile in my living room)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (reading next)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X (read the illustrated version too. It's better)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X The original and some of the others in the series)
53 Cold Comfort Farm
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X (loved this book)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X (Call me Ishmael. He never tells you his real name, just what he wants you to know.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X
76 The Inferno – Dante- X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X ( one of my favorites children's book )
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (nope, first movie freaked me out wouldn't read the book)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

I haven't found this list outside of Facebook, now that I googled it. But BBC did put out a list in 2003 of the top 100 favorite books. The list is quite similar. I only marked books I had read from beginning to end at least once. I didn't mark books that I started but never finished, also watching the movies or listening to audiobooks don't count (sorry)