Weekend Artist (TM)

Varina Burch of varinajewelry  began apprenticing in a fine jewelry store at the age of 19....opened a custom design shop at the age of 20 and have been in the Jewelry industry for 34 years.

Varina and her husband are Master Goldsmiths, who crossed over to the fashion world in 1988 and created many different lines, working with Galleries, Museum Stores, Gift Shops and Jewelry Stores.    She switched from Retail to wholesale in 1989. Made a line of Jaguar jewelry for JC Penney.

Varina designed jewelry for Major Surf shops along the East Coast of the United States including Ron Jon's.  Now winding down she goes sailing with her husband and son.

She mention "I am NOT getting out of the Jewelry business because I carve out of wax and will always work for the Jewelry Industry."

 Varina do wholesale work and have just recently taken on a new role of mentoring New Jewelry designers. She said it was quite by accident. She went on line to look for an on-line store that she might get rid of a LOT of stuff. Because she cannot bring everything with her when she set out to sea.

Varina found Yardsellr and a ton of talent. Varina not only joined Yardsellr but a whole new group called Centerpiece.

It is a place for designers to get together to share experiences, ideas, and the LOVE and Passion for jewelry making.

Vist Varina Burch of varinajewelry  

at

Varina's Artistic Designs In Jewelry

Yardsellr

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Weekend Artist - In Review: All About The Buttons, Woodcut Designs, Raige Creations, Janelle Beauty, Paper On Parade

Barbara the owner of "All About The Buttons" loves to create. She said since she was a child, she have always been busy with various forms of fiber work including knitting, crochet, needlepoint, embroidery and weaving. Alongside of those interests was that famous old cookie tin of buttons that she loved to play with. 

After a fulfilling career in education followed by the ease of online selling, she now devote myself full-time to combining fibers and buttons. She also love and make clocks, magnets and bookmarks. She love special orders so please don't hesitate to ask.   Read more on All-About-Button

Faye Goode said she love just being alive. She also said  there is so much of the world to explore and such a wonderful support group around her. Faye's passion is quickly evolving as a jewelry designer though in another life she was an equally passionate Canadian Realtor.

She enjoy using castoff elements from my friend's jewel boxes or from garage sale finds and combining them with some nice sparkly new elements to create a pleasant marriage between old and new in unique jewelry designs. Nothing is duplicated in her shop.  Read More on Faye Goode

Raige Creations - where Creating and Vintage is all the Raige! You can find handmade original items made by Rebecca and an eclectic mix of Vintage items.  Rebecca, and began Raige Creations after a thoughtful gift of a crochet hook and yarn for Christmas which brought back memories of her late family members creating art and music.  

She said it was a long journey to get to Raige, but without each step, she wouldn’t be where she is today. Rebecca said she is lucky to say her childhood was heavily influenced with art and music, even though she chose to study Business.  Rebecca found the courage to venture out on her own leaving the corporate world and create some Raige.   

  Read More about Raige Creations

Anika Janelle Pettiford of Janelle Beauty always had big dreams. Growing up in the Caribbean isles of Trinidad and Tobago, Anika always had clarity on her ability to go against the grain and create her own reality no matter what the odds.

Anika migrated to the United States and immediately realized her dream to attend college. This was the beginning of a relentless pursuit and a patient perseverance in achieving the American Dream. 

Read More on Janelle Beauty

  

Teresa (Terri) Riley, proprietor of Paper On Parade, also known as POP Embroidery  have for over 40 years used her hands to lovingly created and designed a variety of projects

Terri  said her Grandmother taught her to sew when she was 8 years old and she was using a sewing machine with ease by 10. At 56, she continues to enjoy sewing, embroidery, scrapbooking and just about any type of crafts. Sometimes it is difficult to stay focused on one project.  Read More on Paper On Parade

How to market your online store

another Great article.   (By James O'Brien)

Getting a top position in major search engines for your shopping carts is hard work, it can take 1 month, it can take 10 years. Follow these rules and techniques and you are truly giving it your best shot, but BE PATIENT! It's difficult for a reason, remember, those who give up, never make it.


This article covers;

• Getting the search engine spiders to find your site.
• Getting the search engine spiders to crawl your site more frequently.
• Getting the search engine spiders to crawl your site more deeply (i.e., this will get them to look at more than just your site's homepage.)
• Setting your site for maximum keyword optimisation
• Building link popularity for high rankings

Understanding Rankings
This "article" covers several areas which major search engines uses to rank sites in their search results.


"Natural" results, (as opposed to Paid Results) should be regarded as the major target of your business to be ranked highest in the world as they provide long term targeted visitors for your store. The "paid" results are considered by many to be a short term objective as they provide instant results but more of a costly outlay for visitors (PPC).


The shopping carts that rank high in the major search engines (like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc) are the ones getting traffic, and often sales.


Search Engines have computers and programs called "Spiders" that collect information about your web pages in an attempt to "figure out" what your pages are about. These spiders gather information from your pages and use these in factoring which sites get ranked higher than others. Search Engines analyze over 100 On-Page Factors when "spidering" your web pages.


Some of the major On-Page Search Engine Optimization Factors are:

• Keyword Density
• Words in Title Tag
• Words in the Page
• Words in Links
• Words in Headings
• Words in Bold
• Beginning Words
• Words in URL
• Meta Tags (some older small engines)
• HTML Validation
• Directory Listings
• Link Structure
• "Indexability" of the page
  and Hundreds of Other Factors

What is Search Engine Optimization?
When a user types a search phrase into Google, and gets back results, those results are made up of several complex formulas. When Google "Ranks" sites, it is really just performing Mathematical Formulas. There is no human involved in the process of evaluating any individual site - it is Math formulas computed from the information that Google Bot gathers from your site.


Google sends several Search Engine Spiders (computers) out to update pages it knows of, and to seek new pages that it finds through links. The name given to all the Google Search Engine Spiders is Google Bot.


READ MORE .........HERE





    

Weekend Artist (TM)

Teresa (Terri) Riley, proprietor of Paper On Parade, also known as POP Embroidery  have for over 40 years used her hands to lovingly created and designed a variety of projects.

Terri  said her Grandmother taught her to sew when she was 8 years old and she was using a sewing machine with ease by 10. At 56, she continues to enjoy sewing, embroidery, scrapbooking and just about any type of crafts. Sometimes it is difficult to stay focused on one project.

Terri’s wonderful husband and 3 grown children have supported and encouraged her throughout the years and all the moves. Her husband is retired from the Air Force and she and her family lived in some interesting and lovely areas over his 24-year career.  

Terri and her family move to Asheville last summer which brought about many changes, as they are now empty-nesters. Terri mention her family is number one.

Terri set up her embroidery machine while unpacking and realized how much she missed sewing and embroidery. She wanted to keep the online recognition of PaperOnParade, her first online venture of scrapbooking. Therefore POP embroidery by PaperOnParade was born. Even though she gets lots of questions about the name, Terri have maintained the online foundation built thus far and enjoy the questions as it gives her a chance to meet more wonderful people.

Terri’s standouts ones are wedding dresses, dance outfits, hand smocking, picture frame mat designing and teaching machine embroidery and sewing.   Terri realizes some of her designs will be passed down through generations is an honor and inspires her to keep pressing on. The amount of sales has too much of an impact on my attitude sometimes, so I strive to stay positive and keep moving forward…. sales or no sales.

Terri Mission is “Sharing machine embroidery with those who love personalized gifts and treasures. Value each day and always look up!”

Also, she has a heart for encouraging people to stay positive through tough times. It is a season of life and things will get better, just keep speaking uplifting words and smile when you feel like crying. You never know when you’ll bring light to someone’s day.

A successful business woman willing and able to give back to the community that birthed my success. 

          
 POP Embroidery on ZboxTV

Check Out Terri at all These Locations

PaperOnParade at Zibbet

PaperOnParade at Etsy

PaperOnParade at EBAY

PaperOnParade at Flickr

PaperOnParade at Facebook

PaperOnParade Blog

PopEmbroidery at WordPress

PopEmbroidery at StumbleUpon

PaperOnParade at Twitter

Content Marketing & Social Media: The New SEO – By Chad H. Pollitt

by Colleen on May 2, 2011

Why did J.C. Penny recently get punished in Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)? They were allegedly caught buying hundreds of links from spammy, low pagerank websites by the New York Times, who reported their findings to Google.

J.C. Penny took a black hat shortcut with their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign, which is a clear violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. They could have avoided the violation if their campaign focused on the new SEO – content marketing and social media.

Content Marketing
Content marketing is the creation and sharing of content with the purpose of promoting a product or service. The focus of this content may not specifically be about the publisher’s organization or its offerings. Assets created for content marketing include a mix of problem-specific information and thought leadership.
For affiliate publishers, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines recommends, “If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.” In other words, publish unique problem solving content.

Social Media
Social media acts as a distribution conduit for content marketers. By distributing content via social media, the distributor potentially has access to millions of eyes that may comment, share, consume and/or evangelize the content.

The New SEO
By no means does content marketing and social media distribution alleviate the publisher from doing basic SEO due diligence such as a keyword workshop, defining on-page conventions, competitive research, etc. Below are just a few of the SEO benefits that can be realized by deploying content marketing and social media distribution.  Read More at......Content Marketing & Social Media