Looking for some free printable labels, gift tags, and fun stickers for your handmade creations? Everything Etsy has teamed up with World Label and designer Erin Rippy of InkTreePress.com to provide you this incredible collection of printable labels and other goodies. All for free and available for download right here!

All Downloads are PDF 8.5×11

Click the download link beneath the design you want!

4″x5″ Designs — 4 per sheet

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

4″x2″ Designs — 10 per sheet

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

2.625″ x 1″ Designs — 30 per sheet

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

2.83″ x 1″ Designs — 33 Per Sheet

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

2″ Round Designs — 20 Per Sheet

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

Download Design Above

———

Wow! That’s a lot of free printables!

These are totally free for your own use. Please don’t share them from your own blog, but feel free to point your friends and followers here to get the downloads.

These designs fit many common printable label sizes and if you’re handy with a pair of scissors {I know you are!} you can forget all about trying to line-up your designs and just print on a full sheet label. Easy! For more information on sizes or to order labels, check out WorldLabel.com

Have Fun! ~ Kim

Great lighting can make your products look amazing!

It’s no secret that product photos can make or break your Etsy sales.  You can have the coolest handmade product ever, but without an outstanding photo you might not be as happy with your response.

Getting beautiful photos is not as hard as you think, but it will take a little practice to get the hang of what makes your product stand out in the crowd.

Lighting is the biggest source of photo problems.  Create your own photo light box and you’ll be amazed at the quality photos you can take!

Here are 5 examples of DIY Light Boxes…

Pretty Handy Girl – DIY Photography Light Studio Set Up

Ninth and Bird – DIY Photo Light Box

Never Homemaker – How to Build a Light Box

Radmegan – Sun Powered Light Box

You’ll find one more example with some photo tips at The Dapper Toad.

—————————————————————————————————-

Now you know how to do it, so get busy and create a light box!

It’s time to take some fresh photos for your shop.  Don’t forget that multiple angles help show off your product.  It takes a bunch of photos to get a few good ones…so snap, snap, snap away!

You might enjoy reading this post…5 Quick Tips for Better Product Photography.

Take a look around Etsy and see what product photos for inspiration.  As you scroll down the page you’ll notice certain types of photos catch you attention and I bet they all have great lighting!

Practice makes perfect…or close to it. There’s always room for improvement when it comes to product photos, so keep updating you photos as your skills increase.

Do you have a light box?  Do you use natural light?  I’d love to hear your photo success tips in the comments!

~Kim

Free photo editing has never been easier or more feature rich. Tools and websites designed to crop, edit, and enhance your photos are almost as abundant as places to share them!

It’s no secret that I’m a Pinterest fanatic (EverythingEtsy on Pinterest), I love Instagram, and I’m in constant need of photo editing for my blogs and Etsy shop. My guess is you do to, right?

Even though I have Photoshop, I’ve been doing lots of my work using PicMonkey. We’ve written about using picmonkey for photo editing and Tim did a tutorial and video to demonstrate using PicMonkey to create a blog button or Etsy Banner.

Today I found a new (to me) site that just might turn out to be my new go-to website for photo editing, especially if I need to do a collage, which I do all the time.

Free Photo Editing with iPiccy

iPiccy.com is very powerful and full of great features. It’s a tiny bit more effort to learn than PicMonkey but most of the tools and steps are easy and intuitive if you’ve got any photo editing experience. The extra features are totally worth the effort, and there is no cost at all.

iPiccy is totally free.

I haven’t used it enough to offer a full review of iPiccy, but I can point out a few of the things that I liked and were different than PicMonkey.

Local Storage

The first thing I noticed was that iPiccy wanted to store my work on my computer rather than online. That involved allowing it permission which kind of freaked me out a little. But since I really wanted to try it, I took the time to Google “iPiccy Local Storage” and didn’t see anything negative in the search results so I gave it a try.

As it turned out, I really liked the features that local storage opened up. You have a photo library of all the pictures you’ve uploaded to iPiccy as well as a “history” tab where all of your finished picture saves live. This is in addition to the normal file location on your computer.

Overall, I found working with the iPiccy storage easy and very helpful compared to the way you have to upload one thing at a time to PicMonkey and do that again for every time you work on a photo, even if you’ve worked on it before.

iPiccy seems better here though I am curious why the history shows the picture saved on Jan. 4 when it was Jan. 24 (no big deal I guess…).

Easier Color Controls

It was easy to adjust colors in iPiccy for things like added text, overlays (called “stickers”), and shapes. I also really liked having easy access to the eyedropper tool which allows you to select a color from within your image. That’s great when you want to use a matching color for your text or shapes. iPiccy also shows you the new color on the screen as you move the color selector around.

Great Cropping Tools

It might be hard to see in the image below, but iPiccy has built-in cropping sizes for many of the major Social Media sites. Need a Facebook Cover Image or a background image for your iPhone, it’s already built-in as an option in addition to all the standard options such as square, 4×6, 8×10, etc. Now if they would just add some Etsy Banner sizes we’d be cookin’.

Tons and Tons of Collage Options

This feature was one of my favorites. The collage options here were much easier to use than PicMonkey. First of all it seems like there are quite a few more options to choose from. Secondly, you can see them all without having to click on curious terms like “Biggie Smalls”. Finally, once you’ve selected an arrangement you can adjust the aspect ratio of the collage which can be helpful if you’re having a hard time making a picture fit just right.

The screenshot below only shows about half of the collage layouts available:

Full Featured Editing and Effects

iPiccy has ALL of the bells and whistles. You have a full set of adjustment tools such as Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation, etc. as well as a great selection of effects such as HDR, Sepia, and lots of cool vintage effects.

Great Selection of Fonts and Easy Font Tools

One of the things I love about PicMonkey is the font selection so I was really pleased to see that iPiccy has a great selection. Maybe not quite as extensive as PicMonkey, but huge and all for the same price (free). I pay extra on PicMonkey to get all the fonts.

Font editing is easy. Change colors, alignment, opacity, and font size in no time flat.

Overall Seems Great So Far

I’ll keep using iPiccy for awhile and let you know how it works over time. I haven’t used it enough yet to know if it’s glitchy or does anything totally horrifying. If it continues to do well I’ll get Tim to do some tutorial videos to really show how it works.

Am I ready to give up Picmonkey? Not yet. I’m still pretty in-love with that site, but iPiccy.com is one to watch and one you might want to try.

Any photo editing tricks you’d like to learn? What’s your biggest picture editing challenge?

What’s your favorite free photo editing website?

~Kim

For a long list of free photo editing sites, check out this post we found and shared on Google+

Awesome packaging can really make your products stand out!  Ever want to buy something just because it’s packaged soooo cute?  Am I the only one?  I think not!  Ever hate to open a gift because you don’t want to mess up the ribbon?  If you are a lover of all things packaged pretty this post is for you.

Etsy sellers create some of the prettiest packaging ever!  Take a look at some of these exceptional ideas for packaging your way to repeat customers for life or simply being know as the giver of the prettiest presents in the family.

These gift tags are packaged to perfection! I found myself searching for the “buy here” button the moment I saw them. Oh my gosh…super cute stuff!  Find more inspiring ideas on Palette et Ribambelle.

Wychbury knows how to package her beautiful hair accessories!  I’ve noticed her lovely packaging on many occasions.

Happy Doodle Land sells her cute handmade pins in the sweetest package…what a great gift!

Simple packaging can be pretty!  Sometimes a bit of tissue paper, colorful twine and an adorable tag is all you need.  Little Monster Shop does a great job with this!

Sand and Starfish wraps up purchases with a nice thank you note taped to the top…the lovely tape makes it rock!

I ran across the cutest dolls and teddybears ever when I stopped by milinger zita.  I want one…I want a present that looks like this.

Alright, enough about me.  Here are some more cool ideas…

Nong Jia Nu spends a little extra time with packaging…pretty in pink!

Ruth Bleakley creates so many cool things!  Looking for a nautical gift?  Check out her shop!  The labels on her notebooks are exceptional!

This is packaging I used for jewelry a couple years ago.  I used fabric scraps to create a colorful drawstring bag that I felt my customers would enjoy.  Even though it’s pretty, I now consider it a “Packaging Fail” in my book.

Here’s why…

I thought I would enjoy using up my fabric scraps and sewing each bag.  I did…for awhile.  But, when it hits holiday season {and you’re leaving on vacation} you don’t want to have to worry about sewing tons of bags for your extra holiday sales.  Uh, not good.

Keep your packaging simple, but pretty!  Don’t go overboard and make it too hard on yourself.   Packaging doesn’t have to be crazy time consuming or expensive to make an impression.  I hope you see that in some of the examples above.

You’ll find more Etsy packaging ideas in this earlier post. 

What’s your favorite way to wrap your packages? I’d love to hear about them in the comment!

~Kim

Oops. I did it again. I stopped for too long and let my head fill-up with all of the things I’m doing at once. All of the sudden I felt overwhelmed, and no wonder:

• Etsy Shops (plural)
• Blogs (plural)
• Kids (plural)
• Chores (PLURAL)
• Husband (thank God, singular…though he may have multiple personalities I’m not sure yet)

I know this is the same for you. And the list is really much longer than that, but I didn’t want to remind you and send you clicking away in stressed-out disgust.

Instead, let me offer a little trick for you to try. It may be just my latest fad in keeping myself on-task (I’ve tried a few), but on the days I’ve taken the time to do this I’ve found out that I’m much more relaxed and much more effective. I really do get more done, which I knew was possible but sure seemed elusive.

Keep a Short List of Daily Goals

Goals, as in like the big huge “life goals” are something I’ve got an on-again, off-again relationship with. It depends on if they’re being nice to me or not and, truthfully, I’m not sure they’re as all-powerful as they think they are.

Those goals (get the house paid off, send the kids to Princeton, live in a foreign country for awhile) aren’t what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about today goals.

• Get to that morning appointment on time
• Make sure the kids do their schoolwork
• Get a blog post done for Everything Etsy
• Work on the (top secret) new Etsy shop by:
  • Designing one new product
  • Try three new photography location/lighting combos
  • Make list of exact changes to make to the shop banner for Tim
• Make a deposit at the bank

You get the idea.

The funny thing is that, even if my daily goals seem like a long list, they almost always get done when I write them down. And with much less stress too.

When I try and run it all from memory I can hit about 80% success at best and you’d be surprised how some of the biggest things get forgotten. Last Friday I forgot to put a check in the bank. Not good on a long weekend.

The Key: Write it Down The Night Before

The secret to making this work calmly and easily is to write it down the night before. After things calm down a little, but at least a little while before bedtime, I’ll take a few minutes (it usually only takes five minutes) to make a short list. There are modern-digital-connected-techy ways to do this, but I usually just use a 3×5 card. Don’t tell anyone.

I don’t try to get every single detail, I just write down the most important items. When I write them down I automatically feel better knowing that I won’t forget. And I sleep better.

The next morning when I wake up I don’t really have to stop and plan the next steps because it’s mostly automatic and comes from routine. I just go about my day and glance at my daily goals card from time to time to make sure I’m on-track.

Stop When Your List is Done… Ha! (not)

Tim and I got started trying out this method after reading a post on the popular blog zenhabits. The post author took it a little further by doing a “weekly goals” list and pulling the “daily goals” from that. I don’t do that.

The other thing he did (keyword: he) was stop when he was done with the things on the list. I guess to make life much more enjoyable or something along those lines.

I’m a mom and that’s just funny. I, of course, keep going until I drop. But the key benefit I gain from my daily goals list is that I finish the day feeling reassured that I accomplished the most important tasks for the day and knowing what I hope to do tomorrow.

Tips for Organizing your Stuff? We’ve got lots of that here.

What works for you? How do you keep your life on task with so very much going on around you? I’d love to hear in the comments!

~ Kim

{You Are Beautiful by Fresh Words Market}

No woman is an island. We may wish we were on an island, but that’s a different story altogether.

The point I’m making is that we’re all part of a community, or more accurately a number of communities.

We’re friends, daughters, moms, etsy sellers, craftahaulics, vintage freaks, bloggers, women. The list goes on. (men reading this, please substitute terms to your liking!)

One of the dramatic changes we’re seeing in our lifetime is that many of our communities are now online. We interface through a screen and a keyboard or a cell phone.

That can be a little odd can’t it? For me it’s been even more pronounced because the move to working online happened at the same time we moved to a new town in real life. I’ve had to learn online relationships “boot camp” style. And I’ve made my share of mistakes in the process.

One of the things I’ve learned is that it’s okay to be real. Really be yourself online.

Share Some of Yourself Online — Be Real!

The internet gives you so many chances to do this. Your blog is a great place to talk about what you like to eat or where your family goes on vacation. Go ahead and talk about your dog or your kids, people like some of that.

Just be careful not to make that all your blog is about. Readers like to learn about you…a little. They mostly want to learn about what they want to learn about. (which is the overall subject of your blog)

Don’t stop with your blog. Social sites like Pinterest and mobile apps like Instagram are great ways to share what inspires you without the need for many words. I really feel like I get to know people through social media.  I won’t go off on a whole rant on how I love Pinterest, but you get the idea.  You are beautiful so share a little more!

Do you find it easy to share about your life online?  Is all this new social media growing on you? 

~Kim

Do you use Instagram?  I’m pretty new to it, but I already know I love it!  You can share your life, work, whatever through photos with great little filters that make everything look better…like my Mother’s Day cup of coffee.

Here’s a bit of my life in photos…

The harbor…view from lunch at The Crab Shack.

My Vespa…love it!

One of my many chalkboards!

Waiting to go to the beach…

That’s a little glimpse into the world around me {minus the sink full of dishes…ha}.  Come join me on Instagram!  I’d love to see your photos! You can look me up… everythingetsy {of course}.

Do you have any special plans this weekend?  We have a Hibiscus Festival going on in town this weekend…love it!

Have an awesome weekend!

~Kim

{Photo by ArmoursansAnguish}

Weddings are magical and handmade touches only add to the beauty!  We’ve share with you 101 Simple Handmade Wedding Ideas, but why not start off your new married life with fabulous handmade treasures from Etsy?

Did you know you could sign up for Etsy’s Wedding Registry now?  I know if I was tying the knot this would be the first place I would register!

You can find everything you need in one spot {and it’s all handmade or a vintage}…ya gotta love that!

From vintage Pyrex kitchen bowls {that I LOVE} to monogrammed pillows, the Wedding Registry makes it super easy for couples to choose the perfect gifts for their lifestyle.

You can easily add any item on Etsy!  Whoo hoo!

If your guests have never heard of Etsy I’m sure they’ll thank you for it.  They will always remember how cool and smart you were to register on Etsy and are sure to be eternally grateful…just sayin’!

Are you an Etsy seller?  Check out the Etsy Forums for helpful information.

Enjoy it!

~Kim

Here are a few posts you might like to read…

• 101 Handmade Wedding Ideas
• 101 Pretty Printables {free}
• 101 Sewing Tutorials for Summer

Stamps.com makes it super easy to send out all your packages with this nifty little scale and lots of other goodies.

There’s one thing that has always driven me crazy about selling everything online…going to the post office.  It can take forever!  A couple months ago I started using Stamps.com and shipping everything right from home.  It helped me keep my sanity through the holiday season rush.  I love it!

It makes my shipping time a little faster because I don’t have to worry about running out of stamps or making an extra trip to the post office to stand in line just to have them weigh a package.

I signed up at Stamps.com and they sent me lots of cool stuff…

• A digital scale {that I love & is becoming a permanent fixture on my desk}
• $45 in postage coupons {Love this!}
• Supplies kit with cool stickers and such!Stamps.com has new integration with Etsy that makes it easy to to print shipping labels, even First Class International.  You can find a video with more information here.

I just thought I would share what’s working for me.  I was able to send out 21 packages the other day with ease…that’ll keep me using Stamps.com for sure!

These are from the kit they sent.  You can use the stickers or print your postage on plain paper and tape it on your package.  I’ve done both.  I ended up printing most of them on plain paper so I’d save a trip to the printer {in the other room} to change out the paper for these stickers each time.  Kinda lazy, but easy…ha!

Sign up for this no-risk offer and see for yourself! 

Just click on the “Start Here” link in the big square to the right.

This is an affiliate link so you’ll be helping out a fellow Etsy fanatic {me!} when you sign-up through this link.

I hope you’ll enjoy using it as much as I do.  Anything that keeps me out of a line at the post office is a winner in my book!

~Kim

If you’ve been thinking of moving to WordPress or upgrading your current WordPress theme, today might be the day to take that step.

I just found out that StudioPress is offering a 25% discount on the Genesis Framework and all of the related Child Themes that make it so easy to customize. Just enter coupon code “THANKS” at checkout.

If you want a great looking blog that is well set-up for strong SEO and ease of customization, you’ll love the Genesis Themes.

There are dozens and dozens of “child themes” which add-on to the main theme and jazz it up big time. Here are a couple of favorites:

StudioPress Pretty Young Thing Child Theme

StudioPress Bee Crafty Child Theme

We built our newest blog, RemodelingTherapy.com with the StudioPress Fabric Child Theme (with a few tweaks here and there)

Sale Ends Today at 5:00pm Pacific Time!

I should have posted this sooner, but I only got an email about previous customers. I just found this sale open to everyone.

For 25% Off, enter coupon code THANKS at check-out.

Disclosure: When we found out how great StudioPress was on our own sites, we signed-up to be affiliates, which means we get a commission if you buy using the links above. Way COOL! We also are affiliates for Bluehost, which is the most awesomest web hosting company ever. We recently upgraded EverythingEtsy.com to their Pro package and couldn’t be more happy. We heart Bluehost.

For more info on using blogs for your Etsy business, check out our BLOG series (Blogging Leads to Online Greatness), which will continue soon, after a slight delay.

~Kim

Also see this video we did about setting-up WordPress