Creations In Glass Blog

It's been awhile since our last update.  But since the excavation, they came in and plumbed the pool for electricity and water including the in-floor cleaning system, then they set up the re-bar mesh contours.  The pics below show the pvc plumbing for the inground floor cleaning system as well as the rebar mesh grid.

After adding the structural re-bar contours they came in and sprayed wet gunnite all over the mesh, it should be 3 inches under and over the mesh bars for a total thickness of 6 inches or more.  They smoothed and contoured the gunnite and it looks great.  Scott stayed home that day to watch, he said it was really cool watching it.  The gunnite only took one day.  They came in the next day and set the natural rock boulders along the edges of the pool. 

Unfortunately, after the gunnite the project hit our first major delay...and we didn't find out what the delay was for a week or more...  So, the pool had been continuously worked on everyday except weekends, now it was almost 2 weeks and we hadn't seen anyone.  We called, emailed, left messages, played phone tag.

Apparently, it was "several" things.  Our project manager was super busy...our foreman was out of town, AND on top of that the Palapa (our big tropical umbrella for shade over the recessed kitchen area) was causing the holdup...  So, the great town of Oro Valley had initially approved the permit for the project, when they came out to inspect the gunnite job, they said the requirements for permitting the palapa had changed and since it was over 120 sq. foot, it had to have structural engineering plans to permit it!  Soooo, I guess the pool company had to hire and pay a structural engineer to draw up the plans for how the palapa would be installed, including load, elevation etc. So, the palapa sits on the ground waiting for the OK.

In the meantime we hired Jose Bautista to construct our block wall.  He is amazing and gave us a very good price.  He was the original contractor/mason who built most of the walls in our neighborhood when it was first built.  Our walls are great, they are strong and not cracking or settling.  He built our new wall in 2 days!  The first day he came out with his crew, stayed on site all day and dug the footers, poured the concrete and set the rebar.  The next day he set all the blocks with mortar and stucco finished it.  What a super nice guy, and it looks great too!  We had him leave a 10 foot opening for a gata as well as a small 3 foot opening.  My favorite part of the wall is near the tree.  He decided it would look better to do a curved wall around our existing tree and include it in the pool area.  The curved wall looks really decorative and really adds a nice accent to the space.  We also had him fill in our wall near the pool equipment for code and safety.  The wall actually provides a decent amount of shade from the West setting sun!

 The pool masons returned this week and weekend to dig and pour the footer for the recessed kitchen area.  You can see it in the photos above, they laid 3 rows of block for the stem wall.  The "plan" at this point is that the permit for the palapa should be ready on Monday.  Hopefully, the palapa will go up soon, and then they will be pouring the in pool bar stools, the steps and counters in the pool area and laying tile.  Then cool deck, and pebble tec finish..I think!  So, from last week we got an estimate of 3 weeks til completion...  WE are melting and want to swim so bad!

Wow, things have been super busy and the pool project is moving right along.  It's going faster than I can keep up posting about it!

We had a pre-site meeting about 2 weeks ago and this is what it looked like then (click on pics for bigger views):

Then, about a week ago, they came in with a bob-cat and bull-dozed/leveled the site (click for bigger view):  Scroll down for excavation pics!

Then, a couple days after the leveling, they came in and started the excavation.  It took a total of 3 days for the complete excavation. After excavation was completed, we owed our first payment on the project. OUCH, but I'm sure the contractors are real happy. haha.  This last Friday, the plumbers came and laid PVC pipe for the water, air, and gas.  More pics to come soon on that part.  Next up, should be electricity I think...then rebar reinforcement and gunnite pouring/spraying.  Here are the excavation pics:

Wow, we finally decided to do it.  We've been debating about getting a pool for years, and we are closing on our loan today to build the pool.  We decided to do it, because the kids love the water, and man it is so darned hot here, that we need a way to cool off and spend time outside.  I grew up with a pool, so I'm used to the maintenance and upkeep, but man have things changed!

Here are our pool designs so far: 

This first pic shows the top view. Features include pebble tec, salt water, in ground floor cleaning, lagoon entry, spa, seating in the pool, and a sunken kitchen/bar area covered by the tahitian palapa, and swim up bar.

Pool1

This second pictures would show what it looks like from inside the sunken kitchen area looking towards the house.

Pool2

The third view looking towards the shallow end.

Pool3

The fourth view looking from the gate area towards the deep end. 

Pool4

It will have a cool deck, and fencing all around. We hope to install a sink, refrigerator and possibly a tv in the outdoor kitchen area, as well as a charcoal barbeque.

My next post will show the property before any digging is started! 

I got really lucky Friday afternoon around 5:30pm our time.  As you can see by my last post, our yellow stained glass butterfly has made it to the Etsy Front Page via the 4 scrolling Knock Out Images. 

I received a convo from a friend to let me know that we had a piece in a front page treasury!  I was shocked because we haven't had much treasury exposure lately.  It has been kind of disheartening since I had spent well over a month photo-editing all of our images.

Here is the front page treasury with our SAILBOAT fused glass plate and our yellow butterfly in the corner as one of the knockout images

creationsinglass_frontpage6-20

Sara from Etsy Teams picked out this treasury, and I want to say thank you!  I am the founder of the Creative Glass Guild of Etsy street team, and you can visit our team website here: http://www.cgge.org to see lots of great glass in different styles!  We also have blog updates, articles and member spotlights :)

Please visit Sara's blog here and show her some love: http://girlscantell.typepad.com/

YES!  I am so excited and pleased to see one our images/pieces on Etsy's front page.  As far as I know, we've only been in a front page treasury 2 times.  I've been told numerous times that photos are so uber important on Etsy for exposure and selection into treasuries, gift guides etc.  So, I embarked on a month long, self taught photo editing adventure, more on that in future posts! 

So, the image is a little yellow butterfly suncatcher and it is featured on the front page as part of a series of 4 scrolling images in the upper right hand corner.  The images are called Knock Out Images from what I can tell.  Here is some more info on how they are chosen etc.  http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5641253&page=1 

They are clickable directly to the listing in your shop.  I noticed this because I was checking the majaba heart-o-tron site to monitor item hearts and views, and I had 3 new hearts in one day on that piece.  WOW!  So, I thought maybe it was featured in a front page treasury.  Then I saw it!

Here is the screen shot!  I was playing with Flickr photo editing tools, and accidentally included an extra black arrow mid page, ignore that one!

My butterfly on Etsy's front page!

So, this has resulted in 4 new hearts on that piece, and almost 30 new views to that piece just today.  It is really exciting and great exposure.  Here are my before & after pics of the image before and after editing in photo shop to make it a pure white background or knockout image!  I cropped it square, 6 in X 6 in and basically adjusted curves and used the magic wand tool to outline my piece and then adjusted the curves again in the background to make it pure white.  Here is a link to the tutorial I used:  http://theswitchboards.com/articles_professionalphotos.html

There are easier and more efficient ways to do this, I'm told, so here are a few other helpful photo-editing links:

http://lapellaart.blogspot.com/2007/11/product-shots-for-not-so-dumb.html

http://www.graphic-design-employment.com/photoshop-clipping-paths.html

I plan on posting more before and after pics in my upcoming blog entries.  Stay tuned and I'd love to hear from you!

Kris

Here is my next chart!  It was inspired by Loosewirestudio.etsy.com

She has always been very helpful in the forums and I think is one of the pioneers for plotting all things Etsy...Check out her Etsy charts here:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/loosewirestudio/sets/72157603401715031/

Here is mine:

My biggest peaks in transactions were prior to Christmas 07 & prior to Mother's Day 07.

cig_summary_salestracking

These were pretty easy to make, I just downloaded my CSV files from Etsy from the Billing page and made a tab for each month, I used auto filter and sorted by transaction type, then created a separate tab to summarize the data by month and type, then plotted with a line graph.  If it's too complicated for you, http://Loosewirestudio.etsy.com is selling a super cheap version.

You can get more complete stats etc from these 2 Etsy sellers:

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5418829

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5903349

Wow, this question is always asked on Etsy...What is the best day of week to list, what is the best time of day to list, etc.

With the capability to download the csv files from your sold items, I was able to create a summary chart of all my sales since I started selling on Etsy (June 2006).  I have almost 2 years of data summarized in this little chart.  I formatted the cell to include the day of week and then sorted by day of week.  Then I quickly created a summary table, where I summed up all sales for a particular day of week (DOW) and then plotted in a bar graph.  I'm working on creating more charts and would love to hear how my sales data compares to yours...

It looks like Wednesday was my best day as far as quantity of sales (also as far as total $ earned).

Cig_sales_dow

The community of crafters and artists on ETSY---your place to buy and sell handmade are having a site wide YART SALE!  Like a Yard Sale but for Arts & Crafts.  It is from JUNE 11-20th and participating shops will be posting YART SALE in their listings, tags, titles, avatars, banners etc. to let you know that they are participants!

We have  special YART SALE section in our shop creationsinglass.etsy.com of already marked down pieces, no need to await a revised invoice!

Yartsale

For more information visit this thread~

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5653370