Thank you, girls…

For all the good vibes you send in our direction. They sure helped, I am back pottering around in record time!

And for the ones of you who were wondering about how Turkish hospitals are, I will tell you a bit about them. Of course there are hospitals and hospitals. The ones belonging to the government ,or worse, the ones belonging to the public health insurance, you will want to skip all together. The private hospitals are excellent, though. So much so, that health insurers in for instance the United Kingdom, are sending patients to Turkey to have surgery where for are long waiting lists in Europe.

So, my Dutch insurance company agreed with my local private hospital and that was great.
Things are done here differently, though, or Turkey wouldn’t be Turkey.

During the visits to the doctor, no notes at all are made, just the labs results are in the computer. No appointment book is used, either.

Gynecologist : Let me think, when do I have the time to operate you? This week I am out of town, and I know that I have C-sections on the 15th and 18th, so lets do it the 16th…
Midwife-nurse: You sure? The 18th is Mrs. A’s, but whose is on the 15th?
Gynecologist: I don’t remember either, but I am positive that I have a C-section then. We’ll see when she arrives…Esther, I see you on the 16th!

And so I was there on the 16th, because, despite these erratic system, I know that Turkish physicians are often brilliant and committed. And they kind of expected me on that day, the doctor was there, and the anesthetist, and after a couple of hours even a room was available. And by that mingle of serendipity and improvisation that makes Turks so endearing, they also remembered what organs to remove and had me in and out of the hospital with hardly any discomfort at all!

Star mum ogling the web the day after her mayor surgery, he,he…

Great things happen :D

We are so excited that we finally found our niche! People who have been reading older posts must know that we had our difficulties with that. The Sea Urchins are doing great and gets alot of attention :) The other day we where on the Frontpage of Etsy thanks to Pamela Angus's beautiful treasury (please check out her awesome shop)! The next great thing was that the earrings where sold to one of admins members of Etsy!!! So we had alot to celebrate!

Also we got alot of blog features in a short while, wich also says that we are on the right track!
http://dharmadesigns.blogspot.com/
http://wisechild-designs.blogspot.com/
http://uptownfrum.blogspot.com/
http://pamelaangus.blogspot.com/
http://dotjewelry.squarespace.com/
http://etsyhighdesertdiva.blogspot.com/
http://isetehtud.blogspot.com/
(Please check out these awesome blogs!!!)
So we are very happy that the hardworking for new pictures and our Sea Urchin Collection payed so good off, and just wanted to share all the great news with you!

Branch office of heaven

I have moaned often enough in this blog over the weirdness of living in Turkey and specially of dealing with government related affaires.
If you have asked yourself why we do live here, look at this photographs and you’ll know. Nature is all around us, and yes, it is paradise

These pictures are taken during the 40 km drive to the beach where we find the sea urchins and other treasures that you are seeing lately in our jewelry.
The road has at times the sea at its left or its right, being a peninsula, and goes through a pine trees, eucalyptus and rhododendron forest.

We encounter several goats during the journey. If you bleat, they bleat back. Instant contact! In the background are blue painted bee hives.


We are almost there! You can see the sea through the trees…



Here you are, the branch office of heaven…and you know what? It is all ours. When ever we go, summer or winter, we never see a soul. You can walk for miles at the sea shore, pick up treasures and find calm. No wonder that we are looking smug sitting in our private paradise.


And than the road back…along the sea…through the forest…



These are the sea urchins, the way we find them.


After several manipulations they will look like this…

Target Market

A few days ago our European Street Team Members had an appointment at the chatroom. Our subject was: Target Market. To put everything in a row and to review our conversations I made some notes and here are the results of a 4 hour chat session:
Target Market:
Most economists would suggest that BEFORE you start selling, you should look for your Target market. So if you think about selling bags (handmade or not) for example, you should think about what kind of bags you would like to sell and how large the target market would be. With bags you have all kind of styles and purposes, like how large is the target market for bold colored girly bags? Or laptop cases? Or just ordinary bags for daily use? Do women buy more bags or men? And who spend most of there money on bags? Housewives or working women? Younger or older women? If you go on thinking this way you will soon find the perfect market. Of course you also will have to look out for competition, if there is much, you will have to give it a different twist or have to offer great price deals.
While as artist with handmade things is a whole different story: You first start to make your things and when you hear nice reactions you start to think about your options how to make money with your passion. So as artist we start maybe the wrong way; we do not look for our Target Market nor competition when we do our ‘thing’. Handmade is always unique but still there are many artists who make alike things, with or without knowing that they even have competition.
So what do we, artists, have to do? How or why do we have to find our Target Market?
During our 4 hour chat session soon everyone noticed lacks in their way of selling like bad pictures, wrongly priced items and most of us never really had thought about our target.
First things that came up for Target were age, gender and style. And after that how large our Target would be with those in mind and how we could make our target larger. Knowing your target can effect you whole way of selling; style, item descriptions, how and where to advertise and so on.
We have been thinking about asking our customers a few questions to learn more about our customers so also to know who our target really is. Questions like there age, style, taste and hobbies could be very helpful. One member (PaperFlowerGirl) suggested to give the customers a nice extra gift for taking the time to answer the sellers questions. That is indeed a great idea but not everyone would feel comfortable to ask these questions, nor everyone would like to answer them. It is indeed difficult to find your Target Market if you already have started to make your items, hopefully we will learn more soon, maybe in our next chat appointment?
We are now busy with finding a way to get a bigger audience for our shops. Especially EUROPE could be a great Target Market for us, European sellers. We have to use our advantages of being geographically closer to these buyers so that they will have lower shipping costs and faster shipping. All European sellers should think good about how they can promote theirs and other local Etsy shops in there own country by advertising and giving interviews at magazines and newspapers. Difficult side of European buyers is that many do not have experience with buying online and do not own a credit card. By having that in mind it could be an option to have more options as paying method beside Paypal like bank drafts etc. Also MEN buyers are very low, and we are looking for ways to make them buy more for their ladies, hmmm even harder to get them!

A Turkish wedding

One of Estella’s friends got married the other day. A Turkish wedding is, of course, similar to any other wedding, but some oddities make it worth to share in a blog post.

Here is the bride gathering her strength for the ceremony, with the omnipresent Ata Türk looming in the background.


The bride and groom make their appearance at the wedding place accompanied by confetti and party crackers.


They give each other their ‘yes’ in the presence of two witnesses, a wedding official (in purple gown) and all the guests.


Then the happy couple opens the dance. The red sash around the bride’s loins is a virginity symbol, as is the white dress.


The male friends of the groom dance around the couple.


The most awkward part of the ceremony is the pinning of money or gold coins on bride and groom. Somebody holds a dish with pins and you fasten your offering without sticking the pin in human parts. Because the gift is openly displayed, thriftiness is out of the question!


The fastening of presents is accompanied by happy drumming.


Exhausted by all the festivities, the bride badly needed an smoke. That had to happen in the bathroom, because well brought up Turks never smoke in the presence of their elders, no matter how old they have become themselves.


She also needed a pee.


Greatly relieved, she goes back to the festivities.


The cutting of the cake. The knife is very similar to a Turkish scimitar. If the girl has second thoughts, this is the moment to act upon them, one should think.


The couple, tired and happy, at the end of the evening with the friends of the bride. As the Turkish say: ‘That they may grow old on one pillow.’

Little visitor

This little guy was playing with the keys at the back door of our studio.
There are thousands and thousands of feral cats in our small town. In summer, they find plenty of food in the waste of all the hotels and restaurants. In winter, when the tourists have mercifully left and the town is deserted, well, than is survival of the fittest.
It is a blessing in disguise that we are both extremely allergic to cats, otherwise we would probably end up with fifteen cats as well.

Shit happens

Last Sunday, an hour long downpour was enough to swamp the lower parts of the town, where the insufficient or not existent canalization could not absorb it. The biggest supermarket, really a big one, was flooded and won’t open in three weeks.
Our studio, also downtown, was flooded as well. Many pieces got damaged, some of them beyond repair. Shit.


(gardenpainter4)
In such situations, I have the greatest admiration for the Turks. They are stoic and laconic and convinced that some good will come of it.
If you travel through the poorest parts of Turkey, you can find always some little old man in rags, obviously at the end of his tether. If you ask him, as is the custom, ‘uncle, how are you?’, he will smile a big toothless smile and answer, ‘very thankful’ (to God). I am always moved by this faith, by the ability to find thankfulness where there is nothing to be thankful for.


(ratsliveonnoevilstar)
I simply envy the ability to disconnect reason and simply believe. We, the infidel, can only say, well…shit happens.

The mail blues

I think I could write a book about the Turkish mail services. I imagine the main post office in Istanbul as a big, crumbling, ill illuminated building. Well, that ill illuminated is probably inspired by the fact that I am writing this post by candle light on my laptop. It is rainy weather, and when that is the case, we have no electricity, sometimes for hours at a time.

Well, in that big darkish building I imagine an enormous pit, where the sacks mail coming from the plains are emptied. Once in a while, a foot dragging, tired civil servant, grabs some mail and put it on the bus to some remote destination, for instance, Marmaris, the small town in the outmost South West, where we live. There in the post office, big baskets filled to the brim wait the whim of another bored civil servant to be distributed. This is no fantasy, the tale telling baskets are in plain sight. The post office employees drink gallons of tea in the mean time and hope that the mail evaporates.

(AngieHallHaviland)

So, it should be clear, that receiving mail is erratic at best. The record of tardiness rest with a post card coming from Holland, that took a year to arrive. Of course other pieces of mail unbeknownst to us could be still very well at the bottom of the pit gathering…experience.
But, because of this, you are grateful and pleasantly surprised with any small mercy coming from the post office. The post office makes you humble and teaches you not to take any thing for granted. Did you know that the post office could do that for you?

(kateblack)

We rent a P.O. box in the main office in town, not to over work the mail man. Seldom any thing ever lies there, but once I found the box overflowing with mail. Briefly I thought the improbable thought that we had won all of a sudden a popularity contest. But of course, it became very soon clear that it was wrongly delivered post, puzzling enough it was outgoing mail, that the tourists in Marmaris had written to home, in the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, etc.
I queued in the post office and tried to give the mail to the employee, telling him it wasn’t mine. His baffling answer was: we have a margin of error of five percent. And with these words he refused any farther dealing with it, leaving me with almost four hundred post cards in my hand. I told you, life is never boring, here. Routine? ...never!

Sometimes, mail do arrive, and brings wonderful things, like these unbelievable little mermaids, a trade with a lady on Etsy that makes this delicate little gals full with great details and grace. You can find them in her shop, along with other whimsical jewelry for a steal. Go quickly and shop!

European Dream list!

I'm so happy to be among so many talented European artists in our Street Team at Etsy! Altought we laught alot I'm sometimes sad that I can't buy everything I want...

Here are some of my favorits, they fit perfectly together and are so beautiful on there own!

If you would like to see more of there work you can click on the link below the pictures or you can visit our European Street Team to find many more talented artists!

HeliSengezer

Karlita

Kreativlink

BabaStudioPrague

Pamela Angus

Lapomme

XbyLeinaNeima

Anne Julie

Turkish spiders

Today was a funny thread going on the European Street Team on Etsy, about Turkish spiders. Apparently arachnophobia is very common. We have no problems with spiders, we have other phobias (that we keep secret).

(DeliciousCrochet)

But, did you know that spiders have a kind of holy status here in Turkey?

According to the legend, the prophet Mohammed fleeing for his enemies through the dessert, took refuge in a cave. The spiders immediately wove a dense web at the entrance of the cave. Mohammed’s enemies noticed the cave, but because of the web assumed that nobody had used the cave in a long time, and continued on. The prophet was so saved by the spiders.

By the way, exactly the same legend exists with turtle doves building their nest at the entrance of the cave. Turtle doves or collared doves come originally from Jordan, but are very common in Turkey as well, beautiful birds with pinkish brown feathers, always in twos, faithful for life.

(ragtrader)

When I was a civil engineer working for Amsterdam’s city hall we had two lady visitors, two architects from South America. In Amsterdam, pigeons are a plague, their detritus causing severe damage to buildings, because of its acidity, so that many historical buildings have to be wrapped in metal mesh, to prevent the birds letting their droppings on window sills and so.
I was explaining to those ladies what a big nuisance these pigeons were, and they started to giggle uncontrollably. Asked what was so funny, they say: How can something that you can eat, be a nuisance?

Tja,…how indeed?