Reviews and Feedback

First of all – we are so, so grateful for each and every review. It really makes one’s day to know that the person who received an item was happy with it. But, I’m also as grateful to anyone who has made a purchase and has not left a review. Because reviews are a bonus – both, fur us and for the person writing it. I absolutely don’t expect everyone to bother. If it makes you feel good to leave a review – it totally makes us jump up and down from glee, but if it feels like a tedious task, then simply enjoying your item as much as you can is the best thing – even if we won’t know it! 🙂

There was tiny review related discussion at one of the teams Facebook page we are part of. I’ve always thought that as a customer I personally would not like to have an extra reminder about leaving reviews after I’ve made the purchase. But as it turns out – some people actually do like if they are contacted later on and asked about how they liked their product, because that makes them feel important and gives them a feeling that their opinion is important and matters.

This one is obviously a very good point! Plus – any suggestions and feedback on what people liked, what they didn’t and why and what would they improve, sounds more valuable than gold.

Still, the problem for me is, how to obtain it without bothering people too much? Maybe it’d be a good idea for Etsy to work out some sort of separate, private suggestions and feedback system? Because eventually – receiving critique can be extremely valuable, but it does not always necessarily go well with the review/stars system. You can receive a perfect item – exactly what you saw on pictures, and be totally happy with it and still have some suggestions for improvement or critique. It would be good to have a tiny fill in box for private feedback, for further thoughts and suggestions.

I think I’ll try to make it a standard line in a shipping notification to point out how welcome and appreciated any suggestions and critique would be. Although, I suspect it would be definitely a bad idea if it came out like “please try and find flaws with the thing you just bought and look for reasons why you hate it”. This kind of message would no t do good for anyone. I know, that I am prone to post-purchase regrets as a customer myself. So, after a purchase I am more in the need of hearing and focusing on why the thing I just paid money for is actually a good one, not being encouraged to think of more reasons why it might have been a grave mistake instead.

Oh, and and at some point just recently we had a moment when we could congratulate each other for the 100th sale of our shop. Congratulations, ISE Paper And Craft for the first 100 sales!

– Maarja

PS: If you are about to throw into recycling the small paper box your acorn earrings or necklace came in you might also want to take a peek at the bottom and rescue the tiny pebble used as weight first! (Natural habitat above)

Plum blossom card, Some more on product photography, #TheDress

I know it was just last post, where I kind of shared my attitude towards product photography according to which I’ve learned to not worry about it too much or spend too much time on it. But there’s this cherry/plum blossom card, which is just gorgeous in real life, but which didn’t photograph well at all despite me trying several times. It came out like that:

This picture is not exactly wrong. I took it in conditions which are normally pretty good – full sunlight. But somehow the essence of the card just doesn’t come across. I put the card up with these pictures, as despite trying several times I couldn’t get better results.

Today I was messing around with my old iPhone as I tried to get some voice memos off of it and into my computer. (I can’t help but to mark how frustrating the process was. I mean … what is it with Apple, why can’t one access the data on their own device directly? All I can do with it when I connect it to my computer with a cable, is to download picture and video files. And I can only download those – no chance of transferring anything to my phone. Anything else, any notes or voice memos or any other content I might have there I have to EMAIL. Ugh. Anyway, sorry about that.) I also had some photos accumulated in the phone which I saved on my PC, and among those I found couple of first snaps I had done of the cherry/plum blossom card so I could quickly show it off if I wanted to. And I have to admit – despite being somewhat blurry, this time the tiny iPhone cam and nonexistent lighting turned out to be way better at capturing this card than full sunlight and actual camera.

Usually the sunlight routine works out just fine, but with trickier objects everything just gets more complicated. It’s like that whole #TheDress thing. My first reaction upon seeing that dress question on Facebook was something along the lines that I’d really like to see it in better light and from a different angle, it’s really a horrible shot to judge colours by. Of course the news that some people actually see it as dark blue and black was very surprising to me, and it was more surprising to find out that it actually IS dark blue and black. Seriously. Now I’m all uneasy about how some people might perceive any of my poorer Etsy shots.

I also think that that dress thing illustrates nicely what must be going on in with all sorts of things, not just colors. People just perceive things differently, assign different meanings to different things and most of the time you just don’t think that someone else might see the same thing in a light entirely different (btw, sounds like really conveniently fitting metaphor here!).

As for product photography – for now, I have both of these photos above up at Etsy with the product description. And I’ve begun really looking forward to getting myself a decent camera.

Catnips, Satisfaction and Product Photography

I finally got around to trying out an idea that I had been thinking of for a while. I had been looking for a method of applying white on coloured paper and I think I  found something that seemed to work, sort of. I started out only testing the idea, but I thought it worked well enough to make an actual card out of it. Since I had used paper with a failed drawing on the back side I had to cut it off and glue on a new back to the card, if I wanted to actually use my test project. But as it turns out – olive green made me love this card even more, and now it’s up at the shop too, with a hand-drawn envelope and all.

It’s not that you could really call this a great accomplishment on objective levels, I have several issues going on in my life I really need to work on, and compared to that making one little art card seems kind of like a waste of time. But it was totally worth every minute of it, I tell you. These colours and the contrasting white and how delicate and fluffy and warm looking it all came out just made my heart jump from joy, because I just had made something very pleasing to my eyes all by myself. Making things is great. I guess I should mention, though, that I choose to ignore here all these times I get really really frustrated when I fail to get anywhere in my attempts to create something.

Meanwhile, though, my sister has been out to collect real willow catnips (or pussy willows, if you will) and made some gorgeous Spring / Easter themed dried bouquets with them. Willow catnips start budding already in the Fall and even in the harshest winters you can find some that are already or still open in February. But with the weather we have been having in the past years there is really no lack of pussy willows even if the real Spring is still months away.

Whenever I look at my sister’s gorgeous product photographs I’m always reminded of my own rather shabby looking pictures I keep posting. To put her obviously good eye for taking lovely pictures aside, the fact is that I still keep making do with my almost 10 years old Nikon Coolpix 7900, which has managed to dry out after a dive into the salty waters of Baltic sea, among other things. And it’s not rare for me to even post photos off my couple of generations old iPhone, which I inherited from a relative some years back. When I started out this used to really frustrate me and I felt really bad about my photos, but worry way less these days. Sure, good quality product photography is important, but what’s most important is actually getting things done. The first thing a product photo needs to accomplish is to exist. And then, of course, let everyone looking at it get a reasonably good idea what the item might actually look like. I intend to improve and I will be very exited once the time comes I can buy an new decent camera. But in the mean while I’ll make do with what I have, because it definitely is better than nothing. I’ve begun slowly to learn that not having things perfect for the vast majority of time is more like a general rule in life, and it is way past time to get that famous “lemonade” metaphor. I’ve even become so wise as to realise that it is also not very prudent to spend much time editing my product photographs because at this stage it is just not worth it. The best kind of product photography for me right now, is the kind which is done in about five minutes and then uploaded straight from the memory card. I will make beautiful catalogue quality photos once I I can achieve that goal as quick and easy as that or when I’m selling thousands of the same product with one set of photos.

-Maarja

The post with cute cats on postcards

I attempted to sketch a cat birthday card the other day. I had a cute idea behind it – can you guess what it was? What the cat is trying to do on the picture?

Obviously it’s trying to make a cute letter B with it’s paws! Right? At least that’s what I thought. But the first two people I showed the drawing to didn’t find it obvious at all. The basic response I got was the polite “What a cute cat” or “Nice drawing”. And I could sense a question hanging in the air – “Is there a point to this random cat on this card?”.

So, I was kind of successful in attempting to be cute with that cat paw letter B, but unfortunately it was just me cutely failing to convey my intended meaning …
______

But enough about me and my failures! One of my sister’s most adorable and awesome cat cards got some awesome feedback today:

“Pretty expensive with shipping, but the art is fantastic and sincerely charming. The recipient of this card really loves it.”

I keep prodding her to make a post about her cat art and most of all – about the five furry, cuddly purr-balls of inspiration she has around the house. It would be an excellent chance to make a contribution into the global pool of cute and beautiful cat photographs and drawings!

As for the comment about our cards being expensive – well that’s the back side of selling things on line. Shipping expenses can’t be avoided. Another reason is that our cards are still very much hand-made and sold on a very small scale. At some point in the future, it may happen that we get into actually having some of them professionally printed, but at this moment we rely on our little brave desktop ink-jet printers, cut and measure paper by hand feel proud and happy over every single individual card we make. And you can be certain that with each purchase you’ll be directly supporting the artist and getting something really unique in return.

-Maarja

Valentine’s day cards

Yes, I know – it’s over a month away! But it’s like with Christmas preparations – you have to start early.

To be quite honest with you – I have never particularly celebrated it or expected any special on that day. It’s one of those silly commercial holidays, you know, and people should make showing love, affection and appreciation a pleasurable daily habit not once a year show off… The only Valentine’s cards I’ve ever sent and received were from friends at school, as we mostly interpreted it around here during that time as friends’ day, there was special valentine’s postal service at school and everything and I sent and got a card from all of my friends.

But then again, holidays like that are a perfect opportunity for many people to make lovely surprises or great gifts outside the regular Christmas/Birthday routine. There can never be enough reasons to pamper the people you love, right?

Either way, what I do firmly believe in is that all this planning and celebrating should never be a source of aggravating stress (I mean the kind that wears you down and weighs like a stone, and makes you feel like you are just acting a part and poorly at that). The best kind of gift anyone can give is their time and attention. And if that holiday is important for you, be sure to communicate that to your partner. And make clear (to yourself above all) that time spent together and mutual attention is ALL you expect and absolutely at the top of any potential gift or surprise list. Life is not a movie, it’s way better than that.

Oh .. and if you still feel like you should surprise your loved one with a thematic post-card, or add a card to your bouquet of flowers and/or expensive presents, why not take an educational approach and do some linguistic exploration? Or go for cute and amusing? Or simply say how you feel …

 

I’ve been also busy building up a greater variety of acorn necklaces. And I got most of our acorn/chestnut earring stock listed, with gift-boxes and all. I plan to properly introduce them on this blog as well, but if you want to sneak a peek (you totally should), here’s a link to our natural jewelry section:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/IsePaperAndCraft?section_id=15610513&page=2

-maarja

Keeping it real – holidays at home :)

I thought quite a bit whether I should post this. I mean, I really want to show you our Christmas ornaments on a tree. And what I especially want to show off are the ornaments from last year – as good as fresh! But there is this thing of it being the darkest time of the year. I mean, one should not post such real looking pictures of things they want to sell, should they? But then again – I’m not an international corporation. And this is not a tree from some catalogue, it’s our home Christmas tree which had a broken branch and was dropping needles since the first day, but we love it anyway because my 4 year old chose it himself and had a real blast hanging every last ornament I had at hand! 🙂 I think one of our mottoes with ISEPaperAndCraft, although we have never precisely discussed it or spelled it out, is keeping it real. We are not making and selling things for customers, we are sending them to other people. And we are people too. So, here it goes, our* Christmas tree this year:

This is the second year we’ve been decorating our tree solely with ISEPaperAndCraft decorations. I’ve been wanting to do a carefully designed and well balanced Christmas tree decorations design with our products, but this will have to wait until it’s Summer, because real family Christmas trees are meant to be simply enjoyed. In my opinion – it is not possible to have an ugly family Christmas tree, especially if the decorations are put on the tree by all family members and are self-made or special and love in some other way or for some other reason. This year I just took out the box with what I had prepared for our tree the last year and almost everything also on sale at the shop – could not miss a chance to test them on an actual tree! My 4 year old son had a blast decorating, and I we love our tree to bits. (Note the red yarn and the star shaped bowl – our tree-vase turned out to be leaking and this was our solution to avoid removing the tree and taking everything off of it)

The different sets of acorn/chestnut/ pine cone ornaments go together surprisingly well and the tree feels just so right, natural materials are just so … natural on a real tree. Artificial ornaments are of course brighter in colour and shinier, but not something I really want to bring into my own home. What I love about acorns/ chestnuts / and pine cones, is how rich in detail and texture they are – they invite you to look more closely. They are eventually made of tiny cells, like we are, there is richness in texture and colour, even if more subdued. Our cosy little tree feels like yarn coloured with natural colours, it’s like a field of (northern) wild-flowers. And if you want to light up that kind tree you should either use real candles or choose some more exquisite brand of Christmas lights which would look more like fireflies on a jute cord not like a random electric cord with plastic on it and some more plastic.
Of course there is a limit to the natural. Some ornaments are made with a drop of quick dry glue, acrylic paste spikes on chestnuts are not what the soil is made of and satin ribbon is very much artificial in origin. But, well, that’s where the balance stands right now 🙂

Here are some chestnut rose ornaments. Can you tell the difference between the ones made for last Christmas and the ones made this Fall?

   First and last are picked in 2013, the middle two are 2014 crop. The only difference I could spot was in style. And if you are curios, what kind of filter is used for the photos, I must disappoint you. It’s just the lack of light 🙂

Here’s my best shot of one of the silver cones:

And here’s the crochet cap acorn set I originally made for Easter 2013 – it turned out to liven up our tree really well. It’s such a hassle to brand things. I know they look equally convincing on twigs with willow pussies, but I admit that the concept of eastern acorns is rather … unique. Even though it is definitely cute and original and nature friendly 🙂 As for the acorns being also from the last year – I don’t even feel like it’s noteworthy, red oak acorns are so sturdy and durable that I suspect that it will be a really long wait of decades to see one wither up and fall to pieces …

As for the white oak acorn ornaments from last year – they will have to wait until summer for me to get proper close-ups of them 🙂 Some ore visible on whole-tree shots though! But here’s one of my experimental tree-decorations. I once covered this oak leaf with golden paint, with no particular purpose in mind. A future Christmas tree with acorns and oak leaves? Why not!

PS: Some ornament sets are on a 20% post-holiday sale now at our shop.
PPS: I am actually aware that the year number is changed and it is customary to send out new year wishes and such on that occasion. But I also feel that the internet and every other place is so full of new year wishes on this day of all the days, that I will put mine/ours up at some later date.

-maarja
*this means our little family of tree. My sister had some wonderful Christmas decorations up at her house too – I don’t know if she took any pictures though.

Elves at work

Earlier this month I had a blessing of a order for a larger number of cards. I was so excited to set up a card making shop for a couple of days. And I suddenly felt such a weight of responsibility too – there was a real live person who had just entrusted our little shop (read:me) with the task of preparing the medium to carry her Holiday wishes this year!

The card making process at my little desktop card shop is really very basic and simple, as you can see below. No paper cutters or creasers here – just a metal ruler, pencil, eraser and a really sharp knife. Some sort of paper cutting/creasing tools are on my wishlist, but I don’t feel like getting them is really justified before our card business picks up a little first.

Meanwhile I’m becoming a real millimetre nerd. And a paper nerd (although, let it be noted here that I’m not really all that knowledgeable about paper in general, but I’m learning new things all the time and this is fun). It frustrates me to no end when the store-cut paper sheets are off by a millimetre on one side, or when the cut edges are too fuzzy, or when a sheet of white paper is ruined by a tiny brown spot in the grain. I bought some recycled cardboard pre-creased post-card bases some time ago, and it really frustrated be that the were made so that the edges were not cut from outside to inside, so that the paper’s edge would ever so slightly curve to the inside, but it was the opposite.

It was a wonderful chaos halfway through – like the postcards had just snowed down from the heavens.

These 60 cards turned out beautifully. In the original listing the year number was drawn with pink glitter gel pen, but since the customer preferred another colour I was happy to hunt for a red gel pen (which surprisingly was more difficult than I had thought – no glitter gel pens in pretty colours, only gold and silver ones. Eventually I found one that was a bit more Christmasy shade of red, no glitter though).

The original listing was for one page (non folded cards too), but again – not a big effort to turn it into a folded version. I realized, that I love customizing orders. Of course, it is a little bit more time consuming, but for a larger number of items it just makes perfect sense to try and make things as perfect as possible – after all, that is part of the beauty of having things made by hand vs factory made mass production.
 

We do not offer delivery/shipping upgrades at our shop by default, but that doesn’t mean that you can not ask for one if you need things delivered ultra fast! This time I was the one to offer researching fast delivery options myself, as it seemed like it might end up being a really tight call with regular mail, especially in the pre-holiday season rush. So I had my own first-time experience with DHL too. I learned that one two things are needed for certain – the addressees phone number and a filled out shipping invoice with detailed description of contents. I also put a small “thank-you” chocolate into the packet originally, but that resulted in me having to fill out a really scary detailed piece of shipping invoice for food stuffs, and since the DHL personnel seemed to kind of see this chocolate as a potential customs hold-up risk, I had them remove it to make everything as simple as possible. Didn’t want to risk the delivery being late just because of a small sweet thank you. The customer service at DHL was great though – always accessible via the help-line and the delivery man was behind my door literally a minute after I had filled out a delivery form at their website.

-Maarja

Christmas is over now (or not :))

That’s how time seems to pass if you peek into the business end of the thing. Holidays are so close now, that I’ve been dreaming of hearts in various shapes and sizes and trying to come up with clever birthday card ideas, because Christmas and holiday related things are so … yesterday. Of course the non-online shops should be increasingly busy and then there are still the post-holiday discounts coming up. But our little on-line craft store can only sit back and relax and wait for sales reports from The Little Christmas Market pop-up Etsy shop in Helsinki (I snagged the header from the event FB page).

My sister has not been sitting idle (and dreaming up some silly Valentine’s hearts), she has been busy keeping up the work on her simple, elegant and natural beach pebble jewelry series instead. Here are some examples:

1) A pair of lovely (nickel free) silver tone post earrings with beach pebbles. (It should be red brick pieces worked smooth and round by the sea).
2) And a matching red brick sea pebble brooch.

Aren’t they great?
I love beach pebbles!

In other news – it’s December, if you haven’t noticed. And we live in the northern part of the northern hemisphere and we see very little of the sun this time of the year. I think I might have mentioned it couple of times already on this blog, but it’s still growing darker each day and it’s kind of hard to avoid the topic. Especially while the urge to just cave in and spend the days mostly sleeping and eating until the days are of a more decent length, is just getting stronger. Bears, badgers, hedgehogs and other wise animals, who either hibernate or almost hibernate during winter months, have worked it out so nicely …
Of course, there are plenty of people living way more to the north than I am. In case you are one of them – please just ignore my complaints about the lack of the light. I know we have like a daylight feast down here every day – I even actually saw the sun yesterday, and it’s kind of unclear why I have put my swimming wear away. We don’t even have snow at our beaches yet …

In any case – happy wait for the holidays to arrive and may you find double chocolates in your advent calendars!

-Maarja

Busy crafting for the pop-up shop

Most of this glory will be available in Helsinki. Everything is also theoretically available at the Etsy shop, but since the hanging cord has changed slightly into a thinner version, I haven’t re-listed sold out items yet. Was kind of hoping to make some new up-to-date photographs, but the days have been so busy (and incredibly dark and short) that I just haven’t had a proper chance yet.

So, if you like something that’s sold out, feel free to ask for it anyway! I even have some fresh acorns left to replenish the supplies some more 🙂

-Maarja

Exciting news!

We are to participate in our first Etsy pop-up event! It’s taking place in Helsinki, Finland – there is a small exhibition space called Akkuna in the Lasipalatsi (Glass Palace). How great is that? So, now we are busy building up some stock to sell there – Golden Chestnut Ornaments, Golden Chestnut Necklaces, Silver Acorn Ornaments, Acorn necklaces and earrings plus a selection of cards, especially some Christmas cards. I’m thinking of this and a cat version of it, which is not up at the shop yet (there have been just zero sunshine recently and I don’t have a very good alternative for lighting to take product photographs…) and this card as well. I hope my sister will draw up some brand new cute cat themed cards and maybe I’ll send a couple of the flowerpot series as well.

So, there’s been that, and some regular everyday life business. In short – I’m trying to apologise for the longer-than-usual silence in this blog here.

I’d also like to introduce this year’s collection of silver (and some golden) acorn ornaments. They were already linked and mentioned above, but this here is the picture time:

-Maarja