I've Managed It Again...

... somehow almost six months have past me by and my last blog post seems to have been July! First off let me wish you all Happy New Year and I hope you enjoyed yourselves over the festive season as much as I did!

If you are interested here is a quick summary of the more exciting things I got up to in the last half of 2011 (other than reading, I did an awful lot of that!). 

In August I managed to nab myself a table at the Boutique Market in Portsmouth's Guildhall. It was a good experience and I got to meet other crafters from the local community, which was really nice. I was there for about 4 hours and my stuff seemed to get quite a lot of interest which was really encouraging and by the end I'd made £40 (which was even more encouraging!). The day itself was a bit of a logistical nightmare as I was supposed to be working! Luckily 'the management' were kind enough to let me skip work (as I was owed some lieu time anyway) for a few hours. So I ended up starting work at 9am leaving the shop at 10 o'clock to attend the market, only to return again at 3pm and carry on working til 5.30!

My very first table at my very first craft fair!

My table presentation will need some work though!!

In September my boyfriend's parents very kindly took us on a little holiday to Bruges. It's a really lovely city and I had such a relaxing time! I pretty much spent most of my time following everyone else and enjoying the beautiful architecture, it was so nice not to be in charge of the holiday and just go with the flow. The people were so friendly, the food (especially the hot chocolate) was delicious and the best thing of all, people thought I was under 26 years old - we were told you can get discounted tickets for galleries and museums when you are under this age, unfortunately I'm about five years too late to receive that, but it's still nice to be asked!!

Unsrprisingly I've hardly done any crafting (apart from a couple of custom orders) in the last few months! October, November and December were pretty uneventful and merged into one long month as the bookshop got into Christmas mode. Although I can tell you that I managed to sell about 90% of the stock I had on display in Waterstones and I completely sold out of my russian doll totes about a week before the big day! I even had people asking when they would be in stock again (that did made me feel quite proud!) 


Oh, one thing I can show you is something I made for my friend to give to her fiance (the guy I made the felty batman for). As they loved the other one so much she commissioned me to another superhero. He's not a character I'd ever heard of so I had to do some research, and I found he was a bit tricky to make but I got there in the end!

His name is Etrigan The Demon, who looks a bit like this....

...and here is my interpretation in the medium of felt! 

Apparently when my friend saw his gift he was speechless (which is quite a thing to achieve) and I received a lovely text message something along the lines of BEST. SOFT. TOY. EVER! So all the time and effort was all worth it.

Anyway I think that's enough for now, I'll try and blog again soon I'm aiming for one a week but whether or not that will happen is another thing.

Happy crafting everyone!! :)

Five Sales and a Theft.

I'll try and make this just a quick post today (as I know I have the tendency to waffle on) and tell you about what I've been up to. I recently had a two week break from my day job in which I spent lots of time creating new things (there was also quite a lot of eating and sleeping as well, it was bliss!!) like a new line of sweet Matryoshka and Little Bird brooches (pictures to follow) as well as a couple of bags.

This creative time off made me realise all over again that this is what I want to do as my full time job! At the moment it can only be a far off dream but I'm determined that one day I will achieve this, I just need to work harder at it (and I know it'll be hard work)!!!

Anyway my craft stuff has now been on sale in Waterstone's for five weeks and as the title of this post suggests I have had 5 sales (not too bad) and 1 theft (v. bad). So far I have sold 1 Matryoshka tote, 1 Heartfelt Decoration, 1 Matryoshka and 2 Skully brooches. Also one of my Cloudy bags was stolen! I'm trying to take the latter as a compliment but I've got a horrible feeling it was just used as a receptacle to steal books from the shop!! But then who knows what goes on it the minds of shoplifters, they may also love to 'shop' for local products!?!

Guess this wasn't such a quick post after all!

Happy Crafting.

What Have I Been Up To?

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I blogged. What have I been up to? What have I achieved? The answer? Not as much as I should have!!!

I haven't been completely lazy this past month, I have made a few bits and pieces (which i will be listing soon) and had a couple of custom orders but overall I haven't been feeling particularly inspired lately (it didn't help that I have been completely distracted reading an awesome series of books).

Here is a few photos of one of my custom orders. I was contacted by a lady in Louisiana who's cousin was having a baby and wanted to decorate the new nursery with a cutesy skull theme. Seems a little unusual I know but I thought it sounded like a fab and unique idea for a baby boy's nursery.

I was asked for two large squishy skull decorations in light blue and black. It was slightly intimidating as I've never made a skull this big before so wasn't sure how they would look but I think they turned out alright in the end.

The other thing my customer wanted was one of my long skully ornaments but in light blue, black and white felt. I had to play around with the colour combinations (usually my skullies are brightly coloured with black eyes and nose) because one of the skulls was going to be black. This was the end result and I'm pretty pleased.

Also this month I also sold four skully and two heartfelt brooches, two totes and two cushion covers. So it was a pretty good month here at CloudberrySkies.

Feeling More Positive.

In my last post I was feeling a little negative, talking about shutting up shops but since then I've made 2 Etsy sales (one of them was a custom order for 4 Camo Star totes) and a couple of days ago I sold 2 skully brooches on Folksy so I'm feeling a lot more positive. 

Also I added a new tote to my shop. It has a pretty star made up of lots of lovely pink and purple buttons of different shades and sizes. I have high hopes for this one. 

Bit of a bad day.

Today I found out that I'm rubbish at my day job! Last week we had interviews at work to find out who would be made redundant, who would lose some hours and who got to keep their job as is. Even though I didn't get made redundant (which I guess I should be grateful for) I lost 5.5 hrs a week because I sucked in my interview which seems a little unfair to judge me solely on that after 5 years service! So if my experience counts for nothing then the only conclusion I can come to is that I must be rubbish! You could look on the bright side, like I originally did and say 'Hey that's not so bad, at least I can spend more time crafting!' But this loss of hours means not just less money but no more weekends off! I will have to work every single weekend and I usually do my best crafting on a Saturday afternoon, so this really sucks!!! My main point is that I need to really get working on my shops as I'm really going to need to supplement my income now as I can barely manage as it is. Overall I think I'd rather have made redundant!!

Anyway on the bright side my flatmate and I had some friends over on Saturday to watch Eurovision and I managed to sell two brooches!! Before you think it, I don't try to flog my stuff to every friend and visitor who comes round to the flat!! It was just that I had a lot of my brooches on display ready for photos and everyone commented on how nice they were and asked how much. It was hard, I really had to restrain myself from giving them away but in the end I sold a Skully and a Leafy Ladybird brooch. Result!

Oh well..

Oh well no sales at the craft fair (boooo!) but I'm not too upset due to the bags I sold at work last week and I sold another one today! (wooo!) Also I let one of my colleagues take the rest of the bags home for her daughter and her friends to peruse (as she really loved the bags her mum bought and even nabbed one for herself!) ... so that could mean a few more sales! In the mean time I should really get going on the making.... especially trying new things not just sticking to the safe, straight forward totes that I could probably make in my sleep! So that means taking this crafting malarky a bit more seriously in the new year. Starting by getting my personal graphic designer/boyfriend to make me some lovely business cards so I can appear to be a bit more professional than scribbling my etsy address on random scraps of paper for people. I'm also thinking of maybe getting some leaflets printed up as my lovely colleague suggested that she could put them in with the catalogues she delivers which would be awesome!

I got some really nice feedback from FluffysStuff (the lovely lady who was my first folksy sale) and was just thinking what a shame it was that some people who have bought stuff from me haven't left feedback! I know that I shouldn't worry about it or take it personally but I guess it's just nice to know what people think and I admit I'm paranoid if I don't get any feedback from someone but they have left it for other people.... it kinda says to me that the person didn't like their purchase but are just too nice to say!!!!! Oh well....

Why didn't I think of it earlier....

As Alix is kindly taking my bags to this craft fair on Saturday I took my them into work to pass onto her other half as he is going with her (mostly for moral support as it is her first craft fair). I had been toying for a while with the idea of putting up a poster at work advertising my wares and I just decided that I should just ask around to see if any of my colleagues were interested in buying and amazingly they were!! In the space of a couple of hours I had sold 5 bags to 4 people and made a grand total of £28!! (not all that much I know but that is definitely my best sales day  ever!) I hoping to flog some more tomorrow but I guess I shouldn't wish to unload all of them as there won't be any for Alix to take to London!

Book group choices for December and January are - 'Thirteen' by Sebastian Beaumont and the 'Lucifer Box Omnibus - The Versuvius Club/Devil in Amber' by Mark Gatiss.

Critiqued.

'I'm thinking of revamping my shop! Does anyone have any ideas?' I posted this question on the Critique section in the forums today. Only two people responded but their feedback was very positive, they both like what I was selling the only criticism they had was about my photos! Surprise! Surprise! Anyway one of them said that they thought my photos needed to be lighter and the other suggested that I should try showing the bags 'on the move'... in the park on a sunny day.... on the beach, etc. These are all great ideas the only problem is I don't know how many  good weather days we will have at this time of year in Britain!!!

Yay more sales! I sold the Negative Panda Bag and the Lucky Dip Beads a couple of days ago! 

Also today I made a new bag. It's made from really pretty duck egg blue fabric that I found in a shop that sells random knic knac's and furniture. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out considering I spent an hour longer than normal making it! I seemed to lose the ability to sew this afternoon and had to unpick the stitches 3 times!! Nevermind! Here is another terrible photo! I really do need some help with them! (or move to a different flat!)

I really should try a little harder.....

This evening I finally added some bags to my Folksy shop, I opened it months ago but hadn't thought about it until today. I was thinking I should really make more of an effort to spread out, opening more shops on sites like Dawanda and Winkelf, that way I get my stuff seen by more people! It's just getting round to it, you know what I'm like - L.A.Z.Y!!!

In other news I sold my odd panda bag to a lady in Florida a few days ago. But annoyingly I need to wait for her eCheque to clear before I can send it out! I hate to keep the customer waiting, usually I like to send it out straight away but I guess it's safer to wait until the money is in my account. 

10 Sales!!!

I've finally made to 10 sales......and my second British customer, apparently she found me in a treasury that I didn't even know I was in! I wish there was a function on etsy that let you know when you're featured in a treasury, as I rarely ever look at them. The only reason I knew I was featured last time was because Alix found it and convo'd me! 

It's been a while since I've been on here as I've been quite busy over the past few weeks (although not busy crafting!) I intended to do a lot of sewing this last week but unfortunately really hurt two of the toes on my right foot (I tripped over the hoover!) it was so painful I had to take two days of work. So mostly I did a lot of sitting with my feet up feeling stupid and useless. 

I can finally put pictures on here as I have a new camera (which my lovely boyfriend bought me for my birthday!) it's really great I just have to learn how to use it properly and take better pictures! I thought I'd add a photo of one of the bags I mentioned in an earlier post.

Woohoo again!

Yay two sales in two days! I know that I'm only doing well because everything is half price and I'm not really making much of a profit but it's getting me noticed and hopefully people will come back again when I've listed my new stuff next month! Just need one more sale.....