Blogging Business Artisans

End of year shop review

Dec 312012

November marked my fifth year of selling on Etsy, a journey that began with a shop called JN Originals that features crocheted and felted personal accessories, continued with papercrafted items in Mister PenQuin, and extended with recycled craft supplies in 2nd Chance Treasures. Along the way I’ve learned lessons about marketing, photography, shipping and customer service. My journey has been made easier by becoming a member of multiple selling teams on Etsy, most particularly BBEST (Boomers and Beyond Etsy Street Team) and Blogging Business Artisans. In fact, one of the strongest pieces of advice I would give a newcomer to the Etsy scene is to join a team that reflects your interests, as this will shorten your learning curve. Visit the information-packed Etsy post, What is Teams? to learn more. I also recommend becoming familiar with the Etsy Seller’s Handbook. Finally, you can pick up lots of marketing and organizational tips by visiting such sites as Blacksburg Belle, written by April Bowles-Olin, and Handmadeology, written by a team of entrepreneurs.

One of the pieces of online selling advice that really caught my attention this past year is the concept of having a cohesive shop. In her post, How to Create a Cohesive Shop, Etsy staffer Michelle writes, “Creating a cohesive shop is the most important tool for branding yourself, and one of your biggest allies in your search for repeat customers. Customers who love your style will share your shop with others and come back again and again.”

Define your style

What is a cohesive shop? According to Michelle, a cohesive shop has a clearly defined style that can be summed up in just a few words. This makes it easy for both you and others to promote your shop through blogging, simply because it is easy to identify your style and describe it. Your shop may also be more visible if you have a well defined style because search results may better match what you sell than if your shop is a mixture of unrelated items that share no common theme other than that they are handmade by you.

For the first shop on Etsy that I opened, JN Originals, my style has evolved over time. In fact, when I first began selling on Etsy, I was like a lot of other sellers who are not exactly sure what they intend to sell. I remember starting off with felted wool coasters, crocheted hair scrunchies, and long, fuzzy scarves, none of which I make anymore. I added crocheted spa cloths and felted java jackets, felted needle books, felted wool clutch purses—and eventually, crocheted wearables such as flower brooches, scarflettes, headwarmers, hats and fingerless gloves. What I observed is that while all of these products share a common material—yarn—the ones that sell best for me are the wearables, particularly the ones that feature a flower as part of their design. Moreover, they are customizeable, which is a selling point. This, then, has become the style that defines my shop: crocheted wearable accessories featuring a flower motif.

Cohesive Shop Collage

Match your products to your style

Michelle points out that once you define your style, it is important to make sure that your product line-up meshes with your definition. Gradually, over the course of this past year, I have been redefining the sections in my shop to include only crocheted wearables. To be sure, there are still some products that don’t quite fit. These include my felted wool java jackets which, despite the fact that they sell, sell infrequently and inconsistently.

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I am still wrestling with the appropriate home for the felted wool needle books I make, not because they don’t sell, but because they no longer fit the style of JN Originals. Perhaps they will move into a fourth shop that has been sitting on the Etsy site, product-less, for more than a year. This shop is Dancing Thimble, intended for fabric accessories—what I like to call “fabric solutions.” I can visualize a section containing sewing tools at this selling venue.

As of December, I moved out the spa cloths and the last set of coasters from JN Originals. What will also move out during 2013 will be the long, fuzzy scarves that were popular some years back (and seem to still be worn by Midwestern women because of our very cold winters and the warmth of these scarves), but are perhaps not so popular elsewhere. Likely these same scarves will sell locally at craft fairs, rather than online.

Having a defined style helps you to develop new products, or to modify existing ones that will conform better to your style. For longer than I would like to admit, I have needed to pull my felted bags from my shop to modify them to include the floral motif that highlights other products. The bag with the felted flower below, for example, is one I made for myself but whose style has never appeared in JN Originals.

Recognize who your buyers are

Part of having a cohesive shop is knowing who your customers are, and making sure that every product you offer is geared toward those potential buyers. For the most part, I have come to recognize that women and teenage girls represent my buyers. But I also realize that my buyers include those who like to crochet the same items I make. So, I have begun to offer crochet patterns to address the needs of this type of customer. My first pattern is a set of fingerless gloves that fits an average-sized woman or teen. I expect that in 2013 I will roll out other patterns, not only on Etsy but also at the Craftsy site. In addition, I intend to broaden my market by including some unisex items.

Match your shop appearance to your style

Etsy’s Michelle, in her post about creating a cohesive shop, advises sellers to tailor their photographic backgrounds and banners to their style to create a cohesive shop. My product backgrounds, which are a plain white, will remain so in order to show off the colors and textures of my work. My shop banner, on the other hand, needs some work. It currently features a pink background with tiny flowers scattered on it (which ties in somewhat with the floral motif I use), but doesn’t really tell you what I sell. We’ll see what the new year brings!

Creating a cohesive shop takes time and experimentation. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of products you consider to be your favorites, but don’t sell particularly well. Likely these are items you can turn into special gifts. In the end, it’s all about your buyer!

I’d love to hear what other sellers are doing to make their shop more cohesive; let me know in your comments below.

Secret Santa surprise!

Blogging Business Artisans, Special Occasions

Dec 302012

This last year I continued my participation with the Blogging Business Artisans team on Etsy. We’ve had a lot of fun during the last 12 months, participating in challenges that take our skills to the next level, and blogging about them afterward. Our most recent group activity was a Secret Santa exchange. Just before Christmas, a lovely holiday package arrived from Edi Royer of Memories for Life Scrapbooks. Edi, a fellow Iowan, knows how much I love journals, so she made one for me with wooden covers, personalized with her laser engraving machine.

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Edi has other wonderful books in her shop, and is always willing to design a custom book, album or journal for you. I especially like the album shown below, which would be perfect for holiday photos, now that most of the holidays are behind us.

This notebook would be a great place to jot down favorite quotations, verse or titles on your reading list.

Edi also tucked some hazelnut chocolate in my package. Yum—it doesn’t get any better than this! Thank you, Edi, and happy holidays!

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Back to School BBA Challenge

Blogging Business Artisans, Blogging Business Artisans, Challenges

Aug 132012

Although I no longer have a child of school age, I treasure memories of the time our son started school each fall. I remember shopping during August for classroom supplies, taking advantage of a tax-free summer weekend when you could save on new school clothing, and scheduling our son for a visit to the doctor for his annual physical. Many of those memories are compressed among photos in shoe boxes, waiting to be systematically organized and transferred to photo album pages. The thought of filling heavy binders with them, though, is daunting and—thankfully—unnecessary to do. The best albums, I think, are the small ones that tell a story. I have decided it’s time to tell a few stories, and to pass them on, little by little, in small albums. So, when Erika of Artful Rising on Etsy suggested a “Back to School” theme for this month’s Blogging Business Artisans Challenge, I knew what I was going to do.

First I had to decide what format my small album would take. Since I’ve been playing around lately with books whose pages are made from envelopes, I decided my pages would form a “Z-fold” created by joining 6-inch x 9-inch envelopes to 3-1/2 inch by 6-1/2 inch coin envelopes. I got this idea after I watched a 2010 YouTube tutorial titled “Z-Fold Envelope Mini Album” by Laura of Following the Paper Trail. I liked the clever way her Z-fold method formed pocket pages—perfect for small photos and memorabilia. Laura spiral binds her pages into a book using her Bind-it-All, but I was concerned about the covers splaying open like a V with all of the tags, photos and embellishments I planned to add. After all, the widest owire I have is only 1-1/4 inches! I decided instead to make a hard cover for the album, and to sew the pages in place. But I’ll get to that later. Here is what a Z-fold page looks like when you adhere two envelopes together.

The papers I used in my album came primarily from two different paper collections, “Makin’ the Grade” by Little Yellow Bicycle, and “The Grade School Stack by Die Cuts With a View (DCWV)™. I thought the colors and patterns meshed pretty well. I discovered, by the way, that Little Yellow Bicycle has a blog with lots of inspirational ideas you’ll want to check out. The DCWV site also has an Idea Gallery that will get your creative juices flowing.

Makin’ the Grade papers by Little Yellow Bicycle

Once the individual pages were covered with paper, I dug into my embellishments stash. I found a place for my “Playground” adhesive accents from Paper Bliss™, some of the Sticko copper-rimmed circle tags to which I adhered matching Rebecca Sower Nostalgiques™ typewriter-style letters, and several Teri Martin “Martinscript” scrapbook stickers from Creative Imaginations. These were all items I had purchased years ago, with great intentions of incorporating them in scrapbook albums that never materialized. I confess that I did buy some canvas stickers from Little Yellow Bicycle that matched the paper; I just couldn’t resist!

Following a tip from Kathy of Paper Phenomenon, I reinforced the spine of the book with difficult-to-tear Tyvek® (available from office supply stores in envelope form).

I covered the chipboard covers with navy blue card stock, and decorated them—front, back and spine—with Little Yellow Bicycle paper. For a final touch, I punched holes in my cover with my Crop-A-Dile™, and then used my Zutter hammer and Pound-it-All (marble slab) to insert a Zutter leather strap and closure. You can dye the leather, but I prefer the natural color.

If you look at the spine of the book, you’ll see how I continued the back-to-school theme with an image of a locker. In my embellishments stash I located a packet of Karen Foster Metals Mini School Tools that included a combination lock. Perfect! But my biggest challenge was finding a way to attach it. I’m sure there is a better way to do this, but I had some split rings that I thought I could join to the combination lock. I riveted the combination (pardon the pun) to the album’s spine, but those little rings nearly made a trip around the world before I got them joined! They kept jumping out of my fingers (is that why they are considered to be a variety of “jump ring?”). In desperation, I enlisted my husband’s help. He has a lot of patience with tiny items, and was able to join the two split rings. Guess I’m not destined to be a jewelry-maker.

The final step of my album involved sewing the individual pages of the album to a pre-punched piece of paper-covered chipboard, leaving 1/4 inch between pages to allow for the fact that the pages are dimensional.

The skeleton of my back-to-school envelope album is now finished, but obviously will be fleshed out with photos, journal tags and bits of memorabilia. Like most moms, I have saved all those wallet-size school photos, the lists of books read over summer vacation, scraps of paper celebrating first attempts at printing, early drawings, and more. It’s nice to know all of these, with the help of a photo scanner, have a life beyond the shoe box!

Summer Lovin’ BBA Challenge

Blogging Business Artisans, Blogging Business Artisans

Jul 282012

This month, fellow Blogging Business Artisans team member Janet of Bird in the Hand Art challenged us to create anything summer-related, love-related, or “Grease” (the movie) related. My response was to create a mini pocket album made of envelopes called “The Love We Share.” I previously created an album like this for the January challenge, but not with a theme. I chose Country Boutique papers designed by Jodie Sanford for Fancy Pants Designs because I love the delicate interplay of brown, blue, cream and yellow colors in this line. Two of the papers, Loved and Wallpaper, form the front and back covers of my book.

I decided to add journal tags with writing prompts to the album, which was a lot of fun. I made so many tags, in fact, that I will probably have to make a second album so they can find a home!

As I assembled the pages of the album, all of which include a pocket for a journal tag, photo or some kind of memorabilia, I kept track of the supplies that went into this project. To my surprise, I learned that one of the biggest costs was the adhesive. I used a full roll of tape runner (40 feet) just for the journal tags. One of my goals will be to reduce costs without sacrificing the quality as I make more of these for Mister PenQuin on Etsy. You can find the completed album in my shop.

I think that this type of album could work with different themes. The album shown above would work well as an engagement, wedding or anniversary gift. I can imagine a very colorful one for a child, a friendship book for a student, or a family holiday album. Thanks, Janet, for coming up with this month’s Blogging Business Artisans challenge!

February BBA Challenge: Month of Love

Blogging Business Artisans, Blogging Business Artisans, Challenges

Feb 282012

Each month members of the Blogging Business Artisans team on Etsy are challenged to stretch their creativity. This month’s challenge was conceived by Edi of Memories for Life Scrapbooks:

In February we celebrate Valentine’s Day. My challenge to you: Create a love-themed item. You can write a creative love letter, make a valentine, make a love-themed home decor item, etc. Be Creative and Have Fun!

The way in which I chose to implement this challenge was to craft my first-ever hardcover book, a photo journal whose pages consist of modified envelopes, covered with designer card stock cut and folded to form pockets. The theme for this journal, which is a gift for a family member, is “Cherish,” which suggests the relationship between a couple. My German-born mother (now deceased) used to tell us as we were growing up, “People are for cherishing, not for teasing,” so I’m reminded of her with this single word on the cover of the journal.

I learned the techniques for making a hardcover book, creating pocket pages and binding them by watching several YouTube videos, among them the Envelope Mini Album Series (click on the link for the first video) by Kathy Orta of Paper Phenomenon, Stack the Deck Mini Albums by Laura of The Paper Trail, and Robyn’s Scrapbook Mini Album Binding Technique by Robyn of Injoy Stampin’. I blended these techniques, made some mistakes along the way, and adjusted.

The most fun part of the project was making the photo-matted cards. I adhered various patterned paper shapes, collage-style, onto textured card stock, forming a patchwork of colors and patterns. Each photo-matted card was unique, as well as a surprise, since I simply moved the pieces around until they pleased me.

Another part of the photo journal project that I thoroughly enjoyed was designing journaling tags with different topics, such as Favorite eats & treats, How we met, Words we live by, Our house rules, Our recipe for love, Our favorite vacation and We’ll never do that again! Once upon a time I ran a home-based desktop publishing business, developing all of the forms, brochures, newsletters and other designs using Corel® WordPerfect® software. I used the same software to design the journaling tags. You could use Microsoft® Office Word software just as easily; I simply prefer the former program. There were 24 journaling tags by the time I was done, not all of which will fit in the journal. However, I figure that if some of the topics don’t strike a chord with the recipient, others will do the trick . . . or they can simply be used in another journal.

I inserted some of the journaling tags in the book itself, and put the remainder in a gift box I made from patterned card stock. For each half of the box, I decided how big I wanted the box to be and added 2 inches to that, cut a rectangle with those dimensions, and scored each side of the shape at the one-inch mark. I folded along the score lines and cut corner flaps, and glued into place. If you don’t have a scoreboard, you can accomplish the same very easily by following this tutorial by Nancy Fallon of The Life and Times of One Loopy Knitter in How to Make a Card Stock Gift Box.

The book was supposed to have six envelopes for its foundation pages, but I made the mistake of not leaving enough space between the last page and the back cover, and it tore off. The lesson I learned was to create a wider spine. Also, the video tutorial called for library-style pockets on both sides of one page. I really think this makes the page too heavy, and would not do this in the next book. This extra weight probably contributed to the last page tearing off. I salvaged the pockets and adhered them to the front and back inside cover. You can see one of these pockets on the left side in the next photo.

You’ll notice, in the above photo, that the far right pocket (actually, a double pocket) is kind of bulky. The video tutorial suggested you use a smaller envelope to form this pocket. On another page, I decided to use card stock instead. Take a look at the difference below.

You can see the “salvaged” library-style pocket on the back inside cover. In my next book, particularly because there are so many tags, I will add a few more pages, keeping in mind that the spine needs to be wider. I would be interested to see if this book would be less bulky using card stock instead of envelopes, too.

I learned a great deal from this challenge, and look forward to making my next hardcover book.

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