Made my first treasury on etsy

Today I managed to finally be on Etsy at exactly the right time to make a treasury. My treasury theme is Mediterranean Dreams and it contains lots of gorgeous items to get you into a summery mood. Please take a look at it and leave a comment if you can.

How to set up domain name forwarding

Having recently started selling on Etsy and Dawanda, I made myself some business cards to send out with my orders. However, www.newworldmonkey.etsy.com is not exactly catchy, neither is www.dawanda.com/shop/newworldmonkey. What I really needed was a succinct domain name. It’s also very useful for advertising as it looks more professional to have a proper domain name. I’m not very experienced at these things and I assumed that if I bought a domain name, I’d have to buy hosting and build a website. Luckily, it turns out that you can create a domain name and then forward it to a url of your choice. Here’s how to do it:

1) Find out what domain names are available. I am from the UK so I opted to use www.daily.co.uk which has a special offer on at the moment where domains are half-price. A lot of Americans recommended www.godaddy.com
2) Most of the good domain names are gone. I’m no expert but, based on my research, it seems that the best thing is to get a .com or failing that a .co.uk. You should write down all the possibilities available to you and compare them. A brief, catchy domain name is best but catchy is more important than brief. You also want to include your keyword in your domain name to optimize it.
3) I managed to get www.bohemian-jewellery.com for 10 GBP for 2 years. It doesn’t include my brand name but it is easy to remember and includes my two main keywords.
4) Daily offered me quite a few things to pay extra for. I think it’s best to opt out of everything and buy it later if you find that you need it.
5) Make sure that your domain name is registered in your name.
6) Once my domain name was set up, I went into my control panel on daily and clicked on domain forwarding. I then entered my etsy site and filled in the meta tags and meta description. Daily has a very good guide on this which they provide a link to when you set up domain forwarding.

Now if you go on www.bohemian-jewellery.com it automatically will take you to www.newworldmonkey.etsy.com. I hope this helps, please comment if you have any questions.

How to make Christmas less expensive

Having recently taken in a stray kitten, my spare cash has rather shrunk. For the first time in a while, I have been thinking about why we all feel we have to spend so much money at Christmas.

A while back, I did a post on home-made gifts. Home made gifts can help you to ease your cash flow a little. I also think that it's a good idea to cut out unnecessary gifts. Gift-giving should be limited to close family and your partner; do we really need to be receiving gifts at Christmas from more than about 5 people?? Excessive gift giving is just a way to be more materialistic than we already are and find an excuse to shop.

A good idea is to combine a home made gift with a small bought gift. For instance, why not make use of special offers and get a few books and then give people a book and a home made gift. Another idea is to make your Christmas cards yourself. Buy some coloured card and cut out humorous pictures from old magazines and newspapers. Stick them on the card and add a funny caption.

Food is always a great home made gift to receive. Another good idea is something that I saw in The Guardian today. It sounds crazy but you can "knit" jewellery for the women in your life. You will need to know how to knit (easy to learn, just google it) and then you will need metal wire and some beads.

Instructions:

1. Thread all the beads that you want to use onto your wire. To work out how many beads to use multiply the amount of stitches per row by the length of the bracelet in centimetres (eg if you are doing a six stitch wide, 12cm long bracelet, I'd thread at least 72 beads on).

2. Cast on as many stitches as you think want and knit one row. As you knit the first stitch of the second row, bring one of the beads up to your needles and knit it into the fabric. Repeat for every stitch of the second row.

3. Continue knitting every odd row without beads and every even row with beads - this will ensure all the beads stay on the same side of the bracelet.

4. Once the bracelet or choker is long enough, cast off then fix a jewellery clasp to either end of it.

The end result looks pretty good and would make a great gift for someone.

Pity da fool and stay in school

The A team is being remade. Why? If anyone wants to watch the A Team they can just watch the original. I know that good ideas are running out when it comes to movies but seriously, no one could possible remake the A Team well. It was sheer genius and it can never be recreated. When I think of the A Team what springs to mind is B.A. Baracus. The man who defined the A Team.

Mr T was a man who could do jewellery.

This Halloween when you're dressing up how about paying homage to Mr T and dressing like him.

First, you will require a very small waistcoat. It needs to be childsize unless you are stacked like Mr T. I would recommend the one on this page http://www.babybiker.co.uk/category.php?display-category=33 as he usually wore a leather one but a gold one would do perfectly too. Alternatively go topless but make sure you've got the chest rug to suit.

The next most important part of Mr T was the hair. He says he was inspired by a Mandinka warrior - he wanted to be true to his African origins. The hair is a bit tricky. If you're up for it you could actually create his hair by shaving the sides of your hair off. Alternatively, you can get a wig like this http://www.starwarskingdom.com/Mr.-T-Wig-for-ATeam-Mowhawk/M/B001DNJYJQ.htm

It's also a good idea to start growing some facial hair in advance.

For the bottom half of your outfit you should get some army trousers from an army surplus store - look them up in your phone book. Add a large blingin belt. The other option is lycra leggings but you've got to have the bum for it.

The final and most important ingredient is the jewelry. Mr T didn't buy expensive jewelry, he just had a lot of it. I would recommend going to a hardware store and getting a few gold plug chains and a few gold security chains. A few of these would be good http://www.justbeads.co.uk/curb-chain-8x4mm-gold-plated-50cm-p-123.html

You can make the medallions using some cardboard painted gold with glitter on them.

Whatever you do, don't paint yourself brown if you are white. It's offensive and unnecessary. Anyone can channel Mr T, whatever your skin colour.

So there you have it. This year lets all dress as Mr T and pay homage to his brilliance which will never be replaced. As the great man said, "Be somebody...or be somebody's fool!".