White on White and Spots

Just a quick post to show you the tag I made for this week's WHITE ON WHITE theme over at the Tag Tuesday blog, and the photo I took for the word prompt SPOTS over at the Our Beautiful World blog -

For the SPOTS, I took a photograph of a foxglove, which had just sprung up on our little lane a couple of days ago. The inside of a foxglove is just gorgeous -

I wish I had a proper macro lens to take close ups.

I still feel all deflated over this wretched Etsy testing/experimenting business. How many times a day am I breaking the (EU) law when customers can't see my shipping charges upfront?  I don't feel like I should be listing anything right now until that issue is cleared up. BUT........... that hasn't stopped me from going to a brocante this morning! Found a beautiful vintage hand crocheted huge bedspread, gorgeous monogrammed pillow cases, 50s school rubber stamps with animals and leaves and a big lot of gorgeous old little baking tins/tart tins, some of them shapes I had never come across. That cheered me up a little.

Veggie garden is coming along nicely now that we have had a bit of sunshine and warmth. I love looking at the little plants, lol. Have to check every morning and every evening to see whether they have grown, tehehehe.

Toodlepip xxx

WHAT IS ETSY UP TO???

I don't often talk about my Etsy shop on here, because I don't want to turn this blog into a selling blog, but I know that many of you also have Etsy shops or buy on Etsy and may not be aware of what is going on at the moment.

I just posted this on my Vintageland blog -

A few days ago I was preparing a custom listing, went to check the details and to my absolute horror, the shipping prices had disappeared from the shipping tag in the listing. I thought I had done something terribly wrong, redid everything, with the same result, no shipping charges were showing. The customer bought the items, and it was only then when I looked at the invoice that I was sure that the correct shipping had been applied. WTF was going on? Eventually I went to the forums and only then found out that Etsy was testing. Without informing anybody beforehand. A random selection of buyers/sellers were now unable to see the shipping costs upfront under the shipping label, and nobody was told that you now had to put your items into your shopping cart in order to find out the shipping charges. ABSOLUTELY CRAZY!!! Shipping costs are an important part of any purchase, especially for international transactionS, so what the heck  are they doing making it so difficult for customers to find out shipping costs? I am in the same test myself, I can't see shipping charges on my listings, I can't see them on anybody else's listings either. Incredibly frustrating when you are looking for supplies for example. Many sellers on Etsy carry very similar supplies, ie beads, and to compare their shipping costs, you would have to place each and every item from each and every seller in your shopping cart, compare, delete, add more, compare, delete etc etc. WHAT A RIDICULOUS WASTE OF TIME!!! There are thousands of comments, 99% negative regarding this issue on Etsy.

I have no idea which potential customers can see my shipping charges under the shipping tag and which customers will be totally perplexed by seeing a heading 'SHIPPING' without any shipping details at all. Apart from charges you also cannot see which countries I ship to, where I ship from etc etc.

So, if you are looking at my shop, and can't see shipping charges under SHIPPING, I am not being devious and hiding them because I want to make a killing on overcharging you, it is because Etsy thinks it is a good idea. 

I am so frustrated. As a seller, I feel awful for customers getting confused and leaving, as a buyer I am so mad that it took me ages to compare prices for some special ribbons I wanted to buy, only to give up in the end and say sod it, I really can't be bothered with all that shopping cart crap to compare shipping costs. 

I don't rant often in public, but this has really upset me. Nobody knows how long this testing will last, it has been going on for days already. 

Sigh, so there you go, you may be able to see shipping costs etc, you may not. I can only apologise for any confusion and frustration this may cause you.

Toodlepip xxx

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I wonder if any of you have been selected for this testing as well, or perhaps for the other test they are running at the moment, which has also upset so many sellers, where they are taking away your banner, your info, completeley mess up the shop front, basically all that makes your shop YOUR shop. I escaped that one, for now, phew.

Colour? Well, a little bit

There seems to be a little more colour creeping into my life recently.  There are the colourful ATC swaps, for example. Then there are the yarns I acquired recently, and also customer tags which are a little different to my usual lace and neutral style.

I'll start with the ATCs I received in Kimberly's recent TEA IN THE GARDEN swap. They are all so beautiful! And Kimberly, being the wonderful hostess she is, sent the sweetest little party gift with the swap -

And here are the splendid ATCs I received back in the swap -

This one came in its own fabulous fabric envelope with teabag! -

Isn't this one just gorgeous? -

And how about this little beauty? -

All photographed against Vicki's stunning new nest.

A little while ago, a charity shop in a town not too far away, had a huge box of all kinds of yarns for sale. I suppose it was older stock which the local wool shop wanted to get rid of. It was such fun rummaging through the massive box and pulling out lovely yarns.

I started with neutral colours, thinking they would make a gorgeous knitted patchwork blanket -

 Then I thought, what the heck, there are so many lovely colours in there, why ignore them?  So I came away with some rather brighter yarns as well -

Great for adding a bit of colour to collages and tags etc.

And talking of tags, all that colour must have had an influence on my crafting brain, lol, because when I went to the craftavan to make some customer tags, they had coloured bits on them as well and not a piece of white lace in sight -

I had a 100 year old colourful map of Paris which was completely tattered, so I used little scraps of that on the tags -

And to finish off, some photos for the BATH prompt over at the OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD blog, a big old zinc bath tub behind the cottage, where the rain running of the workshop roof collects. Until my son and husband took down two of the three huuuuuuuuge pine trees, it was also overhung by them and therefore not only collected water, but also all kinds of debris from the trees, like pinecones, moss, twigs. They have taken on a fabulous rust colour and even though I have often wanted to empty it all out and clean it up, I just can't bring myself to do it, because it all looks so fascinating under the clear water -

Toodlepip xxx

Brocanting on a Sunday morning

It was a beautiful morning, a little mist drifting through the valley below us, blue sky smiling above us and sunshine trying its best to warm us. I wake up early when it gets light early, so I walked the dogs at 6.30, and we were ready to leave for the brocante  at 7. So much fun! And of course I did find a few things which I had to bring back.

I unloaded them straight onto the garden table as it was such a lovely day -

So what did I get? A rather lovely silver handled carving set, marked Paris on the knife, a few tart tins including these dinky Xmas tree ones -

Ephemera, like these calendar pages, and what looks like a police diary from the 1930s, which could make for very interesting reading -

Wonderful old school books

The sweetest child's basket and a wicker and glass wine jug -

At long last I found a couple of gorgeous enamel pitchers/jugs again, don't see them very often anymore -

Isn't this just the sweetest little tin?

Another rather pretty tin, a weird old medical thingy in its tin and a pair of  antique weights. I could not help but imagine a 1910 gentleman with big moustaches and wearing one of those striped outfits, using these -

A pair of top quality metis sheets, never used, with original labels, a garnet red rosary, a white rosary, and a sparkly bead necklace ( for moi ;-) ) -

a bunch of sweet little greeting cards and a set of 12 really pretty coffee spoons -

Gotta finish this post with another photo of the enamel jugs, they are soooooooooooo gorgeous!

 I spent a couple of hours in the craftavan this afternoon, making more tags to go with orders, but I think I'll leave those pics for tomorrow.

Until then, toodlepip xxx

Grey Dey Thursdey-ish

Well it is almost still Thursday somewhere, probably, maybe. I wanted to do a little post to link up with Petite Michelle Louise's Grey Dey party, which I enjoy so much every week.

A few silver grey religious items found at a French brocante -

And a few of the dark grey shell buttons ( are they mother of pearl? ), mixed in with some very old French coins and two tiny little shot cups -

Toodlepip xxx