Back Full Circle

So, after being on Folksy for 4 months without selling a single thing, I am moving back to Etsy.

I will still keep a few items on Folksy but not many, as for some reason I find it difficult to add photos the right way round on Folksy. I'm not sure why, but when I try and upload photos Folksy always seems to turn them upside down or rotates them to left or right. I imagine it's probably something to do with the way I take photos on my phone, but I don't have the same issue with Etsy.

In the meantime have a look at my Etsy shop (on the right, or by clicking on the Etsy tab at the top of the page). I try and post at least one new item every day so there us bound to be something to take your fancy!

Back on Etsy

I have just posted a new item to my Etsy shop. I have decided to give Etsy another go after not making a sale on Folksy in 2 months.

Handmade Red Necklace

My current plan is to try and post to both sites for a period of around six months or so, maybe a year, and see which one has given me the most sales in that time.

I will do my best to promote each site equally, by posting on Twitter and Facebook, and the occasional blog post.

My Garden

Yes, I realise it isn't much too look at. It's rundown and overgrown and my husband hates it. Me and the cat love it though. I didn't get a picture of him, but I'm sure he thinks he is a leopard prowling around in the Serengeti, with all the long grass.

I love sitting on the little bench next to the shed. Now the weather is getting a bit better again I want to start making the most of being able to sit outside in the evenings and weekends. I want to start appreciating little pleasures like that more, now my life should hopefully be a bit less hectic (for the time being).

Here is the oldest resident of the house and garden. It's a pear tree that has been here since I was a child and came to visit my grandparents when they lived here, but I'm not sure how long it has been here. It does seem fairly ancient. It's still good at producing pears though, maybe this year I'll get round to making some pear cider.... 

At least I managed to get a few good photos before it turned cloudy......

The end....

So, the stage is packed away, the cast have been applauded one last time, my tenure as a director is over. I can't say I'm not glad, it's been a long, hard slog, emotionally and physically draining. The play has taken up so much of my life over the last 7 or 8 months and I'm now at a bit of a loose end. I'll post more soon, including a review and links to a video of one of the stage effects but at the moment I'm a bit too raw.

A nice snippet of information is that the week our play Count Dracula was performed marked the anniversary of Dracula being published in 1897. That geeky fact does make me a bit gooey inside.

So, now to carry on with the rest of my life. I might be going to a craft fair later on in the month, I also need to take photographs of more of my stock and list them on Folksy. I am about 2 weeks behind with everything and I need to build up stock online before I'll have a chance of selling anything.

I also need to post on this blog more often, not to help with getting my name out there for my jewellery business, but to help my sanity. I used to keep a diary and it really helped me understand what was going on in my head and in my life. There are going to be a few big changes in my life (again) over the next 18 months. I'm ready for a change in certain areas of my life, more than ready, but one of those changes is likely to be moving house. I've only been here a year and the thought of moving within the next 18 months is a lot to take in. I love my house, but that is a whole separate story. These changes involve making a lot of enquiries and waiting to hear back from people so I won't have an update for at least a month, at the absolute earliest.

New Folksy Shop

I have managed to post a few items on my new Folksy shop (in between stressing about improving my work life balance and stressing about the play I'm directing).

You can check them out by clicking this link:

https://beta.folksy.com/shops/Merryflowers

I am trying to concentrate more on having a range of different items, rather than just necklaces and brooches. I am also trying to put more emphasis on keyrings and earrings.

Here are a few of the items I have uploaded already:

A lovely vintage style heart brooch with a flower.

A flower necklace made with one of my favourite flower motifs and with a crocheted chain of leaves.

A little doll keyring made in the traditional Japanese amigurumi style.

Can you tell I'm trying to force myself to include picture in my blog posts? I'm a very wordy person naturally, I always think a thousand words speaks better than a picture.

Easter.... yay.... *collapses with exhaustion*

Well, for saying that I have had 4 days off work for Easter, I can honestly say I feel worse than I did before we finished. I just feel so drained. I've been to church 3 times to sing in the choir (and managed to break my voice singing the descant for the final hymn), I went out to the pub with a few friends on Friday and felt dreadful all day on Saturday even though I didn't drink that much (well, 3 pints of cider, but I never felt anything more than tipsy all night....) and I've posted a few items on the Folksy shop to get it started.

Apart from a bit of housework that's all I've done. I haven't even got to sit in the garden because the weather has been a bit too chilly even though the sunshine is lovely.

And I'm exhausted. And I have a sore throat. And I have to go and supervise a rehearsal later.

At the moment I'm just holding on to the fact this time in 6 weeks, I will A) hopefully still be in bed, and B) I will no longer be directing a play.

Back in business...almost....

I know I haven't posted for a while, I'm sorry. I've had a bit of a break from listing and promoting items recently because of the amount of things going on in my life recently and that will be going on for the next 6 weeks. My play opens 6 weeks today and saying that I'm bricking it is putting it mildly.

I am working on tarting up my Folksy shop and starting to list items again. I am aiming to post 1 item each day (when I finally get chance to take some photos) and making the odd post on Facebook and the blog and twitter and craftjuice and all that nonsense. Then in June I can start promoting properly when I have a reasonable amount of stock.

 I would honestly be happy with selling one or two items a month, because that would cover listing fees and it would keep down the number of items cluttering up my house. I also plan to seriously make gifts for relatives and friends rather than buy.

Well, that's it for now I think. Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to start listing items....

Indoor Sale - Spondon Village Hall Saturday 22nd March

I will be attending my very first sale on Saturday. I'm excited and nervous, there more to plan than I thought, from buying bags so I can package my jewellery professionally, to putting prices on every item, to organising a change float and buying a cloth for the table.

I will be very very despondent if I don't sell anything or fail to 'break even'. I have spent £20 to book the stall and around £15 on bags and a cloth to display everything on. I have a couple of necklace display stands, which were thoughtfully given to me as a birthday present by my mother in law, so I should be able to make the stall look good. Even if I only make a tenner on top of what I've paid I'll be thrilled.

Tiny Turtle

I haven't had a lot of success with crochet amigurumi up until now, but then again, I have only done a few crocheted animals so far. I find them very fiddly and time consuming to do, and because I haven't had much practise, I'm not all that good at it.

I am really really pleased at how this little turtle came out though, isn't he gorgeous?

This little fella is not for sale unfortunately as I gave him to my husband as a little thank you gift for taking over my Etsy photography for me....

I plan on making a lot more of these now I am little more confidant, not just turtles but lots of other animals. I will start adding them to the shop here and to my Etsy shop as soon as I can, although I still have a backlog of items to add.

Renewed Listings on Etsy

The below items have just been renewed on Etsy:

Floral Crochet Necklace

Vintage Style Bow Tie Crochet Necklace

Blue Crochet Flower Brooch

Blue and Green Long Crochet Necklace

Irish Rose Crochet Brooch

Pink and Blue Pansy Crochet Flower

An Essay on Colour

I have always been fascinated by colour, the fact that there are almost limitless colours that can be seen by the human eye, and an almost limitless again variety of combinations of those colours.

 I have to admit that colours scare me a bit too though, by that sheer limitlessness. I think its some sort of weird fear that I will waste my time on mediocre or bad colour combinations and never find my way to combinations with that 'wow' factor, which other people seem to come across so easily. Its also a fear that of going to far and using 2 many colours in a piece of work. The lucky thing about crochet is that it is so easy to rip a colour out of the work if it isn't working out so I will have to force myself to experiment.

 I also find that I go through colour 'phases'. Some weeks I will have a hankering for vintage colours such as cream and ivory and dusky pink. Other times I need to work with bold colours such as bright red and blue and deep purple. Sometimes I want grey and brown neutrals and other times pastels.

At the moment I want colours that are somehow toned down and greyish toned, dusky pink, ash purple, olive green. It must be a mood thing. Or just a desire to buy as many different colours as physically possible. I don't tend to worry about colours working with each other or with other colours when I buy them, I tend to buy the colours that appeal to me in the mood I'm in while in the shop.

 Some crocheters seem to find it easy to develop a colour palatte. Lucy of Attic 24, for instance, favours juicy, bright, positive colours. This over exuberant attitude to colours terrified me a bit but Lucy's stuff is all so lovely I can't fault her. I've read other blogs where the crocheter favours neutral colours, or includes pink or blue or purple in almost everything. I just love every colour (except maybe orange) and sticking to one colour palate would bore me.

 Unfortunately, that does mean I have to buy an awful lot of wool......