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The Seller's Dilemma

For me, taking pictures of items for my shop Say It Ain't Sold! Vintage is always is always a bit of a gamble. The reason being that when I look through the lens there is always a chance that I see what I am selling in a brand new light. Meaning I want to keep it!

It's hard being a seller because you've always got to be impersonal when it comes to listing items.

Honey don't you remember when you wanted me to buy this...?

I live with my boyfriend in a studio apartment in the "nice",and "safe" but expensive part of the city of Chicago. Since my financial situation isn't what I'd like it to be bf pays most of the bills for our nice apartment and I pay for groceries. If that sounds kind of messed up, believe me it is.
I know I shouldn't complain but often times when we go grocery shopping bf will put things in the cart just because they are on sale. Sometimes I don't like what he puts in the cart and so he has to be the one to eat it. This wouldn't be a problem if he did EAT what he insisted on me buying. I put in the cart what we both want to eat and some of the things that I want, like snacks. The things that he puts in the cart are usually sale items like Indian dishes that are too spicy for my taste or frozen vegetables.
What ends up happening is that we both will eat the best things, the things that we were most excited about buying to eat and he will forget about the stuff that he wanted me to buy until I remind him about it a few months later. He doens't like snacks but I do and he eats my snacks. He blames me for buying them in the first place because he can't help himself. Ugh...

Baby Names

I'm not pregnant and I have no plans on being pregnant in the next five years (in fact I could easily see myself never having kids) but for some reason I've become fixated on coming up with an appropriate baby name so I'll be ready when the moment arises. 

Girls names:

Justine (I just came up with this one today)

Nina

Ivy

Simone

Zoe

I had a reverie once where I called my imaginary kid by three different names because I couldn't decide which one I wanted. When I call out to my daughter I want to actually like her name.

Vices

I live on $400 a month and I have clothes from all over the world.

Heel Heels Heels! Nicholas Kirkwood

Can you really walk in those? via The Gaurdian

I am not a heels person. It is my feeling that even if the heels were comfortable I would feel slightly like I was walking on stilts.

My "heels" are Fly London wedge shoes which top out at a whopping 2.5" ^_^

The shoe to the left is Fly London's Yale Wedge. I have a pair in black. They are SO comfortable and funky! At $169 they are my most expensive shoe beside my UGG boots.

Postal Rates to go up,again. from www.walletpop.com

The issue of the rising cost of postage is certainly important for those who buy from small businesses such as those found on Etsy or any other e-commerce retailer who chooses to use United States Postal Service.

For the past few years postal sales have been on the decline because of people's use of the internet for communication and for paying bills, among other things. ll of these were once taken care of by the postal service. And

"With volume down, the Postal Service has fewer pieces of mail to pay the same fixed costs"

I'm not sure what these fixed costs are and this might make for some interesting reading material if I do find info on it.

There is a proposal going through Congress I would assume which would increase the price of postage. Most rates are expected to go up 4 to 6% which doesn't sound like a lot but an increase in shipping charges can be a buzz kill for online shoppers.

Any increase in postage prices will take effect in early January.

The article can be found here:

Postal Rates to go up,again

Myers Briggs Personality Test

My results after I took the Meyers Briggs Personality test:

Introverted (I) 76.67% Extroverted (E) 23.33%
Sensing (S) 63.89% Intuitive (N) 36.11%
Feeling (F) 51.52% Thinking (T) 48.48%Judging (J) 60.61% Perceiving (P) 39.39%

ISFJ - "Conservator". Desires to be of service and to minister to individual needs - very loyal. 13.8% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

A list of Make-your-own e-Commerce sites you might want to check out

I just thought about compiling a list of eCommerce sites that provide people the opportunity to sell mainly bespoke, handmade or vintage items. This is for myself and for anyone else:

image from st.johnsbury academy website

Winkelf site closed for good due to web host issues
Bonanzle now Bonanza
Smashion
Market Publique
Etsy or course
Ebay obviously
Shophandmade
Artfire
European Etsy.com Dawand


* UPDATE ADDITIONS*

                                                                                                                                                                          Pappa Shop I'm not too familiar with  
                                                                                      this one     

                                                                                      I will have to look into it more.

                                                                                      Big Cartel
                                                                                      Goodsie
                                                                                      Zibbet 
                                                                                      Copious

A few others to consider Magento/Zencart/Volusion/Shopify. Links coming soon!




The other companies that make money from just selling online vintage. You cannot setup a shop on their site

        

                                                                                        image from criticalmiami.com

Violetville
Free People Vintage Loves* outrageous prices

And there are websites that specialize in selling consumer products made in developing nations. These are called worldshops and they might sometimes be apart of alternative trade organizations. Here are a few I know of:


SERRV
Greenheart
10,000 Villages









I will be adding more to this list in the future and doing reviews of the ones I've tried.

New Project LIGHT TENT: UPDATE

This epic project that started off as an idea for a solution to my problem of not being able to catch the sun for picture taking has ended and here are the results!

My pictures SUCK! And with that said let's toast to my next project. Getting a shiny new camera because it has to be the cameras fault that my pictures are bad.

The camera I'm using now is a 4 megapixel Fujifilm Finepix e500 and these are the pictures it took for me:

 
 

The middle picture isn't so bad but generally I think the pictures are pretty dark in a lot of place. The contours of the clothing don't capture all of the light. The strange thing is that the camera is not capturing what I see. The placement of the overhead light clamps gave me a lot of trouble. At first I tried duct-taping it to the ceiling but it came down after about thirty minutes - thankfully on the top panel. My attempt at putting a nail in the ceiling didn't work either. I just settled for putting the nail as high on the wall as possible below the ceiling. I would have preferred to have to light shine at the object and not directly over it. Then again I would have preferred to have a drill and an actual wall sconce to house the light bulb so that I could extend it over the tent and adjust it as needed but we can't have everything now can we?

 When I was buying all of the supplies for this project I had to fight my boyfriend tooth and nail over the light bulbs because even though he had never done anything with photography for some reason he was adamant that I use regular light bulbs and this had nothing to do with the price. I got him to buy two 42 watt CFL's which are 150 equivalent and one 150 watt incandescent because the cfl's can be pretty pricey and I wanted this to be a low budget project.

Hairwrapping

I have what people in the African American subcultural community call natural hair. It is not straight. The picture above is is one I found while searching for hair wrap styles. This is the only one I could find that I liked. A lot of the ones I came across looked like the ones that Erykah Badu would wear

and these are pretty ostentatious in my opinion. I don't want to look like a diva or an African queen. I just want to protect my hair and put it away when I don't feel like dealing with it.