Saturday Artisan: filigreephotos

Meet this week Saturday Artisan couple, Liga and Janis of filigreephotos. A couple who each has a special talent and sharing it with the world. I'm in awe of how beautiful snapshots of nature Janis was able to take. And calling himself, ameteur photograph? Hmm...he's just being humble, IMO.

Tell us a bit about yourself and what arts/ crafts that you make?
We come from small country in Europe – Latvia. We live in beautiful rural area, in fact biosphere reserve. So almost every day we se beauty of nature and it’s inspiring. Janis is amateur photographer. I’m unemployed for now so as I have free time I decided to promote my husband’s wonderful artwork.

What is your favourite item in your shop?
In fact there are two – Snowflake photo

Snowflake – it was a miraculous moment to see it after uploading from camera to PC – so detailed, fragile and unique...you’ll never see something like this with naked eye.


and owl photo

Owl – this kind of owls are quite rare here in our country so we were very lucky to see it and even more to take photo of it. This photo also shows skill of Janis as a photographer – it’s taken with vintage heavy manual lens (MTO-500)... and it’s not easy to photograph flying bird with manual lens!


What is your best seller?
We haven’t had many sales yet, because we’re newbies on Etsy. But for now our best seller is photo cards.

How does your day go in general?
Janis has regular job, so he goes to work in the morning. I usually do what’s needed to be done at home – like cleaning, cooking...but most of my day 10.00am – 4 or 5 pm is dedicated to promoting our Etsy shop. Listings, promoting in forums, twitter. Not very long time ago we started our blog and I plan to make facebook fan page also! (and they have a FB fanpage by the time this interview is posted). Actually these things take a lot of time. In the evening Janis often does some photo projects and I do my crafts – I make lamps. (and she finally opened a store selling the lamps, yei!! It's FiligreeCreations.

Do you have a favourite Etsy seller?
We don’t have one particular favorite. But I have a favorite thread – in Etsy forums promotion section there is a wonderful thread with many lovely and helpful people – Enyaeires thread. Many thanks to people of this thread for helping and being so nice to us!

What inspires you?
I’m inspired by many small things like good tea, snow, smell of rain, but I never can get an answer to this question from Janis – he says to him inspiration just comes from somewhere and it has nothing to do with outer factors... :-) he does not know himself.



What is your goal for 2010?
Hmm..hard to say – we have a list of goals actually. It’s about being seen and inspire!

What is your favourite tool that you cannot live without?
For Janis it’s his pile of photo equipment – especially he loves manual lenses. My is not a tool – it’s my senses. It may sound wierd, but I mostly get my inspiration from all the small things (like I mentioned before) – smell of tea, rain, trees, seeing moments in nature – like birds playing in the snow. And I can’t do anything properly if I don’t have inspiration.



How do you promote your shop?
We’re always looking for new ways to promote our shop. For now it’s Etsy forums, blog (www.filigreephotos.blogspot.com ), and twitter (http://twitter.com/filigreephotos ).

Any advice for a newbie running his or her on-line shop?

We’re newbies, so we don’t have much advice to give...but I guess I could mention some things... 1) Be kind and nice to everyone. Treat them as you want yourself to be treated. 2) Good photos are important if you want to be really successful. There’s piles of info available on internet about improving quality of your photos. Invest time in visual appearance of your shop and it’ll pay back.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's giveaway!