Thursday, April 30, 2009

CHALLENGE REMINDER: Submissions Due Tomorrow

O.K. everyone! We had a lot of buzz and excitement over the idea for our "April Earth Day Challenge" but have only had two submissions (one being my own,lol). Dig out those empty ribbon spools because the deadline is tomorrow at midnight! We have a super talented group of paper lovers so let's see what you've got. Come on and put your creativity to the test and your spools to good "green" use.

Here are our two submissions so far:

*Michelle Neuendorf of Michellenstamps





*Sarah Kinzalow of PaperPeddler




See more photos here

Friday, April 24, 2009

Flickr Pool Friday

Every Friday we jump into EtsyPaper's Flickr Pool. Here's what we surfaced with today:
owl tags
Image: CutHerePaperCraffts
It's ARBOR DAY! Please be respectful with regards to the paper you use and the amount of consumption that will not be recycled. Plus, owls need homes.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

EtsyPaper Team Weekly Featured Sellers - We NEED your help!

*This is a current forum topic but I wanted to make sure everyone saw it. I also want to open this up to some of our team blog followers who aren't members. If you are not a team member or an aspiring member but would like to submit a few questions, feel free to send me a convo (Paper Peddler). We would love to include everyone!



O.K! So, we have made space for our weekly featured sellers and I am ready to get it going, starting next week (fingers crossed). Here's a quick rundown - each week team admin will choose two of our team members to be featured both on ning and our team blog. Their names and shop links will be added to our Ning main page "featured sellers" box and remain there for 1 month. I think it would be much more fun to include everyone in the process. The more interactive, the better. This is what I've come up with & also where I'll need help from all of our members. Here's my idea. Let's do a kind of Q&A session for our sellers. The way I would like to work it is to have a series of questions that I send out to our "chosen ones" and let them answer and send back to me. Now, to make it more fun and a little more interesting I want our members to come up with the questions. And the twist is that I will send about 10-15 questions out and the featured seller will choose which 5 they want to answer for our blog promo/interview. This way, we'll get answers to questions you guys have and it will be a surprise each week because the sellers are choosing the questions. We could end up with quite an interesting mix! So, to get this started I would love it if everyone would add some questions to the forum post for our sellers to answer. Put on your thinking caps and make it interesting!!! Any thing goes (well, remember we are a "clean" team/family friendly,lol). What kind of music do you listen to while crafting? What is your favorite item to make? etc,etc..... So come on over to Ning and post your questions. Let's get this show on the road! I hope everyone likes this idea:)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Monday, April 20, 2009

Changes to NING (and a few other things)

NING - the EtsyPaper Team's social networking site

Our team site on ning was taken offline yesterday for some much needed updating. Here are a few of the changes that were made and also some of the things we are working on for the near future. I hope these changes will help us work toward becoming a more successful team and better serve us all as sellers and crafters.

NING UPDATES:

Changes on the main page - our team description was edited and updated and the admin list received their own box to give a more clean appearance and to better distinguish the two areas.
Our welcome and how to join messages were updated. All "aspiring" members will be able to create a page but admin will have to approve it before it goes online. We have had an issue with a few people not interested in the team but trying to advertise and junk up our site with non-craft related pages. They didn't have etsy shops and were adding inappropriate photos and comments to our site. So unfortunately, we had to take this step.

NEW on NING - You may notice that we have a new box on the main page titled "Featured Members". We will choose 2 team members a week and feature them on our team blog. Their shop links will appear in the "featured" box. We will add the 2 new links each week and leave them up
for one month. Hopefully, we can bring some much needed and deserved recognition not only to individual members but also to our team as a whole.

TAB CHANGES - "MEMBER" tab. If you run your mouse over the "MEMBER" tab, you'll notice a drop down sub-tab that reads, "OFFICIAL MEMBERS" and "ASPIRING MEMBERS". It will take a little work, but each member and aspiring member will be listed in the appropriate section. This should help make members easier to find and will also aid our membership coordinators when it's time to update our team roster and verify new official members.

TAB CHANGES - "TEAM SHOPS" tab. This idea has been in the works for a couple of months and we are getting ready to start working on it more seriously. The tab will have a drop down box that will be divided into sections (like the members tab) and will serve as a shops directory based on what types of items our members sell. For example, a few of the sections may be "Handmade Cards", "Art & Illustrations", "Books and Journals", etc. We will need our members help for this to work. More info will be coming soon so be on the lookout.

TEAM ADS - The team ads were removed but only temporarily. We will be bringing them back! We have quite a few issues and "kinks" to work out before we will be able to provide this service. We do think they are a great idea, it will just take some time - please be patient with us on this one:)

We are working very hard to improve our team while making it a fun group that everyone can benefit from and enjoy being a member of. As always, please feel free to contact any member of admin if you have any questions, suggestions, criticisms or comments you would like us to address. Thanks to all for being a part of the EtsyPaper Team - we appreciate you!!!

Friday, April 17, 2009

EtsyPaper, Earth Day & April's Team Challenge


O.K! Who's ready for the next team member challenge? I was doing some "forced" cleaning (you know, the kind where you make a mess trying to get to something that's packed away, everything spills over and makes a mess that you are "forced" to clean up) and I ran across a bunch of empty ribbon spools I have been saving. I am thinking "green" and have been saving them for a while just knowing that I would one day find a new use for them. I was getting ready to tuck them back away (for who knows how long) and it hit me.....these empty ribbon spools are the inspiration for our April challenge. Read on:
In honor of Earth Day (Wednesday, April 22nd) and finding new uses for "old" things, our April challenge is to see what you can create from an old ribbon spool/spools. Anything goes here so be creative! All members and aspiring members are welcome and encouraged to participate. I will also post photos and shop links of challenge participants here on our blog. If we have enough entries, we will try to grab a treasury. The deadline will be Tuesday, April 28th. Don't forget to add your photos to the NING site and our team Flickr photo pool (if you use Flickr). Tag your photos "AEDC" (for April Earth Day Challenge). I hope everyone has a good time with this one. We're looking forward to seeing what you come up with! HAPPY CRAFTING:)

Flickr Pool Friday

Every Friday we jump into EtsyPaper's Flickr Pool. Here's what we surfaced with today:
Running Through The Poppies
Image: APunkinCardCompany
Hoppy through the poppies!

Friday, April 10, 2009

Flickr Pool Friday

Every Friday we jump into EtsyPaper's Flickr Pool. Here's what we surfaced with today:
LinkHome, detail
Image: Annamatic
There truly is no place like home!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Congratulations to Our Newest OFFICIAL Members!

A BIG CONGRATULATIONS to all of the participants of our "aspiring members" ACEO/ATC Challenge! We had six aspiring members submit challenge entries and a few submitted multiple entries. We hope you guys had fun with this one! As promised we had a little something special in mind and decided that their challenge participation (as well as the fact that these members have been extremely active with the team and on ning) deserved to be granted "OFFICIAL MEMBERSHIP" on the EtsyPaper Team! They have shown that they are and will continue to be valuable contributors and members to our team. Thanks to all & congratulations!!!


Here are our newest "official Members":

Friday, April 3, 2009

Flickr Pool Friday

Every Friday we jump into EtsyPaper's Flickr Pool. Here's what we surfaced with today:
Cool Kawaii Kids Magnet Set
Image: Agent Mermaid
You need paper to make buttons. These are super kawaii (that means super cute in Japanese!).