Vote For the January Challenge on Etsy!

The theme this month was Science and Geekery and we got so many amazing entries. There were 27 entries this month and you can view them all here on Quirky'nBerkeley's blog. Click here to go to the forums on Etsy for your chance to win this LP recycled bracelet and business card holder by http://tresijas.etsy.com. One lucky voter will win. You have until midnight February 8th to vote. Be on the look out for another great challenge next month. The theme is Lucky Charms for February.

CCCOE Group Meet-Up in LA

So 12 Ladies from Ventura, LA, Santa Monica and more, met up on a Saturday morning to scour the fashion district for fabric, trims, beads and more. Five of us also hit up the jewelry district for tools, beads and findings. It was great to put faces to all the beautiful work we see on Etsy. The group had photographers, doll-makers, jewelry designers, bag-makers, seamstresses, knitters, and more. So Sandy of sandysimone.etsy.com took on the role of leader and she really needed a flag to keep all of us women together. Some of the places we visited were Michael Levine's for fabric, Berger's Beads, Bella Findings, A to Z Tools, Sadco. I know I am forgetting places and after a few stores we branched off in groups to find what everyone came downtown in search of. Diedre of Blackbird72.etsy.com and her husband pointed some of us in the direction of the flower district where we sat down and had some lunch. The group that made it downtown for our first meetup was Erin of knittergirl, Kim of visionsquest, Sandy of sandysimone, Jennifer of porterness, Elena of elenamary, Joanne of crazyartdolls, Christie of precioustwinkle, Valorie of arttoweardiva, Annie of anniekdesigns, Diedre of blackbird72, Nina of prettycheapjewelry, and myself Amanda of amandaklockrowjewels. If I missed anyone or spelled any names wrong please let me know. I am the worst with names. I stole the photos from Sandy and Nina, thanks for taking them.

Artists Books Made Here Show!!

CCCOE member Elena Mary Siff and many other talented Central California book artists are having Artists Books Made Here at the Elverhoj Museum in Solvang, California. The reception is February 8th from 5-7 pm. The exhibit runs from February 2- April 6 so if you are in the area it is definitely worth checking it out. Judging by Elena's beautiful work you won't be disappointed.

ETSY IN THE NEWS!!

Thanks to Tami Cate for bringing this to our attention!

January 30, 2008 10:04 AM PST

Crafty commerce site Etsy gets $27 million in funding

Posted by Caroline McCarthy

One of New York's most talked about tech start-ups these days is undoubtedly Etsy, the Brooklyn-based online marketplace for buying and selling handmade goods. And it's continuing to generate headlines: co-founder Robert Kalin announced in a blog post Wednesday that the company has picked up an impressive $27 million in Series D financing.

The venture funding comes from existing investors Union Square Ventures and Hubert Burda Media, as well as Accel Partners' Jim Breyer, who will take on a seat on Etsy's board of directors.

Etsy is "almost break-even" when it comes to profits, Kalin admitted in his blog post, but it does have 650,000 registered users, 120,000 of whom are classified as "sellers." The company employs about 50 people, and last year opened the Etsy Labs community space in a converted industrial space in Brooklyn.

With the new financing, the company hopes to achieve a laundry list of goals: expand beyond the U.S. dollar and the English language, improve its search and checkout technology, ensure that it can pay its employees fairly, keep its servers running, and have a "cushion" to ensure stability through current economic woes.

It's as much a social mission as an economic one, Kalin wrote. "Throughout the myriad challenges since we launched the Web site, we have worked day and night to see things through. We're in this for the long haul," he said. "We believe that the world cannot keep consuming the way it does now, and that buying handmade is part of the solution.

How To Become A Pro in the Chat Room ...

The Newbie's Guide To Etsy Chat (used by permission of Duet.etsy) So you've heard about the chat rooms at etsy, but you're afraid of making a fool of yourself? Say no more, Duet is here to save you. I've put together a chat-cheat-sheet, one that will have you chatting like an old pro in no time. First, where do you find the chats? Go to the Etsy Forums and look at the top right of the page. You'll see a link for chat, and the three main chat rooms. See picture below. Click on "chat rooms." (You can also click red, green, or blue, to be taken directly to that chat room.) After a brief loading period, in which you are being connected to the chat server, you'll see a Lobby Page. This Lobby Page shows you all of the chat rooms currently open, and the miniature avatars of the chatters within. From here, you can join one of the rooms already open, or you can create your own chat room. User made chat rooms can have passwords, or they can be open to all--its your choice. A box is provided below the room list to input a name for your chat room. (People often hold Street Team Meetings, Etsy Guild Meetings, or hash out the details of a transaction in passworded rooms.) There are 3 main chat rooms--Red, Blue, and Green. The colors have no significance, they are simply names. See picture below. By clicking on a certain room's Join button (far right side) you will be brought to the chat room of your choice (assuming it isn't full already,) after another quick loading page. For the purpose of ease, I'll break down what you'll see into 3 main areas: Left Side, Right Side, and Bottom. Please reference picture below. Left Side On the left, you'll see the various conversations people are having. Line by line, these sentences scroll up and disappear. You can not scroll them back down, so once it goes off the top of the page, its gone for good. Each one begins with the name of the person who typed it, so you can know who are you talking to. When you type and click send, your message will also appear here. Right Side On the right side, you may see large thumbnail pictures of etsy items start to appear. These are items from etsy sellers, either in the room or not, that someone wanted to share with the rest of the room. See something awesome while browsing etsy? Share it here. Want to show off your latest listing? Share it here. Majority of the time, this function is used by someone browsing the shop of another chatter, and who wants to share something they found. A small version of the poster's avatar is attached to the item's picture. You can click on that tiny avatar to go to their shop, or you can click on the item itself. Clicking on the item will expand it to give you the option of seeing the full listing, in another window (click More to do this.) Wait long enough, and someone will put one of your items here--its polite to say thank you when this occurs. So, how do you do this? Its as easy as can be. Find a nifty item in someone's shop. Copy the item's url and paste the link into the Listing I.D. box located at the bottom left side of your screen. Click Add and it will pop up above that box. Voila! You've shared that item with the entire room. **It is considered impolite to spam the room with nothing but your own items, over and over. Doing this will create a negative response from the rest of the chatters, someone may politely ask you to join the conversation instead of spamming the room, or you will simply be ignored.** The Bottom At the bottom of the screen, you can see the avatars of every person in the chat room. In the picture above, you can see an expanded section next to my name, Duet. This happens when you hover your mouse over an avatar. Three options appear when you do this: shop, profile, /msg. Click shop to visit that person's shop, click profile to see their profile, and click /msg to send them a private message in chat. "/msg Duet" appears in the chat box when someone clicks on mine, and they can then type whatever private message they want to, to me. This is also where you can set the color of your name in the chat. Click on any color in the row of colors to choose from, below the text box. Alternately, you can set your color manually by choosing a hexadecimal color. To do that, type /color (color code here.) I set mine manually, by typing "/color cc0033. You can find hexadecimal codes here: http://www.december.com/html/spec/color.html If that's too much hassle, just click a color from the color bar. Scroll down on your screen to see a helpful list of commands provided for you. This is your "in-chat" cheat sheet. Other Nifty Chat Features There are some really fun things you can do in chat. You can spin your avatar, make it bounce up and down, set yourself to "away" for a few moments, perform an action (the text you see in blue,) throw different shapes across the screen, get rid of item pictures on the left side, and grab someone's attention easily. Here's a list: Performing an action: type /me (what you want to do here) Example: typing" /me shows the room her new item" will produce this: Duet shows the room her new item Spin: type /spin (Your avatar will spin on it's own whenever you are typing) Bounce: type /lol Away: type brb OR /brb OR /away (this will fade your avatar, letting others know you have stepped away from chat briefly) To set the title of the room (seen at the top of the page,) type /title and whatever you want it to be. To remove a picture on the left from YOUR sight, simply click and drag it off screen--use a little throwing motion and it flies off the screen! To grab someone's attention, type out their full name. If they have sound on, they will hear a "Bonk!" sound, alerting them to the chat screen. You can also type the first few letters of the name, press the Right arrow key on your keyboard, and it will fill in the rest for you. Tokens are fun. See below the chat box, where there's a tiny little number and a shape of some sort next to it? The number tells you how many tokens you have available, and will go up to 20. The longer you are in chat, the more tokens you have, and they replenish after using them. Tokens are used by clicking on the screen where you see all of the conversations. Often one person doing this will set off another, and another and another, until the whole screen has falling cookies or glowing orbs floating across it. You can change which token is selected for the room by typing /shape (name of token you want here) like so: /shape cookies. Click on the screen, and cookies will fall. List of tokens: cookie, star, orb, coffee, notes, cross, haim. Yes, Haim:) And there you have it! The Newbie's Guide to Etsy Chat. All kinds of things are discussed in chat, from how to make crafts to potty training to forum discussions to recipes to banner making to, to, to..... It can be calm, quiet chat, or it can be rowdy, adult chat--it all depends on who has stopped by to have some fun. It takes time to become comfortable with chat, as it often moves quickly and seems like everyone knows everyone else already. Just jump in with a hello, add your two cents to the topic at hand... a quiet chatter isn't a chatter at all:) It won't be too long before you can consider yourself a "regular.

CHAT ROOM MINUTES 1/13 (Sunday)

Short Review of the Chat Room Minutes:

1. Membership:

We have an automatic message to welcome members and it requests they join the yahoo group.

We get spikes of new members during monthly contests and treasuries. New member names are sent in monthly, requests of Etsy. Admin. Consequently, due to the lag in time, sometimes a week or so, new members joining may not see themselves added right away. Therefore, Shell really relies on new members checking on themselves in the list especially for omissions and corrections. Also, the CCCOE blog tries to keep current with new members being added but also, this takes time and Amanda relies on new members sending the information to her.

Along with this, new members work is added to the slide show, but it also takes time and the work may not show up immediately.

2.Event/Contests

We will stick to monthly contests for now. The topic for February is: Lucky Charms. This contest will end and voting be in progress just before St Patrick's Day.

There are about 5 prizes left being held by 7bridges. Quirkynberkely is happy to take over handing out prizes to a random voter during the monthly contests. If postage becomes problematic, she will ask for help. Many members are willing to put up prizes, and when we run low they will be called for.

3.Blog

A calendar and map might be added, give the blog chairs some time to figure it out. Links to websites relevant to our group might be put on the blog; and when posts are needed they will ask.

4.Promo Swap:

A nice group has joined for the January Swap. Please send 30 items and a SASE Priority Flat Rate Envelope to yolandaclay by 1/3l/08.

Downtown La Meet Up: Sandysimone and/or visionquest will put up a post and poll on yahoo to determine date and place.

SF Bay Area Meet Up? Just posted in the forum and the Blog post just after this Chat review.

5.New Ideas for 2008:

Theme item was confusing. Having shops put a link to one item in their profile under a given theme would help make treasuries easier and useful for storque pitches. It also would help feature active members. Marimello suggested the idea and she will explain it further.

Team Shop:

Too big to take on right now.

Thanks to Nina for the recap!

SF CaliforniaEtsyParty ----QuirkynBerkeley

QuirkynBerkeley says:

Hello Thought I'd pass along an invite to a gathering for SFEtsy members. See invite below: SAVE THE DATE for the January ETSY PARTY! When: Sunday, Jan. 27, noon to 3 pm Where: 338 Nevada Ave., Moss Beach*, CA 94038 (just north of Half Moon Bay) Why: For fun and chat face to face, to see the membership's choice crafts, plus to find out answers to your burning questions One topic that has been floating around is craft shows: which ones, how to apply, when are they happening. If you have ideas, convo with your RSVP. We want to make this a fun and effective party. We will have space to set up tables so we can see everyone's crafts, so bring a display, card table, some of your crafts, business cards, etc. Also, if you could bring something light to nibble on, that would be great. Anne is going to supply the coffee, tea and lemonade. Plus water. Looking forward to a fantastic 2008! Please RSVP to this convo, YES or NO. *for a map and directions, go to www.mapquest.com Cheers! Jeyn :o) www.jeynreyn.etsy.com