New Marketplaces

With so many new selling sites springing up left right and centre, it's hard to know where to pick to sell on. A lot of them are still in beta, so they havent finished testing them out, and there are no real sales figures to go on, so you dont know how successful you will be there.
But thats how Ebay & Etsy started out and now they have millions & hundreds of thousands (respectively) of users.
I have been selling on Etsy now for just over 6 months. I decided not to put all my eggs in one basket and in the last week I have opened shops on two new selling sites: shophandmade.com & artfire.com. Both have opening offers for new sellers, free listings and discounted memberships.
Only time will tell as to how successfull selling on there will be, as sales on Etsy have been slow.

Featured in another blog

After the weather turned last week I was inspired to crochet up a little grey wool scarflette, I just sat down and the design flowed, no pattern, no nothing just experimentation, even included some button holes and a frill around the bottom.
I actually started with the mustard rose flower which embellishes the outside. That paved the way for the matching mustard silk buttons, and what better to set it off that a nice mid grey background. It is a simple double stitch ground and really didnt take too long to make.
Once listed on etsy the views shot up quickly, and two days later I recieved an email to say that it had been chosen by a fellow blogger as an example on her blog http://wickedlittlepleasures.blogspot.com/2008/11/finds-scarf-by-any-other-name.html

Supply success

Yay! I just won my new lightbox. This should greatly improve my photographs and bring them all into uniformed line.
I already bought some lamps and daylight bulbs earlier this week (the day someone outbid me on a cheaper lightbox, but hey ho!)
So keep an eye out for further developments and experiments once it arrives!

To sell or not to sell? Part 1

So do I venture into other selling venues?
At the moment fairs are not an option for me, I dont have the correct paperwork yet for starters a few places have a blanket license, but they still prefer you to have your own, and I dont have transport, display aids or signage. Or for that matter, enough stock to sustain a full day!
So, where else can I go?
Well I did Ebay for 4 years, to start off with I did a few auctions, then after 2 years I opened a shop, which was at £6 a month plus 6p per item listing for the month rather than 30p for a max of 10 days per listing worked out a lot cheaper.
There were ups and downs to only selling through a shop, as one of my friends said (and she owned a shop there herself) that she never looked in the shop listings to buy stuff, only the auctions, because at that time it was a seperate page under all the aution listings. I think they now mix all the listing in together.
Also you got to set the price up actually wanted to sell the item for as a Buy It Now price, not start the auction at a low price to entice bids, like an auction would. Good side, you got a half decent price for it, downside, people only want stuff for 99p! So you still couldnt really set a high enough price for your item, and items didnt move very fast tending to sit around in my shop for months on end. I only really had one good selling stretch, christmas 2006, I managed to make about £250 in one month, but other than that it was dribs and drabs.
Handmade items just dont go down all that well on ebay, people want brand names, and brand names for cheap. They dont want to pay retail for an item they could go out and buy in a high street store, and they most definately dont want to pay full price for something someone has made, not matter how qualified and skilled they are.

Retro Handmade Etsy Street Team Treasury

I made this treasury on Etsy's Treasury West for our street team Retro Handmade.
It features some of our newer members.
(Screenshot taken by Kelly of retro80s.etsy.com)

Serendipity The Finished Hat

Remember the first felted mini beret I made last month? Well here is the finished article!
I studded the felted wool with glued tiny pins holding tiny freshwater pearls, attatched matching grosgrain ribbon to tie under the hair at the nape of the neck.
It is sat on a matching handmade hatbox.

Crocheted Grey Felted Mini Beret (unembellished)

Grey Mix Paton's Classic Merino wool.
Crocheted mini beret, felted post production. (unembellished)

Felted Crochet - To form or not to form?

Phew! Another busy week. Relly's visiting from abroad, so it was Tourguide Liz for a week! God, you think you have busy life until you have to show people round where you live, then your knackered as hell after day two!
So that put a halt to design and make for 5 days, which was actually abit of a rest! I was eager to get back to it by the end of day 4.
I kept a ball of wool and a crochet hook in my bag for subway trips and got 4 mini beret's worked up and ready for felting. I managed to get hold of and old plastic pot lid which was just the right size for the insides of the berets, so that when they felt down they dont screw up like the first green one did. Although this means I can only felt one at a time (until I get another lid anyway)
The first one twisted slightly, but the second and third turned out well. I didnt put the last two in the tumble dryer, I left them to dry naturally after I had taken the plastic form out of the middle. I pushed the top and bottom apart and gently formed a dome in the top. This has given them a more natural shape, not so forced as the tumble dryed ones. I dont think tumble drying really adds to it. It would only be of use if I was drying larger flatter pieces.