Metal Stamping Kit

Note: For $15.75 you can buy a ¼ high metal stamping kit from HarborFreight.com. Perhaps you could keep an eye out for something less expensive and use it to transform old silverware into a metal label.

Update 3/31/11 - Customers have left some awful reviews about this product on the HarborFreight.com website.  According to people that have purchased this product the claims about the hardened steel used to make this product is bullshit.  


Amazon has this 1/4" metal stamping set for $8.50 + $6.74 shipping:

Music: Serial Killer Country (title?) is my new favorite genre of music. The tune from Full Throttle was my first taste of this music and it has stuck with me ever since. Lately, I've rediscovered the genre playing during the opening credits of HBO's True Blood. Jace Everett's Bad Things is baby-making music plain and simple.

Someone else's thoughts on small icons on ebay and Etsy:

Business Topics

Before anyone gets as far as your pictures, they have to first want to click on the thumbnail, because that's the first thing they see. There was a thread on this yesterday, and I wanted to do a show-and-tell.

The web is visual. Shopping on the web is extremely visual. Every day we read threads about low views or no views. It's not because the items are not good or attractive, but rather because nobody clicks them.
Your item's thumbnail is your one and only opportunity to get people into your shop. There's no grey area here. They click or they don't. Full stop.

That thumbnail has to make them want to click. It has to catch their eye, intrigue them, seduce them, make them open the door and walk into your shop. If you had a real store, it would be the display window. I say tag shmag. People mostly browse. Yes, they search too, but they mostly browse sections they're interested in. A page appears. 21 thumnails, 75x75 in list view or 155x125 in gallery view.

If you're like me, you flick your Magic Mouse or you spin your scroll wheel, and zip down the page, your eyes darting around looking for something to jump out.

So here's an example. A beaded necklace, and two thumbnails out of many possibilities. Both shot with the same really crappy camera, in the same light at the same time.

One view from above, the whole necklace, the photo straight out of the crappy camera.
One close up, just a small section, levels adjusted after the fact.

List view:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bomobob/4685254318

Gallery view:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bomobob/4684648679

Which would you click? Even though you can't really tell what the 2nd thumbnail is, it stands out.

Here are the two full size pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bomobob/4684620133
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bomobob/4685254410

Notice how the dark photo, though not great, isn't too too bad in full size. It's dark, but that's the only issue. But in a thumbnail, it's just totally unclickable.

So while it's important to have great photos, spend lots of time looking at the thumbnails because they look totally different than the full size pictures. Use high contrast views. Make the colours POP. Make them visually interesting. You have 5 slots for pictures, so the main one doesn't have to show the whole item. Don't just upload you images to Etsy and then see them. Change your images to 75x75 or 155x125 and view them in real size on your screen.
How do they look? Do they jump off the page, or do they just sit there, waiting to be passed by?

Posted at 9:57 am, June 9 2010 EST

Stock Photography Notes: This is the license I want for my stock images: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/