My First Craft Fair

I did my first craft fair before Christmas. It was at the Church of a friend of mine, and we shared a table between 3 people - my jewellery, my friend Ali's Christmas decorations, and my friend Sophie's ceramics.


This was my little third of the table. I wasn't sure how to best display the jewellery, but I was quite pleased with the final outcome. I would definately have struggled to fill a whole table, though!

The fair itself went ok - I think there were about 200-250 people who visited (and all table/entrance fees went to our local hospital, which is always a good cause), and I made three sales. It was quite a long day for three sales - the fair was open from 10-6, but could probably have closed at 4 quite happily really. However, I got some really lovely feedback from someone who bought a necklace for his mum and was the flavour of the month on Christmas day apparently! That kind of thing always makes me happy!

I did also get to finish my own Christmas shopping from some of the other lovely stalls that were there, and it was lovely to sit for the day with my friend Ali and chat, without one of us always having to jump up to rescue a toddler from imminent doom.

I think I would have to think carefully before signing up for another one though, especially from a space and display point of view. If anyone has any tips on this, I'd be grateful!

Flickr Themed Challenge - Graveyards!

The UK Etsy Challenge has been opened up! It has become the Flickr Themed Challenge Group and it is open to anyone, anywhere in the world, with an online shop or craft blog to promote - so get those thinking hats on, people, because the new challenge is here.

The challenges are pulled out of a hat by the lovely c-urchin from a big pile of suggestions, and this quarters challenge is Graveyards. Yes, really. It even finishes on Sunday 17th October - just in time for Halloween.

Work in progress photos are welcome, but you are only allowed to enter one item into the competition. There is no prize except pride, but it's a fun competition to enter.

And finally - I always like to throw pictures into my blog, so here are two picture of graveyards from my photo library, both coincidentally taken from the battlements of a castle. Funny, that (have I mentioned my castle obsession before?). The first is from the Isle of Wight, and the second is from Jordan - they are not very clear photos, but hey, sometimes you got to work with what you got!

Backlinking - a good idea

I just read about this in an etsy forum post, and it makes a lot of sense - backlinking at the bottom of an item, to help viewers find relevant items. It might be obvious to you, but it has just never occurred to me before!

For example, I make some Swing Earrings with pearls, and list them.

A few days later I make the same style earrings but with turquoise, and list them.


If I put at the bottom of the listing 'I also make these earrings with pearls', and add a link to the earrings directly, then people can check them out directly if they want to without going through 3 other links to find them.

Clever. See an example here

I am off to go through all my listings and backlink where appropriate!

Lovely Moo Minicards!

These are some of my lovely new minicards that arrived this morning from Moo (www.moo.com)! This is the first lot of minicards I have tried, after receiving a few from other people in etsy purchases, and I am really quite pleased with them - they are very cute. Now I just need to be brave enough to give them out to people (this is where I struggle most - with the marketing).

Moo also offer a 15% discount to anyone who hasn't used them before - the code is 2RB2CK - and they do full size business cards, postcards, and stickers among other things.