MAYBE I'LL FINISH IN A YEAR OR TWO
BUT I SWEAR, I'VE NOT BEEN COMPLETELY USELESS.
and also, a few more excuses.
and also, a few more excuses.
Good afternoon my super sweet sugar babies!! Is there a chance at me winning you over with flattery, or are you completely done with my garbage already?
Let it be said first off I don't blame you! It turns out this whole making my own website/becoming a professional blogger/business extraordinaire has a little more involved in it than my single mom self had prepared for (I'm typing this to a very tired baby resisting sleep as we speak) but rest assured I do have some legitimate excuses for my absence even if my words fall on deaf ears.
For starters, I had surgery. Granted, it was just a run-of-the-mill oral surgery that has unfortunately become routine for me (thanks to an unfortunate accident involving my face and a doorknob in October of 2014) but I still went under anesthesia and had to balance recovery with watching my son because a babysitter wasn't available. 'Recovery' being just another word for a very long nap considering I had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for my shift the next day.
During that time I decided to focus on listing a few more products and also editing my theme--big mistake because I messed up all the coding on my blog and am decidedly all too tired of redoing things I've already perfected. When you have so little time on your hands backtracking is absolutely painful.
I also spent a lot of time messing with Adobe and looking at other blogs, websites, and stores for inspiration. There is a lot about online commerce I've overlooked and I imagine some big changes are going to come to the face of Sweet Girl in due time. After three days of screwing around I finally came up with one of Sweet Girl's first advertisements. I might use this for tons of things in the future but for now, it's intention is to be hung as a flyer on this memo board we have at work with some of my business cards. I've been crocheting during my (very sparse) spare time and breaks since I started and every time I pull out my crochet hook my co-workers ask what I'm working on. It's pretty hard to communicate what a large operation my business has become but maybe with this new "advertising campaign" I can better communicate with my peers what Sweet Girl truly is.
Let it be said first off I don't blame you! It turns out this whole making my own website/becoming a professional blogger/business extraordinaire has a little more involved in it than my single mom self had prepared for (I'm typing this to a very tired baby resisting sleep as we speak) but rest assured I do have some legitimate excuses for my absence even if my words fall on deaf ears.
For starters, I had surgery. Granted, it was just a run-of-the-mill oral surgery that has unfortunately become routine for me (thanks to an unfortunate accident involving my face and a doorknob in October of 2014) but I still went under anesthesia and had to balance recovery with watching my son because a babysitter wasn't available. 'Recovery' being just another word for a very long nap considering I had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for my shift the next day.
During that time I decided to focus on listing a few more products and also editing my theme--big mistake because I messed up all the coding on my blog and am decidedly all too tired of redoing things I've already perfected. When you have so little time on your hands backtracking is absolutely painful.
I also spent a lot of time messing with Adobe and looking at other blogs, websites, and stores for inspiration. There is a lot about online commerce I've overlooked and I imagine some big changes are going to come to the face of Sweet Girl in due time. After three days of screwing around I finally came up with one of Sweet Girl's first advertisements. I might use this for tons of things in the future but for now, it's intention is to be hung as a flyer on this memo board we have at work with some of my business cards. I've been crocheting during my (very sparse) spare time and breaks since I started and every time I pull out my crochet hook my co-workers ask what I'm working on. It's pretty hard to communicate what a large operation my business has become but maybe with this new "advertising campaign" I can better communicate with my peers what Sweet Girl truly is.
Awesome, no? Alright, so I can admit for how long it took me to create that little doozy up there, the end result isn't that impressive at all but I did learn a lot and next time I take a stab at it not only will my finished product look a whole lot nicer, it will be a lot faster to create as well. I can't wait to hang the flyer up at work and at the local grocery store and see what kind of traffic (if any) it generates! I'm also including little 'sample' bags that consist of one of our small fabric gift bag samples, a clothes pin magnet, some glitter thumb tacks, and lastly, a key chain which can be used to hang/carry/promote the handful of Sweet Girl business cards inside!
Which by the way, do you want to see?!
Which by the way, do you want to see?!
Totally cute right?! I won't take all the credit for the design-- Vistaprint provided me with an awesome template and I'm so pleased with how they turned out. If you're wondering what's up with the back of the card, let me tell you, it's only pure genius. Price Tags! I learned a long time ago that when at a fair, you should price mark every single item because more often than not the customer won't ask. Craft buys are impulse buys and made on a whim. I thought making the back of my business card a price tag would be an awesome way to save money and time, combining the two, and also is sending an imprint of the Sweet Girl brand (along with contact information) home with each and every customer that makes a purchase. Good thinking, right? |
Finally, I've been doing tons of research looking for a venue to try Sweet Girl's hand at live commerce once more. A story for another day, my handful of attempts to sell some crafts at two different venues have been utterly pathetic. Alas, I think I have a potential location for our third whirl secured and will be updating you as soon as possible! Craft Fairs in Michigan are few and far between because of our seasonal weather and often very expensive to participate in. I'm hesitant about selling at the many (and much cheaper) 'flea market' type venues but our local library is doing something they're calling a Heritage Day Sale, and in addition to the M-15 road sale, I think I might give it a try. I probably would not invest my time if I didn't have a ton of additional crap I want to unload from my belonging. Like three vintage singer sewing machines I'm never going to touch an a ton of craft supplies/dye cuts I don't even own the machinery for and definitely won't be buying in the future. I hate scrapbooking.
I've also gotten very close to kind of sort of sorting all my product and just so we're up to date I have four VERY large storage totes packed to the brim as well as one of those three drawer storage systems I could not possibly stuff another item into. I probably have enough product to fill three(ish) more totes and that definitely doesn't include all the racks, display notions, and other craftastic crap drowning me alive. When I think about all the stuff I've given away it's pretty remarkable to see all the things I've created in under three years.
So that basically concludes the update! And I'd just like to note it took me over a week to write this. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem and my issue with time management is starting to become one.
So once again, thank you so much for your patience and support of Sweet Girl. Now that things are settling down expect to see more progress, or in this case, blogress. I look forward to writing up some dope tutorials to share with you in the near future and wish you the world's success until we meet again. So until next time...
I've also gotten very close to kind of sort of sorting all my product and just so we're up to date I have four VERY large storage totes packed to the brim as well as one of those three drawer storage systems I could not possibly stuff another item into. I probably have enough product to fill three(ish) more totes and that definitely doesn't include all the racks, display notions, and other craftastic crap drowning me alive. When I think about all the stuff I've given away it's pretty remarkable to see all the things I've created in under three years.
So that basically concludes the update! And I'd just like to note it took me over a week to write this. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem and my issue with time management is starting to become one.
So once again, thank you so much for your patience and support of Sweet Girl. Now that things are settling down expect to see more progress, or in this case, blogress. I look forward to writing up some dope tutorials to share with you in the near future and wish you the world's success until we meet again. So until next time...