As expected - so many months since last post!

It is now November (as seen by the date on the computer today) - where has the time gone!

My last post was about a pamper evening I went to in March, by almost happy co-incidence, I was at a pamper evening type do on Thursday 1st November.

Again it was an evening where I expected not to sell anything while spending my time enthusing about my hand made jewellery to anyone that would stand still long enough for me to open my mouth. In the event, not only did I enthuse to a lot of lovely ladies, but many of them picked up a business card or a postcard (both with pretty pictures of my work and the website address on them) and one lovely lady bought a bracelet from me.

I enjoyed the evening apart from one factor - I had a hacking cough! I'm sure the other people in the room just loved the sound of it but everyone seemed happy to chat, or listen while I talked anyway.

It also pushed me into doing something with my White Oak Jewellery website that I've been meaning to do for the last 2 months.

As I mentioned a few posts ago (which makes it round about Jan 2012) I was looking at setting up a shop on Etsy. Well, I've done it. Very early on I had set up the banner, and the basics of the shop, e.g. terms and conditions, basic description of me etc. But, back in July 2012 I actually listed 5 items in my new Etsy shop! And people have been viewing those items too. No sales so far, but it's early days yet. As you might expect, my Etsy shop is called "White Oak Jewellery".

At the pamper evening on 1st November a number of people asked if I had a web site and having said "yes" I also pointed out that I have a recently opened Etsy shop too and that the web site links to the shop.

This link means that I only have to put the prices in one place, which will please the Etsy team as their conditions do say "don't list it elsewhere" and it means if the price needs to change for any reason (i.e. increases in the cost of materials) I only need to change one place. It does mean that the White Oak Jewellery website needs to have links to the listings on Etsy but it also means that I have to keep the listings on Etsy active - they are only listed for 3 months at a time. I'm hoping that this needing to keep listings in my Etsy shop active means I'll keep a more pro-active interest in the business.

Anyway, I started last Saturday by making active a set of listings on my Etsy shop for the items also listed on the web site (not everything being listed is available on both yet). Then I spent a few hours changing my White Oak Jewellery website to have links to the Etsy shop listings under "buy now" buttons. It was a very interesting exercise, and slightly nerve racking as I realised a few of the listings on my Etsy shop contained errors in the text, doh! So those errors got fixed and my White Oak Jewellery website now links to my White Oak Jewellery Etsy shop. Job done!

Now I just have to list everything I've made and have for sale on Etsy at least, and then link to as many of the listing from the web site as I can be persuaded to do.

I hope you'll drop into both the website and Etsy shop and have a look around.

Until next time

Anne

Pamper evening - Update

Just ove a week ago I attended the pamper evening I mentioned in my last blog entry. The night wasn't as busy as the last event we held at the same location back in September, but then that night was a gorgeous 18 or 20 degrees in temperature! This pamper evening was much cooler.

Again I didn't sell anything at this event, not that I actually expected to, but the real down side was how much I managed to spend while there! Mind you, I did wine a bottle of wine in the "Wine or water" challenge and the cake was just soooo yummy I wish I'd more some more when they lowered the price to 50p each. It was the other items that cost the money, but I'm not going to go into the details of those here. Suffice to say, having access to a "float tin" is not always a good thing!

Anyway, on to the evening, I laid out my stall and decided that this time I would take a few photos - see below for them. The layout is not the most "professional" display, but as I said in my last post it's cheap and made up from things I generally had in the house. The only things I bought to use on the stall was the mirror (helpful in the house too) and the smaller boxes now covered in gold paper. This is a full view of the stall:

These are some close ups of it layout too:

I did get to enthuse about my sterling silver chain maille jewellery to a few people so that was fun - I did warn them it would happen but they let me go ahead anyway! And a number of people picked up a postcard or business to take away, so you never know, that might just lead to something.

In the meantime, it must be spring as the tulips are out - it's the only tulip in the garden and I have no idea where it came from, pretty though:

Until next time
Anne