New Moon in Virgo today - separating the wheat from the chaff ....

butterfly ring - uncorked

The astrology wheel is the hero's journey
(just like the fool's journey in tarot) of self discovery.

When the sun moves into Virgo in late August, it is the hero's first encounters with service.

Although Virgo is the loner sign (along with Aries although Aries doesn't choose it, Aries just embodies it) - she is the conscientious loner.

The hero is learning when to help and when helping isn't really helping. Virgo is the modest healer with the critical eye that takes care of the details.

Every sign has something to learn from the sign that follows it. Leo learns from Virgo (and we all have Leo in our charts somewhere - its placement will affect how this activates in your own journey) - to do the work. Virgo teaches Leo to let go of the need for the spotlight and recognition and to just focus on the work.

(next the hero moves into Libra and learns that those carefully attended details she has manifested into physical form in Virgo need balance)

It is no coincidence that Virgo comes in autumn; the time of the harvest - the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. What is needed to be nurtured and what needs to be discarded is more easily seen and felt now. Mercury is not connected to any other planet for the next 9 days so we can be really objective about what we want right now (then Mercury moves into connection with Jupiter, Pluto and Uranus allowing us to see the bigger picture).

Our soul's purpose, which has been built through many lifetimes, is exactly what is needed to meet the challenges of these times. Our previous lives fit together within us like a puzzle and each of us forms a bigger puzzle (which is really the same puzzle) together. 

We each have it in us to do what we are called to do and we are the only one who can do it. When our belief becomes that we are here to serve the world, that is exactly the space that will open up for us.

A Virgo new moon is the perfect time to focus on Virgo areas such as : health (diet and exercise; the maintenance of our health), work/job, creating order, relaxing perfectionism and helping others.

Examples of some affirmations:

1. I am easily attracted to foods that are healthy for my body. I establish routines that create total health for me. I easily swallow vitamins (ugh).

2. I easily complete tasks with minimal stress and maximum efficiency. I create routines that give me time to relax. All tendencies to postpone necessary tasks and errands are totally lifted from me. I create financial abundance for myself while adding value to the lives of others.

3. I restore my work space to order on a daily basis. Any resistance to 'cleaning up the mess' is lifted from me. I create order in my home.

4. I am free of critical judgements of myself and others. The compulsion to 'be right' is easily lifted from me. I use positive language.

5. I consciously feel satisfaction from being of service to others in my work.

AFFIRMATION TIPS: get into a happy frame of mind - always make affirmations from a  positive place - write your affirmations down by hand, speak them out loud - I always write my affirmations on strips of paper and put them into a bowl of rice so I can mix them around every now and then with my fingers if things get stagnant - then release your attention from them knowing that your intention is known. Know these things are already yours. xo

5 questions to ask ourselves when launching a new thingamajig

lori portka's bracelet by polarity

You may have noticed by now I love the word thingamajig.

I especially love that it covers just about every thing makers could possibly make and I love that Google and Websters think it's a real word, too.

(maybe it actually is)

Anyhoo, I am about to launch a new thingamajig and thought I would share a little bit of my thinking that went into this process.

5 questions to ask ourselves:

1. why are we making this?

"Why" is a really important question. I truly, truly believe that it is the passion in people that draws us to them and draws us to the things they have created - our energy seeking out energy that makes us feel good - that makes us feel more alive.

The answer to why we do what we do will never be about the money because there are many things we can do to make money, many more sure-fire things, like those that involve paychecks and 401Ks - why are we making this and why should anyone care? Artists can't make art for the money - we will lose our hearts and not make any money that sticks anyway.

2. who is this for and why will they want it?

Our market is much more important than our marketing. It is no fun to make something we really love making and then have to spend all our time trying to figure out how to sell it. Take the time to think about who is going to buy and why they would want to first. Stand in our customer's shoes -

(luckily for me my customers are not so much into 5 inch spikes and if yours are, then yes, you will have some sore arches, but you will have to do this anyway)

who will buy our thingamajig and how will buying our thingamajig make them feel? Is this how they want to feel?

3. what are other makers doing? how is our thingamajig better and different?

When I started fabricating magnetic jewelry I googled and searched to make sure no one was doing anything similar (they weren't ... ah, the good old days) - since we are looking for a need to be filled, it is important to take a look around and make sure there actually is a need.

We are not competing with who it looks like we are competing with. I do not compete with other cork jewelry makers with my cork jewelry because it is not like people are waking up and saying to themselves "I must have some cork jewelry!" - I still can't understand why this doesn't happen, but cork jewelry is not a vanilla latte folks - sniffle. 

I do not compete with jewelry makers with my magnetic jewelry because no one has my story and my passion and my originality - no one can do what I do. No one can do what you do either. 

What we are really competing with are the gazillions of distractions that vie for our customer's attention. 

We have to be worth their time.

I once developed a whole line of plexiglass jewelry and, right before I launched, an artist wrote a new book called Plexi is Sexy (which I can't find now in a google search, wth) - with such similar and such better stuff, I shelved my launch and gave the stuff away for Xmas. Now, I google and search first. Don't create the same old, same old. And don't do something someone else is already doing better than you are.

(and by 'don't do what someone else is doing better' I am talking about your thingamajig here not your skill set, obviously there will always be someone with a better skill set which is probably ok, because different is better than better anyway)

4. how will we sell it? I do not believe that we have to make art that we intend to sell, but here we are talking about a thingamajig we intend to sell.

If we want to make money with our thingamajig we need to put some thought into strategy - where is our customer looking? How will we be where they are looking? How will what they see when they look at us make them feel? How can we make what they see reflect our 'why' so they connect with us?

Let's say we create a very popular thingamajig and people become rabid, loyal fans (yes, we want them foaming at the mouth and drooling - an ugly customer is a happy customer folks).

What will those rabid, loyal fans tell themselves about themselves by being our loyal, rabid fans?

5. what is our goal with this thing? This is different for everyone. And it is perfectly ok to update this from time to time, but we need little end zones so we can pivot when things go wrong and when things go well we can make time for happy dances around the studio, high fives with our peeps (in my case Olive, whose high fives are more like 'give me your paw', but I know what she is thinking with this) and chances to haul out the good liquor.

(please send me your corks)

happy labor day weekend all ...

enjoy your Labor Day - and remember not to labor

 

I guess this was before some genius invented beach towels

Changes to Etsy Feedback or sellers are seeing stars

I have never been a fan of feedback.

(mostly because it scares the hell out of me)

Like thousands/millions of other people who sell on Etsy - I make stuff. I take pictures of it. I sell it. I ship it. Most of the time I do this really, really well. And sometimes I screw up.

There are a whole lot of "I's" in this process so this whole thing has always felt way too personal to me to be healthy - like I am walking through life naked and hoping someone will offer me an umbrella or some sunblock or a nice hand knit sweater and at the very least not throw darts or rotten tomatoes at me.

A connected economy is a feedback economy. Our businesses rise (or fall) by the connections we make. With a gazillion bits of information clamoring for our potential customer's attention word of mouth marketing is the only thing that works.

I get it.

Really.

It still scares the hell out of me.

Before two days ago I hadn't looked at my Etsy feedback in over a year because I like to sleep at night and because I am afraid of darts and rotten tomatoes and because my big girl pants have been at the cleaners ... yes, for a year - my cleaners are very slow. I don't give them bad feedback about this either.

Etsy changed from a kind of pass/fail system to a 5 star system.

A few other things changed, too.

1. Buyers don't get feedback anymore which sounds like a good idea because why does a buyer need feedback. When I leave the grocery store there isn't some guy standing there with a pad and paper rating my performance as a customer. Sellers have used this buyer feedback thing as a way to thank buyers, but sellers have likely thanked them two or three times by this point so it's not really needed for that..

There are sellers on Etsy who make time consuming and sometimes expensive custom items for buyers and kind of like to see who they are dealing with before they get started. They would like to know if the buyer has a history of being unhappy with things they have ordered, so maybe they can avoid the pitfalls of dealing with someone who might be unhappy with them, too.

I get this. It's the same reason I hadn't checked my feedback in a year.

It isn't the way life works though.

Life supports us putting in the energy first - great jobs require unpaid internships, great skills require 10,000 hours of practice, great rewards require sweat. Sellers of time consuming custom work will have to figure out a way to make this work for them.

Maybe someone could offer a place they could privately list problem situations, I don't know. I think few problem situations were ever avoided with buyer feedback though.

2. The stars have little labels that because Etsy is the place for hip, read things like "not a fan" and offer suggestions to customers of what they should write about (customers are required to write at least 5 words now) - suggestions like "what did you like about it?", "what did you dislike?"

Ouch.

(maybe a little disrespectful for handmade Etsy? whatcha think? some of us are still making the things we sell on Etsy with our own two hands and the handmade experience is an imperfect experience, which is the wabi sabi beauty of it - we aren't all resellers Etsy)

3. Sellers overall rankings (1-5 stars) are calculated from the last 12 months of feedback received but listed next to the total of all feedback ever received and so are a little misleading. Maybe a lot misleading.

This seller who posted in the forums yesterday should have a 4.75 overall star rating, but because she has only had 1 buyer in the last 12 months who left feedback (most buyers don't leave any) and that buyer was not happy, she has a 1 star rating which is going to be very slow to improve.

My gut tells me that Etsy will revise this 12 month thing, and if they don't, I think we should all contact this seller and ask her to sell us something cheap which we will all rave about until we pull her rating up to the 4.75 she deserves. I am serious.

4. Buyers can revise their feedback for up to 60 days. They used to have much longer to leave feedback and this replaces kiss and make-up which drove sellers crazy.  It has some potential pitfalls because buyers could revise their star ranking down if something breaks, shrinks or falls apart. I think most likely these buyers would go back to the seller and talk to them before revising their feedback. It's still a little nerve-wracking

There are other changes, but my brain hurts from thinking about them

We'll have to see how this all pans out, maybe some things will be revised over the next couple weeks.

The one good thing that came out of this for me is that with buyer feedback disappearing some purchase feedback I had missed leaving popped into view for me to give out.

I noticed when I left feedback something called Shop Note showed up under my comment area - it looked like the Message to Buyers info, but I couldn't be certain.

We need to figure where this Shop Note gets entered. Before my buyers leave feedback I want them to see something like this:

I love stars. Falling stars and shooting stars and movie stars - since Miss Rehak's first grade class when I went home every day with little gold stars stuck to my forehead (well, maybe not EVERY day) - I just LOVE them. You have been a 5 star customer and I hope I have given you a 5 star experience. Thank you for buying handmade and recycled!

or maybe something like this:

HOLD ON there buddy. If you were about to give me any rating other than the 5 STAR rating we both know I deserve let me just tell you this - I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. I've seen your Facebook profile and I know where you work. I know you are a little too fond of (I'll pop some custom info related to their purchase in here) OCTOPUSES. Let's just leave it at that.