Pleasure, little treasure

So Etsy has this cool feature called Treasury, where users can create a page to showcase 12 items they like. These lists are ephemeral, only lasting a few days. There's also a limit to the total number of Treasuries allowed, so people wait for old ones to expire so they can jump in and grab one as soon as the opportunity is available. The other cool thing is that several times a day, a different treasury is chosen for the Etsy home page.

Like many sites and forums, Etsy has some rules of use. Which are fine. The thing I find odd about some of their rules is that they try to enforce "nice", in my mind, a bit too much.

One of the generally 'accepted' rules about Treasuries is that if you are the curator of one, you are supposed to put at maximum, only one of your own items in it. Most people don't put any of their own items in there.

Which to me is such an odd rule, because Etsy is an ecommerce site. People are there to sell stuff. Why not use the free marketing tools provided to actually market your own stuff??

But no, the Etsy rules say that Treasury is for allowing the community to promote other peoples' items. Yeah, it's all very nicey-nice, but that just seems very odd to me in a business setting. (Then again, I used to work at Microsoft. And liked it.)

And of course everyone is peer-pressured into following the rules and thinking that those who don't are horrible self-promoting narcissistic people. Dude, I just want to sell some of my jewelry!

Another one of the etsy rules I find odd is that you can't "call out" another community member on their message boards. So if you had a bad transaction, or someone is ticking you off, etc, you cannot come right out and say it. And the Message Board Police are watching. It does keep a lot of the snarkiness down, but it just seems like a form of censorship you'd expect in elementary school. Like having to give a Valentine to everyone in your class, not just your friends or crushes. We *are* grownups, right?

Anyway, I digress. Rules aside, the Treasury is a pretty cool feature. People generally pick some sort of theme, so many of them are visually stunning.

Yesterday I was thrilled to find myself in two treasuries created by strangers, so I took screen shots to save them. Click the pictures to make them bigger and see the details.

Here's one with a cherry blossom theme. My bracelet is in the upper right hand corner:



Theme for this one is preppy pink and grey. My earrings are in the lower left corner:


And to repay the favor, I got my own this morning, and like a good Etsy robot, I did not include any of my own delightful pink items, but chose to focus on my fabulous buddies on my Seattle team. (Who are a *very* talented bunch, I might add!)



Hopefully this weekend I'll get some time to add more pieces to my store. I have one waiting to be photographed, but I'd like to have several ready for pictures, because it's easier to do them in batch. I've had an idea rolling around in my head for a necklace, so hopefully this weekend it'll come into being!