What's New Today

Well, my first news is that I finished the flower themed sample sign!  I love it!  I'm giving it to my (adult) sister, and she's really excited to get it!  Here's a photo!

My other news is that someone requested a quote on a custom item to match their baby's antique fire fighter nursery theme!  They got cute custom made bedding and want a sign to match it.  I hope I get to make it for them!  It sounds like it'll be a cute nursery!

Still waiting on the order from the lady with the rock and roll themed room.  She said it'd be about a week or so before she placed the order officially, so I'm not concerned about it yet.  I can't wait to get started though!

The animal sign I am working on for Karter should be done in a couple of days.  I'll probably be able to deliver it on Friday!  I got 3 of the letters done last night, so now I just need to do the other 3, varnish it, paint the background, and attach the cutouts and hanging ribbon. 

On another note, I found something else I'd like to do as a sample project.  I found 10" letters in a really cute font for a good price, meaning I can hand paint them and still be able to charge a good price for them!  The font is called Ravie, if anyone wants to Google it and see what it looks like!  I'm going to hang each letter by a ribbon.  They actually come with keyhole cutouts in the back so they can be hung by themselves, but I think ribbon is a nice touch.

Finally, a question for anyone willing to answer.  I have suddenly been getting spam e-mails from people who have had horrible sad lives and only need me to donate some money by giving them my credit card number or something equally stupid.  (Never believe these, by the way.  They're taking people's money and running with it.  I got 2 today that were exactly the same except the name of the "person" sending it was different.)  This has never happened to me before, and I'm wondering if it's from Twitter or from here.  I'm guessing Twitter, because it seems like there are a bunch of shady people on there and it would be easy to collect e-mail addresses from people you don't know and spam them.  I'm taking my e-mail off of there and telling people they can message me if they need more info to see if that helps.

Sara
http://sarashandmades.etsy.com/

A Break From Creating

In the last few days I haven't had a specific order to work on, so I've been working on other aspects of the business, like making my shop easier to find with search engines, some hard core price analysis, and other things like that.  I've also worked on a sample of a flower themed name sign which should be finished sometime tomorrow.  I'm excited to see the finished product!

Today I decided to list one item on eBay to see what happens.  I've never used eBay before, so that was an interesting experience for me.  It's been up for several hours now and has only had 2 views, but it's scheduled to be up for 30 days and eBay says listings don't usually show up in item searches for a few hours.

Another potential business building thing I did was sign up for Google Analytics.  It's a free service and it will tell me where my business is coming from.  I only have one day of data so far, but it looks like a promising tool.  It tells me how my visitors got to my shop, so I can see if they're just using search engines, coming from within Etsy, or from other places like my Twitter or Facebook pages, or the new eBay listing I put up!

I think Google Analytics is going to be my new favorite tool!

On another note, I'm going to the craft store tomorrow to pick up the supplies I need for another animal themed sign for Karter!  So I'll be starting on that tomorrow night!  I'm also getting some 10" letters to paint when I have some time so I can list those too!  I'll be selling those as individual letters hung by ribbon, and I'll probably do some of the same designs I've used on the other signs.  Of course I'll be able to do many other things as well, but I feel like that will be a good starting point.  That will be something for me to do with the next lull in paid painting projects!

I hope there's someone out there reading this!  Follow my blog to continue to hear about my journey running my new business!

Sara
http://sarashandmades.etsy.com/

A New Style?

Busy busy busy.  Last night I got an interesting request.  A woman is decorating her nursery in a light blue and brown rock and roll theme and wants me to do a sign for her new baby to match that theme!  She sent me a photo of some of the nursery decor, and it is so cute!  I messaged her back with some ideas and options, so hopefully I'll hearback from her tonight and be able to set up a custom listing in my store!  I might be working on something new pretty quick here!

As far as the signs I have been working on, I just need to attach the ribbon with the cut outs to the sign board and that one will be ready to ship out!  I'll make sure to post some photos of it after I take some tomorrow!  I'd take them tonight, but it's already getting darker out!  The photos always look the best when I use natural lighting and not the flash.

The two others I was working on are almost done too!  I finished painting the letters mauve last night and added decorations in pink and mint today, and glued the letters to the signboard.  The ribbons to hang them on are ready to be attached.  I just want to add some detail to the signboards since they are fairly empty with the smaller thin letters instead of my usual size, and then add a coat of laquer to make them shine and last a long time!  I should be able to get that all done tonight and post photos of those tomorrow too! 

So I plan to have all three packed up and ready to ship out tomorrow!  If I don't have the new rock and roll order by then, I'll just have to find something else to work on!  Probably another sample I've been planning for my sister.  Flowers!

Sara
http://sarashandmades.etsy.com/