Fresh Picks: Bits and Bobs

It’s that time of year again! Artists and crafters who sell their wares in the Etsy marketplace are designing one-of-a-kind gifts for the holiday shopping season. Hobbyists are scrapbooking or creating holiday home décor with their own personal touch. Whether your vocation or avocation, consider these vintage buttons, beads, ephemera and such for your inspiration, or follow this link for thousands more Etsy Vintage Team Supplies.

6 Vintage Christmas Greeting... PaperPicker $10.00	Vintage CHINESE White Red Fl... EurekaEureka $12.25	Foux Foux Collection 1 Vinta... suchandsort $15.00
4 metal filigree flower drop... nosnowsupplies $3.80	bonjour Paris (no 3) 1959 ep... GossamerMemori... $5.50	6 ceramic lady bug beads zombieparts $4.50

Treasury tool by whalesharkwebsites

Member Spotlight: Forever in Style

Vintage beads used in exciting new designs—what’s not to love? We recently talked with Debby Arem of Forever in Style about her Etsy shop.

Fall honey bead necklace

Q. How did you come up with the name for your shop?

In the late 1970s, I first began designing jewelry—all hand knotted beaded necklaces and earrings—for museum shops and catalogs and upscale boutiques and department stores. I made both conservative pieces and funky and ethnic ones and created a company known as “Beadles”—cute name when I first came up with it, but tiresome when far too many people would say, “Oh so you’re a big fan of the Beatles?” When I was searching for a name for my Etsy shop, I thought of how many of my designs had originally been created years ago (I guess even my designs would be considered “vintage”) but were still in style. Friends would remark that my designs would be in style forever because of the unusual vintage design components I have at my fingertips (purchased years ago from buying trips my husband and I made all over the world). Many people still recognize my work as “Beadles” and I’ve actually had people find me on Etsy and send a convo such as” I think I bought one of your pieces years ago,” but it was time for a new name that personified what I felt my designs reflected.

Turkish blooms earrings

Q. Aside from your business and related activities, what do you do for fun?

My husband and I are both avid animal lovers and are active in a couple of dog rescue groups—one for all breeds of dogs and one specifically for Samoyeds. I do home visits, vet checks, and a lot of networking to help find forever homes for pets that have been given up or abandoned. I’m amazed at some of the inane reasons we’ve heard for why a pet was given up, such as the Great Dane owner who “didn’t realize he’d get so big.” Don’t get me started or you’ll never get me off my soapbox!

Joel does a lot of the photography for the dogs on one of the websites and was instrumental in getting our 501(c)3 (nonprofit status) for that rescue. We’ve both done adoption shows and transport on occasion as well. I also LOVE to garden (although it’s an uphill battle with the deer, squirrels, and mother nature who took it upon herself to hurl a tornado our way a couple of summers ago and demolish a number of my plants). I also knit and love to cook.

Qufu garden bracelet

Q. What does your family (or friends) think about your online vintage business? Are there any common misconceptions you run across, and how do you deal with them?

My family and friends are pretty intrigued by how I run an online business and all the ins and outs of promoting myself, especially since I’ve never considered myself very computer savvy (I can see my grown kids grinning here as I type this). I recently revamped my blog and use Twitter and FaceBook to get my name out there. And of course I belong to this awesome team and try to participate as much as I can!

Ocean treasure earrings

Years ago when I first started my jewelry business (yes, I’m a vintage dinosaur who has been creating jewelry since the late 1970s), it was all done by first making appointments to see buyers and curators at museum shops and then dragging along a big heavy shoulder bag of my work. And of course I did some cold calling where I “pounded the pavement,” which I absolutely HATED. When the Internet came along and I could run my business from home, life became so much nicer and so much more productive! Of course (and here’s where the misconceptions arise), I find that even my friends sometimes think that since I “work from home,” I don’t really have a job. I do this full time—7 days a week and far too many hours a day—for this to not be a job, but I LOVE every aspect of it. I just have to remind my friends of this every once in a while!

How to Promote for Free & Get Noticed in No Time At All

Alternate title: How to make a rock solid neato condito treasury. 

First of all, if you want to be noticed and considered for the home page of etsy.com, follow the rules. Each item must be from a different store, and you may not feature yourself. Simple enough, but one that's easy to mess up on. When you think you're done, always go back and double check to make sure you're not repeating a store. I do this almost every time and have to find a substitute item.

Well lit action shot of Vintage Skirt by GeneralWhimsy2

Now, pick a topic. Topics range from people's moods, the seasons, and decorating ideas to hot fashion trends. There really isn't any rhyme or reason to which treasuries get the most views. It depends on time of day, week, season, etc. That said, ones that involve beautiful people do tend to get a lot of clicks! I will tell you that the ones I click on most include some clever twist in the title, description and content. Think of this like a billboard, you want it to grab someone's attention fast.

Excellent detail shot of Antique Chinese Needle Case by EurekaEureka

Decide how you want to structure your treasury. Do you want to follow a timeline? Perhaps you'd like to tell a story. Or maybe you want to select items that are all in the same color hue. You can get easy inspiration from Etsy's Merchandising Desk: they provide tips on what the trends will be for the month. The most important thing is to select highly aesthetic, stylish items. I highly recommend paying attention to this step-it can make or break your group of items. This is what will be the glue holding it all together.

Excellent photo of Vintage Spice Jars by TheFancyLamb

Next, pick your items. I try to carefully select items that are photographed clearly and are easy to see. Things that cannot be identified in a quick glance aren't usually on my list. (Unless they're so intriguing I think they'll attract attention) To make your treasury easy on the eyes, find items that are photographed on a simple background. Items photographed on busy patterns or bright colors don't tend to mesh well in a group with other photographs. (A tip to remember when taking photos)

Vibrant color captured in a clear photo of a Vintage Fire King Bowl by Kultur

After you've selected your items, organize them. To me, this is the one area that gets overlooked the most. It is critical that your items look balanced on the page. Meaning, don't put all your red items on the left side. Space them around so that they balance out visually. Carefully place complex items with many parts with a simple item, next to, above and below. Place dark next to light, textured next to plain to get the right contrast. Pretend you're designing a magazine page.

Textural photo of 1960's Tan Cape by TimeAndAgainFashions

After you're all finished and satisfied with your treasury, hit save and go on to the next steps. Copy the link for your treasury. Then click on the first item on your list, and contact the seller. Since you're contacting through that item, the link for that item will automatically appear in your email. Compose an email informing them that they're featured and paste the treasury link. Make sure the link to the item is down below to avoid confusion. Then just copy and paste the email and send it through to the next seller in your treasury. Don't forget to title your email!

Detailed, textural shot of a Vintage Cameo Brooch by popgoesmyvintage

Why bother doing this? Word of mouth. If each of those sellers Tweets it and puts it on Facebook, that will extend your reach. After you've notified everyone, then you should promote it yourself. If your treasuries are fun, easy to look at and showcase cool items, people will check out who made it. You will get buyers browsing your store as well as those stores you've featured. Best of all, it's free!

Vintage Buzz: Turn Over An Old Leaf

Yes. Leaf. Leaves. Autumn. It is that season, if you need reminded, and no vintage feature would be complete with the aforementioned, ahem, leaves. Perform a search for etsyvintageteam leaf or etsyvintageteam leaves and you will find lots of botanically inspired lovelies from some of the best vintage dealers on Etsy.
Without further ado, I present you with some lovely examples of vintage leaves to adorn yourself and your home, to sip from or slip something into and to create with.

This vintage Oak Leaf and Acorn Copper Mold will make a pretty gelatin mold
or look lovely on the wall ~ from Sweetrice.
Vintage Maple Leaf Pin looks plucked from an Autumn Landscape.
You can find it at Aesthetics And Old Lace.

Sip hot coffee on a cool morning from this fabulous
Autumn Leaf Airbrushed Syracuse China Cup
from 10Karri.
Stash your knitting project in this Falling Leaves Knitting Project Bag.
Made of 1950s vintage heavy textured cotton by McYarnpants.

Vintage German Glass Leaves from EurekaEureka
will look lovely in your new-from-old creation.
This gorgeous Glowing Green Blue enamel-on-copper brooch
from TRUECOLORSFORYOU will look lovely year-round.

Beads with a Past: An Interview with EurekaEureka

I’m a huge fan of gemstones and rocks, so I was fascinated to discover EurekaEureka, the Etsy shop run by Debby Arem. Browsing through her shop is like taking a trip around the world, with vintage beads from places like West Germany, China, and Czechoslovakia. I asked Debby to explain to us how she got into the business of selling such unusual vintage gemstones and beads.

I probably would never have become a jewelry designer if it hadn’t met my husband, Joel! While I do have a degree in Fine Arts, my area of concentration was silk screen printing. I never took a jewelry making course while in college.

But when I met Joel, he had been a colored stone wholesale dealer for 30+ years, so he was already immersed in the field of gems and jewelry. He had also written a number of books on the subject (seven as of now, including the Color Encyclopedia of Gemstones, by Joel E. Arem, PhD, FGA).

Although I loved silkscreening, the inks available in the 1970s were oil based and toxic. One day I was working in my studio (which I thought was adequately ventilated) and got the headache of all headaches; every vertebra in my spine ached.

That was it. I put my inks away and said no more! Joel at the time had a number of customers who, in addition to buying colored stones, were looking for high-end beaded jewelry. I took a course in bead knotting (something that isn’t done much anymore, since most people just string their beads on wire and crimp them), and I found that, not only did I love it, but I had a knack for combining beads in an unusual and eye-catching way. I soon realized though that my “palette” was rather limited and I wanted more unusual beads. Joel was already traveling to Asia for business, so I started tagging along as we searched out sources for amazing beads (many of them carved) that weren’t being sold in the United States.

I picture you in a bazaar someplace exotic, looking over trays of stones. Could you describe one of your most interesting encounters?

We traveled to Pakistan as the guests of the son of the Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Through our guide and friend, we found ourselves in Peshawar, which is right up by the Khyber Pass near Afghanistan! I’ve included a picture of myself and our friend in front of one of the little “hole in the wall” shops, where I found a number of handmade brass and pewter beads. What we still joke about is that here we were, in one of the most remote places in the world (in a village that few Western women had been to), yet the little shop we wandered into had pictures of the store owner standing next to David Niven and Jackie Onassis!

You’ve had an extensive career as a designer of jewelry that’s been sold in places such as the Smithsonian, the Sackler Gallery, and Saks. Where can we find your creations today?

Today I mostly sell my work on my own website, although I’m in the process of redoing this site. And of course I sell on Etsy in both DebbyAremDesigns and EurekaEureka. I’m always available as well to do custom work for people, which I still love.

Tell us a little more about your inventory at EurekaEureka. What types of stones and beads do you carry? What’s the rarest thing you’ve ever sold in your shop? The most valuable?

My immediate response is, “You name it, we have it!” In our travels, we bought stone beads of just about any kind you can imagine – black onyx, rose quartz, malachite, lapis lazuli, jaspers of all types, tigereye in different colors, carnelian, sodalite . . . the list goes on and on. We were able to import coral and ivory, which of course you can’t do these days. We bought pearls, cloisonné, handmade porcelain beads, Japanese tensha beads, metal beads of all sorts, and West German glass beads.

I think what set me apart from other designers at the time was my incredible collection of carved stone beads, which I am now selling in my Etsy shop. Nobody had such a huge variety of beads to work with, then or now.

The most valuable pieces we ever sold were gem-quality 30 mm large intricately carved lapis beads from Afghanistan. This kind of material is sold by the carat, not just the millimeter size. We still have a few of those amazing beads. We also purchased intricately carved, gem-clean aquamarine beads, which sold by the carat as well.

Do you have a favorite? And has your taste been shaped by your husband’s knowledge?

My personal favorites are the vintage West German glass that I bought so many years ago, and that we are selling now. I’ve always had a thing for colored glass (I even have a collection of carnival glass tumblers), so I was always hunting for unusual colored glass beads. And if I could find glass in an unusual shape, that was even better, since I like to incorporate different shaped beads and different sizes of round beads to make my pieces true “wearable art,” not jewelry.

I wouldn’t say that my taste has been shaped by Joel’s knowledge, but certainly he’s helped me learn to differentiate between a poorly cut bead and a bead that is top top quality. With Joel educating me, I was able to purchase beads worthy of the Smithsonian museum shops and catalogs.

Many of the items you sell are no longer available anywhere else. Why is that? What’s changed in the world?

Some things (such as ivory) have become sensitive politically because of animal rights and environmental activism, which of course we completely support as we are both huge animal lovers and volunteer with two rescue groups. The CITES Treaty banned ivory sales to stop the senseless killing of elephants, so ivory beads are not available in the United States except for pre-1989 stocks, which are now mostly depleted. Coral has become rare and valuable as a result of water pollution and is no longer being harvested or imported. The list goes on.

The bead market in the 1980s focused on natural stones, rare and valuable components, unusual shapes, good designs, and high-quality workmanship. Today’s market is driven by low price points, inexpensive components, average workmanship (no knotting!), and tumbled shapes (rather than expensive, hand-cut geometrics). Factories in Asia stopped producing the higher quality components a long time ago because the market simply stopped demanding them. That’s why our vintage inventory of components is so unusual and pretty much impossible to replace.

How do you choose what to sell in your shop? That is, what makes a good bead?

First, in terms of a round stone bead, you want it to be perfectly round! Many beads today are cut in India, not Asia, because of labor costs. And these beads are not of the caliber, in terms of roundness and polish, of the beads that we purchased in the late 1970s through the 1980s. You also want to look for an even polish and to make sure the hole is drilled all the way through and the inside of the hole is smooth and not jagged or it will cut your cord if you are stringing on silk.

In my shop, I try to vary what I list so that there’s something for everyone. I have top-end pieces like a carved ivory bead for $30, and I have vintage resin beads from the 1950s that are only a couple of dollars. Sometimes I list items by color combinations, or I list a few different vintage Chinese cloisonné pieces at the same time. I try to keep my shop interesting so that my customers check often to see what’s “new” in the “old.”

I had a peek in your other shop, DebbyAremDesigns, and just love the recycled jewelry you offer there. Do you see any connection between your recycled creations and your vintage shop?

In my Three Ring Circuits line, all the items—both decorative and functional—are made from recycled circuit boards. When I first branched out and started 3RC, I didn’t see a connection with the beads I was using in my “Beadles” line that I sold to museum shops. But nowadays “recycling” vintage beads and recycling discarded circuit boards is pretty much the same thing! There’s a definite crossover between my two lines, including using vintage jewelry glass cabochons in my Three Ring Circuits line, particularly the clocks, and Beadles necklaces that have components made from recycled circuit boards. This picture, for example, shows a custom piece I designed last year using recycled circuit boards along with beads made of coral, ivory, turquoise, and amethyst, plus vintage West German turquoise crackle beads.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I suppose simply that people can be sure that, when they buy from EurekaEureka, they are indeed getting what I say they are. I’m careful to accurately describe the beads and where they were purchased, along with an interesting story if there is one. With Joel’s expertise in the field, I’m comforted to know that when I’m not sure if a bead is made from glass or resin, he can look at it under a microscope, see a “bubble” or other identifying characteristic, and be certain that what I’m selling really is what it is represented to be. And when I say that a particular bead is of gem quality or grade A material, it is properly labeled because of Joel’s expertise in the field.

Thanks, Debby, for sharing your story. Be sure to check out her vintage shop, EurekaEureka, and if you mention the word “Peshawar,” you’ll get free shipping on any order over $25 from now through September 1, 2008 (one order per customer).

EVST Daily Dose: 7.15.08

What a gorgeous piece! Turquoise etched glass teardrop pendant from EurekaEureka would make a truly beautiful addition to any creation.

This is truly a gorgeous focal piece if there ever was one -it's from West Germany from the 1960's!

This is a very large West German etched glass focal piece - gorgeous hanging as a stunning center piece on any necklace or even just by itself on a silk cord.

This piece is a beautiful deep shade of turquoise with high relief etching of both a butterfly and a flower on both sides. You can see the detail in the close up photographs.

Price is for this one piece which measures 45mm long by 20mm wide and 8mm thick and we 100% guarantee it to be a vintage piece of West German glass from the 1960's. As you can see in the photographs, there is a hole at the top for hanging purposes.

EVST Daily Dose: 6.25.08

Beautiful vintage carved amethyst focal bead from EurekaEureka will complete that unique jewelry project you've been working on.

This is a gorgeous vintage cape amethyst carved pendant which measures 40 x 30 x 13mm . It has a good size hole as you can see for stringing purposes or to put on a chain.

The carving on this pendant is similar to what the Chinese do with nephrite jade with a strong relief floral pattern. We purchased this on one of our earlier buying trips in Hong Kong back in the early 1980's.

Cape amethyst is a lavender variety of amethyst ranging from transparent to opaque and variable shades of lilac. This beautiful pendant is well polished and lustrous and we 100% guarantee it to be vintage natural stone from the mid 1980's.

EVST Daily Dose: 4.28.08

The Etsy Vintage Street Team has a fantastic mix of members who offer all sorts of vintage - including supplies for crafters and artists. I, myself, dabble in making jewelry and I only use vintage beads for my creations because that's the style I love.

Today's gorgeous pick is from EurekaEureka, a member I've purchased from myself and am always checking out their beautiful items. This stunning vintage focal bead from the 1950's.

Each bead is a wonderful soft lemony yellow color and they have all be strung together on a piece of twisted wire and pulled tight to create this "flower" - there are approx. 24 abacus lucite beads per flower from as best I could tell and count!