Embedded - 14: Hot

Episode Date: August 15, 2013

Artist Kristin Anderson of Idle Creativity spoke with Elecia about the technology of working with slumped glass, getting started on Etsy (Elecia mentioned her craft electronic ideas), and moving from Silicon Valley technology to artistic pursuits. Kristin's Etsy store, blog, and Facebook page Elecia's intial craft electronics idea and some followup Great book for getting started: Contemporary Fused Glass Kristin suggests Marketing Creativity and  Handmadeology as blogs to help build a craft business Etsy is a great resource for learning to use Etsy: forums and video tutorials.  Bullseye Glass, see classes, especially "Set Your Kiln on Fire" [That does sound fun! -El] Monte Vista embedded Linux Kristin suggests Marketing Creativity and  Handmadeology as blogs to help build a craft business Etsy is a great resource for learning to use Etsy: forums and video tutorials. 

I am Elysia White, and you are listening to Making Embedded Systems, the show for people who love gadgets. My co-host today is Kristen Anderson, and we're going to talk about things that get really hot and Etsy. Hi, Kristen. Thank you for being here. Hi, Elysia. Thank you for having me.

This is fun. So you're a glass artist. Yes, I am. And I laugh because I used to have a hard time saying that. And you taught me that it's important that I admit that I am a glass artist. But what kind of glass? Fused glass. So basically, glass that you melt pieces together at a high temperature, and then you slump them into various molds. And this isn't blown glass or beads.

This is more like the plates and the really neat bowls that you see in museums and whatnot. Yes, although some bowls are made with blown glass, but blown glass and what you said, the beads require a flame, and this only requires a kiln. Cool. And before you did this, you were a software manager at Monovista. They make the embedded Linux, right? Yes, yes. The director of engineering. Cool. And before you did this, you were a software manager at Monovista. They make the embedded Linux, right? Yes, yes. The director of engineering. Cool. So this is the post-technology career. Yes, yes. It's the artistic side of the engineer that everyone has to have some escape.

I think a lot of engineers do. Yeah. we all have plans that someday I'm going to write books or play drums in a band or whatever. And it's cool to see you going after that. Yeah, it just the timing was right. And so I found this hobby, got addicted, and decided to give it a go. Are you ever tempted to tell people you just work in silicon and not really explain further? Yes, although it depends on the audience. And there are definitely some people in fusing that wouldn't quite understand that statement. Oh, that's kind of sad. So what technology is associated with making slumped glass? So the key one are kilns that you use to actually take it to the various temperatures. But then you have glass cutters, you have molds.

You basically can find various gadgets. As an example, you bought me once a really cool thing from Ikea where I could use to sift small pieces of glass onto a plate to make designs. You can buy templates from Michael's. Those were just like cookie cutter things that you put on top of cakes and you use it to sift glass onto other designs. Exactly, exactly. So you would just lay them down and then you would sprinkle, you know, powder. It's sort of a glass powder on it and then fuse it. Yes, it's called frit. And so frit is small pieces of glass in various consistencies from sort of a powder up to sort of coarse pieces. But the kilns are not just the like a wood-fired kilns I used playing with pottery in college.

They're controlled. You can't just get it up to a temperature, wait for it to melt, and it cool it down. It's more complicated, right? Yes and no. So some people use those kilns because that's what they happen to have. But that takes a lot more work to then you have to watch the piece, see when it gets to a certain level and know to adjust it. Seems fraught with problems. Most glass kilns that if you went to buy today, you would actually buy with a controller that

helps you do what's called a ramp and hold sequence. But let me explain for kilns that there's two different kinds. There's ceramics, which have the elements around the side. And then there's glass kilns, which actually have the elements in the top, in the lid, basically. And the difference is, the reason the glass kilns do that is if you're making a big plate, you want the heat to come from the top to sort of push the air bubbles from the center out, as opposed to if the elements are on the side, you're basically melting the sides first, and then that's kind of trapping air bubbles between your sheets of glass. Having said that, the world's changing some, and new kilns, which I really want one, actually now have both.

And so depending on what you're doing, you can actually control the top and control the sides, which is kind of a neat feature. Because some things work better, like vases, when you're kind of slumping over something and you just want the glass to kind of fold over, you know, the stainless steel mold as an example. You want the temperature to come from the sides for that. Okay. I have seen the slumping and I've seen the kilns. But I'm afraid we're not doing a good job of explaining from the beginning. So let's say we start out with some glass. What happens next when you're doing slumped? And we want to make a plate okay so the first step is

you have a flat shelf a kiln shelf that you put in the kiln and then you put glass pieces down typically glass will naturally want to go to one quarter of an inch and so what happens is is that most the glass you buy comes in one eighth of an inch so you so what happens is, is that most of the glass you buy comes in one eighth of an inch. So you would stack two pieces as an example. And so let's just say you wanted a simple red plate. You would put like a sheet of clear down, a sheet of red down, or you could put them in the reverse order. And then you would take them up to a certain temperature, in that case, typically about 1460 degrees Fahrenheit. And then they would fuse together, you'd get nice round edges, it would keep its form factor of

the square, the way you did it, then you do a second cycle. In this case, instead of a flat shelf, you take a mold that say was sort of gently sloped on the sides for your plate. That's the shape you wanted. You would put your square that you've now fired on top of that. It's cooled, of course, by then. And then it would sort of take on the shape of the mold. So one firing for getting the glass to merge together and one firing for actually slumping it into the shape that I want. Yes, that's the typical. And the reason I say typical

is sometimes it doesn't quite work out and you need to actually sand the edges because things had little extra little divots or whatever. And so you want to get it smoother and then you might fire it again before you actually slump it. Slumping is always the last firing. Okay. And I mean, the bubbles might be one reason to sand. Or do you not sand bubbles out? You can't sand bubbles and their bubbles are natural. You won't really ever get rid of all the bubbles. But if you have sort of an egregious one you don't like, you can actually take a drill to it and drill it out, then put little pieces of what you talked about before, frit, in the hole, then take it back again into a full fuse, which is that 1460 degrees Fahrenheit, and then you'll now have it minus that hole. It'll smooth itself out. And I'm not

choosing glass, you know, I'm not using window glass and then painting it red or anything like that. You have to buy special glass and it's very specific. I mean, you and I took a stained glass class together and you were like, you can use any glass you want. That's so cool. You have much greater constraints with your glass, right? Yes. In fusing, you have to use fusible glass that has been developed specifically for fusing.

There are multiple vendors out there, but you do have to be careful because there's something called a coefficient of expansion. And so basically, as glass heats and cools, it expands at different rates each piece. And so these vendors have worked really hard to develop glass that will expand and contract at the same rate if you use their glass. So you pick a vendor, pretty much typically each person would pick a vendor and you stick with that vendor because then everything in your shop you know will be compatible. And the coefficients of expansions, if you get it wrong, what happens? So it will crack, but sometimes it's not always apparent at the very first.

So it can actually come out of the kiln, look absolutely fine, and then maybe crack a day later. You can tell if you've got a problem by taking, I don't know what they're called, but there's, it's like a film and you put the film over the glass and you look at it through the light and it'll actually show you that there's already a thin crack there that you wouldn't, your naked eye wouldn't be able to perceive. And so then that's a good indication that the glass is not compatible. So if you had just spare glass and you wanted to try it, you would, you you would fire something small and then do this test to see if they're actually truly compatible with each other. So the vendors have to work out the chemistry. And I bet some colors are easier with some chemistries. So the coefficient of expansion

and the colors are kind of linked, aren't they? This is all a great chemistry project. Yes, it is. And yes, each color requires different chemicals. As an example, pinks and purples require gold. So the price of pink and purple glass is outrageously expensive compared to other colors, just because of what has to go into it. And then other pieces of glass, because some have copper, some have selenium, some have sulfur, they actually the colors will react with each other and create yet another color if you fire them sort of next to each other. So there is a tremendous amount of chemistry in it going back to the coefficient of expansion. I think it took some of these vendors, I'm more familiar with bullseye, bullseye glass. And I think it took them several years of working with people who did a lot of glass work themselves to actually work out the

chemistry to ensure that their pieces were truly compatible from a coefficient of expansion. And I think every time they develop a new color, they have to then work through that again. It's a whole test plan devoted to colors and glass. Yes, they went from talking with them, they have a huge quality department that everything goes through, probably more people in quality than they do in making the glass. So glass blowing has been around for thousands of years, and I know bead making has been around for more than a millennium. This is new, isn't it? Yes, from from what I've read, I believe fusing didn't truly become popular until the early 80s. And I say popular only meaning that people

started to get involved. So the people that started bullseye started it in 70 and really had a hard time. They were artists, they wanted to make a go of being artists didn't understand how to do the business side of things, didn't understand compatibility. Then some artists came to them that understood a little bit more about what was needed. They worked together and created the compatible glass. And that was the early 80s. But I think it's actually from what I read, it's not until sort of the late 90s, that there was like a plethora of people like me and other, you know, past engineers, housewives, you know, just a general population of people giving it a try like stained glass. So, I mean, we go from the professionals do it to the hobbyists can have it. And this isn't a kiln thing. I mean, I bought a kiln in 1993 and it wasn't that hard and it had

been somebody's home kiln for already for 20 years. So it was really about this chemistry and the glass being possible then. Yes. And then people learning about glass fusing. It sounds like in the beginning, because people thought glass was all about blowing, nobody really understood this concept of fusing. so then bullseye started teaching classes it sounds like in about 1982 to start teaching people about fusing and that of course then just kind of went from there and they still teach classes today which are awesome to help you learn it's the apple method you put it in the schools and then everybody will use your product later yeah pretty much so you have a number of kilns. Yes. What are they?

I have three kilns. I've named them. The first one is Ann because that kiln is very small. So three letters and the word Ann. It's eight by eight. It's typically used by people for beads. Eight by eight inches. Eight by eight inches.

Yes. And so I use it now. In the beginning, it was all I had. So the biggest plate I can make was six inch square. I use it now for small things and like breads. I the biggest plate I can make was six inch square. I use it now for small things and like breads, I make a lot of breads, some jewelry pieces, and for testing. So a lot of times you're never quite sure the color of a piece of glass might be different before it fires than after it fires. And before you make a, you know, a 12 inch plate, you want to know what that color is going to look like. So you fire a test piece to give it a try. And you said sometimes you put two together and they end up with weird.

Yes, reactions. So that's where all the fun would be for me. It is. And it's become very popular for people to do the reactions on purpose and see kind of the because then your piece is different from other people's by the combinations that you can create. So the second kiln is actually Betty and Betty is my only true glass kiln. And so Betty is a 14 by 14 inch kiln and only about six inches tall, but it's perfect for making like 12 inch plates. Or if I'm making like coasters and I want to make four at a time, you know, you can lay them all in the same kiln on the same shelf. And you said she's a glass one. So that means her heat elements are at the top. Correct. Correct. And then the third one is Cindy. Cindy is my tall and thin one. Cindy was

actually sort of put together by my husband. I bought the pieces at Weird Stuff in an auction. It's Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale, which is a really fun place to go. Yeah, it's like a surplus electronics place. Somehow they acquired the bricks of the kiln and the elements, so the coils that get really hot, those were all intact. And so then my husband figured out the brand, and we added the controller and the lid parts and all the hinges and all the the controller and the lid parts and,

you know, all the hinges and all the other pieces to go with it. And so Cindy is the one that I typically will use for vases because she's tall. And so you could make taller pieces in that. And given that you got it at Weird Stuff, do you think it's somebody's home project that they were building a, a solder mask facility inside their garage or something like that? Could be. It's a ceramic kiln, not a glass kiln, although it was in really good shape as far as the bricks. My understanding is if somebody were to actually have fired ceramics in there, there might have been some like residue. And these were actually almost like brand new. So honestly, I'm not even sure if somebody had fired it. Although one of the elements was broken, my husband spot welded it together and knock on wood, it is still holding

today, even though the glass manufacturers or the kiln manufacturers can't believe it. They all say, no, that's not possible, but it's working. Spot welding. Spot welding. Yes. So these all, you've run them out of your home. You have a shop now, but you used to run them out of your home, right? Yes. My living room was my shop. So it just takes home power or do you, were they dryer connected or just put in special circuits? So two of them I bought specifically for home power. So if you get the smaller kilns, you can get them to run off of like 110 volt. Cindy, which is the tall, thin one, required 220. So what we did was we made sure that the dryer plug was the same for both the dryer and the kiln. And so when I wanted to run the kiln, I would wheel it to where the

dryer is, unplug one and plug the kiln in. So how often did you blow your circuits? Break your circuit. I only did it actually twice. So usually we made sure that each kiln was on a dedicated one and not to use any other outlets on it. But I was running a sandblaster on one with the same that Betty was on and blew the circuit on that one. So that's not so bad. No. And then you mentioned the programming of the kilns. Do they all get programmed pretty much the same way? Is it? I mean, yeah, if you're using it for ceramics, and a lot of the controllers can do both, it's a different type of a program. But for glass, they typically call it ramp and hold. And so what happens is, is that you control the rate of temperature increase or

decrease. So you would plug in that you want it to say go 400 degrees an hour. And then you tell it when to stop. So say you want to stop it at 1000,000 degrees because that's about when the glass is softening and you kind of want to then give it a little time to kind of have all of the piece of glass to reach equilibrium. So then you would hold it there for, say, 30 minutes or an hour. Then you would rate it again and you would say, okay, now ramp it, say, 600 degrees up to 1,225. 1,225, 1,250 degrees Fahrenheit is where you do what's called a bubble squeeze,

where it pretty much is then where it's trying to get the air out. So that's probably the second most important part of the ramp and hold. Then you take it up to your full fuse. You typically will only hold it at that full fuse like 1470, 1460 for 10 minutes. Then you decrease it very quickly. And most kilns give you the capability of saying as fast as possible. So basically, you know, it just kind of crashes it down to bullseyes. annealing temperature is 900. Others have said that there's are 950 960. But 900 degrees is what bullseye has for annealing. And annealing is probably the most important one, because it's what allows the molecules to then of this glass that's now been liquid to realign themselves.

And if you don't anneal it properly, that's when the glass will crack. And I've had that happen several times. And it depends on the thickness of the glass. And so there's charts that'll tell you if it's, you know, a quarter inch thick, you can get by with annealing it for like an hour. But then if you had like a third layer and so it's slightly thicker, you have to add another hour. And so sometimes with castings, they'll actually anneal something for like eight hours. And so that's probably the most important one to then ensure that your glass doesn't crack in the end. That all got pretty technical. And I mean, you ended up with a stair step of three stairs. And before you got to crash back down. I've seen some of these

controllers. It's not like, do you have a digital controller? Yes. So most glass kilns have digital controllers on them that you just type in the numbers and then actually they save them for you for later. So then you can go back and typically have like five programs. And so, you know, your slumping program is number one and, you know, have different ones for different types of things. Oh, good. When I played with the ceramic kilns, you could do a few of those things, but not very many of them. And it wasn't a digital controller. And programming the little monsters was beyond my ability. And that was so embarrassing.

I had the manual. I think they've made them easier. And probably even some ceramic ones. Because like I said, some of these controllers, like the one on Cindy, is for both. And so I think they've made them easier over time. What you cannot do yet today, at least not as far as I know, is there's no kiln manufacturer that has external access to the controller that will let you say use a computer. Electric imp. Yes. Oh, we had those little Wi-Fi microcontrollers. They could totally talk to your kiln and control it. And then on the internet, it would say what temperature it was at. And you could say, hold there or just move the, oh, yes. Yes. So that would be very nice. Or say that if you're slumping, like you're doing a bowl using a donut shaped mold as an example, where you let the glass go down into

the hole of the donut. And so basically, you're going to get a nice bowl out of it, you want to watch to see when the glass touches the shelf, and then you want to stop it at that point. So sometimes, even though you've set the program for the top temperature, you still have to be visible to watch it, but it might take about seven hours for the kiln to actually, you know, ramp up and get to that point. And so it'd be great if you had external access so that you would then know that, oh, it's getting to that point, you know, you can have an alarm on your phone that says, oh, it's reached, you know, 1225, say, as an example, I better go look in the kiln. And then you can stop it, you know, when it reaches that. So it would be very handy to have external inputs. Forget the Wi Fi enabled refrigerator,

you need Wi Fi enabled kilns. So what other kilns are there out there? Are there easier to use ones? What other features do you want? Well, I don't know if they're easier to use. But like I said before, there is now a kiln where they have top and side elements and you can control them. The other and so I'd like one of those, I guess the other thing that they just came out with is I saw a kiln, where right now they just dig a groove or cut a groove into the top of the bricks to put the elements up there. But what happens is you get a lot of dust then coming down from the bricks. And so that might be another example of where you would need to then your finished piece isn't nice because it's got this dust stuck in the glass. And so you need to sandblast it out and refire it. So now the kiln

has sort of a ceramic fiber blanket on the top, which supposedly doesn't deteriorate. And I've never seen one after it's been used. I've only seen brand new ones. And so it the elements are in that blanket, and it supposedly keeps your glass much cleaner. I really want one of those. And that same one has both the top and the side elements. So I think that's my next one. Yes. Okay. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today was about Etsy. I mean, I'm interested in kilns, but that's more for my amusement. I have this idea, and I'll bore you all with the idea because it's certainly not patentable.

It's basically using the electric imp I got from Matt, who we had on the podcast a while ago, and a BlinkM LED, which is just a smart LED. And I put them together, and now I have a Wi-Fi-enabled LED, which, you know, doesn't sound that exciting until you add just a little bit of code. And I mean a little bit of code. And now I could give it to you. And anytime I thought about you, I could go on the, I could go to my little tiny, tiny program and, and click a button. And then you would get a little light that said, that indicated that someone was thinking of you. And maybe I'd assign myself a color and your

husband a color, and then everybody could think of you and you would smile. And, you know, version two of this, there'd be an accelerometer. You could tap, tap. And then I would get a message that said you were thinking of me too. And it'd be all very sweet and cute. Good idea. I don't want to make a product out of this. I can't imagine making a product out of this.

But I could see making a little craft out of this where I buy these things off the shelf and I build this and I build a little bit of software that requires that goes with it. I mean, that's my crafty bit. If I was a knitter, that would be my nitty bit. And then I could sell this on Etsy and I did check it out. Etsy does have electronics. So this is all very possible. Yeah. And to me, it's very much an Etsy project because it's got that awe factor and the homemade crafty factor. So that's where I'm thinking about. And now I want to know about your Etsy store. Okay. So I think it's perfect for Etsy. So for people who don't know what Etsy is, Etsy is sort of like an eBay. It's an online internet way to sell handmade goods. They've expanded a little where handmade supplies

are also available, but it's mostly for handmade goods. There are other available venues out there, but I'm constantly reading about people's experiences. And in general, most people get the most business from their Etsy stores. And I think it's because Etsy has become so well known that if you want to go buy something handmade, people just know to go try Etsy and see what they can find out there. There's actually millions of sellers and actually millions of buyers that are, you know, participate in Etsy. So it makes it a very good venue to make something available. And, and, you know, have people actually buy from you. So and as a buyer, it means I'm buying from the artist, I'm not going through a gallery or

someplace that's going to take a big cut. I'm actually dealing with the person making it. And, and I have worked with some Etsy artists who are upfront with if you want something custom, sure, just ask, let me know. And it's nice to have that connection. Right. And I think that's another reason people like Etsy is because you do get that connection with the buyer seller. You can just ask questions. You know, sometimes people ask me for a piece I made. Well, you know, I'm giving it to my mom. So can you explain to me a little bit more how it was made so I can make sure she understands. And so you can develop a relationship with that person that's buying from you, which is kind of fun. Yeah, it's it's bringing it. It's connecting the people as well as the

purchase. Yeah. And it's not an expensive site. So it basically there's no monthly fees, you pay 20 cents for each item. So every time you listed one of your gadgets, it's 20 cents. And then when somebody buys it, it's they basically take 3.5% of whatever the price is. A lot of things on Etsy are fairly small. You know, three point five percent isn't a lot. And so so, you know, some people sell things that are, you know, 50 cents out there or, you know, a couple of dollars all the way up to some people sell some rather large things for hundreds of dollars or hundreds. There are many that are many thousands, but those are mostly the jewelry makers. Yes, yes, yes.

Search jewelry on Etsy and then sort high to low. It's really fun. Yeah. I usually sort the other way. Yeah, me too. When I'm actually looking to buy, when I'm just looking for ideas. Well, I use it to look for information on what others are doing. And I'll have to say that's probably one of the most confusing things I find from Etsy,

but it's true outside Etsy too, is how to price your product. So you develop this gadget, you have to figure out what you're going to charge for it that would, one, entice people, but also make sure you recoup your costs. And that's an interesting balance. And so doing a lot of searches out there of what other people are doing helps. And then they have a lot of forums and a lot of, so if you're getting started, I would suggest you, you know, watch some of the videos that they've created on helping people get started. So how do they do advertising? Do you have to do all the advertising yourself?

Yes, you, you are responsible for it. And, um, a lot of people will tell you, you should also have your own website. And your website can point to the Etsy site. Facebook is another way. And you know, Instagram, there's lots of different ways that people do the advertising, but you are completely on your own as far as advertising. They do daily newsletters where they'll showcase some items the chances of yours getting chosen millions of sellers millions of buyers your chances are small yeah correct correct um the i guess the other way is is that they um there's a lot of training on how to write your descriptions and give things tags um because trying to pick the right words that people are searching for is important to make sure that people can find your items.

So I shouldn't just make an Etsy store, slap a picture of what it is I'm building up there and wait for the buckets of cash to roll in. No, no. And actually giving it a clever name, a lot of people think that's really cool. But again, if that's not something that somebody is going to search on. Yeah, I've been thinking I'm going to call it the thinking of you something. And that's probably not going to help me here, is it? It's not something that they'll probably search to find when they find it, they'll probably think, oh, this is really cool. But you have to also add some way for something that they would go looking for to find it.

And you said these things are handmade. They're one-offs. This is not at all like Kickstarter. It's more garage hobbyists or professionals, too, who make one or two of these things and sell them and then move on to another artistic or craft sort of project? Yes, they're all handmade. Although some things that some people make, they make them by the hundreds. So like one store that I noticed, which was amazing to me, sold like a thousand items in the first three months of being in business, which is rare. It was sort of like a brie la where they wrapped, you know, metal around it and hung it on a chain.

So they had different color brie la's. But again, all of thousand, you know, all items that they had sold were that same thing. They're all handmade. But they're all similar. So it's not like they make one or two and say, I'm bored. I mean, some people do. Let me move on to something else. My attention span is short. But that's what's great about Etsy is that you can do that. I mean, some people's stores are very eclectic, meaning that all of their items are completely different, um, and, uh, different mediums even. And I do, I mean, when I find an item I like, I tend to go to the store and see, is this something that is just, you know, kind of cut and pasted over and over again? Or is this something individual? And what else is in their store?

And if I like more things in their store, I'm more likely to buy whatever it was I looked at first. Because it means I like the whole gestalt of it. And I think that's how a lot of people buy. And your store is? My store is Idle Creativity. It's a name we came up with several years ago for when I was no longer an engineer and I was idle. I could be creative.

Excellent. And you sell barrettes and plates and jewelry? Yes. I started mostly with the bigger plates and I'll have to say from watching over the last two years those things sell for holidays wedding present big things but from a regular sale point of view I'm starting to think about smaller items and so bretts have been selling a lot lately I'm thinking of creating nightlights, which I've never done, soap dishes, and some smaller items. Jewelry is interesting because there are so many people out there selling jewelry, that jewelry is really hard for somebody to find you and hard for you to stand out. Soap dishes, coasters, there's not that many people selling fused glass of those items out on Etsy yet. And meaning by that many, there's probably 50, but that's still better than thousands.

Whereas fused glass jewelry, there are thousands of people selling that. So how do you decide what to price items at? I use a little bit of, they tell you not to look at other people, they tell you pretty much you should figure out what it costs you add your time into it, and then double the price. If you watch the videos, that's what they all say. That's pretty cool. But if you follow that advice, and sometimes and I also add in sort of kiln cycle, I know how much it takes me to run a kiln cycle. But if I take that advice on all pieces, then sometimes it feels like I've priced it out of the market compared with maybe somebody

else who's selling an eight by eight plate, I might price it at 65, they're selling it at $24. And you're like, whoa. So so then you're in a quandary. And honestly, I don't know the right answer. You want it to sell at the same time they say don't undervalue yourself. So I've played around a lot. They get a percentage, they want you to sell for as much as possible. Well, and they also say some of the theory behind selling is is that if something's more expensive, sometimes people feel it adds more value. So they want to buy it. So if they can afford it, yes. And I have to admit, I was going to be one of those annoying hobby people. And all I want to do with my gadgetry, if I go at sea's route, is to recoup my losses so I can build another. Because I'm doing this for me, not for a product.

But as an artist who's thinking about professionalism and making a profit, making at least enough to cover your time as well as your materials and kiln, that's harder than just, well, you know, I like doing this and my time is free then. And actually, since I'm doing this as a hobby and I've given one to all of my friends, now I have to get rid of it somehow. Here, Etsy, take it at a loss. Well, and I'll have to admit that probably for the first two years, that's exactly what I have to get rid of it somehow. Here, Etsy, take it at a loss. Well, and I'll have to admit that probably for the first two years, that's exactly what I have been doing is I've been just figuring out the cost, putting it out there. Sometimes I'll make or I'll lose a little money on shipping because maybe I didn't price the shipping enough. But yes, it does get it out of the house.

And I try and recoup back some of the cost of glass because because believe it or not, the raw materials for glass is not cheap. And so if I could just get back that money, then I can do more exploring. Having said that, at some point, you have to sort of think, okay, well, maybe I want to buy another tool. And so now instead of just recouping the cost, as an example, I want a tile saw, maybe I need to figure out how to start making a little bit more money to then be able to buy some of these additional things I want. So I'm in that part right now, trying to weigh that balance and trying to figure it all out. And it's sometimes easier and more fun to give things away or even give it at a cheaper price because if you sell it at full price and if you count your time you have to be really critical of your work um there's the pressure of

someone paying you and you can't give them crap i mean maybe that's just the engineering embedded consultant in me that's like yeah if I ended up surfing the web for the last 10 minutes, I don't charge for that because that's not work. That's not good stuff. And I charge for good stuff. Do you, how do you, how do you get around that? How do you get around being so critical of yourself as you're doing something artistic? Well, wow, that's a loaded question. So a couple of things things is one right now I don't charge for my time because I view it as learning and having fun and so from that standpoint I haven't quite added in the time part yet on the critical part there I have two huge tubs full of pieces that I

would never sell and because I am extremely critical and you look sometimes at what other people put out there and, uh, and, and you think, well, I wouldn't sell that. And so, uh, my husband found me an article that was talking, it was a woodworking article, but the guy identified his problem as compulsive mistake identification. And basically it's being way too critical and finding a mistake in everything. So I'm starting to let go a little bit and kind of go ahead and say, this is art. So it may not be a perfect edge, but that's what art is. Having said that, I still have a hard time and I still want to, and I think it is the engineering in us. You're used to angles and just things that are perfect, symmetrical, and not sort of wavy edges, which, you know, I allow sometimes people to come to my shop and make glass as you have.

And some non-engineers don't want a perfect edge. They want the waves, which is always kind of interesting to me. Nuts. Yes. How are you handling making art, the individual pieces versus craft making what sells? Well, so far, I've been worrying more about the art and focusing on learning. So typically, if you look at my shop, there's not a lot of two pieces that look like each other. Because I try new methods, Bullseye is always putting out new lessons on new techniques they've created, and then they tell you how to do it, you can go

experiment and give it a try. So so far, that's been what I've been focusing on. Although I decided for this holiday season, that I'm going to give a hand at making pieces that might sell and see if I find that boring. So I'm going to make a lot more coasters and soap dishes and nightlights. Like I said, I really haven't done a lot of that. And see if maybe I have increased sale. At the same time, if I find it boring and that takes the fun out of it, that'll be a good indication that I need to find a better balance. And for holiday, you mean Christmas, even though it's August?

Yes, Christmas. I think some people, well, they have sales out there called Christmas in July. So I think people start thinking of making Christmas arts and crafts starting in July. Well, that makes sense. I mean, there's a decent lead time. You have to figure out what you're going to do, which does require at least having an idea of what materials. And then you put it together and then you fire it. And then now you have one now if you

want to make a hundred repeat that cycle a few times and you know it's going to be September by the time you post it and then somebody will buy it in October November yeah you do need to start thinking about it now in order to figure out what you're going to do for this year yeah and it's interesting running a store trying to sell any type of good. There's a lot more analytics in it than I would have realized before a lot more marketing that, you know, maybe your job as an engineer, you don't think about that much about marketing, you leave that to marketing. But there's really a whole combination of all sorts of things tied up in it. And one of the analytics of trying to sell that at least my observation is that my glass pieces that are a Christmas design don't sell so well. Having said that, glass pieces sell for Christmas. So I see a

huge increase in sales in October, November and the beginning of December because people are buying items for Christmas presents. But that doesn't mean they want red and green because maybe red and green is very limited. You can only use it at Christmas time. So if you're going to give a gift, you want something that somebody can enjoy year round. So I would have never realized that before. So the first Christmas, I made all these red and green things thinking they were all going to sell and I still have most of them. So does your previous career in Silicon Valley at me at Monta Vista is Monta Vista allowed me because we were a very small company when I started, I got to understand all the different functional groups. And so now that I'm more aware of how all the different things so not just engineering, but I understand marketing, I understand legal, I understand

branding, I understand webs, and you know how and, you know, how to, you know, kind of put things out on the web to get noticed. I've been able to use a lot of that. And having said that, it's still a tremendous amount of more additional learning, which luckily, there's, you know, a plethora of information on both the web and in books on how to market your stuff, especially on Etsy and Facebook and Twitter. So that makes sense. I mean, I know you're in it a lot to learn. And I tend to pick up new things for the same reason. Yes. So do you worry that your hobby is going to become a chore? That's part of this year's Christmas project is that, yes, my husband and I both worked at Hewlett Packard.

And remember when Lou Platt, one of our CEOs, retired, he bought a winery and he made the statement that he hoped it didn't ruin a perfectly good hobby. And so that's always stuck in our brain. And so from that standpoint, I don't want it to become a chore. And we've actually met a lot of other glass people we've talked with that said that they now only make what sells. So I'm trying to find the balance of being able to be creative, have fun, but also recoup the costs so that I can keep doing it. So this Christmas will be an interesting experiment to see if I find making those smaller things that I think will sell more of if it's

going to be a boring or I can still be creative in the ways that I designed the soap dishes and the nightlights. And there's there's coloring in the lines and then there's coloring and still having fun inside the lines. Exactly. Well, I think we're about out of time. Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with? No, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you and good luck on your Etsy store. It sounds like a great idea. And we'll see. We'll see. I have a lot of things going on. So we'll see. Thank you for sharing. And I do wish you the best of luck for the holiday and for Etsy and just trying to make a go of this. Well, thank you. It's a different sort of startup than I usually talk about. Yes. That's it for this week's show.

Fewer gadgets, but maybe some food for thought. Thank you all for listening, and a big thanks to our producer, Christopher White.