Makin' Sales!

Well things are picking up a bit over here!  I've gotten several new orders for signs, and I'm super excited to say I got an order for a onesie cupcake in my Sweet Baby Mine shop on Etsy!

Here's one I finished just after the camo sign for Seth!

This was a surprise gift from a husband to wife!  They are expecting a new baby any time now and he got this to hang in their nursery!  Isn't that sweet?!

And here's an animal sign for Oscar!  This one is going to be a baby shower gift!

I've also got 3 sign orders I'm working on right now!  The day after I listed the camo sign in my shop, someone bought one!  I think it'll be another popular design!  That one will be for Chase! 

I also just got an order for a space sign for Luke's bedroom!  He loves robots, stars, planets, and spaceships according to my customer!  I hope he loves his new name sign too! 

The third is one I get to make for my Grandma.  My mom wants to get her one of my curly letter name signs like the Hannah Kate one above, but with mint green ribbon and just the green accents.  No pink!  It's going to be a Mother's Day gift for her to hang on the door to her room at her retirement home!  We just celebrated her 90th birthday back in January!  She was a wonderful artist and crafter when she was younger!  I think I must have gotten my "creativity gene" from her!

Finally, Sweet Baby Mine just got an order for an individually wrapped onesie cupcake!  I've been putting off getting the paper punch sets I need to make pretty gift tags to go on my baby items, but now I think I'd better get out and do that!  Perfect timing too!  I think Hobby Lobby has punches on sale this week!

Thanks for reading!

Sara

Name Signs and Wall Letters:
http://sarashandmades.etsy.com/
www.Zibbet.com/SarasHandmades

Baby Gifts:
http://sweetbabyminebysh.etsy.com/
www.Zibbet.com/SweetBabyMine

A Second Shop!

I made a big decision!  I decided to open a second Etsy shop!  I opened it 2 days ago now and I feel like it's going to go well!

The main reason I opened it was because I didn't feel like the products I was selling in my first shop went together well.  So my original shop is now going to be dedicated to my hand painted name signs, while the second shop will have my baby shower gifts!

I'd love it if anyone reading this checked it out!  The new shop is at http://sweetbabyminebysh.etsy.com/.

I had VERY promising beginnings with this shop!  I hope it continues!  I started by listing 3 items.  They were sets of cupcake onesies in neutral, girl, and boy colors.  3 hours after I had opened the shop, I was already featured in 2 different treasuries!  My other shop has only been in 2 treasuries and it's been open a month and a half!  My shop was also added to someone's favorites in that time!

So that was a much more exciting first night than I expected!  I'm adding an Etsy mini shop on my blog now for that shop along with my hand painted signs shop!

Keeping Myself Entertained

Well, I haven't had anything going on as far as sales, so I've been reading up on ways to promote my shop and increase sales.  So far there are a few things I'm trying.

The biggest thing I've heard is to list or relist something every day.  Why?  That keeps at least one item from your shop toward the top of searches, which are unfortnately automatically organized by how new the listing is instead of search term relevancy.  I feel like this is a mistake on Etsy's part.  Yes, it should definitely be an option, but by default it should be relevancy.  For example, I typed "diaper cake" in search yesterday to help me decide where to price my diaper cakes.  The first few pages contained very few diaper cakes.  Maybe 2 or 3.  It pulled up the most recent things listed that used the words diaper or cake as tags.  Not helpful at all.  Typically when I'm searching for something, unless I'm a VERY frequent shopper, I don't care what the newest thing is.  I care about what items are most relevant to the words I put in the search box.  But that's just my opinion.

Anyway, I had a ton of fun a few nights ago making more onesie cupcakes and putting together some diaper cakes!  So much fun, in fact, that I stayed up until 3 working on it!  Probably not a good idea since I knew the baby would be waking me up somewhere between 4:30 and 6:30.  Oh well.  I survived!  I just went to bed early the next couple of nights to make up for it!  Here are some photos of the diaper cakes!

Thanks for reading!

Sara
http://sarashandmades.etsy.com/

A Line of Baby Shower Items?

I have had so much fun with making new things since the last time I wrote!  I decided to start making the cupcake onesie and washcloth sets I have had in the back of my mind for awhile!  Here's some photos of how they turned out!

Aren't they SO cute?!  It makes me want to give nothing but these for baby showers from now on!  Each "cupcake" is a onesie wrapped up with a washcloth surrounding it.  They're even packaged in a cupcake box!  I can't wait to see how they sell!  These sets even have a hidden 5th onesie surprise underneath the cupcakes! 

Some of the other baby shower gift sets I want to do are thing like burp cloths and spoons wrapped to look like suckers and shaped into a bouquet, and diaper cakes, which are absolutely adorable!

As far as my letters and signs, I don't have any new orders yet.  There seem to be several people who want them, but just haven't gotten around to ordering yet.  And then there are a few people who contacted me asking if I could do a specific theme and after I tell them yes, I never hear from them again.  Strange.  Oh well.  What can you do?

I have been working on my 10" letters a little bit.  I have one started with a space theme that is the same idea as my space themed sign.  I plan to have that one done tomorrow to list on Monday during the day.  I've been researching what other people seem to think is the best day to list in Etsy's forums, and quite a few people seem to say Monday.  So we'll try it and see!  The other letter I've started is a ladybug theme.  That one is taking awhile because I'm making it striped, and I have to wait for each one to dry completely soI can tape over it to do the next stripe.  Painter's tape works wonders for making a straight line!  Such a life saver!  That one will probably be a few days, so maybe I'll be able to list it Wednesday.  Then for my other two samples of the 10" letters I am doing a lavender letter with butterflies and flowers in bright spring colors, and a monkey theme with greens and browns.  I'm excited to show them off once they're done!

I also came up with some new ideas.  I was thinking about ways to accomodate longer names, because my sign boards only fit up to 7 letters, and that's pushing it to be honest.  So I found some plaques in the right size to fit the letters perfectly.  I'm going to paint the plaques in my themes and paint the letters a solid color and put them on top, and then hang the whole thing with a ribbon.  One plaque for each letter.  I have several shapes, too!  I'll be using circles, ovals, hearts, rectangles, squares, and anything else I can find.  I will also be able to use the curly font from a couple of my other signs on these plaques, since it will be the background that is decorated!  Finally able to use a girly font!

My final thought for the name signs is to use the same letters and plaques and decoupage them with pretty scrapbook papers to coordinate with various bedroom and nursery themes and colors!  Now I'm just waiting for sales from my suppliers so I can stock up on all the goodies I need!

As always, thanks for reading!

Sara
http://sarashandmades.etsy.com/

I just love doing all these custom and exciting baby gifts!  So much fun to give, receive, and create a personalized and unique baby gift!