Bookmaking

 For as long as I can remember I have always loved books. All kinds of books, not just reading books. Everything from Encyclopedias to planners is fascinating to me. And of course I absolutely love reading books; it's my favorite pastime; my addiction.

 Bookmaking however has only been a relatively recent fascination. I got interested in bookmaking in a sort of roundabout way. For those who do not know, my religion falls under the Pagan umbrella and back when I first started learning and studying, all the books and people practicing talked about having personal books to keep all my notes, thoughts and beliefs in. One online mentor gave me the intriguing idea of scrapbooking. Scrapbooking is something I always found interesting and had done a few times in the past so I thought why not. However after searching long and hard I could not find the type of book I wanted. Nothing spoke to me even in stores, plus it was hard to find a book that I knew was easy to add pages to later on.



 Then I came across a blog post online which explained with pictures how to make a post bound book. It took me awhile but I bought all the materials (fell in love with the specialty paper section at the local art supply and stationary stores) and built my first book. The scrapbooking continued from there every once in awhile but I thought I was done. Then a few years later a group of friends were graduating and I wanted to make something for them instead of buying it. It took me awhile but after I came up with the idea of making small, personalized books for them I kept going until I had all six done. They came out great if I do say so myself. Here are pictures of four of them.

 I have not made many books since then because it takes a lot of time and space and my personal life went through a lot of changes not too long after that. But I've learned other styles of bookbinding, like Japanese ribbon binding. And I've taken the last year to study how others are binding, designing, marketing, pricing and selling their hand-made books since I had planned to include books in my Etsy shop from
the beginning.

 The thing is, books take a lot longer to make than my bath and body products and its more labor intensive especially since I don't have any of the expensive equipment that makes it easier. But lately, I've been getting the urge to make new books to put up for sale. The idea machine in my head has stopped churning out new ideas for body scrubs and bath soaks. I still have quite a few to unveil in the shop but I think I'll be physically focused on bookmarking for the next few months. My post next week will probably be a picture heavy post showing you my bookmaking process. I hope you guys will look forward to that. I can't wait for you all to see another side of my creative process.

Spring Creations and Renewals

Taurus Bath Soak

Hi All,

Spring has sprung though its still snowing in some places. I saw a great meme this weekend that said, "You think its April but its actually the 96th day of January." Here in NYC the weather is doing its bipolar thing which is how I know its spring. Which means it is now time to share all the great Spring products available to you in my shop while I whip up new ones. The research itself is rewarding; enough so that I've been thinking about including blog posts summing up my findings for each zodiac sign and the herbs, spices and flowers associated with them. Would you guys be interested in that? Let me know in the comments below.

Along with the Zodiac bath soaks I've been happily renewing my Sabbat oils and adding their corresponding loose incense. The incense is the herbal base for the oils; what I pour into the carrier and essential oils for a few weeks before straining and selling the oils for each Sabbat. I thought why not offer these as well, they smell amazing? I've also been renewing many of the scented body scrubs and bath soaks such as the Eucalyptus n' Speaking Bath Soak during whichever season I feel they fit with. Soon to come will be the lemon package: Lemon Body scrub, Honey n' Lemon Facial scrub; as well as a few others.

Orange n' Rose Body Scrub

I had renewed the Orange n' Rose Body Scrub as part of the Romantic Package back in February for Valentine's Day but since then I've had the idea of a Lime n' Lavender Body Scrub so I've been trying that scent combination out to see if I like it. I love the alliteration of tthe name and it was interesting to come up with another floral-citrus combo. Its ready for testing so once that's done I'll unveil that as well.

What are some hot spring and summer scents you all are looking forward too?

Facebook Marketing

I have come to the somewhat sad conclusion that Facebook is not the place for me to build an original following for Scarlet Moon Creations. Facebook before it went public would have been great for my young business. Unfortunately, I did not create a business page until just before that. The effect going public had was that now Facebook had to prove that it could make money as a social networking site. It decided to do this in one way by changing its site wide algorithms ruling what content users see. Basically, the more you like a certain person's or page's posts the more they show up on your news feed. The drawback to that is if you don't click that like button often enough those 'less liked' people and pages will disappear from your news feed.

Now all of us who have used Facebook for purely personal reasons know that we don't click that button for everything we see on our news feeds but that does not mean we do not want to see it all. Now Facebook did try to adjust things by giving you the option to change your settings and let certain people and pages onto your news feed while blocking others. They then came up with the Pages Feed so that you could actually see what the businesses and groups are up to without them getting lost among your more personal contacts. You can even make lists for family, friends, co-workers, and any other specialized grouping so that they can essentially have a separate news feed that you can look at. But honestly, when it comes down to it who wants to do all that work to find out what's going on with the people, places and things you have already taken the time to find and like so you could follow them easier. It somewhat defeats the purpose.

After officially going public, Facebook took even more measures to show its backers it can make money by creating advertising and boost payment packages for pages. "Hey, not getting enough followers, why don't you pay for an ad that you create for your target market here." Not a bad idea; a good one actually. But on top of that Facebook's new algorithm says, "hey all those followers you got (and possible paid for ads to get) aren't really seeing your posts. Really it's only 6% of them so you should pay to boost your individual posts so that the people who already liked your page can actually see you on their news feeds." Many business pages went from having, as an example, 1,000 followers and roughly 600 likes and/or views for each post they publish down to roughly 60 likes and/or views per post. For those of us just starting out, you only get about 5-10 views or likes per post unless you pay to boost your posts. And that's hard on a new small business. Unfortunately, within the past few weeks Facebook has done another update that reduces views for posts to only 1-2% of your following.

Courtesy of Pixabay

One way to get around the views issue is for your followers to click yes for notifications from your page once they like your page. This means every time you post something they will get a notification. The drawbacks are if those people don't look at their notifications often, it makes no difference or if you post a lot all those notifications can become annoying. So with all of this, these past few months I've been very frustrated trying to crunch the numbers and coming to the conclusion that Facebook is not the place to build a new business following. I think it's best to be more established elsewhere first and then give those people the option to follow me on Facebook and to offer Facebook only specials.

What does this mean for Scarlet Moon Creations and Facebook? Well, I've reduced my presence there by not posting as much. I plan to be more active on this blog and on my personal blog on tumblr. I use Pinterest, Instagram and most recently Google+ as sort of behind-the-scenes looks into Scarlet Moon Creations inspirations, creation process, ingredients, and its owner. I hope to create a full picture from all angles so you can see the business grow without being redundant across multiple social networking sites.

So Facebook is not going away entirely just having a reduced presence. I know that means more work for me since one of the perks of Facebook was if I go on for personal reasons and see or think of something worth posting on Scarlet Moon Creations page I could do so easily. That and already having a follower base to work from. But if even my friends and family cannot see my business posts to like and share it short of defeats the purpose. I wanted to end this post on a positive note and not a bitter one. I've gone back and forth over this entire issue and how I feel about it and I think that this decision is best for now and that is why I feel I can write about it. Its not the end, its just the beginning.