Featured shop: Browns Country Originals

Thank you very much Mike for taking the time to answer a few questions about your etsy business: Browns Country Originals.
http://brownsco.etsy.com

Q1. How did you hear about Etsy?
A local newspaper had an article on an artist selling her pieces on ETSY. We thought the concept was really cool.

Q2. What made you decide to sell on Etsy?
My wife and I were looking for a web outlet for our art work. After reading the article about ETSY we decided to check it out. Late November of 2008 we decided to open a shop on ETSY.

Q3. How did you originally get into arts and crafts business?
We are a husband and wife team. I work with wood, chalkware, clay and papier mache. My wife works with dried, fresh and artificial flowers and hypertufa. Hypertufa is a lite weight concrete. Besides the paper mache and chalkware we have a line of garden items my wife makes country/primitive hypertufa birdbaths, flower planters and flower pots. I make country/primitive wooden potting benches, planter and garden stakes. These creative passions led us in 2008 to start Brown’s Country Originals.

Q.4 You have many papier mache items in your shop. Which process do you use to create your papier mache pieces?
I make a clay out of paper pulp and a bonding agent. Each piece is hand-sculpted of paper mache clay, hand painted, numbered signed and dated. Most of the embellishments are handmade there are a few flea market finds that are added. Each piece takes approximately 2 weeks to complete. There are no molds used in the process, so each piece is one of a kind!

Q5. What is your best advice for new etsy sellers?
What we have learned in the 3 months that our ETSY shop has been opened is that promoting ourselves is very important. Keeping our shop fresh is also very important.

Thank you very much, Mike