You, gentle reader, may have noticed that I haven't been blogging
much over the past couple of months. I have been busy making decisions,
the kinds of big decisions that insist on one's considered and
undivided attention. One of those decisions has been the closing of my Twitter account,
another has been to experiment with placing my work in boutiques
instead of relying entirely on online outlets, and another has been to
blog less frequently.
I enjoy my blog. I love the chance
to share with you new designs about which I'm particularly excited, I
love showing off the work of other artists, and I love the remarkable
things – such as Mary Frances finding her 'Bobbi necklace' – that have occurred because of this blog.
However, as my business takes a slightly different direction, I have – reluctantly and after much deliberation – come to the conclusion that I need to close The Nameless Blog.
Thus, with
some formality, I hereby announce that this is the final post on The Nameless Blog. (I never did think up a
better name for it!)
Why close the blog?
For several
reasons, but the primary one is that I have found myself spending more
time on blogging than I have on earning a living. And not just on my blog, either: I've spent hours every day reading others' blogs, and
while I have encountered some fascinating ideas from some fascinating
people, it's still taking me away from my real business of creating and
selling jewellery.
Another reason to close this blog is that I
don't think I'm offering you, the readers, anything of importance or use
that you couldn't find elsewhere. There are loads of more interesting
jewellery blogs out there, whose authors are far more deserving of your
attention than I am.
The first post
of The Nameless Blog was published on 23 May 2010. My most recent post
before this one was on 29 May 2011. One year seems like a satisfying –
if short – lifespan for a blog.
And as for the three things that I mentioned in that first post, I think I've achieved all of them.
I would like to thank all
of you who have followed, read, and commented on this blog, everyone who
sent encouraging words when I told them about the blog, and all the
wonderful bloggers whom I follow and who are still going strong in their
own blogs.
I made my blog career short, but you made it sweet.
I
do have a burgeoning mailing list, so if you would like to be included on
it, just leave me your E-mail address in a comment. Comment moderation
has been enabled, so only I will see your E-mail address, and I will not
publish any comments that have your E-mail address in them.
Silverlight & Whiteleaf Jewellery is now on Facebook, so I'm not disappearing from social media by any means.
Nothing quite beats the feeling of making a decision and being at peace with it. I am at peace with the decision to finish The Nameless Blog. Thank you, once again, to all the readers who have kept pace with me.
Peace be your journeys. And if you want to keep in touch, you know where to find me online.
Yours sincerely, and with gratitude,
Emma (Silverlight).
10 August, 2011
The Closing Of This Blog
Posted by Silverlight at 12:59 AM 5 comments
29 May, 2011
Bye bye birdie!
As you may have noticed if you are following me on Twitter, I have closed the Twitter account of Silverlight and Whiteleaf Jewellery.
Twitter is a lot of fun, and I have enjoyed using it. However, in the past month or so I realised that I was spending time tweeting when I should have been creating new designs. This simply wasn't good for my business or for my customers.
There are so many people on Twitter, and so many crafters and small businesses using Twitter to drum up business instead of using Twitter as it was intended to be used: for conversing, keeping in touch, and chatting with people all over the world. It is so easy to become a spammer on Twitter rather than using it as a natural extension of one's business and activities.
So I have decided to close down Silverlight and Whiteleaf Jewellery's Twitter account, ten months after I opened it in July 2010 (as posted here). In that ten months, I amassed 2,450 followers, but I doubt that any of them will miss my tweets. And maybe that's a good thing.
So: farewell, Twitter, and happy tweeting to all of my fellow Twitterers! Thank you for all the fun times. May the little blue birdie continue to bring you happiness.
02 May, 2011
A Second Autumn Showcase
My bloggerversary is coming up this month, and one of the first posts I published was a showcase of Autumnal eye-candy from Felt.co.nz. So I thought I'd do another one, almost a year later.
The range and 'interestingness' of Felt's selection has grown in the past year, and I was delighted by some of the items that I found, and the beautiful photography.
One of my designs is in there – I couldn't resist including it, since it fits so well with the theme and the colour scheme of the showcase. Some of the items that appeared when I searched for 'Autumn' I recognised from last year's showcase! I avoided including these, with one exception: bonus points if you can pick it.
Posted by Silverlight at 11:45 PM 2 comments
Labels: autumn, birthday, blog, bloggerversary, Felt, handmade, showcase
25 April, 2011
I've done it: Silverlight & Whiteleaf Jewellery is on Facebook.
My third big step into the world of social media (this blog and my Twitter account being the first and second): I reluctantly joined Facebook in early February.
I put it off for a long time, but after multiple requests from friends, acquaintances, and relatives, and after hearing for the umpteenth time about artisans who find that one of their best promotional tools is their Facebook pages, I decided to give it a try, and scheduled it for early February. Perhaps the reality of Facebook would be more fun than my mental image of it.
Regrettably, that was not the case. It took me 48 hours to grasp Twitter, and that felt like a long time. Two weeks after joining Facebook, I thought that I might be getting the hang of it, and I was starting to see the possibilities in it. Twitter was overwhelming because of the sheer amount of information being flung about; Facebook is overwhelming because it is complex, sprawling, feels unnatural, and, despite the fact that it's the biggest social network in the world, it's not user-friendly.
Despite all that, I'm now almost starting to like it. Unlike on Twitter, on Facebook you can post images and get rapid feedback from potential customers. Now that's handy. I can also say that I have made a sale due to Facebook, which is more than I can say about Twitter, fun though Twitter is. I've also found that customers are clicking on the Facebook link in my E-mail signature and are 'liking' my page, which is brilliant as it means that they are keen to keep in touch with my work and to see new designs.
Facebook is sort of like a blog, a bit like Twitter, a bit like StumbleUpon, and a bit like Tumblr. It's as though each of those social media platforms took an idea from Facebook and expanded on it, while Facebook itself, as the original social media platform, is the (more or less) happy medium.
You will notice that there is now a Facebook badge in the sidebar on the left of this blog. So you can now officially 'like' Silverlight & Whiteleaf Jewellery on Facebook.
Posted by Silverlight at 5:10 PM 4 comments
Labels: achievement, business, Facebook, social media, world domination
11 April, 2011
A black and white ArtFire Collection
Silverlight Jewellery's 'Victorian Silver Key' bracelet was recently featured in this gorgeous, black and white, member-curated Collection on ArtFire.
Black and white – or black and silver – is one of my favourite colour combinations. It's the brand colours of Silverlight Jewellery.
The design is relatively simple, but the whole bracelet has lots of detail and subtle decoration.
Posted by Silverlight at 10:59 PM 1 comments
Labels: ArtFire, black, bracelet, Collection, gothic, handmade, jewellery, Silverlight, white