Crafty update

Time has this fascinating habit of slipping by doesn't it?  There have been no blog posts for the last couple of weeks as I was entertaining children (Easter holidays) and visiting family, and last Monday was a school inset day and then suddenly I was busy with lots of catch-up things.

I've been a bit unfocused of late so it's time to narrow my eyes and get on with things.  This weekend saw me playing with my huge stash of bits and bobs to see what I could come up with and I decided that Saturday night was asymmetrical earrings night.  This is not a new idea, just Google asymmetrical earrings and you'll find lots of examples, but it's something I fancied having a go at.  Because this was a new thing to try it took a little time to get the balance of colours and the aesthetic right, but I'm actually quite pleased with what I came up with.  Next job is to get some better pictures and then get them listed in my Etsy shop, Blackwillow Boho.  Here's a sneak peek:

All three are a mixture of contemporary and vintage elements and different bead types including some fresh-water pearls and little semi-precious stone beads.

Somewhere in my stash of findings is a bag of sterling silver ear-wires but can I find them?  It is most annoying that I cannot but I figure than in the meantime I'll get some silver coloured pairs made up and then attach them to the ear-wires once I've been through every box, drawer, bag and corner of the house and located them.

And once my son goes to school soon I shall settle down with a cup of tea and go and see what all of the other crafty folk have been doing on the Handmade Monday blog.  You should go and check it out too, there's lots of talented folk around!

The Websites - the light at the end of the tunnel

I'm coming to the end - well sort of.  Websites should never really be "finished" should they?  They should always be a kind of work in progress.

If you've followed my previous entries then you'll know I've been working on three websites recently.  One is my Blackwillowtribal website where I showcase things I have made and sold and directing potential shoppers to my Etsy shop.  I'd previously let this one go due to the cost of my previous hosting but when I hunted about to check where I was linked I realised that I was linked by quite a few big websites that garner a lot of traffic.  So I reinstated the website after building it with Weebly.

The second website was my belly dance site where I advertise my classes.  It needed an update and the web host (different to Blackwillowtribal) was shutting down the service and although they were offering an alternative I was going to have to rebuild the whole thing anyway so I wandered over to Weebly again.  I love the Weebly interface and think that the things I can do with it are fairly fabulous for a free website.

Third and last is the Hipnotic website.  Hipnotic is a belly dance night I run with two dance colleagues.  We've been running it for three years come July this year and to be honest although we only just about break even we love doing it.  It's a great night out for anyone who loves belly dance and for non-dancers alike and this is something we have worked hard to achieve.  Anyway, same as my dance site, I needed to rebuild the whole thing and so another Weebly site was born.

All three need some links work doing/building and all three will have extra info and articles added as I source and write them but this is part of that on-going work I talked about earlier.  If Google loves new content then new content Google will get.  But I'm happy with how they look and that's got to be good.

And so, link building begins and then I really need to get a wiggle on and start making new things, take some awesome photographs and most of all get selling.  I shall also be going over to Handmade Monday to check out what everyone else has been doing as it's always inspirational.  Have a good week all and I hope the sun will be shining where you are.