Metalheart Jewelry

Etsy Shop Name: Metalheart Jewelry

What you sell: Jewelry that I make from silver, semi-precious stones, chain, and other pretty bits.
I am currently taking metalworking classes so that I can expand my designs--I’d really like to be focusing mostly on the metals. I LOVE learning this skill!

Tell us about your featured item: These are my Smokestack Lightning earrings, my favorite piece right now. I like to think of this look as “modern rustic-industrial”. This pair combines many of my favorite ingredients: smoky quartz, chain, silver, circles, oxidation… I called them Smokestack Lightning because the name references the stone and creates the idea of old trains. (Plus, with just a few exceptions, I name all my pieces after songs. This one is an old blues song by Howlin’ Wolf that’s been covered by a lot, from the Yardbirds to Soundgarden.)

How do you market your Etsy shop?

I try to stay involved in the forums and the treasury on etsy, and I also renew items I have listed a few times a day. I’ve joined a few teams on etsy as well, my favorite is etsyrain, the seattle etsy team! Outside of etsy, I maintain accounts on myspace, flickr, and indiepublic (www.myspace.com/metalheartdesign and http://www.flickr.com/photos/metalheart_design/sets/72157602037669890/ ) but I feel I could be doing much, much more! I have a couple of domain names, but only have one set up (www.metalheartdesign.net) with anything on it. I would love to start a blog one of these days, too. I have a full-time-plus day job, so I run out of time to do a lot of the things I’d like to be doing with my shop. Which is unfortunate, because I’d WAY rather be playing with my jewelries!

Why do you think that most Etsy shop owners are worried about filing taxes?

Probably just having a lack of information about it. People (including myself, and I’m even a lawyer!) get overwhelmed by the mere idea of dealing with taxes but usually once you just start doing it, it becomes easier. It is also helpful to have an organized system of tracking all the information you need all year long instead of on January 30th! Hmm, I wonder where an etsy seller might find some useful business tracking tools… (wink!)