The Etsy giveaway from Lewasdesigns ends tonight at 11 pm Eastern time! Lets have some fun with this last 11 or so hours of the contest … so here’s the deal – you can enter one more time for every person you send to the giveaway who leaves a comment/entry of their own. So lets say I was entered into the contest and I wanted as many chances to win as possible – so I sent 10 more people the link and pleaded that they enter, too! In their comment they need to say “So and so sent me”! And that’s how I know you can have another entry – for every person who does this.
Go!
Don’t forget to enter our giveaway! Ends September 14 at 11pm Eastern time.

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Thanks Tracy for a great question in my last post about how I browse etsy.
Tracy asked:

Yes, is the simple answer – I enter in a key word I’m interested in – yesterday was “Tea pots” and then “Sweaters” and go from there. Today in my example I’m using “Chocolate” because, well, really? It’s obvious.

I might scroll through 4 or 6 pages before I find something that catches my eye that I open in a new tab to investigate – in this search, it took 3 pages:

The first thing that caught my eye was the Badger Onsie – and there’s no special rhyme or reason as to why. I just liked it. Personally, for me, the photography of the item that’s being sold is one of the biggest reasons I click through to see what they have to offer – if it doesn’t look appealing at first glance, then I’ll pass almost 100% of the time.
I just continue to do this until I can’t see straight any more or feel like I’ve got a good enough list. If I think I might want to come back to something I found later, I make sure to HEART the seller, or add them to my favorites so I can find them easily.
Now, If I know I want to look for something specific, like Sweaters – I might go to the actual category, which you can find on the homepage:

Then, once on the “Clothing” subpage – I can click through even further to “Sweaters”:

And the search begins!
NOW! I’ve just started looking through the SHOWCASES, which is Etsy’s way of letting shop owners advertise their shops.

And you can browse through categories there as well:

There really is no wrong way to browse etsy – as long as you’re looking around and having fun, I figure it’s worth it. I generally change the way Etsy filters a search to “All items: tags and titles” though – so I get to see it all. Not everything is handmade on etsy, which is the eclectic/flea market part about it that I love.

And that’s how I browse etsy!
There are times when I search for a keyword and nothing hits me – so I shake it up a bit and search for moods, colors, rooms I’m interested in decorating or places and even names. When we were trying to figure out what to name Oliver – I went through our “possible’s” list on Etsy to see what I could find. Oliver came up with some adorable stuff, octopuses and owls. The options are endless!