Happy progress - about health

Here's some happy progress that I want to share. 

Not related to crafts, but related to health. This matters to everyone of us. 

One of my beloved family members has been suffering from long-term constipation due to the amount of western medications he has been receiving throughout the years due to complications of several chronic illnesses. His doctor prescribed a large variety of pills that are supposed to help relieve the constipation - which didn't quite do the job without causing side-effects which made things even more difficult.

Lots of readings have been done to help. Lots of natural remedies have been experimented. Lots of cheering on in sticking to therapies as well. Apples in the early morn with empty stomach, full bowls of veggies per meal, tomato juice, prunes, walnuts, 3 fruits per day, camellia seed...  and tonnes of other little stuffs that have been tried. Note that, they were experimented with persistence and dedications. Still. Results not very optimistic.

Finally - finally - something works - a teaspoon of olive oil mixed into the bowls of veggies in each meal. 

This is something that, no doctors we know of have ever thought of. 

This reminds me of the story of Thomas Edison. How many ingredients have been tried before the invention of the first light bulb?

If you believe that - medical insurance is good enough to take care of your body - I just want to remind you sweetly that at times you just needa look out for yourself. Doctors are helpful most of the times, but not 100% of the times. The responsibility is always in our own hands. For you, and your loved ones. 

How to use instagram to market your crafts business

I've tried instagram for a week to observe how this tool could help grow my craft business. And I found out:

1) It's not necessary to be too "business-like" or "professional-looking". 
     You want to come off like a normal human being not a businessman. Just connect with people via comments or likes. Make neat comments to posts if you have something nice to say. You know, whenever you like a post, people see your name in their notifications, as long as they're not popular to a point that they get 100 likes in an hour.. Especially for folks who don't get as many as a hundred likes on their posts, when you liked their posts they might take a look at you.

2) Give other people comments. 
     When you comment on a post, other viewers could see your instagram username + profile picture - which could be your business name or logo. Free advertising! Of course don't come off as "Please visit my etsy site on blahblahblah."

3) If you want to reach your specific audience, you could do some homework investigating on tags. 
     Some people search posts of similar sort by clicking on tags. For example, somebody saw a very beautiful washi egg - and they want to see more eggs of this type. They would click on the tag that says #washieggs. For my crafts - I look up a list of egg related, or handmade craft related, or asian craft related tags. Especially if they're popular tags - there's more chance of being found.

    For example, what I could do is, go and "like" the posts of asian crafts or egg crafts. Of course you might want to make good use of your profile picture as this is gonna help draw attention.

    Here are some links that summarize popular tags:
http://www.tagsforlikes.com/
http://instagramtags.com/
http://top-hashtags.com/instagram/

Updates on Aug 4th - I experimented with the popular tags - added a long list of tags and see if it really works. What I found is - it DOES NOT help when you add like 20 hash tags. Some people think that it indicates you're desperate for likes. So - less is more!!!

4) In general, Instagram users like to see beautiful things.  
     So, on a daily basis, keep taking pics of beautiful things or special things that attract you. Apart from reaching out to your specific audience, you need some publicity - more followers. Instagram has a very instant nature - posts sink after a short while. IF you want your posts to reach more people, you need to keep the traffic coming and have people "like" your posts.


Updates on 4th August:
Just found a huffletonpost articles about drawing audience, which is pretty helpful:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/instagram-followers_n_5537524.html

Another article which suggests a pretty "extreme" method of attracting followers:
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-1k-Followers-on-Instagram

Leftovers from Scan N Cut - they have a use!

Wow it's been a long time since my last post! Have been very busy.

Today I'm cleaning up my studio and found some vellum leftover from using Scan N Cut. It looked awesome and something clicked - why not try and use them as stencils? 

Vellum is absorbs water ink super slowly so one could reuse it as stencils!! Lovely isn't it? 

Here's the picture: 

Egg craft - how to prepare a clean and empty eggshell

Easter's coming!! I've blown out a lot of eggs and here is a how-to for blowing out eggs in large quantities. This tutorial is a bit long as I've done it too many times and have made tonnes of mistakes there're lots of stuffs I wanna share!

Tools:

- Bulb syringe (you can get it from the pills aisle in the supermarket)

- A Large bowl
- pin
- paper clip
- eggs
- paper towels
- lunchbox (big enough for the egg content!!)





Steps to empty egg content:

1) Fill the large bowl with warm tap water
2) Let the eggs sit in the warm water for 10 mins. While waiting, clean all the equipment and egg surface.
3) Dry one egg with paper towel. Let other eggs bath in warm water to stay warm.












4) Use the pin to punch a hole on the south pole and north pole. Approach it gently then gradually increase your force. Wipe away the powdery debris after punching hole.












5) At the south pole, poke a few more holes that are IMMEDIATELY NEXT TO the first hole (i.e. such that the holes will become a big hole altogether). Then you will have a 3mm diameter hole at the south pole.

                                                       

6) Unwind the paper clip a bit, so you'll have a stirrer. Stick it into the egg from the south pole. Stir the egg yolk in circles gently. This is to break the egg yolk.











7) Above a lunchbox, hold the egg upright and apply the bulb syringe at the north pole, make sure the mouth is tightly in contact with the egg shell. Squeeze the bulb gently, go slowly to begin with. Egg content should start dripping into the lunchbox.




8) as you squeeze the bulb if you could feel a lot of resistance which prevents the egg content from coming out, use your stirrer again, and give the yolk a few stirs. Then try the bulb again.
9) Keep repeating step 7) and 8) with lots of patience until all the egg content is out.

Note: Don't drop the eggshell!!! I dropped one onto the kitchen floor by mistake. Hard work all gone. The strong arch structure of the egg shell is destroyed by punching a hole at the poles. It is extra fragile.

Steps to clean the egg content residue:
1) Now you've got like 10 empty egg shells.
2) Fill the large bowl with warm water.
3) Squeeze the bulb syringe and let it be filled with warm water.
4) Squeeze the water in from the bulb syringe.
5) shake-shake-shake!
6) Empty the water inside the egg by pushing air into the egg with the bulb syringe. You shall see the yolky stuffs coming out too.
7) Repeat steps 3) to 6) again and again, until the egg is cleaned thoroughly.

Home-made spray glue

Found a how-to about home-made spray glue!!!
I'll try it out once I get through the storms... Spray glue is superb when applying glitter.

http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/spritz-glue

Etsy

Have been seeking online articles about selling on Etsy... Got some nice reads to share with you.

Etsy marriage - working with a "partner"
http://www.handmadeology.com/etsy-marriage-a-unique-approach-to-increasing-etsy-sales/

Etsy marriage team - here to join! For looking for "partners"
https://www.etsy.com/teams/8733/etsy-marriage/discuss/6855010/page/6

Avatar photo: does it matter?
http://www.onthedotcreations.com/2009/05/your-etsy-avatar-does-it-really-matter.html

Etsy banner design tips
http://icraftopia.com/2013/02/the-nuts-and-bolts-to-etsy-banners/

10 really useful tips
http://www.squidoo.com/10-tips-for-etsy-sellers
http://www.handmadeology.com/10-real-tips-for-successfully-selling-on-etsy/

10 common mistakes of etsy sellers
http://iramency.hubpages.com/hub/10-Common-Etsy-Seller-Mistakes

Watch out! Scan N Cut Canvas treats broken line as solid line

Half an hour ago I just found out another shocking fact about Scan N Cut Canvas..

I am using Inkscape to make a cut file for a gift box. I want some line to be broken lines so I select those lines then choose "broken line" in the stroke properties. I opened the final svg in Internet Explorer afterwards to make sure everything looks as normal as what I saw in Inkscape. 

Here comes the surprise. After uploading the svg file to Scan N Cut canvas, I found that it doesn't know stroke properties. In another word, even if your svg file has broken line and you see it standing there, Scan N Cut still considers it as a solid straight line. 

In the end I am doing it the "backward" way. Space out short little lines so that scan N Cut could convert it to fcm file. 

It is indeed a blow.