Holiday Shopping for Me

Did you all have a nice long holiday weekend? We definitely did. We had some friends over for Thanksgiving and on Friday we all headed down to San Jose for the Harvest Festival - that's a huge craft show for those of you who aren't in the know. haha

My big purchase this year was "Wooly". He's the cutest sheepskin covered footstool you've ever seen. He's a buffalo and comes complete with his own fuzzy goatie. Wooly has friends. If you'd like to see them, click here.

My friends Bob and Sue are vendors at the Harvest Festival, so that's the main reason we headed down to the show. I picked up a new snowman for my collection from Sue. He's so cute!

That's all the shopping I did this weekend. How about you?

Just Kinda Busy

Oh my gosh! I can't believe it's been over a week since my last post. I've been so busy lately, things are just plain crazy. My little monkeys were lucky enough to be part of an Etsy gift guide last week and since then the monkey business has been great! The Treasury that Etsy Labs created also landed on the homepage! And the best part was that I got to be featured along with my friend Lemon Cadet (she got a screenshot).
And in between all the monkey stuff going on, I never got a chance to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. I finally got to take a quick look at some of your blogs tonight and enjoyed reading some tidbits about your holiday. Nick & I had some old friends of mine over. They were in town for a big craft show (actually, it was down in San Jose). It was great to see them. Bob & I used to work together at the Anaheim Angels, he's a pyro guy. His wife Sue is a very talented artist, she makes the cutest little snowmen you've ever seen (I designed her website). Anyway, we barbecued some steaks and had a lovely time.
Nick went with me to check out the Craft Show and the fabric sales. Amazing he made it through the day. lol We missed all the morning specials, but I was able to get some more fabric for my wedding at 30% off. That's not all I bought, I just don't have any piccies to show you.

Chico had fun meeting Sue's snowmen. He's still really tired from playing with them. Hope you all have a great week, I've got to get to my sewing room!

Now taking credit cards

I got my ProPay account sorted out, so now I can take credit cards at the Farmer's Market! Cool.

Nick says I'm AR. That's a nicer way of saying anal retentive. So. Sometimes it's a good thing.

Marin Farmer's Market - Round 1

Okay, okay, I know I've taken too long to report back to you on my farmer's Market experience. I just thought I'd wait a few days until I'd done two. I was super busy on Friday and Saturday with orders, I just didn't have time to blog. :)
You'll notice that my actual booth setup looks pretty much identical to the mock-up I did in the driveway a few weeks ago. I guess that's a good thing, I must have gotten it right the first time. (I used to do this type of stuff for a living, I better be able to do it right! lol) Anyway, Thursday's market was my first ever public sale of my handmade goodies. It's typically a pretty slow market for artisans so I'm pretty happy with my sales. I made a profit, so it was worth my time in the end. And of course, a great experience. Nick came along to help me set up and then left as soon as he could, haha. While manning my booth I was able to add three new monkeys to the basket, so I was able to do my usual multi-tasking. I'm hoping to get some photos taken today so I can fill my Etsy shop with them. For the Sunday Market, I used a larger basket to display my monkey friends. It was a lot easier to see their shining faces this way. You might be surprised to hear that in the two markets I've done now (seasoned vetran) I've sold ZERO Gadget Monkeys. Shows what I know about what people like, eh? I got a ton of, "Ohhhh, these are so cute", and "What a great idea!". But not one was adopted. I still am not able to take credit cards too, so that might hinder sales a bit.
All in all, I had a great time out there chatting with people. I made a possible contact for wholesaling in a boutique in the city and met a very nice wedding planner whom I'd love to work with in the future. So, two thumbs up. For now, Ihave no markets scheduled again until next Wednesday at another location. I got some great tips from other sellers this weekend about which markets offer the best business, so I'm trying to work more things into my schedule now. Here's hoping for some cancellations.
Now it's back to the sewing table for me. I have that custom quilt to finish and two custom bags too. phew. It's fun to be so busy. And on a final note, here's the custom bag I made and sent out this weekend. She liked a bag in my shop (which I sold yesterday), but wanted a larger version with a zipper pocket and closure. Here's the result, I may make more like this & add them to my shop. It turned out really well I think.
Have a great weekend, sorry for such a long winded post.

Finished!

After all my talk about home sewn logo quilts and Farmer's Market applications, I finally set up my pretend craft show booth today. Hooray! What a load off my mind that was. I still need to actually make my table covers, and do some tweaking, but I'm happy with the results so far. And I must admit, I think my logo quilt turned out pretty nice. I definitely want to write up a tutorial on how I made it, but first things first. Tomorrow I walk my application into the Farmer's Market office for the jury selection on Thursday. I should know by the end of the week if I got in. I think selling my things in person will be a lot better than online.
And that's not all. I also received my package from Tamy yesterday for the Bucket of Sunshine Swap. This girl is on it. I haven't even finished my container yet and she's already mailed hers. I'm embarrassed. (Tamy, if you're reading this, I hope to mail your package tomorrow). I've tried to be good about not ripping into my pretty little package, but the temptation is getting the better of me. I think I will have it all unwrapped by tomorrow. Looks like there are some great goodies in there. :) Fun stuff.


Oh yeah, and check out Jenn's blog on Monday. A little bird told me she's having a contest of some sort. hmmmm

A Grand Day Out

I got to go on a little fabric odyssey today and it was a pretty good time. Nick had a seminar or some such thing over at Google in San Jose, so I drove him down there this morning & spent the rest of the day finding fabric stores. I went to 3 quilt fabric shops and 1 very large JoAnn store that I've already been to 3 times. Can I help it if Sisters n Stitches is off the same exit as the big JoAnn? Nope.
Here's some of what I got today...

I finally got a call back from the Marin County Farmer's Market today too. Their next jury selection will be July12th. That gives me a little less than 6 weeks to get some things made and get my booth in order. They require photos or drawings of my booth, and I've never done a show. I figure I'll just set it all up in the driveway and take some pictures. That'll give me some practice too. I want to get a tent and hang a quilt in the back with my logo on it. I got the fabric for that today too, so I hope to get it made pretty quickly. I got some fabrics to make more of my pennants (the fat quarters upper left corner, there's some boyish ones too) so I can hang them in the tent as well.

Those tags you see there were only $1.00 for a pack of 88 and I liked that they were so colorful. I plan to make my price tags out of them. Not sure yet what I'll do with the red floral print, but it was on sale for $5.99 a yard and it's sooo pretty. I got that at the first shop, Prairie Queen Quilts, in San Jose. It was a pretty big store, and had lots of great stuff on sale. Nick would be proud of how little I actually got at these places.

Tomorrow maybe I can work on situating my sewing room. What a mess of boxes everywhere. eugh

What's a Blog?

"You need a blog". That's what I keep reading in all my books about having an online business. Well, here it is. I don't really have any issues with blogs, I just don't think I have a lot to say. And I hate writing, I'm terrible at it. I guess it's a good way to promote my business, which I need to do badly. I don't know how it works (and probably sound like a real dork right now) but away I go.

The deal is, I have an online business selling my hand sewn stuff. I make

handbags, diaper bags, etc., etc. - iSew...get it? Anyway, I launched my site in November and now I'm just doing all the things you do to get it noticed. I get a fair amount of traffic, but not that much. No one knows I'm there.

My next step into marketing my site is to try getting into some craft shows. Aside from the natural downside of grannies in puff paint sweatshirts, it can be pretty expensive to get into the good ones. However, you have a captive audience that is there to buy. I've been to these things and there are packs of ladies walking out with crafty stuff hanging from their bodies. They bring their husbands just to carry the bags. There seems to be a definite opportunity there. I also think people are more likely to buy a higher priced item from some stranger if they can actually see it in person. I don't blame them.

I guess I plan to use my blog as a way to put my ideas down in writing somewhere. Sort of like when you talk to yourself, it just seems to stick better. I hope it works. Ha Ha

More later,

Kippi

www.iSew.biz