Week 6 - Personalised gift tags

I offer a free personalised gift tag service with my items, so far not too many people have taken me up on this offer, maybe as it's not something I've promoted too much, just detailing it in the item's description where it could be easily overlooked. I've had great feedback from the ones I have made so I thought I'd share with you some pictures of the process of making the tags and an example of the finished item.

I didn't want to just do simple paper tags as I wanted something a bit more substantial so I use a special type of plastic that you shrinks when heated to give a nice, solid tag. You can draw or print on the plastic and as the material shrinks so does the applied design, the hard part is working out how large to make the original print so it gives you the right size when it's been shrunk down. I use this same material to make other things like name badges, zipper pulls for hoodies and bags and small charms. It's pretty versatile.

This particular order was for a lady who wanted a couple of sets of cufflinks to give as a gift to her husband and his brother as they were opening up a pizzeria. She wanted the gifts tags to have the new restaurant's logo on. After preparing the logo to make it suitable for the printing & shrinking it is printed out onto the plastic, then cut to size. I always round the corners when using this plastic as if they are left square then once shrunk they can be quite sharp. I also make sure to make any hole I need before shrinking as it's a pretty tough material to cut afterwards.

Once printed and trimmed the next part of the process is the shrinking, I usually do this in the oven but you can also use a heat gun. Watching the plastic shrink can be a bit nerve-wracking as it curls up and jumps around, as long as the pieces aren't to big them they will eventually even out and flatten themselves again. Below you can see the pieces before and after shrinking, note the difference in thickness and how the shrinking process makes the printed colours more vivid:

 The print on one of the larger tags ran a little, the smaller tags were better suited in size for this job anyway (I'd made two sizes to have a choice as you can't always predict how much the plastic will shrink).All that's left is packaging up the cufflinks and stringing the tags on the ribbon ready to send out. The completed packages can be seen below:

The great thing with the shrink plastic is you can also cut it to make simple shapes; for example, in the past I've done heart shaped tags for an anniversary present. Anyone who'd like personalised gift tags with an item simply add details in the comment to seller box when placing your order and if I need any further details I'll get in touch.

Week 4 - back on the horse!

Phew - a busy last few weeks (more about that in a future post!) has got in the way of me updating the blog but catching up now and to make it up I've decided to do some double weeks i.e. at least two posts for the next few weeks till I'm back on track!

This week I decided to get on top of updating my Folksy shop. This meant working my way through all my stock checking what I have and re-listing items that I had previously sold so they were available again. I've still got a few listings to put back up but currently the shop is now up to 76 items! This also means I now have a list of all the stock I need to photograph to then make up new listings for. this list currently sits at 92 items so busy times ahead again, just hope the sun holds out for a wee while to help me get some clear pictures.

I need to do the same with my Etsy store, my aim is to maintain both at over 100 items as this will increase my visability to people searching the sites. And I also want to get started on listing some of my t-shirt designs on both sites within the next few weeks and work on some new products. Some of the items I've updated listings for are shown below:

The last few weeks too have seen a big increase in the number of custom order requests I've had in, a lot of them for weddings. I love working on custom items, I'll show some of the recent ones in a future post too.

Personalised scribbling

So December was a busy month with a lots of people buying items for Christmas, I ended up spending most of it getting items made for custom orders and to replace sold stock, so much so that I didn't get my own Christmas shopping done till the 23rd! For quite a bit of the month my workspace resembled a crayon factory as my packs of personalised crayons were popular gifts and just about my biggest seller of the month. I'm actually quite glad for the end of the Christmas rush so I can stop dreaming about coloured wax letters!

So we're a little of the way into January and I'm excited about getting new stock photographed and up online, also about a few new lines I'm working on so stay tuned!

Map of sales so far

I thought it would be interesting to try and chart where my jewellery and t-shirts were ending up so I've created a world map showing my sales from February this year to date. Some people have been repeat buyers so I've only included one marker for them also I've only done one marker per place (I've had a few sales to different people in the same towns. You can see the resultant map below, or for more detail click here to see it on the Wayfairing site.



I'm hoping to try keep the map up to date as I make more sales, here's hoping it fills up quickly! I think you can follow/track other peoples maps too so let me know if you make one of your own and I'll follow you!

Folksy Friday - Martial Arts

Straight after listing my martial arts magnet set on Folksy I saw a great ninja note book (fiona t's below) that had just been listed too so I was inspired to make Martial Arts my theme for this week's Folksy Friday. Fiona does a number of different notebook designs, and they're on my wish list now!

Three Folksy finds!

Since setting up my shop on the uk based handmade marketplace Folksy last month I've discovered a whole collection of talented crafty peole and developed quite a long wishlist of things I'd like to buy! So far I've restricted myself to three things that I saw and fell in love with...

My first purchase was this wee soap set from Bits N Bobs, they're so realistic! I had to justify this to myself as something I could buy and give as a gift to someone so I'm waiting for some birthdays to come round (hopefully not of anyone who reads my blog!). This seller also makes a really cute haribo style soap set and sent me a wee sample soap with my order which smells amazing!

The second thing I bought was this lovely necklace from Crafty Little Mia who makes a variety of things including button based jewellery, illustrations, fine silver jewellery as well as her own fabric designs. The necklace I bought has a wee button pendant on it made from fine silver clay which is a material you can mould and once fired, finished and polished has a higher silver content than sterling (around 99%). I love this necklace and it's going to get lots of wear!

Lastly, just today I bought this postcard set, it's from an illustrator called Elli Moody who I discovered though the Folksy forum. There was a thread on the forum with people recommending shops that they loved, I clicked and found this one and the chicken postcards just jumped out at me. I love the style of illustration used throughout the items in this shop and almost wish I was moving house so I could use her new address cards!


I think this is the one downside of setting my shop up - just finding so many things I want to buy and having to rein myself in constantly!

Personalised pendants

I've been meaning to list these for a while now (since I had my giveaway) as there seemed to be a good response them. The basic idea is you can have a picture that means something to you made into a keepsake pendant. It is something that is quite popular in North America but I haven't seem much over in the UK, in fact I had to buy my supplies from the States so I hope they prove popular!

The pendants are approx an inch square and I finish the backs with fabric and a thick resin coat to proect the picture itself, make the bail secure and to give a water resistant glass-like finish to the back to match the glass tile front.

I'll need to see how the choice of necklace types goes down, it's hard when listing items to know how much information to include and whether to just do a standard item or give people choices. With this item because it is customised I'm hoping people appreciate the option of chain/necklace types and colours, so it is more personal to them. But it means that it requires a bit more interaction between me and the customer after their purchase so I'm sure I'll have to iron out how this works best.


Leave me a comment to let me know what you think and what you could see peole doing with these. Of my giveaway winners, one was on holiday so is looking out their photo for me now, the other I'm in the process of making her necklace, I'll post up a photo when it's done!
Anyway you can find my personalised necklaces in my shop (click here)

Packaging and promotion

This week I got some nice promotional goodies sent to me from Lady Umbrella, a new T-shirt brand that takes their promotion work very seriously. They sent me some stickers and also a pin badge (see below)










I first found these guys on a t-shirt makers forum over a year ago and so saw the thorough approach they took to setting up their company and working towards a launch date. They fully launched their line this February and have already been featured in National media and one of their t-shirts will be in a new feature length movie Booked Out. Their approach to promotion is very inspiring. Now that I've started selling more items I really want to get definate packaging and promotional materials designed and made...watch this space!

Winners, busts and new stock

My personalised pendant giveaway ended on saturday there so using a random number generator (http://www.random.org/) I drew the two winners and emailed them to let them know. The first winner got back to me right away and is looking out her picture for the pendant but I haven't heard back from winner number 2 yet so I think I'll give it till the end of next week then draw another winner if I still haven't heard. So if you're reading this winner number two email me back!

I'm indending too to make personalised pendants (i.e. with your own photo) available for sale. Because of the process they would have a turnaround of a week to 10 days. Is this something people would be interested in? Please leave me a comment with any thought you have.

I'm trying to develop my product photos as seeing as customers to my online shop can't physically pick up and inspect my pieces having good photos is very important. I've yet to work out how to get any good ones at all of my t-shirts or hoodies but I'm working on it! The jewellery is slightly easier because it's smaller but I've proved to myself I can't get good photos of it being worn (seeing as I'm not a contorsionist or professional photographer!) so I think my next project will be to try to make a display bust for necklaces at least. Rena Klingenberg gives a tutorial on her blog showing how to make a simple one like the picture above that I might try out (picture from Dana's Jewellery Design)

I've been listing some new items in my online shop and there's more to come, I managed to get some time to spend making new stuff and so have a batch of resin pieces that need finished. Before I get to much more up for sale I really want to concentrate on developing my logo and packagin material. Right now I'm trying out some different ways of packaging including gift boxes, mini customised cotton drawstring bags and pillow packs. I need to decided and settle for my packaging 'look'. Some items that I'll be listing in the next few weeks...

First week on folksy and fabric

So my shop's been open a week and in that time I've made one online sale and six offline sales from people who'd seen the items on it, two of which were custom items (and one 'almost' sale to the US but the buyer disapeared and didn't complete payment!). So I'm happy with the start I've had! I'm still working hard to catch up with listing items, taking photos, updating facebook and twitter, trying out other online venues to sell and eventually I'll maybe get the time to make some more items. My first online sale was to a fellow folksy shop owner pussy galore who makes beautiful sock cats, check her out!

In the meantime I've discovered Spoonflower, a service that lets you get designs made into fabric, it's US based but looks great, hopefully in the future I'll be able to use it for a project. The way it works you upload your designs and then they'll print them for you but you can also sell your new fabrics to the public through the site, there is some really nice stuff on there, a wee showcase of some of my favourites is below:

This includes fabrics available from: craftylittlemia , renule , maile , petunias , bronhoffer , royal forest , cabinpressstudio , troismiettes and hlozik

Online shop is open!

I've only uploaded some items and will update it over the next few days but my Folksy shop is open. I've started out with some jewellery and accesories and will expand as I get stuff photographed and made.

Check it out and leave me a comment to let me know what you think! Online shop

Setting up to sell online to do lists!

Trying to get ready to get items listed up online for sale but there so much to do and it can be a bit like the chicken and the egg....what to do first, what's better done when there's actually listings up.

I'm concentrating on setting up on Etsy first, even though it's a US based site (and so all transactions are in dollars) it seems to be the busiest handmade marketplace and where most people seem to get most success. So my logic is - is everything's set up on there then it should be easy to transfer to other marketplace sites. So currenty my to do list includes:

- research and write shop policies (shipping, returns etc)
- write descriptions for around 5 items to start me off
- photoshop the rest of the item photos ready for listing
- design and make packaging and basic business cards to send out with orders
- make a spreadsheet that lets me work out selling prices and also allows me to track etsy, paypal and postage fees
- sort out a paypal account

and that's before I start on getting t-shirt designs and other items made. My main problem at the minute is getting bogged down in researching things (like shipping policies etc), I need to stop reading and start writing! Plus I'm still trying to get some belated Christmas presents for friends made up too.

Here's a pair of transformers cufflinks I made for a friends birthday, I'm quite happy with the way they turned out, and some of my lastest batch of resin bits and bobs waiting to get polished up...