What I've been up to...Challenge 52 weeks 14-15

Good Afternoon!

So, the fetes & fairs are over for the Summer (yippee!) and now I need to work on the website and a jewellery party I have booked for next weekend.

I got some lovely flower cabochons and ring bases through the post last week, so have been making some new accessories, as modelled by my Glamourous Assistant who has actually nabbed a couple of these for herself, so we need to make some more ASAP!

I decided to make a couple of really over-the-top pirate theme necklaces for the website http://www.pirate-treasures.com/, they took ages to make but I think they look pretty cool!

I also made another new pirate necklace, which has been featured on the Secret Carousel blog today. Secret Carousel is a great new website, which is a showcase and directory of the UK's alternative clothing & accessories online stores.

June was my best ever month for website sales and July has been pretty busy so far, so while it's a bit quieter in August I'll be closing the shop for a couple of weeks. I've been meaning to get a gallery of sold designs done and delete them from the main shop pages as it's getting a bit clogged up with 'out of stock' things. I also want to get a completely new category up and running - details of that nearer the time.
I'd probably get on with it so I can start September with new collections and exciting stuff...
~Jane

Summer Fair season - Challenge 52 weeks 11-13

Phew! I've just done the last of my three Summer fetes. It was a mixed season...

The first fete I do is at my local Primary School where I also work at lunchtimes. I think this helps as the children know me and as I've been doing the Summer fete and the Christmas Fair too they know I'll be there! As mentioned in my previous post, I always have plenty of children's jewellery and reasonably priced items. We sold a staggering 140+ of the little seed bead bracelets and 5 of those hair clip bead strands - Rebecca was a bit disappinted we didn't sell more of them as she thought they'd be snapped up. Over all, we did really well here and also got a booking for a 'girls night in' jewellery shop at home party.

The next day we were at the Friends of Caterham Dene Hospital fete, which is only a couple of miles away. There were quite a lot of stalls there this year, mostly charity ones as that's the kind of fete it is. Unfortunately the four jewellery sellers were placed in very close proximity to each other! Mind you, I don't think it made much difference as no one seemed to be buying - or even looking - we watched so many people walk down the aisle of stalls without even glancing either way. I know we're in a recession, but to not even look at what stalls there were seemed a bit strange to me. With people like that it wasn't surprising we only sold 5 things the whole time we were there and made a loss as the stall was pretty expensive - ah well, at least it was for charity and we know now to visit it as customers next year! Look at our happy smiling faces - this was before the fete started!

Yesterday we were at a Girls' secondary school nearby. By Friday I had almost decided not to go as the rain had been so torrential all week and the fair was on the school field. However, the weather forecast looked pretty good so I thought we might as well give it a go as girls=jewellery! Or so I thought...
Again, it wasn't great. The pupils of the school were all there, but seemed to be working on their own class stalls so there weren't that many of them wandering around. Our stall was on the far side of the field in the corner, so we got the most of the wind, which resulted in some of the displays falling over on a regular basis! We put the side up of the gazebo which helped a bit. In the end we made a very small profit, but if you factor in the time we spent there and the time it takes to make the jewellery, plus the £10 I gave to my glamourous assistant then it was actually a loss! 

So guess what fete we'll be doing again next year and which ones we won't! I don't think I'll bother trying to find any alternatives to do, I'll just use that time to make more website stock. In the warm and dry and non-windy house!

Challenge 52 - week 10 - fete preparation (part two)

I'm getting there!
I've made four new flowery bracelets, which are always popular.
Over the last few days I've been making lots of strands of hair beads. I was given a bag of (unworn) glittery hair clips by a friend and had wondered what to do with them, whether to just sell them individually as a 'cheaper option' for the usual children with 20p in pennies clutched in their hand...but then had the idea of hair braid style strands.
A few years ago at the local school fete a hairdresser mum used to do coloured hair strands which she melted onto your hair with her straighteners (I used to go for blue or purple!) - this was really popular and she used to have a queue for most of the afternoon.
So I thought I would attach a strand of beads to the clips with a charm at the end to finish it off. I've made 15 so far and have more clips to use, so guess what I'll be doing in a minute?!

I've no idea how I'm going to display them, maybe just lay them out on the table. Unfortunately I don't have a TARDIS for a stall, I've got far too much stock for one table! Hopefully if the weather is dry and we don't have to put the sides on the gazebo, I'll bring the old pasting table with me too and put it on one side of our space at right-angles to the main table. My daughter Rebecca helps me on my stall and usually does the children's end, so she could have a table to herself. Hmm, better get some more cloth then - another thing to add to the "to do" list!

If you're in the area and fancy coming along, my fetes are
25th June - Keston Primary School, Keston Avenue, Old Coulsdon, Surrey
26th June - Caterham Dene Hospital, Caterham Hill (opposite Queen's Park)
9th July - Wallington High School for Girls, Wallington, Surrey

Right, I'm off to vaccuum the floor and make some more of those bead strands....
~Jane

Challenge 52 - week 9 - Fete preparation (part one)

Over the last week I have started preparing for the three Summer fetes I have coming up. I have my boxes of stock for stalls and jewellery parties separate from online stock, so got them all out to do a stocktake. I should probably make tidy lists in Word and keep them on the computer so I can delete things as they sell, but I haven't got round to this so far and every year do a big long list on lined A4 paper. I do have a huge amount of things to sell!

I want to cater for all tastes and all ages, so make a lot of childrens' jewellery at as low a price as I can, as there are always little girls coming up to my stall looking longingly at the pretty vast array and then saying "what can I get for 50p?"...well I'm afraid I don't really have anything that cheap, but I've made a bunch of necklaces I sell for £1.00, which are a silver acrylic heart charm on a length of ribbon which is tied to just slip over their heads. I still get some children who try to haggle with me over prices, but I just smile back and say "no, the price on the label is the price I'm selling it for" and point them in the direction of the cheaper items!

I have so far listed all the necklaces I'm taking (though I'll be making a few more, better to have too many than too few!). I even have a bag of "spares" to replenish my revolving stand of childrens/teens type necklaces - plenty of skull & crossbones, Hello Kitty, plastic stars, silver hearts etc. Last night made 16 pairs of clip on earrings as I realised I only had a couple of pairs left and neither were very 'little girly'. I wonder how they'll do this year, there were quite a few girls without pierced ears who bought them last Summer.
It's funny, each year there's something different which is the 'best seller'. A couple of years ago I sold loads of little seed bead bracelets...oh I forgot I do have something for under 50p, I bought these in (I gave up making them as the knotting drives me mad!) and sell them for 20p each...so bought in another lot and last year hardly sold any, hmm, I must remember to get them out of the loft and see how it goes this year!

Next job is to stock take the bracelets....

Challenge 52 - Week 7 - more Pirates!

Yes I know I haven't done a post called 'Week 6', but that was the Folksy Friday I did last week, my Challenge to myself was to try and do one Folksy Friday a month...let's see how far I get with that!

The last week or so has been really busy...

My brother and his family moved into a house 10 minutes walk from mine - he had been working abroad for 9 years, met his wife there and they have two small children. So that was a major event! I, Mr Treasures and my parents spent a lot of time going backwards & forwards to the house (which they had been renting out since buying it a couple of years ago) getting it as ready as possible for their return. Then we had to be there when they arrived from Heathrow Airport as they didn't have any keys themselves! Luckily it's been sunny up until today, so they have had a nice welcome and a chance to walk around and get to know the area. 

This week it was my birthday, which has meant cake and Chinese food in between a trip to the gym - yes even on my birthday, have to keep up the twice a week as much as possible!

Then we went to see my daughter's AS Level play for Theatre Studies - Berkoff's interpretation of Kafka's The Trial, so confusing but well done!

Thursday we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides. Well obviously it was really good, though I'm not sure I enjoyed it as much as the previous films, but Captain Jack Sparrow was his usual character!

So guess what? I've been making more pirate jewellery for the website! I have also been making a few different styles of designs for my Folksy shop, but finding the time has been a Challenge!

Check out the Folksy shop http://www.piratetreasuresjewellery.folksy.com/ 

and website http://www.pirate-treasures.com/

Well that's enough from me for now, I had better dash round with a duster as my parents are coming for a cup of tea after the Grand Prix which is just finishing!

Bye for now,

Jane

Challenge 52 - week 5 - catching up (part 1)

Only a day late! This week has been mostly about catching up and probably Week 6 will be too. I caught up with my 'ideas' list of making, but there haven't been quite enough hours in the day to get everything added to the website!

These are a few of the new designs on the website Pirate Treasures over the last week...

I've also been keeping up with the Mayhems on Folksy. Here's a couple of my listings from the week...

I'm planning on doing a Folksy Friday for my next blog post, I've got the subject sorted, just need the time to find all the lovely goodies to show!

Challenge 52 - week 3

Yes, I realise I should have written this last weekend, but we were doing the tiling in the kitchen! It went pretty well and now everything is back in the cupboards and finished!

Last post I mentioned the commissions I was asked to do. One I am very excited about I will save for another blog post as I'm waiting for some supplies to arrive. The other was for a Steampunk necklace. I had to buy some new epoxy as when I had carefully designed and arranged all the pieces in postition I realised I didn't have enough to stick all of them (it tends to seep through the lid no matter how tightly you screw it on, so I bought some in a syringe this time). Well, I was having a bit of a steampunk marathon and made some rings and hair pins too. These are the pendants for the necklaces drying happily - I have given the potential customer the choice and will put the rest on the website afterwards.

 I signed up to Google Merchant Centre to add my website's shop to the 'shopping' items for Google searches. I'm pretty high when searching for 'pirate jewellery' or 'steampunk jewellery' but need to go through all my meta keywords and descriptions on my website. I think when I first changed website hosts I was in such a hurry to get all the products up, I didn't add all the meta info for everything - that's another fun job to look forward to! Though Create are a really good and easy to use website provider it's not too much of a pain, just a bit time consuming.
Oh by the way, this isn't week 3 news but I had my first order via Google checkout yesterday, so I'm pleased I added it!


OK, I'll hopefully do another post on Sunday and that will bring me up to date!
~Jane

Challenge 52 & April Show-ers

OK, so maybe I need some sort of incentive/threat to get myself moving and remembering to blog...

Well luckily Abi from  Birdcage Creative had a great idea with a great name and invented Challenge 52, where she will aim to make/design/blog or otherwisely be creative every week. She has invited others to join in, so that's probably the poke with a blunt stick I need! But as I have two blogs, I might alternate some weeks if I don't manage to get things done for both of them - sounds like I'm chickening out, but hopefully I'll keep it up! Yes I know I attempted the One a Day Challenge last year and that tailed off, but once a week might work out better.

Also, I'm joining in with the daily listing club on Folksy this month, called the April Show-ers. I'm alternating between Pirate Treasures Jewellery and The Emporium of Curiosities each day, so that will make 30 listings in total.

So far for Pirate Treasures I've listed three Pandora style bracelets. They are very popular with my local customers - I daren't think of how many beads one of my friends has bought from me, she has an adiction to them! I've sold quite a few on my website but haven't listed any on Folksy before.

Right then, as we are in the middle of having a new kitchen fitted and it's fish & chip shop dinner tonight, I can use the extra not-having-to-cook time to go and make some more jewellery! Look out for a new necklace later this week... 

~Jane