EkaBlog - Site Blog for Ekaweeka the Small Business Community

Calling all female artists!

Are you creative, passionate and socially aware? Then Element clothing wants you to come forward and become and advocate. Jane magazine and Element Clothing have partnered to find the next Element Eden Advocate. Element has a whole team of advocates. What exactly do these advocates do?

All the advocates are creative craftswomen, and artists that want to cultivate creativity in other women. To qualify you must:

• Live and work as an artist, want to work on Element Clothing events, graphics and other Advocate opportunities (so like a working creative spokesperson)
• Have an inspiring story to share about your life or artwork
• Give back to your community

A Los Angeles based artist named Brooke Reidt is one of the current Advocates. One of the projects she worked on was creating and painting over 100 wooden birds and bees for an Element retail event. For each piece sold, 20% was donated to Project Luz, a non-profit that provides artistic outlets for at-risk kids. Sounds like a pretty neat gig.

But just in case fame and good deeds aren’t enough, first prize also includes a trip to the Element Southern California headquarters in Orange County, a deluxe spa package, a $2000 stipend, Element clothing to wear to events and a chance to write about your experience for Jane magazine.

Check out all the details at www.elementeden.com and enter.

My photography knowledge is pretty much limited to the pictures I have of my friends and family where I think I look good. Limited though MY experience is, I love looking at other people’s photography – people who really know what they’re doing! – and sometimes I feel like pictures (even abstract ones) can speak to me more than paintings or sculptures done by the masters. There’s something so real, so “capturable” in a picture taken by a good photographer.

San Francisco photographer Allison Tungseth has this “real” aspect of picture-taking down. She draws off a close inspection of other people’s possessions, and documents every-day objects, turning them into art.

So what does that mean? Since Allison is a friend, I let her come to my apartment a couple months back to take pictures of my possessions. She goes around a room, snapping dozens of pictures, in a disjointed kind of panorama. Snapping everything from my high heels standing by themselves in the bottom of a book case, to my cell phone charger and cord plugged in by my kitchen counter.

She takes many photographs in each space – from 50 to 200 single frames - to create
a 360-degree panoramic view. She then combines the images to create a larger
work.

And she’s all about getting her work into shows, where she’s trying to build up the base of people who have seen (and even purchased!) her work. Through connections made with other artists in her studio and professors and students in her graduate program, she showcases her art all around town.

Visit Allison’s EkaPage at: http://www.ekaweeka.com/415/
or her website:http://tungseth.com/allison/

Hope everyone had a great Holiday. We spent ours in Santa Monica. We were wondering down Main St. with some friends who were in town from NYC and decided to go into a bead shop called Ritual Adornments. At first it was a little overwhelming in there - they've got jewelry supplies of every kind covering the walls from head to toe, once you get over the shock of all their color and materials you realize you're in a goldmine of potential.

Ritual Adornments doesn't just sell supply, they also have a workshop space in the back of their shop where customers can go and use their jeweler's tools to make stuff. This was awesome! I've always loved the idea of combining my work environment with the place where I get supplies, RA really nails it! The best part of all is they offer classes every week for all sorts of instruction on making jewelry.

For someone who is just getting started this looked like the perfect place to go and find out about all the awesome ways and tools used to make jewelry.

Check them out online: www.ritualadornments.com
their store is located at:
2708 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA US
90405

And you can call them at: (310) 452-4044
They are open (9-5 Mon-Fri PST)

Nearly everyone wants to be unique. What initially drew me to Melissa’s site - or as she fittingly also calls herself: uniQue - was her creativity and originality. In her profile she mentions: “graffiti, the art of hip-hop, the creativity of drawing pictures and words to express your feelings” among her favorite things. And you can see these preferences reflected in her work. Ok, so what is it that she does - besides, of course, drawing and expressing her feelings? She makes individually hand-painted sneakers. That’s right - each one is custom designed and painted.

At first, my 21st century, efficiency controlled brain was thinking, “what an awful lot of work. Couldn’t the process be streamlined and more readily produced?” But then I realized - that would ruin the *whole* point! You’d end up with shoes that look like screen printed tees, designed to look authentic (you know the type - “dripping” paint, imperfections). In reality, these “unique” pieces sit on a rack with 50 others just like them.

At 17 years old, Melissa draws on her love of graffiti, drawing, and hip-hop to create her individualistic footwear. She’s got several pictures up on her Ekaweeka site, and is always creating. Her first couple sales came off of ebay, and went to a guy in Japan and his girlfriend. She says he’s since ordered six more pair - and that’s enough to keep her busy for a while. But, Melissa says, she always has people asking her to design special shoes for them - business is booming already for this teen!

Since adding the sections we have had lots of great feedback. We adding a feature for choosing what image dimensions to use for photos in the sections, now we've added a method for choosing what order the items in your section are displayed.

You can already select what order your items are displayed in the general item areas. Now in your all items page next to each section you've added the item to you will see the "order in section" field and an update button. All items default to #1 so you just need to change the number to correspond with where the item should be displayed in the list.

The shopping cart was completed this weekend. With the new cart we are also considering a switch to item sales directly between buyer and seller instead of buyer - Ekaweeka - Seller.

The shopping cart has taken us longer then we had hoped, regardless, the build is done. The finishing touches included switching over to cookies so anyone can shop Ekaweeka add items to their shopping cart, leave their computer for minutes/hours/ or days return and still have the items they'd added sitting right there ready for purchase. We fixed up the item attributes and item options which weren't being added to the shipping cart total. So now all those extra's like framing a picture, additional charges for shipping, and anything else will be included in your orders.

The biggest development was truly that sellers can now receive payments through Google Checkout and Paypal. And just in time as Authorize.net has become one of the worst financial services to provide credit card transactions literally overnight. Without getting into the gory details I will just say we are going to be switching to a different credit card authorization company, so keep your eyes open for it, we will be back up with all three sale processing options shortly.

As for processing methods, currently we retrieve the funds for sellers when a buyer has purchased an item. We watch the sale to make sure each party is happy before releasing the funds to the seller. This escrow like service was chosen to assure sellers and buyers a smooth transaction but in the recent past we've found more and more sellers who would be comfortable with managing the sale without our assistance. Since this would speed up the process for everyone we are giving it serious consideration and are opening up the floor to anyone who would like to chime in on the issue. So let us know folks - what would you prefer?

A couple weeks ago we wrote a post on how preventing people from taking pictures of your creations for copyright protection was potentially more harmful then good for business. Shortly after the post was published Laura Iverson of Zen Breeze Art wrote to us about her own experience with copyright theft. Laura had a really bad experience with some sweatshop art imitators who copied her art designs from the gallery images of her ebay shop and resold low resolution blow ups of them in their own shop. Here's Laura's account of the nightmare turned reality:

I wanted to share Laura's story to represent the devils advocate on this issue, clearly it isn't quite as simple as "the more pictures they take the more business we'll do!". It also doesn't appear to be as easy as preventing people from photographing your work.. if we tried to block those attempts no one would be posting pictures of their art on the web. This does serve as a warning to keep your eyes open for art imitators, sure imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but in this case flattering may not fix the damage that can be done.

Protect yourselves folks, it could be as simple as grabbing an email address from the person taking pictures of your work - after-all they most likely do like your art and there should be nothing wrong with having a way to keep in touch.

If anyone else has a similar story or a testament to the kind of synchronicity that takes a random photo at an art fair and has it turn into a sale of your art down the road - share it with us.

The "Manhattan Project" of Ekaweeka projects is unveiled today, we have been quietly developing an AJAX method of organizing the content in your profile. Some of you may have seen websites using this technology like iGoogle, Netvibes, Windows Live, and Page Flakes to name a few.

This method allows you to drag and drop the sections of your profile where ever you choose to place them. It's a long shot from perfect but it puts us further down the path of innovation and giving Ekaweeka Users total control over the appearance of their profile. In the near future we'll be applying this technology to every one of your pages, with abilities to add and remove any widget on any of your pages. We'll also separate the website links and EkaPages navigation list under your profile photo so you can choose to have those or move em' or RE-move them altogether.

This is a fairly new type of web technology much more familiar to the world of PC based software, we don't expect everyone to "get it" immediately. But we do think that those who do catch on quickly will be able to share the knowledge and get the word out!

As far as using the editor, it's quite simple, just click on the "PROFILE EDITOR" link in your account page (it's kind of hard to miss at the moment), that will take you to an editable version of your profile, once you are there roll your mouse over the section title/header bar of any section you'll notice the mouse icon changes to a directional movement/dragging icon, click down with your mouse (without unclicking) on the section title bar and drag the widget to any other place on your profile.

A great example of getting started is moving your comments section to the left column, or moving your blog to the left column, or putting your blog above your "About Me" section. You can also move your items section to the right column, and if you've enabled multiple item sections you can move any of those to any place in the page.

The profile editor is a tool with endless possibilities and we are happy to bring it to your door first!!!!

Selling your goods from a kiosk in a busy shopping area may not be your idea of a great sales opportunity. But as a shopper and lover of unique jewelry, I’ve found some pretty great pieces by perusing these little stands.

I live near Union Square in San Francisco, and while sometimes it’s kind of annoying to deal with people hawking their goods while you’re trying to shop/catch the bus/walk/go to work, sometimes I actually stop and find something.

One such time was when I got my now-beloved fork ring. There is a vendor in the Union Square area who makes jewelry out of forks and stones – at really reasonable prices. I think I paid $10 for each for the ring and a bracelet. He had some samples set out, and then a bunch of loose stones you could pick from if you wanted him to make it for you right there. I’d been in the market for a black ring, so I chose a black rectangular stone, had him measure my ring size, and watched him go to work on my new piece of jewelry.

He said he bought the forks on the cheap where ever he could find them. He cut off what he didn’t need from the end (handle) of the fork and filed it down, then bent to remainder around his ring-sizing tool. He bent the tines, and used them to hold to hold the stone on the front of the ring.

His ring-making enterprise struck me as creative, and also pretty cheap to undertake. Forks you could probably get for free. And the stones weren’t really that high-quality, but the ensemble put together was cute enough to be irresistible!

Make It Mine magazine, is a new publication from Kalmbach Publishing Co. It shows readers how to spice up their clothes, accessories, and home.

Think embroidery, sewing, painting, stamping, decoupage, computer techniques, polymer clay and pretty much anything else that’s fun and creative.

The magazine is looking to cater to readers that are looking for quick and easy ways to turn nothing special into something spectacular by embellishing, altering, or making something simple from scratch. They are looking for how-tos with step-by-step instructions and photos to help readers along the way.

Make It Mine is looking for submissions for their gallery as well. The Idea Galleries will feature pieces from creative types like you. There will be several Galleries in each issue; each will have a theme and vary in length from 4 to 6 pages. The submission deadline is really tight for this first issue, so get your ideas to them quick!

Themes for the Winter 2007 galleries are:

• Update your skirts (featuring 9-12 skirts)

• Ribbon work (featuring 6-8 items)

• Personalized gift ideas for the holidays (featuring 9-12 items)

• The latest trend: Aprons (featuring 7-9 aprons)

• Recycled jewelry (featuring 9-12 items)
**Alexis! The fork ring would be awesome for this.

Here’s the kicker though-the deadline is July 18! So you will have to move fast.

With a limited number of slots, competition will be fierce, so send your photos ASAP. With deadlines this tight, you should be submitting photos of finished work, not ideas or sketches this time, but the editor assured me she would let me know of the deadlines way ahead of time for future issues.

Once they’ve picked the final items, they will contact you with specifics on how to get your pieces to their offices by July 26 and what they need next.

They also request the rights to publish, in the magazine and on the Web site, a photograph of your work with a brief description of how you made it. They retain all rights to the photograph. If your work is selected, you will receive a $25 stipend. They will also send you a copy of the magazine. This is a great way to promote your work and be part of the premier issue of this exciting publication.

Ready to submit?
E-mail a photo of the piece in a jpg or tiff file (these don't need to be professional shots) along with the information below to editor@makeitminemag.com:

• Name, address, phone (daytime number preferred), e-mail

• A brief bio

• The gallery theme you're submitting –put this in the subject line of your email

• A brief description of the techniques and materials you used to make the piece

You can submit more than one piece for each gallery, but if you're submitting ideas for more than one gallery, please send separate e-mails for each (and put the theme in the subject line).

Deadline for submissions: July 18, 2007

If you are submitting through the mail, include a jpg or tiff of your work on a CD and send it to:

Make It Mine magazine
Kalmbach Publishing Co.
PO Box 1612
Waukesha, WI 53187-1612

This literally just started happening. It seems Firefox for Mac is not processing user logins, we've gone through all other operating systems and browsers - they're all fine. If you're on a Mac try using Firefox to login and tell us if this problem persists for you too.

Seems like everyone's got groups. Why not? Part of our survival depends on getting together with like minded folks. Being in groups helps us share ideas, it helps us pass on helpful tips and advice. Animals, bacteria, people heck we all need to be amongst others from time to time to get by.

We started the groups section on Ekaweeka days ago. We've had much bigger fish to fry recently. Now with our partnership with Box Eight and other entities whom Ekaweeka can share the fun with we're putting the focus back on the groups section. Among things that we need to get into place are the group forums, inviting all and custom lists of friends to groups (currently you have to search and invite each person individually). There are 4 groups going already and more to come no doubt. Visit them here, and start your own here.

We were finally afforded sometime this morning to go through the Edit Styles page, it has been needing a good clean up for a bit now. Also we've given the group managers a tool for editing their group pages' style's. In both pages we've edited the instructions and sample tags so all you have to do is copy one style tag, edit the font style, size, colors, ect. once and you're done. Couldn't be easier. But don't worry we're already hacking away at an interface for just that.

For many people customizing the look of your profile is key. Thats why we launched the profile editor, that's why we added link color customization ( edit style page), and that's why today we have added a tool for uploading any image and a set of stock images to use for the color or background image of your headers.

This new tool opens an enormous can of worms with which we can give users a way to upload any kind of image for use as a background on their page, on the frames, on the headers, on anything really.

To start using your own custom backgrounds, go to the edit style page, in the top left above the color code column is a form for uploading images, select an image to upload, give the image a name, upload it, then in the right hand column you'll see a list of images, there is list of the images you've uploaded and a list of the images we've uploaded for anyone to use. Select the image you want to use as your header background, click save and WHOLLA!

Artists and designers say that they are inspired by everything around them-people, art, and nature. What could be more inspiring than working and living in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands?

After a move from South Africa, a career in fashion in Las Vegas, and finally relocating to the Caribbean, Ekaweeka member, Gina Nigrelli and her husband Brian Smith launched Jules Smith Designs, a luxe resort jewelry line.

Jules Smith Designs features precious metals such as sterling silver, rose gold, yellow gold, semi-precious and precious gemstones in the collection. Gina says that she is inspired by, “Friends, family and my environment. Whether I’m working in New York or in my office in the Caribbean, random bursts of creative energies come to me and I capitalize on those moments.” Of course, azure waters, white beaches and sunshine can probably be as much a distraction as an inspiration.

And while it may sound as if this is a big company with an even bigger budget for marketing and advertising, the entire Jules Smith Design team consists of three people: Brian Smith, Gina Nigrelli and Joni Madere, the line’s sole marketing department.

With the shopping cart improvements in the past we see a new horizon of developments for Ekaweeka. New features like friends activity tracking, an event's calendar, group forums, and update emails will all be brought to you to enrich your experience with friends and associates on Ekaweeka. To improve communication, ease of following what others are up to, and common methods for following the ideas and activities around you that help you stay in touch with your network. All these features will be complete with customization settings to keep the experience in line with your personal preferences.

We'll also be bringing improved browsing methods to the items and user browsing pages, you'll be able to browse by the most active users or by their location be it via country, state or provide, or city. An endless list sits just beyond these developments, including a bulletin board and directory for easy business look up but we'll get these first developments out to you in the interim.