My First Craft Show Experience and Other Stuff

It's been a couple of weeks since I blogged, things have been so hectic with the holiday season. Last Saturday I participated in my first craft show with the local Etsy team. It was a great experience! I only made 1 sale but not very many people sold that day. Most of the people that showed up were more interested in seeing the antique train display upstairs and of course Santa. I learn A LOT and asked so many questions. When I first arrived I immediately noticed how professional other seller's tables look. I kind of wanted to bolt out the door with my little crappy looking card table, plastic green tablecloth, and trays of jewelry. But I made do and everyone there was so nice and the customers were very friendly and had nice compliments:D I lost out on a couple of sales because I didn't accept credit card but I did give them my business card. That is one thing I am looking into is a credit card reader. I read on the Etsy forums of a slick new card reader that you plug into your cell phone called SQUARE UP. Here is the website: https://squareup.com/ Right now it only runs on iPhone and Droid phones.

Overall I had a great time at the craft fair and would definitely do it again in the near future. There is another Christmas show coming up on the 18th which I am thinking about doing but not sure yet. I am more prepared now, I made my own necklace stand and bought a cheap ring display. I have attached a pic of the necklace display. I used an old canvas painting and painted it over with acrylic paint and then I added eyehooks on top to hold the necklaces.

Things are starting to pick up again in my Etsy shop. I had a great October but then things started to slow down for a couple of weeks as my attention focused more on the craft show. One thing that helps keep me motivated is using all the money I earn in my shop to buy goodies off Etsy. I get to buy stuff for myself and my family that I wouldn't have considered buying before I started selling. Also, I want to keep the energy flowing to support the handmade community. I am going to start reviewing some of my favorite items in future posts. Until next time!:D

*HUGE CLEARANCE SALE IN MY SHOP*:D

Hi everyone, I have decided to clear out most of my older pieces by offering huge clearance discounts. Come by and check it out. If you guys could pass this information along to your followers too I would really appreciate it!:) Thanks and have a great day!:D

http://www.etsy.com/shop/JKarma3

I Just Joined the Indie Free Spirits Etsy Team:)

Just a quick update, I am now a member of the Indie Free Spirits Team on Etsy:) I am excited to to work with the team! I think it will give my shop some good exposure in reaching my target audience. One of the things we get to do is create treasuries to promote the team. So from time to time I will be creating treasuries with items from members of the team. The nice thing about being on a team is that I still have my level of independence but with the added support of a team:)

I have also decided NOT to create a 2nd shop so bye-bye Trashy Treasures, lol. I asked a question in the Etsy forum about the pros/cons of opening a 2nd shop and the majority of the people think it is best to just stick with one shop and open a section for upcycled items. They said it was a lot of work handling 2 shops. Right now it would be impossible to juggle another shop since I have a day job as well!

Recycle/Upcycle Anyone?

Happy Monday, my favorite day of the week, WHATEVER! I had a pretty busy weekend so I didn't have time to make anything new. I participated in an autism awareness race on Saturday, a cause that is very near and dear to my heart because my 7 year old son has autism. All proceeds go to help educate, inform, and raise awareness to this rapidly growing disorder!

My 20% off everything in my shop promo was a bust but I did have a couple of people mention that they will purchase in the near future when they have the money:) I finally decided that I am for sure going to open up another shop and sell strictly recycled/upcycled items. Don't know yet if I am going to call it Trashy Treasures but that is my top choice:) I really enjoy "refurbishing" old items and making them into something new but I don't think it fits with the new creations that I am selling in my shop. Another plus is that my husband likes to take stuff apart and create new things, he loves his Make magazine, lol, so this could actually become a joint venture:)

I Love a Good Bargain

I can't believe it is practically Fall already! One of my favorite seasons:) Last Friday I stopped by an antique mall to check out the goods and see if there was anything worth buying that I could take apart and re-create. Well there wasn't and everything was kinda pricey. I think a better place to go would have been a thrift store. Later on that day I stopped by a coffee shop that sells very cute things and ran across some handmade jewelry. I asked the girl at the counter about it and she said that they do buy handmade jewelry and then handed me the owner's business card to contact. I am far from ready to talk to any shop owner about buying my stuff but it is nice to know that I have that option if I decide to try this in the future:)

I did some experimenting on polymer clay. Check out the rings I made in the pic. Yeah I know, kinda irregular in some parts. But these are just testers. I usually end up giving away my tester pieces as part of my free gift with purchase.

I also got some great deals on higher quality charms and gemstones that I am going to work on this weekend. If anyone knows of a good website that sells good quality materials for cheap, I would really love to know about it!

New items I posted this week are charm necklaces. It helps me to get more stuff made when I have a theme to work on each week:) I posted 3 new ones and will post 2 more tomorrow. Good night Blogland...zzzzzz

This Week

Happy Friday or for me SICK FRIDAY. I got a sudden case of vertigo a few days ago and have been in bed sick and puking for the past 2 days! I slept most of the day yesterday but feeling a little better today, at least I can sit up without the room spinning. My son started 2nd grade on Wednesday, what a big boy, I can't believe how time flies! He had a great first day and hopefully it will be a great year:)

Even though I wasn't able to do anything for the past 3 days I did make another sale:) I was surprised because it was one of my older pieces. This peace medallion pendant necklace. This shows me the importance of TAGS when listing items. She may have did a search for peace signs and found my item. Overall I have been averaging about 1 sale a week which is enough to motivate me to keep going:)

I have been playing around with origami projects and seeing how I can incorporate them in my shop. Maybe I can mix some origami projects with my jewelry and sell them as a set.

Hopefully I will recover enough this weekend to crank out more items! Thanks to all of you who left me great positive comments on my blog, I read them all and really appreciate them!!!:D

Shop Sections

Last week I found out that you can have shop sections on Etsy. I always thought we only had to sell what we specialized in our shop but it turns out that we can have different sections in our shop and sell other things. We are allowed up to 10 different shop sections. This is great news because I have some supplies that I no longer want to use. I've also been thinking about making handmade origami envelopes with matching notecards or stationary.

I put 3 new items up in my shop yesterday. I might put this stone pendant with owl charm up tomorrow. I just don't know what kind of rock it is, I got it at some gemstone show. I thought maybe bloodstone but the green on this one is too light and the red looks like it was dyed. I would like to puchase a gemstone manual guide.

Well I am off to bed. I am so exhausted. I haven't done much this week. My lack of sleep has finally caught on to me. Until next time...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

My First Etsy Treasury

I finally created my first treasury on Etsy, it is a little depressing and morbid, maybe I was in Friday 13th mode. Here is the link, let me know what you guys think:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4c650eb6ed3e8eefde8bbc7c/love-hurts?index=0

Working on the treasury was addicting and fun and I got a chance to look through some awesome items and shops. I will definitely create more treasuries in the future, like maybe later tonight, lol.

I haven't done much the past few days, I was having internet problems so I finally just put my internet settings back to default and it is working okay now.

I finally got my metal stamp kit in the mail! I used it yesterday and it works great except I pretty much suck at centering the letters. I'm sure I'll get better but will take A LOT of practice. I will post a pic next time.

Today I will concentrate on bracelets. I got some nice semi-precious stone beads on sale last week. I like to add metal charms to them so my challenge today is finding the right metal charm to fit the stone colors.

I Finally Get the Twitter Craze

Okay everyone I decided to re-activate my Twitter account and basically just use it to promote my shop. I'll definitely follow you if you follow me:

http://twitter.com/KimN1216

I highly recommend getting a Twitter account if you haven't done so, there is A LOT of traffic so you get a huge amount of exposure. I tweeted an item last night and then a few seconds later checked my shop and there were already 20 new views! I thought I would be bothered by the manic environment but so far not at all.

In other news, I made another sale today! I just listed the item last night and I am not sure if she found me on Twitter or Etsy but I am grateful for the sale:) I am posting a couple of pics of the charm necklace she bought. This is one of my favorites, I actually wear one that I made for myself but with an IMAGINE charm instead of DREAM. The peridot drop was originally used to represent my son's birthstone.

I am learning so much from all of you and also from my own mistakes. Like for instance putting out jewelry that I would actually wear or buy. I think in the beginning it was all about what I thought looked good but I wouldn't necessarily wear them. Yet another tweak in the system.

What a wirlwind of a week

Happy Friday everyone! I made 3 more sales this week but they were all from people I know, LOL. There are 4 more people that I know who are considering a purchase. I am very grateful and hope this will help other buyers have more confidence in my jewelry. The lady I sold my first item to really likes the owl earrings and the free gifts I sent along with it. She even said she would purchase again with me in the future. I asked her to leave feedback but she hasn't yet.

I read a comment in one of the forums this week that I thought was cool. She said "everyone is on here (at Etsy) for a different reason." How true is that?! I am not really selling my stuff on Etsy for the money, although it is nice and will definitely help my current situation. I am doing this because I have never had a job in my life that I truely enjoyed or that made me feel good about myself. I have worked for a great company for over 10 years but somewhere along the line I think I lost some belief in myself, I'm just burnt out. Okay enough of my ramblings!

I ordered a metal stamping kit yesterday for around $15.00, it was the cheapest one I could find so I hope it is not some piece of shit. I love the look of handstamped jewlery, can't wait to try it! I have 2 new wire wrapped rings listed and for sure will make a some new stuff this weekend. Tomorrow is Kohen's birthday party at the lake, he is so excited! Have a great weekend all!:)

I sold my first item this morning!

I'm so happy I sold my first item this morning! These cute copper colored owl earrings that I just made yesterday. I'll always remember this moment, lol. Thank you Carol Peterson in Florida! I will probably make more of these but different variation. Hope everyone is having a great Monday:)

Pay day = trip to the craft store

Today is payday so I took a trip to the Hobby Lobby. They had a 50% off sale on metal parts and charms so I decided to stock up on supplies. I got a bunch of stuff but ended up paying a little over $40.00 which was way more than I wanted to spend today! I get so addicted, it is like I am in a trance when I look through stuff. Tomorrow my parents are having a yard sale. I'm gonna bring some of my bottle cap pendants that didn't turn out so well and try to sell them for a dollar. This weekend I am gonna focus on necklaces/pendants. Hope everyone has a great weekend!:)