Download the FREE pattern, with instructions (video tutorial accompaniment below)

In this short video, I show you how to make your own shadow puppet of an Australian Redback spider. This free pattern and video tutorial is an ideal way to have some fun on Halloween! Just print the pattern out, grab some basic materials, and start building. Ideal for beginners or professionals. - There’s also a video below of how it turns out, which is sure to give you the creeps!

You may want to check out the other free tutorials on shadow puppetry as well.

Cross-posted to School of Puppetry.

New info has been added here. For those interested, I have since moved to E-junkie.com. Although there is a monthly fee to be paid, I’ve not had to shell out a single cent for refunds or hard copies of downloadable files (which is what my problem was with Lulu). I’m very happy with this solution and you can find my comparison of the two sites here.

For about 2 years now I’ve been selling my puppet patterns via Lulu.com. It’s pretty much been the largest and most well-known site for self-publishing, especially in the area of selling ebooks. And over those 2 years, 95% of my pattern customers will complain to me that they can’t seem to download the product.

Invariably, the issue comes down to this: the download button, once they paid, is so bloody not obvious to the customer, that they think Lulu has stolen their money. Actually, scratch that - because people either aren’t knowledgeable or can’t distinguish between a third-party site and me, I get called a thief. I had one customer literally send me five emails which were pretty offensive to read, because he didn’t grasp the fact that Lulu offers neither customer information to be passed on to the seller, nor any way for the seller to you know, access their website code and fix problems.

After the first few times this happened, I went to Lulu’s forums and saw that this has been an ongoing problem for many (many) years before I signed up to the site. Undeterred, I reported the issue to support staff and made my own forum post, knowing that web managers often will only work on an issue if it’s reported enough times; and also aware that sometimes problems crop up again after being fixed. The response was typical: look at the FAQ for how to download ebooks, and “we’re looking into it".

Not being able to control the time it takes to fix the problem of making a download function more useable, I went on my merry way, dealing with many more customers reporting back problems getting the files, and asking them to please try again. I’ve even had to send off a couple of free CDs with the patterns on them, because the customer wasn’t getting anywhere with Lulu support.

This whole thing has cost me time, assurance with customers, and as frustrating as it is for them: it’s even more so for me. I’m sick and tired of having to explain to someone how to find a single download button; especially when I’ve reported it (a number of times now) and especially when Lulu has other issues.

Last month I discovered that I wasn’t getting notifications when I make a sale. This is an option in the Lulu settings (as a seller), whereby you get a short email as soon as a sale is made. It tells you what is sold, and for how much, and when; but it doesn’t tell you anything else than that. I’m happy not to receive customer info, since this was a choice I made in using a third-party site, but obviously it does make it harder to deal with any customer problems. - Anyway, I had logged into Lulu to check something and realised I’d made some sales without knowing it. I checked my spam folder: nothing. I checked the setting in Lulu; it was correct. So I contacted support and 3 weeks later had gotten little more than “thanks for contacting us, we’ll reply soon". I contacted them again, and received a reply that they know there’s a problem and they’re working on it.

That’s fine, but not five minutes ago I got yet another email from yet another irate customer, pretty much coming close to calling me a thief and stating they’ll report me (to whom I don’t know) if they don’t receive their money’s worth. I don’t blame them for being annoyed: although part of me honestly wishes they’d figure out that my site and services AREN’T the same as Lulu, given the fact that, you know, it’s quite obviously two different sites.

Given that the whole reason I’m using Lulu in the first place is because I had a lot of problems running my own shopping cart on my own site, I’m now forced into dealing with this crap on someone else’s.

Well, no more. I’m shopping around for a new method to send out my patterns. I’m sick and tired of having to defend a crappy website design and functionality simply because my customers can’t differentiate between me and Lulu. It’s like complaining to the baker that their shopping mall’s parking lot is badly designed. I’m sick and tired of having to explain how to find a download button. I’m sick and tired of wasting my time and money on an issue that should be easy to resolve. I’m sick and tired of being treated like I’m some kind of scam artist, instead of the freelance artist who’s doing this for very little money.

Lulu.com you have taken my time, my money, my reputation as a seller, and you’ve provided no improvements despite being told about the issue. You suck.

Ok, so I’ve been pretty much AWOL for a bit - and with good reason. Migrating content from the Learn Online page to SOP has been going fine, averaging one or two posts per day, 5 days a week. But the new redesign for PIM has been driving me nuts.

Where I left you was with the main product page, with the thumbnail list of puppets I’ve made, videos, patterns, etc. However, I hadn’t done the single product page, which would list a single puppet, its description, etc etc. I got rather stuck on it actually. But it’s finally done. See the old design here, compare with the new one here.

The biggest issue was trying to fit everything necessary into one page. There’s the: photos, video, product description, technical specifications, buy me button, pricing, shipping, policies, share this button, a way of signalling what product is new/hot, product reviews… and this is only what I managed to fit into the page. There were other things that got left by the wayside because of my minimalist approach to the design. You’ll notice no category list; the idea is that if people want to see other puppets, they use the main navigational links anyway. (Even now I am wondering whether to add ‘related product’ thumbnails, as I know it’s a big way to improve chances of a sale) At some point I will have to find room for a link to info on shadow puppetry in order to encourage people to see that shadow puppets are easy to use.

Because I had half of my design already in my head from the initial drafts, I knew that a slideshow gallery would be in use - I spent many days trying to find a script for that, only to come across problem after problem. I finally found one that works perfectly and is easy to update with new slides. This is far better than the way I presented the images/video before, with a separate link to images on another page, and only the video appearing on the product page. I noticed that no one really ever looked at the additional images, so having them on the product page was necessary; my hope is that the change will increase conversions… and of course, there are better images available to view than before.

Reading up on ecommerce design, I improved a lot of things: (I hope) the buy button is noticeable and eyecatching with a change of colour, as well as being placed in the bottom right corner, which is supposed to be the best place for ‘action’ buttons. The price is below, but it’s less prominent. The overall structure of the page is simple, not overwhelming the visitor with heaps of info straight away. If you click on the ‘how is this puppet made?’ link, you’ll be able to read the tech specs. One thing I thought was important was changing the wording. ‘Technical specifications’ or ‘product features’ is way too bland, where as ‘how is this puppet made?’ makes it enticing to find out more about the puppet.

Of course, the way the information is created using the hidden tabs that I’ve discussed before. Unfortunately for me, I spent about 2 days trying to figure out why IE didn’t like the code (despite it being an exact copy of the code used before, and it working fine on Safari and Firefox), only to try something completely random that wasn’t supposed to work: which seemed to have cleared IE of whatever it was that was troubling it.

Another thing I got stuck on was the placement of the ‘hot’ or ‘new’ image, originally placing it at top left of the page. I found it too distracting from everything else, so stuck it down near the bottom right with the rest of the brightly coloured stuff.

… Anyway, I will be re-releasing each product page as I update the text and images, and in the future I hope to make some new videos too - explanations of how to use each puppet, so people are further encouraged to see how easy they are to use. I also have not completed the shipping/policies pages yet, so that will be done as soon as possible. For the moment, products are still bought via Etsy, but it’s likely I will stop doing that and link the buy buttons to Paypal instead. This will save me in fees, but since it’s an extra step - getting customers to sign up with Etsy just to buy a puppet via my site - it’s probably best if that changes too.

I really hope this new design works well enough to encourage sales, as it’s really been driving me crazy for a few weeks now.

I’ve just finished the redesign for the main ‘Shop’ page. See the old version here; see the new page here.

This is just the ‘main’ page done - that is, the page where you can see all of the puppets, patterns, etc. all on one page. Then you’ll be able to click through to each individual description of that puppet/whatever.

I had the idea for this page based on a number of web designer portfolio sites which had faded out images of their work. One in particular was the basis for my design: all the thumbnail images were faded out, and hovering over the image brought up a coloured version.

Sadly for me, after a lot of fiddling around, I still couldn’t get some fancy fading effects to happen. However, utilising the blog platform’s upgraded files helped with a nice little trick. Once again, I implement the ‘list posts randomly’ feature (having used it on the home page of SOP for my random quote generator). This means that every time you load the main page which lists all of the puppets, they will appear in random order.

Additionally, with some editing of the images, I have four thumbnail images appear in colour rather than faded greys. This not only helps draw the eye to certain things, but makes for a good way for me to present new or popular items. For instance, you’ll notice the mermaid is in colour: she’s the most popular puppet I sell. The bat shadow puppet pattern is highlighted: it’s the most recent pattern. Mini marie (the one with the blue background) is highlighted: she’s the latest puppet I’ve made. And lastly, the video for making shadow puppet joints is highlighted; it’s the most popular video. With a couple of quick file edits I can change which thumbnails are in colour and which aren’t, making it a simple way to keep the page fresh.

I’m also listing not just the puppets and patterns, but also the videos and tutorials; I don’t know just yet whether I’ll be migrating the shadow puppet tutorials to SOP, leaving them where they are, or sharing them… but I thought whatever I do, they should also be clearly listed alongside all the other representations of my work in the area.

You’ll notice several ‘coming soon’ pics. Actually, they’re placeholders whilst I make myself some nicer photos of those particular puppets. Most of my ‘Aquaria’ puppets were photographed really nicely whilst I was in Atlanta last year, but a few weren’t - so I want to make them as consistent as possible. For the others, I simply don’t have pretty enough photos for a portfolio page. I’ll be updating these pics as soon as possible: I have rather large plans for that, but it requires me setting aside a few days to organise.

… Anyway, back to the redesign. One thing that I like about the page is it’s a nice, simple navigation, as well as a good visual presentation of my work. I’m continuing the theme across all of the pages of having the puppets the main focus of the design, and leaving everything else as far as possible to the wayside. There are still large issues to solve: how to list all of the relevant policies (terms and conditions); how to create a simple product page design when there’s so much info (intro, product specs, images, video, menu links, etc etc).

Another thing I’ve done to the main product page is to list all of the puppets by category using a pop-up box. I noticed that most people found it difficult to browse my previous Shop page when puppets fit into multiple categories - ie. the mermaid fit into ‘aquaria’, ‘humans’, ‘fantasy’, making her appear in three categories at once. Navigation like this made it tricky to see, at a glance, how many products were available and what they were. Later on I created a page that listed all of the puppets by category, and I found that this was a popular way to navigate. People don’t want to search, they just want a list they can skim quickly. So I’ve kept this feature, but redesigned it - again, using a function from the newly updated blog software. Going through all of my ideas for how to present the page, this seemed like the only ‘necessary’ function other than the thumbnail pics. I have some ideas for future updates too, but will have to wait until all the design has been completed and I can go back to normal building and selling.

… On a side note, I’ve only just now discovered that IE users wouldn’t have been able to use the navigational menu links. Because IE really really sucks. I’ve temporarily fixed it, but of course, now everything is out of alignment and it’s looks slightly shitty. If I can figure out how to make it look nice I will, but in the meantime - as usual - you’re better off viewing my site in Safari or Firefox.