Cog & Pearl necklace, $22.

In today’s edition of under-$25 holiday gifts: a pretty vintage-inspired frame necklace from Cog & Pearl. Why did this pendant make our rigorous present-review process? It’s a whole lot of necklace for $22, Brooklyn gals of all ages and style persuasions will dig it and it’s romantic without going overboard. Plus it’s made by Brooklyn Rehab, one of our local Etsy favorites for a few years running now. Buy it online or at Cog & Pearl, Park Slope’s whimsically curated gift shop, 190 Fifth Ave. at Berkeley Pl. Park Slope, 718-623-8200.

Scarf by Marjin Bennett, bag by Aki Kano.

Diana Kane, the Park Slope boutique for all things soft, silky, unusual and handmade, is hosting two trunk shows this weekend featuring Brooklyn designers. Park Slope’s Megan Noonan makes handmade knits under the handle Marijn Bennett, while handbag designer Aki Kano  hails from Prospect Heights. If that’s not reason enough to pop by, the store is offering 15 percent off storewide — but it balloons, swells, gianticizes to a full 20 percent off if you mention Brokelyn at the register. (Never a bad thing to mention at registers because people who work them need to know about us too.) But we digress: Diana Kane is at 229 Fifth Ave. at President Street, open tomorrow from 11 to 8.

Photos by Christine Herskovits.

By now you’ve heard of the Dekalb Market, where local artisans and foodists peddle their wares in shipping containers parked on the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Willoughby Street. But are there deals lurking in those the steel-encased shops? Here’s what we found on a Brokelyn-style scout…

Designs By Alicia P features a $30 and under shelf and ring sale. Floga carries custom jewelry, from many designers, ranging from $5-$50. In addition, they sell leather sandals hand made in Greece. Prices start at $45 but as summer goes on, they will offer end-of-summer sales.

Greek handmade shoes are $45, but look for summer sales.

If you prefer to meet the designer and support a fellow Brooklynite, check out Kerrie Yeung’s booth.  With a rotating 10% off sale, rings as low as $10, and bracelets made of wooden and ceramic beads for $5, the best jewelry deals are found there. Additionally, this fall Kerrie will be offering classes at her Gowanus studio. Ask her about special rates for Brokelyn readers. (But wait, isn’t that everyone?)

Brooklyn Bodega carries vinyl at $4.99 and up, or ask for a card good for 10 free downloads.  If you’d like to let everyone know you love house music, Designed by Domino offers a variety of cool t-shirts and tanks for $15.

Blamo! Cuzin's Duzin's donuts, six for $2.

No visit to the market is complete without a bite. Standouts include Mazie’s Bites’ fish tacos (2 for $9.50, with slaw), but the best deal in the whole market is Cuzin’s Duzin’s Hot Fresh Mini Donuts. You can get 6 for $2, or 14 for $3!

The Dekalb Market is open every day from 8am – 10pm.  Weekend vendors are there from 10am – 7pm.  For more information go to dekalbmarket.com.

Don't let your great designs stag-nate!

Do you design the best jewelry ever? Are you fed up with your Etsy or Big Cartel not getting the online attention it deserves? Most importantly, are you making zero dollars?

We may have just the contest for you – one that will score you $500 and a vendor contract at UncommonGoods. UncommonGoods is hunting down the next great jewelry designer, and they’re currently accepting submissions “for unique pieces and fresh designs” until midnight Aug. 31.

All designs will be shared with a community voting app, for prime democracy/getting your friends to vote for you. Then, a panel of expert judges (Brooklyn artist Kiel Mead, style and beauty specialist Jenn Falik, and the UncommonGoods jewelry & accessories buyer Erin Fergusson) will choose the winning design from the top five vote-getting finalists. Good luck and may the most creative and cash-strapped win!

Follow Caroline: @shadood.

Cat-hair necklace, $220.

Move over alpaca scarves and sheepskin sock… here comes cat hair jewelry!

In the most impressive recycling feat we’ve seen since the dryer lint Last Supper, a San Francisco artist is turning her cat’s fur into a jewelry line. Flora Davis is selling a (surprisingly beautiful) line of necklaces on Etsy – all made of a cat-hair “felt” she created by rolling the fur between her hands.  As she tells Wired:

“Ordinarily I would have thrown the hair into the compost, but it felt so soft in my hands, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.”

Collecting enough fur from Gaia, a flame-point Ragamuffin in case you were wondering, can take two to three months per piece. The crafty cat lady gets $95 to $280 for a single piece, which got us wondering how our readers could make some change from their floor scuzz. No pets other than dust bunnies? You’re in luck.

Gaia the cash cat.

[Via Wired]

Tracie Howarth, an Etsy success story. Photo by Patrick Fagan.

Success can come in many ways these days: a promotion, a new job, finally paying off your roommate for dropping her blowdryer in the toilet last summer, finding $20 in your jeans on laundry day; or, by our standards, getting four retweets in the space of twenty minutes (it’s the little things that count). For crafty entrepreneur Tracie Howarth, success has translated her successful Etsy jewelry making business into a real brick-and-mortar storefront in Billyburg.

Howarth, featured in our “How to Make Money on Etsy” post was one of the intrepid few making serious coin off her creations. Now all Brooklynites can share in her knowledge of online success — while also pawing through a treasure-trove of vintage jewelry odds and ends.

At Howarth’s new shop, Brooklyn Charm (145 Bedford at N9th Street), she will offer consulting services for people looking to expand their Etsy sites, plus jewelry making classes for beginners. The rest of the store will feature local designer’s wares, and Howarth will provide thousands of bits of vintage jewelry supplies so anyone walking in off the street can feel comfortable in the Basics of Jewelry Assemblage and Wire Wrapping sessions. The classes begin the first week in April.

She’s also giving away some prizes to help you get your own Etsy empire going: Customers at the store from Friday through March 26 will automatically be entered into a raffle for a $100 gift certificate, a custom piece by Howarth, a free class, or a grand mystery prize to be handed out at the official grand opening on March 26.

While we all don’t have the patience to create an Etsy empire — or would simply prefer to use the internet to screw around on Tumblr image blogs — Brooklyn Charm at least offers the opportunity to be a little blingier IRL.

We do! This ring from the Claypot made the cut.

When you’ve found the dame of your dreams, you want to give her the engagement ring of hers: one her friends will gush over, her family will discuss at the dinner table, and her cousin studying abroad will demand to see pics of on Facebook. While not everyone’s into mega-rocks (thankfully for you) even the most non-trad alterna girl wants a ring that she considers beautiful—whatever her taste may be. And you don’t have to eviscerate your savings accounts to find it. With a maximum budget of $1,000, we visited local jewelry stores in search of some baubles for every kind of Brooklyn bride.

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Fashiony
Andie Woo Gowanus 251 Smith St. 718-694-9336
Don’t be distracted by the lingerie, hand bags and home decor, the jewelry here is amazing. From as close as the diamond district and as far as Germany is a solid selection of reasonably priced gems. Our favorites were a citrine-and-diamond ring set in yellow gold for $456, and a white gold ring with a circle of chocolate diamonds for $523. The uber-sparkly set of three diamond flowers atop a white gold band for $448 gets honorable mention.

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Modern
The Clay Pot Park Slope
167 7th Ave 800-989-3579
Carla Caruso has a great set of organic stackable rings, each with one (or even better, two!) bezel-set diamonds on a 14k gold band priced at $866. Brooklyn-based designer Marian Maurer caught our eye with her $800 Armilla ring (above), as did a $830 smokey topaz

stunner by Ray Griffiths.

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DIY
Elleven Jewelry, 168 Court St., Cobble Hill, 718-624-2611
Understated is the theme at this Cobble Hill shop that doesn’t have a fancy web site to go with their fancy jewelry. However, their on-site studio lets buyers name their own budget, and will design a ring to your liking, drawing from their own collection of stones or even your own family heirlooms.

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Traditional
Facets
Park Slope 97 7th Ave #A 718-638-3898
Some of the pieces here induced sticker shock, but that didn’t keep us from looking. We were excited to find a delicate ruby ring for just $750 (right), as well as a few Art Deco pieces from the 1920s and 30s in the $850 range.

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Boho
Norbu Williamsburg 218 Bedford Ave. 718-302-8830
There’s a ton of great jewelry in this store, but most of it doesn’t scream “I do!” The exception: a small collection of antique-ish rings imported from India. Ranging from $565-958, most have more than one metal (white gold on rose gold, oxidized silver on yellow gold, etc.) and intricate designs accented by small diamonds.

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Indie
Catbird Williamsburg 219 Bedford 718-599-3457
This artsy Williamsburg shop is filled with stuff hipsters won’t hate—like the Vampress ring—a miniature set of vampire fangs “biting” onto a brillian-cut stone. Prices start at $800, and rings can be customized to include the stone and metal of your choosing. For the earth-mother, we spotted a twig-shaped ring wrapped around a marquis diamond for $650 and a diamond-accented earthworm ring for $675.

Brooklyn's Tracie Howarth, an Etsy success story. Photo by Patrick Fagan.

Maybe you knit or throw pottery. Or make jewelry out of Phillips screw heads. Or crochet hamster huts (that makes three of you). Maybe all you ever wanted was to sell your handiwork and never work for anyone else, ever.

You may have heard that all you have to do is open your own shop on Etsy.com, the online marketplace that aims to provide artists with the technology they need to “make a living, making things.” You simply upload product shots, tack on prices, write cute captions, then wait for those millions of members to start placing orders.

It sounds perfect. And easy. But it’s not. More than 250,000 shops sell roughly 3.7 million items (and counting), with untold numbers of merchants making only a handful of sales, if that many. Though Etsy provides would-be sellers with myriad tips and tools for success, it’s tough to stand out in the crowd.

Etsy’s Brooklyn roots go way back to 2005, when the site—conceived by artist and carpenter Rob Kalin and built by Kalin, Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik—got its start in Fort Greene. Currently headquartered downtown, it will soon move to Dumbo.

Today, it attracts members from all over the U.S. and 150 other countries, and according to Etsy’s Adam Brown, the top-selling categories tend to be jewelry, art, accessories, clothing and crafting supplies for DIY-ers.

One of Brooklyn’s most successful Etsians, Tracie Howarth, sells jewelry-making supplies to other artists. Since joining Etsy in 2006, she’s generated over 24,000 supply sales through epochbeads.etsy.com and over 7,600 through thatsmycharm.etsy.com, and markets her unique designs on athd.etsy.com.

She lists over 600 items across the three Etsy shops and employs three staff—two to help at her booth on weekends in the Artists & Fleas market in Williamsburg and one in her Williamsburg studio to help with Etsy inventory and fulfillment. When asked if she sells full time, Howarth says, “I sell overtime.” She estimates that she grosses about $130,000, mostly from selling supplies, though due to significant expenses, nets $35,000. It’s enough to keep her in business for herself, the other passion that drives her.

Tracie Howarth's jewelry parts. Photo by Patrick Fagan.

For those who are still at step one—figuring out what to sell—experts say a cohesive line will do better than a whole bunch of disparate items. Products with a trendy element will sooner get noticed by bloggers like Design*Sponge‘s Grace Bonney, who can sell out an entire Etsy store with a single post.

“In this economy, I’d focus on selling small things that look expensive,” says Bonney. “There’s a lot of the whole popsicle sticks and yarn on Etsy. You’ve got to separate yourself from those people.”

Bonney says it’s also important to keep your prices low, because there will always be someone selling a similar item for less. “I personally wouldn’t sell anything over $50 on Etsy unless it was a one-of-a-kind painting,” she says. “Paper goods and ceramics do really well right now because they’re affordable and people don’t have to change the look of their house to incorporate them.” (Bonney, by the way, is a big fan these days of JeanPelle.etsy.com.)

Jean Pelle's candleholders caught Design*Sponge's attention.

Etsy has a host of resources for would-be sellers, including The DO’s and DON’T’s of Etsy amd the Seller Handbook.

All of them will tell you that choosing a username is the single most important decision you can make—it becomes your shop name when you open a seller account. “The most common problem is that sellers choose a shop name and then want to change it later,” says Adam Brown, Etsy’s press rep. “You can create a new account, but your customer feedback, etc. can’t be moved to that account.”

Choose a name that’s short—one or two words are best—and easy to remember. Troy Mattison Hicks, who sells original designs through necklush.etsy.com, says, “We wanted to come up with something that identified the product, sort of the way people use Band-Aid to refer to a bandage. We wanted that when you see a necklush, you call it a necklush.”

In case you were wondering, this is a necklush.

As important as a strong name is good photography. Bright, crisp, clear photos help make your items feature-friendly. Go for natural lighting, close-ups, angles and cropping; place your items against uncluttered backgrounds and avoid graphics and text; use live models when appropriate.

Bonney suggests hiring a good product photographer: “That’s the biggest investment you’ll make, and it pays off ten-fold,” she says. “If you can’t take a good picture, it’s not going to sell. A lot of people put their stuff on a black background and send you a sad little photo.  I will write an email saying I like your work but these images are totally not up to snuff.”

When it comes to your listings, use them to tell a story. Be quirky, personal and descriptive. Bring your item to life by illustrating how it might become part of the buyer’s home or pondering what it might mean to someone receiving it as a gift. The connection to the seller is what Etsy buyers look for—otherwise, they’d go shopping at Target.

Once you launch your shop, it’s important to continually refine it. Brooklyn’s Alison Shanik, who sells embroidered keepsake cards and wall pieces through kingpopcorn.etsy.com, notes, “I opened up my Etsy shop right away, but took my time about fine-tuning cards and listing them. It takes a lot of time to plan out the general appearance of your shop.”

One of Allison Skanik's hand-sewn cards.

Shanik, who has grossed about $600 in Etsy sales so far this year, considers herself “a serious maker who is a half-serious seller,” too busy creating to worry right now about growing her business. “I’m not overwhelmed by orders, but they’re not non-existent either,” she says.

Even if you think you’ve chosen the best name, assembled an irresistible product line, photographed your items just so—you have to promote yourself, either by frequently re-listing items or purchasing a spot in one of Etsy’s fee-based showcases.

In addition to a 3.5 percent transaction fee per sale, Etsy makes money by charging sellers for listings—$0.20 per item for a four-month listing—and fees to gain exposure in Etsy’s online galleries.

Each time you list an item (post an item’s name, description, price, etc., and tag it for searchability) it could show up in the Recently Listed Items section on the home page. You can re-list them, and experienced sellers do. Necklush’s Troy Mattison Hicks gives himself a daily $2.00 budget, equivalent to relisting ten times. “Spread your listings out through the day so they can be seen whenever people pop on to look around,” he says.

There’s also a sellers-only advertising program called the Showcase. A one-day spot on the front-page homepage Showcase costs $15, and a spot on the Storque showcase is $7.

Another way to boost sales is by using social networking tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, and by increasing your Etsy profile by posting comments, ideas and questions in the Forums.

Most important of all is getting name-checked on someone else’s blog. Bonney receives 300 submissions daily at Design*Sponge, many of them from Etsy artists eager to be featured on her site. It’s understandable why. “A blog’s sales effect is pretty easy to track,” she says. “People write us and say, ‘Holy crap, I just sold out!’ ” Bonney also recommends ohjoy.com and poppytalk.blogspot.com, two other design blogs that frequently profile Etsy sellers. While you’re at it, why not use Etsy as a springboard to pitch yourself to the MoMA store? “They constantly troll Etsy for talent,” Bonney says.

Finally, don’t rule out the flea market circuit just because you’re on Etsy. Kristin Raphael, also from Brooklyn, opened her shop ttintin.etsy.com in January and has made one sale from her line of $39 baby and toddler dresses. “I joined Etsy because I knew I should have an online presence,” she says, “but I do better at street fairs and outdoor markets.”

Says Alison Shanik: “Etsy is wonderful because it’s affordable but you can easily disappear into its sea, whereas craft fairs are wonderful because of the direct exposure but require a bit of investment.” They do bring you face-to-face with your prospective buyer, who, if she doesn’t buy something at your booth, may come back and visit you online at Etsy.

We’ll start with the fabric goldmine, Hina Sari Fabrics/PAK U.S. Travel, which wouldn’t let us take pictures inside. That’s a shame because the sign (below) certainly isn’t a tip to the miles of groovy fabrics that you can buy for $2 to $4 a yard—vibrant linens, eyelet printed cottons, other weaves we don’t know the name of but would like to see on the dining room table.

If you’re an Etsy type or a have-the-dry-cleaner-make-custom curtains person, this joint should be your first stop. Forget the Garment District in Manhattan, forget EBay. “Fabrics are my life,” said Eliza. “And I’ve never seen anything like this place before.”From there it was onto House of Fashion, where cute kids’ bracelets (below) were $1 a dozen, and embroidered cotton tunic tops in pastel colors—good beach coverups—were $8 a piece.

At Future Fabrics (below) Eliza found tons of thread and a pair of hot-pink linen pajamas that she couldn’t resist.

Finally, at Zoque, Eliza flipped over some traditional Pakistani slippers ($15, top photo). Really? “They’re great slippers for around the house,” she said. Well they are more interesting than Old Navy flip-flops.

Hina Sari & Fabrics, 1099 Coney Island Ave., 718-692-0707
House of Fashion, 1103 Coney Island Ave., 718-434-3515
Future Fabrics, 1078 Coney Island Ave., 718-421-1251
Zoque, 1062 Coney Island Ave.