BadBob

This is a Steve Good pattern I cut. I like these and want to make some that have people's names on them with a word that is something they like on the other side. I think I can make patterns easily as long as the word is the same length, but what if I have a five-letter name and want the other word to be 6 or seven characters? Can it be done? If it can be done how?

I use Harbor Freight Pitsburg Calpers. They work well for me, except that they eat batteries. I fixed this by removing the battery when I was done using them. I also have their dial caliper, and it works well when I am going for fractional sizes, but it is not so good for letter/numbered bits. They mostly get used for sizing drills to dowels. I also have calipers, the slide rule type I have had for years.

Some pattern creators do not test-cut their patterns. I know this because I asked. I have found this to be true of many plans sold for toys as well. Most of these are a bit of a stretch to call them a plan because they only provide the pattern with zero instructions about making the toy.

The utm_medium tag works with Goimagine analytics. I promoted a listing yesterday, changing my tag from social to OTF-social, and this morning, the new tag was in Goimagin Analytics.

I rarely use phone apps for social media. If I try to log in using my user ID or email, TikTok shows me a round puzzle that I am supposed to spin one of the pieces until the parts of the photos line up. It doesn't work. The pieces will not move. GA4 is different. I have found that if I have questions about how to do something the Google Gemini AI is a great place to ask. You have to be very clear with your questions and read the responses carefully. It works well for most anything Google.

I quit using TikTok when they started using that match-the-puzzle thing to log in. It doesn't work in any of my four browsers. I've been on Pinterest since it started, so I'm very familiar with it. When I first saw it, I said, "Wow, bookmarks with pictures." I only use Instagram because it is easy. Although there have been very few hits from there, one of my biggest customers found me through Instagram.

I use a large collection of royalty-free music. To use it, drag and drop the music, add the fadeout filters at the end, and test. I use Shotcut.

I get the best returns from Pinterest because I post a lot there, and the posts are perpetual. People are still seeing pins I posted years ago. There are some oddities that get lots of views and click-throughs but rarely or never sell. I see stuff from Facebook, but unless you use UMTs, you don't know where they are coming from. If they copy and paste a link into a browser, it will show as direct. Most of my views are direct. This is true for Etsy and Goimagine. When I started promoting my Goimagine shop, I knew I had to figure out how to track this and see which sites were worth the effort. It is a lot of work, and if I am not getting results, why waste my time? You can configure Google Analytics to track conversions, but I don't know how. Yet. Videos are a pain to make. You have to make them, edit them, add soundtracks, upload them, and wait for them to get processed. I haven't made any in a long time. That said, I do get hits from YouTube for the few I have posted there.

Yeah, it's a weird name, but it works. Use it if you are using Google Analytics and want to know if your promotions are worth the trouble. UTM tags are how you do it. I have been using them for a few days, and they work. The downside is that you must build a custom URL for every place you post. Here is a sample I used on Facebook today. This one is on my Facebook Business page: https://odinstoyfactory.com/564816133/?utm_source=OTF-facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Hot_Rod_564816133 This one is on my personal page: https://odinstoyfactory.com/564816133/?utm_source=personal-facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Hot_Rod_564816133 Instead of just showing up as some Facebook source, the red sources will be listed, and I know where the clicks are coming from. I put something in the utm_campaign tag to help me identify which post got clicked on. In this case, it was a short description and SKU. I think I will stick with that. utm_medium I set all of them to social because that is where I mostly post. After I started this, the social category began appearing in my Goimagine analytics. I don't think this is a coincidence. I have asked Goimagine support but haven't heard from them. Etsy analytics suck. They don't filter anything I have been able to detect, so if your page is getting hammered with referral spam from Poland, it will show up as page views in your stats. I highly recommend using Google Analytics for your stats. Goimagin's analytics seem to be OK so far for what they show, but they do not show you the actual source.

This old photo shows the umbrellas, floodlights, and tent. I rarely use the umbrellas. I clamp the tent flush with the table's edge and set the lights against the tent, pointing directly at the item. The overhead lights are daylight LEDs and are part of the lighting. Someday, I will have a boom light. You could use flash, but this gets very complicated because you can't see the photo's appearance until afterward.

I don't find the wrinkles in the material to be much of an issue. They might be an issue if you are not using a camera that allows you to control the depth of field. In this photo, can you see the wrinkles in the backdrop? Yes, you can but you need to be looking for them. I tried a bunch of different lights before I settled on LED Daylight Floodlights on stands. I wasted money on the cheap tabletop lights they sell on Amazon. If you don't want to use a tent, you can get umbrellas to diffuse the light.

I use one of the photo tents. I like it. However, the one I purchased is not large enough. I struggled with the colors for a while until I discovered that the tent was not white. It is pale grey. Lighting is extremely important in photography. If you get the lighting right, you can take great photos with a simple camera. A tent diffuses the light and reduces the number of sharply defined shadows, but it is not a magic pill. I don't use color backdrops because they alter the piece's color. Unless you have very bright light you need to shoot from a tripod for best results.

I have not done it, but I have seen it done in videos. The only problem I can see with it is that you would need to hit the lines perfectly unless you are going to paint or round over the edges. If I had a laser I would do it.

I print from Inkscape to legal size and o shipping labels. I must change the size in the document properties to the size of the paper.

That is because Steve Good's patterns are SVG stored in a PDF to make a book. When scanning patterns, you produce a bitmap. JPG, PNG, or BMP are just a few of the image bitmap formats. Inkscape will let you set the paper size to anything you want. If your printer can't handle it, that is a different story. I do wish that it had the capability of splitting the pattern across multiple pages. I had software years ago that would do this, but unfortunately, it only ran on OS/2.

PDF is a container. It is not a format. The only reason to put patterns into a PDF is if it is multiple pages and you want to keep them together for some reason. You do not need to print on A3 paper. Go to the document properties and change the paper size to your preference.

I thought I had all of her birdhouse patterns. The second from the right on the top row looks like a Steve Good pattern.

Are these your designs? I see several that I havent seen before.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=setuo+etsy+with+ga4

I have Google Analytics set up and running on all my sites. I have only collected a few weeks of data, but it is already obvious that many of Etsy's stats are useless. Etsy makes no effort to block referral spam, which is many sessions. Fortunately, GA4 lets us block these domains. I don't think this is retroactive, so the junk that has accumulated is still there. Etsy doesn't filter sessions that originate outside the US. Since I only sell to the US market, the numbers in the Etsy stats are inflated. I could filter out all the domains outside the US, but that would be a major chore. With some basic math, I have determined that only 11% of the sessions shown by Etsy are potential customers. This is the slow time of year, and I only have enough data to compare the last 30 days. Goimagine blocks referer spam. This was mentioned in one of the live videos, and I don't see any in GA4. There are no sessions from outside the US, but currently, there is very little traffic from outside the US. Goimagine's analytics are close to what I see in GA4, although I don't have enough data yet to be sure. Do I start selling outside the US? It would be a lot of work to go to each country and determine the requirements. I was selling worldwide for a while until they started adding all the new rules. I stopped because it was getting complicated.

Plywood or MDF would work. Hardboard was what I had in the shop.

I'm not organized at all. I lose things all the time. The boards go into the stack with everything else. I lost an airplane last year. All the parts were cut, and it was ready to assemble. I sold a made-to-order item and dropped everything to get that done, and life got in my way. When I remembered the airplane, I could not find it. It' is still out there some where with something sitting on top of it.

Here is the best shot I have. If I sand some thin small, I snug it up to the spindle.

@OCtoolguy, I also use my boards to paint larger pieces. I drill holes for a dowel and glue it in. It gives me a handle to hold onto while painting that I can hold in my hand, clamp in a vise, or hold with locking pliers. The dowel is cut off flush when I am done painting.

Oh, that... It's a holder for small parts. I have several of these with holes of different sizes. Here are some examples of how I use them.