musers: Crazy Day in Etsy Land, A New Shop, and a Snail

Yep, the title about sums it up.

So here's the scoop:
A few days ago Etsy announced that today (10-18-2011), for the First Time EVER, they would allow shop owners to change their shop names!! This may not seem like that big of a deal, but there are a lot of shop owners who either started as buyers and didn't think to change their names, or simply didn't know the in's and out's of what their shop/user name would mean, etc. So, there were many (many many many) people anxiously awaiting this feature! I was one of them. I started as a buyer and just kept my name (kathrynmuse) when I opened my little shop. I decided to call the shop Musers, because that's what I called the creatures I make, but my URL didn't have musers in it.

Plays on the word 'muse' are many, so I was a little concerned that someone might sign up for 'musers' before I got the chance. I wasn't as worried, however, as all the shop owners who got online at Midnight and literally stayed on Etsy waiting for the feature to roll out (many in the UK, who were up forever!). Thank goodness I was lazy and checked once this morning (around 6:30) and then got on at around 12pm. I started checking the site help discussions to find out more, and it still hadn't come out yet. Owners were starting to get flustered. Many were at this point sleep deprived and starting to get a little angry. I watched and waited. The capability to change names started rolling out at around 3pm, my time, BUT it didn't roll out for everyone! I was sitting here watching people happily change their names, but I couldn't (talk about nerve-wracking). That was definitely the hardest part for me! Thankfully, about 20 minutes later, they opened it up to everyone, and...

I got the name I wanted!!! My shop can now be reached by typing in http://musers.etsy.com! YAY!!! Oh, and I don't have to worry about return visitors or all the cards I've handed out, etc. because the old URL will still work (by immediately redirecting to the new one)! Many owners didn't get the names they wanted (either because the name had been taken long before (but no one realized it), or it just got grabbed right before they were able to type it in) so I felt blessed to get mine!

I also opened up a brand new shop called "Gallery of Muses" (http://galleryofmuses.etsy.com) where I plan on listing my art photography. There's only one image there now, but I'm hoping to fix that very soon!

And here is the little gal I listed on the Musers site today: