Well, I've completed 2 Advent Calendars, 2 sets of 3D snowflakes, 4 paper dolls with a wardrobe and lots of Christmas Cards. All of this can be seen on my Facebook page, Kellys Crafts. Here are just a few:
Well, the holidays are sneaking up on me way too fast this year. I've got a lot going on with my crafts. I have a craft show this weekend, need to make a princess charm bracelet, still have 6 advent calendars to assemble, but on the other side, I've completed 48 Christmas cards, 8 Thanksgiving cards (still have to make the envelopes), made one Christmas charm bracelet and 4 necklaces. Finished Becky's Turquoise cross necklace, completed 2 advent calendars and redid a number of my photos. Busy beaver...that's what I am.
I'm also sponsoring 11 children through Letters to Santa. Actually, I'm the clean up crew, I take the children that didn't get sponsored or only got something very small and try to add to it to give them at least a small Christmas. For those of you who think that running your own crafting business is fun and easy, you're kind of right. It is fun, but it is also a tremendous amount of work. I'm on my computer 6-8 hours a day and trying to run 2 stores and my Facebook page. That's why my blog gets behind. I'm posting a few of my new items below.
If you go down the right hand side of my blog, you will find her blog, The Stitching Coop. Click on it and it will take you to her blog and there will be instructions. Just click on Don't forget the Giveaway and it is explained. Sorry about not posting that earlier.
The giveaway is for celebrating Invisible Illness Week. I have a lot of invisible illnesses, so I know what it is like and they are difficult to live with. Help support the cause by entering the giveaway.
I decided I needed to package my cards differently, so...I've taken all new pictures and grouped them into 10 packs of 5. Each pack has a variety of cards. Some are made by Vicky, Laura, Becky and La Tawnya, they are in the card swapping group I belong too. We have a lot of fun, meeting once a month at a restaurant and swapping cards, everyone ends up with 8 cards of the same theme. Girls day out, get to eat great food and have a lot of fun just chatting. September 17th is our get together at my house for Christmas cards and a salad potluck. I have everything imagineable to make cards and other Christmas projects. I can make a nativity scene, villages, layered cards, you name it. The Cricut is incredible with what it can do. Here are a few samples of the new line of cards:
If there were an erase button on the calendar, I would erase yesterday, except for the birthday party we went to, that was fun. In the morning, I managed to delete all of my photos from my computer. Luckily I had some off in Cyberspace that I had to reload and the rest I loaded from Facebook. Took 3 hours to clean up that mess. I just noticed, I still have empty folders, so I guess I'm not through.
Then, last night, I managed to sign on to facebook with a different email account then I normally use, so it created a new profile and before I knew what was happening, I had sent friend requests to everybody on my email contact list. Now, I deal with China a lot in my business, so I have a ton of Chinese email contacts, not to mention my bank, my insurance agent, numerous other businesses I deal with...I can hardly wait until they get my friend request from FB. What a pain. I had to deactivate that account, explain to everyone why they got another friend request and now...well we'll just wait to see what's next.
I've enterered my products in a number of giveaways and they seem to be popular. I'm going to be switching over to making advent calendars though. I spent 6 hours designing them on the cricut design studio only to save the file and have it be too large to save. I lost everything. Still haven't had the motivation to redo everything. It was a lot of work, all down the drain.
The Bellflower craft fair was kind of a bust, there were hardly any customers there. I sold 4 bookmarks. That's it. But what I did while I was waiting was a bit...well, you decide. I was making a necklace, and remember, I'm still learning, out of stone and made the wrong choice in stringing material. Instead of using wire, I used waxed cotton. Did I stop to think that the stone would cut through it? No...of course not. I got to the last piece, putting on the clasp and the string broke. Well, I thought I would be smart and instead of restringing it, I decided to try to glue it back together. So I got me some Bead Fix, very, very strong glue, like super, super, super glue. It wasn't coming out, so I gave it a big squeeze, yeah, it happened. I had glue everywhere, all over my hand, the necklace, the paper it was on, the tablecloth, the table and everything I picked up to move out of the way got glued to my hand. Get the picture? I looked pretty funny. Every time I tried to unglue something, it got glued somewhere else. Glued 3 of my fingers together also. We had no paper towels, soap or water. What a mess. Then I had to restring the necklace all over again, only this time, I used wire. Never make the same mistake twice. Live and learn.
What was your worst crafting nightmare?
Well, I redid a few necklaces. The Mosaic Turquoise Donut necklace I finally got the chain for, so it looks a lot better now and I added a few touches to the Ruby Zoisite pendant. Here's some pictures:
Yes, I must admit, I have seriously been neglecting my blog. I've been so busy with giveaways, a craft fair, learning wire wrapping and life in general that something had to give and this blog was what went. But have a few extra moments this morning before the work begins so I thought I would check in.
My son is getting a job offer that he's really excited about, problem is, he has to stay in Houston. Why is that a problem, other then the obvious answer, he is VERY allergic to Houston. He gets sick all the time. But, he is very excited about the job. They are preparing an offer now and I'm sure he will accept. He's ready for a change.
Now on the other end of the spectrum, my daughter just broke up with her boyfriend from a 2 year relationship. She really cared for him, makes me feel sad. She wants to move back to Texas, I wouldn't, Texas is not a good state for women, but how do you make a 21, almost 22 year old understand that when it is subtle. Her dad told her she couldn't move in with him, nice guy, so I'm not sure what she'll be doing.
Meanwhile my business has taken off. My fans on pagebook have gone from 38 to 268 in 2 weeks. I donated to a few giveaways and wow, what a difference. I've also gained a few customers from it. This form of advertising works much better for my type of business then a facebook ad. They were never any use to me and espensive. Plus, the giveaways are kind of fun.
You should check out my facebook page, the link is on the right hand side bar, down a ways. I just uploaded all of my pendant inventory into photo albums. Looks good. Have some new necklaces and bracelets, new designs, new colors. Started doing wire wrapping and my first project didn't turn out too bad.
Hope your day turns out good and here's to a great weekend to all!
My new wire wrapped Necklace:
Yeah, business is picking up. I sold one of my necklaces on Ebay:
I couldn't sleep last night, so from 1 am until 6 am I worked on some popup cards with my Cricut and I made a new Ladybug necklace. Now if you know me at all, you know I absolutely love ladybugs. I got my first ladybug stuffed animal when I was 1 1/2 years old. She has been through many surgeries, our dogs got a hold of her more than once. She's lost all of her fur and one eye. But I still have her. She is probably my most prized possession. In fact, here's her picture:
