Promotionalicious Goodness!!!!

The Forque
If you see it here, you know it's forqued!
Vol. 2



With the handmade market blooming like ragweed in the springtime, we here at ETC understand how hard it is to be seen. Each seller is really just one tiny drop in an ocean of shops. That's why we are uber pleased to announce the our new promotional program! Now everyone can find a spot in those coveted gift guides or become a featured seller in The Forque, not just my besties and fave sellers! Our favorite admin, DanielleX-hungryhungryhip-O, came up with a brilliant promotional opportunity we like to call "Pay to Play"!

It's really quite simple. You send us gifts and we make sure you get free advertising from ETC! Here are the gift giving monetary standards:

• $10 and under: A mention of your shop in Twitter.
• $15: Your item in a Treasury.
• $20: An enthusiastic mention in Twitter, using excited adjectives like "super-cute", "XXX goodness", "awesomeness", and "totally loving" plus an actual link to your item AND one of your items in a Treasury.
• $21-$30: All of the above plus an item from your shop in the "related items" part of a Forque article.
• $31-$49: All of the above plus a spot in the coveted gift guides.
• $50-$65: All of the above plus a spot in our spammy email, ETC Finds
• $66-$100: All of the above AND The Forque Featured Seller Spotlight.
• $101 and up: All of the above and... (drum roll please) we'll send you a DVD of some White Supremacist inmates forcing a sobbing and drooling Rob White to toss their salad. Now doesn't THAT sound fun?

We here at ETC are pleased to be able to offer this great opportunity to you sellers and hope that you'll be showing us the appropriate gratitude for making it available to you. We don't want to hear any more pissing and moaning about favoritism anymore (cough cough! Etsybitches). Now it's all fair and even and anyone can be an ETC fave. If you don't have the money to cough up for the Pay to Play gifting program, then that's your fault for being such a broke dick.

Ho ho ho! Happy Holidays! and Happy Hannukah! (see how multicultural we are?)

Your good friends at ETC.

Complete Guide to Business Ethics

On a more serious note: Venting is all very well and fine, but if you have a genuine complaint please report it to the Better Business Bureau. I am here only to have a little fun and provide an outlet for my frustrations over the frequent BS I see, but the only way for real issues to be taken seriously is to report them to the correct agency. Please don't rely on this blog, Etsybitch, Regretsy or any of the other bloggers to "get the message through to Etsy. Maria, Rob, DanielleXO and all the rest don't take any of this seriously. They WILL, however, take reports to the BBB seriously and if they don't, their apathy will be there for all the world to see.

REPORT YOUR ISSUES HERE

Vistaprint.com

Does your blood run pink?

I am SO so excited! I just learned that I can now get my favorite costmetics at my favorite place to shop! I can't believe they have been around since March 2009 and I missed them, but now that I know they are there, I feel I must share the joyful news with you all! Ladies, please take a moment to do something nice for yourself. Help Kristi Linebarger get that pink Cadillac she so richly deserves! Buy something sweet and lovely from this wonderful seller and have a very pink Labour Day!

The Mary Kay products have been removed.
updated 9/11/09

The "Props 2 ya!" page has been amended.

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Priceless Wedding

• Wooden Doll Blanks - $8.95 per pack of 50
• Acrylic paint pens - $12
• Finding a wedding-frenzied bridzilla willing to pay $85 for two little doll cake toppers that even a fifth grader could make - PRICELESS

Unfortunate photos from the gift guides

Oh my! Is it just me, or does this photo look like a goose backed up to someone's best bone china and dropped a little surprise? First rule of food photography...you want to get a photo of it BEFORE it passes through the digestive tract.


The Miss Congeniality winner, in the Miss Drag USA competition did not mean it when she said "I was just happy to be able to compete." Eventually her bad attitude did her in and she was forced to turn in her tiara. Miss Cattiest Bitch took over her duties and allegedly told reporters "I knew she wouldn't be able to cut the mustard."


If you can't get fat enough to grow your own cankles, never fear! Cankle spats are here!


One can NEVER have enough rhinestones. By the way, the eighties called, they want their lipstick back.

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The Hot New Trend!!!

I've finally blazed into trendy hipsterness with the next hot craze at Etc! Since Etcians are so very, very fond of fake body hair, I'd like introduce my new line of fake body hair too!

I present to you FUBIC HAIR!!!

Yes, now you too can live out all your hirsute fantasies and have fun, technicolor body hair without the hassle of growing and dying it yourself! Jazz up a boring bikini line! Or spice up a tepid tubetop! And do it with FLAIR!!!

Comes in two styles, the Madonna (armpit hair) or the Pamela Anderson (bikini line pubic hair) and five sparkly colors:

• What's Eating Gilbert Grape Purple (pictured)
  
• Raspberry Beret Fuschia
  
• Cyber Porn Electric Blue
  
• Tree Hugger Bright Green
  
• Oh My Goth Glittery Black
  

Kit includes all natural and eco-friendly materials:

• fake hemp hair accented with recycled silver lame' threads, from genuine vintage disco clothes
  
• reusable skin adhesive, made from 100% all natural bee's wax
• an attractive, upcycled, fabric drawstring bag for your product, to keep in your purse for those unexpected, emergency Fubic hair situations
• instructions for application, removal, and cleaning care (written on 100% recycled toilet paper)

Hurry! Bikini season is right around the corner! Get them while they're hot! First 50 orders will receive a FREE eco-friendly melted record bowl and a Summer cowl!

$48.95 + $15 shipping and handling

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I heard it from a little birdie

I heard that Rob White is having a birthday! So I made this lovely treasury just for him!

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HAPPY ETC DAY!!!!!

HAPPY ETC DAY!!!!!

I just wanted to thank all of you who participated in this very, VERY special day! Soon I am sure that the WHOLE WORLD will know about Etc and the magic of handmade!!!

Special thanks to C over at Ugly Things for Sale and Pussdaddy for their very kind well wishes for Etc's special day!

Kudos also to EtsyBitches for allowing me to read and post on their blog; it has truly been a pleasure and inspiration!

And finally, my sincerest thanks to all the lovely twitterzens who retweeted my Etc Day tweets and helped to spread the word about this momentous day!!!

As my extra special reward to you, I offer up this peachy treasury (sorry, no cash rewards or discounts)! I know the prices are a bit steep, but really, that's the price one pays for the magic of handmade.

• Old brown and blue sweatshirts from your brother's laundry pile that you wove into wearable "art" $80
• Pair of old Sally Jesse plastic framed glasses that you dug out of your mom's makeup drawer $18
• White crochet headband that you made for your textiles badge in Girl Scouts when you were in 4th grade $40
• Finding people to advertise your site for free PRICELESS

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Let's all celebrate ETC DAY this Friday!!!

I just had the most delightalicious idea! Let's designate Friday, May 1, 2009 as the first annual ETC DAY! I do hate to spend money on promoting and advertising, so I thought it would be fun to launch a mass campaign of grass-roots guerrilla promoting to get the word out about my tres FABOO blog!!!! And best of all, I would hardly have to do a thing! I know all my loyal fans would love to help me and it's so easy, here are some ideas for what you can do to spread the word about Etc:

1. Make everyone in your family wear a fake mustache all week long with signs around their necks that say "Mass consumer and proud of it!" Then when people ask them about it, they can say they do ALL their shopping at Etc!!!
2. Spray paint "ETC RULZ", in big orange letters, on your garage door!
3. Spam the internet like it's 1999! I'll help you by providing a three-tiered outline for getting the word out: Social Networking - Twitter, facebook, myspace, chat rooms, stumbleupon, craigslist, and forums are good places to start spreading the word. Email - Send a announcements to every single person on the contacts list for your email account. Advertising - Put your money where your mouth is and dig deep. Pay to do some prime time advertising for Etc on Tim Adams Designs, Craftcult, Etsybitches, and adwords!
4. Stand outside of Costco and Sam's Wholesale and stop customers and tell them how much better Etc is than any big box store.
5. Ladies, your cleavage is prime advertising real estate, use it to advertise more than just your sex appeal! Get "Shop Etc" tattooed on each bazoom!
6. Expectant mommies, name your babies Betsy Etc!
   
7. Go to the airport and love bomb people. Hand out orange paper flowers (available here, at Oriental Trading Company for a special Etc Day price), hug people, and try to assimilate them into the Etc collective. But that is a bit cultish, would a legitimate art venue do that? Oh well, let's just do it and worry about that silly little detail later.
   

Get the Etc name out there in the loudest, most obnoxious, spammiest way you can think of!!!! Make sure to record your efforts with video or photos (if you upload photos to Flickr, make sure to tag them "Etc Day 2009" because I'll DEFINITELY be doing this next year and for years to come).

I'll be highlighting the funniest, weirdest, spammiest, most personally degrading efforts on my Blog and on my social networks, and I'll make sure to link back to you. For those of you who are not my favorite sellers or BFFs, here is a great opportunity to work your little patooty off and finally get my attention and receive the shop promotions I know I should have been sending your way all along.

Vistaprint.com

Hipsters in Space!

Oh teehee! What a cute, funny, AND informative cartoon! Now I can have a better handle on what all the hip and rad people are wearing so I can finally fit in! We could all learn some important fashion lessons from Hipsters in Space. Let's get some popcorn and watch it together!



Thanks to infivision for bringing this to my attention!

Etc Featured Seller!

My creative entrepreneur du jour is The72Pin. Just look what this clever boots has done with Nintendo and Atari games! He has taken the mundane and turned it into something attractive and fashionable! How creative and inventive and oh so unique! My only question is why hasn't this wonderful seller been featured yet? There are already so many creative toy upcyclers galore, even celebrities are in on this hot new trend! Surely this artist should be featured too? He takes toy upcycling to a whole new and exciting level!

I am especially fond of this tres adorable Gameboy Advance necklace!



For a romantic evening, this NES Mario 3 Cartridge Necklace would be quite alluring!



Of course my husband, Mr. Etc, would probably love this necklace on me much more. It's a Fully Functional Super Nintendo Necklace! Though truly, faux fur and pearls are much more to my taste. I've never been a fishnet kind of girl. Still, that is what I live for...to please that man of mine!


The72Pin even has his own blog, just like me and his creative lady friend has her own calendar!!! Oh please, do be sure to give this enterprising duo a few minutes of your time to check out their sites and items! It's always so wonderful to find new and original artists!

Thank you to Callin' Out on Etsy for bringing this delightful seller to my attention!

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More Gift Guide Delights!

Spring is on the way! How EXCITING!!!! Mother Nature is just bursting with flowery goodness! I was so inspired by nature and the latest gift guides that I made myself this lovely toilet paper dress! It has a hip, polka dotty sash around the waste...ooopsie! Pardon my Freudian slip...I meant waist!

Since toilet paper is made from trees, I am happy as a kitty with cream that I'm reusing my toilet paper in a way that is both fashionable and eco-friendly! I just love nature, don't you? I think I'll go hug a tree!

And here are some more unique and special handmade delights for you to enjoy! I found them featured in the gift guides!

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Me thinks the Etsy Bitches made a wee mistake!

Hello dear friends. I do so hate to be a Negative Nellie, but I must disagree with the Etsy Bitch's claims that some of the featured sellers are not worthy of being featured. I don't know why they would think such a thing...every single seller featured in a gift guide or on the front page or in the Storque has been delightfully and stupendously talented.

I've created a treasury listing of some of the best of the best. Each and every artist in this treasury has been a featured seller. I think that one can see for themselves the fine craftsmanship and superior quality that went into each and every piece.

I call this treasury "Featured and Fabulous!" I hope you enjoy it!

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Trendy hipsters R Us

If you are looking for caged birdies, bare trees, bicycle themed fashion accessories, cowls that make you look like Bazooka Joe's buddy, Mort, washed out pastel line drawings, drab colors, terrarriums, or Blythe dolls, then look no further. Etc. is your one stop shopping experience for all things hip and trendy.

Forget Vogue, Forget Fashion Week in Paris, Forget Pantone, Forget the rest of the world...those hipsters have a style all their own. They're hip, they're trendy, they are too cool to buy what everyone else is buying (except for the other 2,360 people who are purchasing the exact same "unique" items).

Etc. theme for this week "Drab! It's the new black!"

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