Easel Clothing Part 2

It has been a very busy week! Monday was cleaning day so we needed to make ourselves scarce. This time we tried Motel 6 again but the Arlington Heights location on Algonquin Rd. It was a much better experience - the halls did not reek of cigarette smoke and the light switches appeared to be clean. I was able to get some rest and actually polished two shoeboxes worth of silver jewelry. The great feeling of catching up did not last long though as I had a buying appointment on Wednesday evening. Kuochun ran over to Portillo's and I requested a chopped salad. Even though it has more calories than the chicken sandwich I feel the fries and onion rings do not hold up when taken away from the restaurant. Plus I wanted to make a healthier choice!

On Tuesday I priced 38 rings which I had polished the day before along with a few additional pieces. Since we booked a couple of new estate sales, I did publish a newsletter to wish everyone a Happy Labor Day weekend and to let them know about the new sales. I even found time to post a couple of pairs of earrings which is something I do not normally have time to do on Tuesdays.

I carded and priced a bunch of earrings and pendants, also from the lot I just polished. However even though I recently purchased a bag of 400 rubber stoppers which I use to keep the earrings on their cards, I could not locate it and had to order another bag. Unfortunately they were not scheduled to arrive until Sunday so they will have to be on standby until then.

I was able to find lots of jewelry for the budget-friendly case on Wednesday including earrings, pendants and rings. Of course they all need to be polished first! I also picked up a group of sterling rings with genuine diamonds. There were quite a few pretty cross pendants as well, including one with tiny blue diamonds. I selected several interesting vintage Native American pieces and was actually able to post this wonderful belt buckle on Sunday. As of now a customer has the buckle in her shopping cart on my website but technically it is still available!

I have been continuing to plug away at my vintage Native American stockpile and did make headway, posting eight items. Two of the items actually sold within 24 hours of their posting! One was a little kokopelli pendant in sterling and gold filled that I was not going to bother posting but I decided to and was glad it found a home so quickly.

I also updated the photos on a couple of turquoise necklaces. I was happy with the way this one came out, it looks so dramatic on this piece of wood. I tried shooting the "try on" photos inside but although the T-shirt colors looked good, the stone colors were way too dark. However when I took the mannequin outside and tried to reshoot, the T-shirt colors were way too faded. I decided to go with the indoor photos for now and when I go back to AZ I can use my ring light to brighten up the mannequin and get more accurate colors on the stones. The mannequin there is a natural color as opposed to the black one I have here so maybe that will help.

There was a notice in my Etsy dashboard which said because I only have one photo on four of more than my 250 active listings, they are downgrading all of my listings in search results. This is a bad thing so I started to work on correcting this. I have one of the four items squared away now and should be able to correct the other three next week.

It was a bit of a challenge Sunday because it was kind of windy but it was not terribly hot and the sun was out so I worked on photographing the rest of the new Easel clothing that I have on hand. There were five items remaining and I posted four of them on Sunday evening. The fifth item is pictured above and is not online yet because the stock photos were no longer on the Easel website. I am going to reach out to the company to see if they can send me the photos but in the meantime it is available for sale! I have it in Small, Medium and Large. All of the shirts in this group except for the one with the turquoise stripe across the front were on sale so I have passed the savings along. Easel clothing is so cute and great quality! The knits feel so soft. I put aside a Large in each style for myself but unfortunately cannot quite fit into them yet. I am working on it though! If they sell before I can wear them that is OK. There is not a lot of opportunity to wear long sleeve shirts in Scottsdale, even in the winter. Not that I have that much experience yet but it seems that every year is a little warmer than the last. I remember the first year walking Vivi at night and needing a long sleeve shirt and a jacket. I did not even wear a jacket last year! Kuochun mentioned the other day that he would like to take a trip to Flagstaff, depending upon what time of year we go, we may get the opportunity to bundle up a bit. I miss wearing long sleeves!

We missed Monday because of cleaning day but Kuochun and I made it to the fitness center all of the other days! I have been on the treadmill for and hour and five minutes each session doing a very challenging random incline workout, gradually reducing the speed until I am halfway through and then I gradually reduce the speed back down. The total distance is nearly 2.75 miles so between this and the evening dog walk, I have been able to average 10,000 to 11,000 steps per day. I have also added a 10 minute morning stretch every day. It has been a time crunch on my schedule but it is so important to take time out for exercise. I have no dining news to report so hopefully Monday morning will bring me a good result on the scale! I am so proud of Kuochun, he is now up to 30 minutes on the treadmill and 30 minutes on the recumbent stepper. He even grabbed a basketball and shot a few hoops one day while he was waiting for me to finish my workout.

I had a good week with online jewelry sales, selling items five days in a row! I even had my first sale on Whatnot which was a totally unexpected surprise. I sold the second pair of these Federico earrings, both in the span of a month. I will definitely try to get more next year, especially since I still have the matching necklace.

The Vendoo deadline is coming up on the 3rd so I need to be sure I at least have my monthly allotment of 25 drafts set up so I do not lose them. My goal is to get the rest of the clothing I purchased and have on hand set up, including Blue B and Zenana. I am about halfway there and still have Monday to do so it is looking promising. I did photograph this Blue B sweatshirt along with the Easel clothing Sunday. This sweatshirt is so cute and this is real embroidery! It does fit true to size and I have Small, Medium and Large. The parts that are taking time is steaming and photographing the samples and measuring each size. I wish I could just use the stock photos but Poshmark prohibits it.

Because I still have more jewelry to post and also received new pieces, I am going to postpone the vintage Native American jewelry online sale launch a bit. Ideally I will only need to postpone two weeks but no matter what I will launch the sale no later than the first weekend of October with whatever pieces I have ready to go.

See you next time!