Success!

Today was the final day of my 2-day craft fair. PICTURES COMING SOON! Suffice it to say that I sold 22 items and made a profit of over $100!! It was a wonderful fair, fireworks and rides and everything, and all of my friends stopped by :) I had a lot of fun!

In personal news, I was just dumped by my boyfriend of almost 3 years and feel totally distraught about it.
So ya know. Feel free to cheer me up or help me stay busy somehow.
Business success really does wonders for a broken heart, though, doesn't it? Hmmm.

Update From My Life

I had my orientation for Indiana University yesterday (I'm transferring in as a sophmore.) I was going to get a business degree, but it would mean cramming in a zillion required classes this year (no, I'm serious, it would be almost impossible. Their business school is very good and very cutthroat.) So my declared major is now Apparel Merchandising! I know, it's not very common, but it's hella useful for my chosen career path, provided that stays the same for the next 2 years or so. Anyway, I'll be minoring in business, so I'll still get tons of nerdy business skills. So I get to take classes in fashion design and accounting. Can we say, perfect?

In other news, I've been secretly working on totally new line of wallets! I've designed them and started to laminate them and cut them out, but haven't sewed any up yet, so I can't show you :( but I will show you this awesome secret preview!

Oooooh. No copyright infringement here, guys, it's all original :)

COMING SOON IN LIA'S LIFE:
1. New hostess job at Olive Garden!
2. Craft fair this weekend! 2 days! Lots of kids! $75 that I must make to break even. Yikes. I'm going to have to do a ton of sewing this weekend so I at least have some more expensive items. I hope some of the people at this fair like hot topic shirts.
3. I have 3976763 consignment orders to go out in the next few weeks. Hopefully I can at least make some money that way, b/c this summer is going SO badly.
Stay tuned!

YART SALE!

Some of you might have heard of the "Yart Sale" on Etsy right now! If not, it's ton of stores with discounted prices from June 11-20th .... like a yard sale, for handmade items! 2 of my shops will be participating! Pictured are some of the awesome items for sale that you can snag at my Etsy shops. To find other great Etsy deals, just add "yart" or "yart sale" to your search, and voila, discounts galore!

I've made sections in my shops for the sale items: Here are the supplies and Here are the earrings!

As a special, secret bonus,I've also marked down one BITCH wallet in my new Etsy shop! Here it is! Enjoy these great deals and be sure to search through other shops as well!

Dinner party at my apartment!

So I threw a little dinner party for my mom, dad, and grandmother to break in the new apartment, so to speak. I slaved all day (imagine the heat of 80degree weather, a shower, an oven, AND boiling water in my little apartment, Ahhhh!) cooking and cleaning just like a cute little housewife (except my boyfriend doesn't eat food I like, or trust my cooking, so he opted out, haha.) Anyway, here are a few pics! First can we just admire my plate set in that first pic? Pink and green PLAID. How much? $3 for all of it (plus the serving tray and a set of knives). Yard sale. HOLLA! Ahem, moving on.

These are Garlic Chedder Biscuits courtesy of the amazing Joyful Abode blog. They are really easy to make and delicious (though I recommend adding an entire bag of cheese rather than half, don't skimp!) and serving them warm, if possible.
I've got loads more pics up at my Livejournal Blog so head over there to see them!

Wholesale/Consignment Tip

Along with many other sellers this summer, I'm not selling a thing! I haven't had a sale in almost 3 weeks now, the longest time ever since I first opened up my shop! So, what to do? Give up? Toss in the towel? No. The answer is, devote my time to other alternatives and opportunities during this slow summer. For me, this means a couple of craft fairs and wholesale/consignment work.

For those not familiar, wholesale means you sell a large amount of your items at a reduced price to a store to sell at whatever markup they like. Consignment means you send items to a store along with a list detailing what prices they should be sold at, from which you receive 60% and they receive 40%. Wholesale means upfront payment; consignment means payment when your item sells. I think of consigment as a 24/7 craft show: your item is on display in a shop with lots traffic! I'm going to be doing my first consignment orders this summer.


What I did to jump-start this re-focused attention thing was write up a Wholesale/Consignment Tip Sheet with every item I wholesale, the minimum price required to buy to receive the discount, and its price. The same items are also available for consignment. Next, I visited my Etsy Thread which lists loads of stores who sell handmade goods, along with their locations! (In alphabetical order *ahem* you're welcome!) I clicked on every website (though, if you're really ambitious, you could probably google the ones without websites listed as well) and if the store looked like it fit my target demographic (edgy, funky, alternative) I found their email address and added it to my list. Once I'd compiled all of the stores, I sent out a mass email with a link to my wholesale page and a couple of suggestions (for example, I can make custom wallets: local-themed wallets, political wallets, graphic wallets, etc! I suggested these as a great personalized shop-specific selling item and, surprise, I now have 2 consigment orders for them!) Not all 30-something of the shops I emailed have gotten back to me yet, but I have several new orders to work on and now I don't need to rely on my dead Etsy shop and Website for income.

To make your own wholesale info page, you don't need a website, although it does help (mine was just simple HTML). You can also write up an email in Notepad and copy-paste it into your email provider to send it out to multiple people. Your wholesale tip sheet should include example pictures that showcase your items (I had pictures of previous orders I'd done as well as my best items from each category), prices, and if you have any requirements for wholesale/consignment or feedback from other wholesale buyers, you can include that too. I can't wait to hear back from the other shop owners! And remember, even if they don't order from you right away, you're now in their file of potential sellers!

And so it begins: adding inventory

My last craft fair is in late June, and I have a TON of inventory left over from the past 2. So, rather than save all the old stuff, I'm going to add a lot of it to my new etsy shop and Omglia.com. I was up all last night taking pics of my necklaces with my new camera (which, sadly, isn't as amazing as I expected. Or maybe I'm just a terrible photographer. Could go either way.) I've added 3 to my etsy shop and more are coming!

Keep checking back!

Craft Fair #2

Got back a few hours ago from my second craft fair! All in all, I had a great time. I shared a booth with Kayraffla from Etsy and her mom. She's super cool, my age and going to my university next year, and her stuff is AMAZING. We had totally different items (she's a metalsmith) but they were both really funky and unique, so it worked. Our booth looked kickass. However, she ended up making loads more money (she sold a $47 pendant necklace - damn! I need some of that!) and I only sold 4 pairs of earrings and a keychain (to Kayla, haha) totalling in about $6 profit :-/

HOWEVER, it was a lovely day outside, it was a really nice little craft fair and I got some great ideas for my next 2-day fair in a month. Kayla will be sharing the booth again and we're planning a raffle for a mixed bag of some of our earrings. I'm also going to make a ton of little $1 button bobby pins, because Kayla had some wire-wrapped seed bead ones that sold like hotcakes and I want in! My cheapest items are $3 and are popular on Etsy and have done OK at the fair, considering, but people apparently really go for that $1 thing. A bobby pin with a button glued onto it would probably cost me no more than .15 to make anyway, it would make a good loss leader. We also have our booth all planned out for next month (paralell tables with an entryway like a store, hanging stuff from the tent, etc) so it's gonna be awesome :D she's really cool and I'm glad to already have a crafty college friend for next year! Pics if I can figure out how to get them from my camera.

Now I need a nap!

Wallet Contest!

I'm trying something new. My Harry Potter Wallets are being discontinued because, apparently, people at Warner Bros have nothing to do but hunt down innocent crafters and yell at them (bitter? me? Never!). So, there will be no more copyright infringement. From now on I'll be making my own unique wallet designs, using my computer graphics-making skills and quotes and such. Which is where you come in! I need quotes! I've already got some ideas, but I'm planning on making a vast catologue of pop culture referencing wallets! My contest:

1. Submit a quote in this post from a movie, TV show, song lyric, book/series, poem, etc. Tell me where it's from in case the fact that I live under a rock prevents me from getting it.
2. Leave me your email address, or choose the box in the comments that says "send me email replies."
3. If I like your quote and make a wallet with it, I'll sell you a wallet for $10, which is the wholesale price (normally $15, which will probably be going up soon). I understand that not everyone will WANT a paper/tape wallet, though, which is why this is optional.
4. The best quote ever that I love gets a Free Wallet using their quote!
5. Submit as many as you want. GO!

SQUEE.

I'm "squeeing" right now, which is something I NEVER do (sooooo not a fangirl. Of anything except ... maybe LOTR.) But you know what? It is perfectly appropriate, because!
* I JUST finished my LAST exam. Which means I'm no longer a freshman in college! Which means I no longer have to attend this college! Which means no more super-hard long distance relationships and classes about things that make me feel bad for being white/rich!
* I decided to watch Dick in a Box again after reading a blog called Lunch in a Box because
* All summer I'm going to be making Bento lunches for myself! Which basically just means the Japanese word for Lunch, but a zillion times cuter than everyone else's lunches. I got myself an adorable Pink Polka Dotted Bento Box and a ton of awesome bento accessories to go with it. It's portion control, too, so I can lose the obnoxious Freshman 5-15lbs I gained when I was forced to eat College Food (my idea of dessert: strawberries. College's idea: carrot cake fried in oil.) and all of my little Jewish campers at Jewcamp will be totally jealous all summer long.
* I bought a new camera! Because you may have noticed, mine SUCKS. It's 3.2 MPX. Suck! But my new one is shiny and blue and 8.1 mpx! Soooo that means I can take lots of shiny new pictures of all the inventory from my last craft fair!
*Except not all of it, because my next craft fair is on May 20. I'll be sharing my booth with Kayraffla from Etsy! She goes to my college next year.
* I might get an apartment this summer! My dad said he found some sweet apartments for like $300 a month to rent over the summer ...4 minutes away from my boyfriends house! Sweeeet, dude, can anyone say STUDIO SPACE? I'm telling some of my friends who are home for the summer too. It'll be the coolest building ever if we all get apartments there.
Anyway, that's the update from my life. I'm moving but I swear there will be some AWESOME new camera updates next week. In the meantime, check out Omg! Lia? Dot Com cuz ya know, it's working, and stuff.

Craft Fair: The Aftermath

So, that's me ... making a funny face and looking weird at my booth! Just a thought, but the face might have been from the intense freezing cold that was permeating my poor bones (and it was only 8am!) The Chili Cookoff was a total success for chili cooks, but not so much for us crafters .... which was only like 5 people! Lesson learned: only sign up for shows that people interested in buying my stuff will be attending. At any rate, it was an experience. I sat with my sister and her fiance for about 12 hours in 40 degree windy weather (At least it didn't rain) while odd folks in cowboy hats and overalls walking around tasting chili (which was odd, considering I'm from KY and I was in CT, and I definetly didn't expect to see cowboy hats and overalls.) There were lots of little girls with cheap parents who wouldn't buy their kid my stuff (lame) but also some really nice folks including Jillian from Ms. Kitty Fantastico, leader of the CT street team who I met and who is wonderful! All in all, I came out just about even - the entry fee was $50, and I made $41 plus my sister and her fiance bought 3 things which I kind of don't count, hehe. Anyway, in the weeks leading up to my next craft fair (on the 20th!) I'll be posting pics of my DIY labels and signs and whatnot. In the meantime check out My Flickr Photostream for more pics of the fair and what I've been working on!