Toto, we're finally in Kansas!

We've made it to our new house in Leavenworth and have all our household goods!  It took a few extra days since the movers came with all our containers on a big rig that couldn't make the turn from our road down our driveway.  For some reason it never seems like we have this much stuff until we go to unpack and put it all away.  For my husbands sanity I've been concentrating on unpacking everything but my art studio first.  Tomorrow, I head to St. Louis to pick up my Subaru and then I'm hoping to get my studio setup so I can re-open up my shop on Etsy sometime between Sept 1st and 3rd.  As promised, my whole shop sale will still be in full affect for the month of September!

This years yearly update...

Yikes!  What's up with me only posting once a year?!  Anyway, its semi-annual whole shop sale time!  This year it's also moving sale time.

The Army has decided our time here in Hawaii will be up after 3 years.  I'm going to miss this place but I'm sure I won't really feel it until winter hits where we're going next.  Miss Fiber Fox will be brought to you from Fort Leavenworth in Kansas coming in mid August 2013.  I'm both sad and excited to make the move.  I've really grown to love Hawaii.  Then again, who wouldn't?  The 80° weather with partly cloudy sunny skies year round is SOOO nice.  But I can't stand being 6 hours behind my friends and family on the East Coast and I really do miss the changing of the seasons.  We have found an awesome rental with 80 acres of land where we can't see our 1 neighbor or the road from the house.  When you live here in Hawaii where land is worth so much, your house is built 8 feet from the houses on either side, your yard is small (ours in big compared to most) and privacy is somewhat lacking.  In the new house I'll have my own art room to make awesome MFF creations.  No longer will I spread out my material on the guest bed in my "office".  My husband will have all his wood working tools too so I plan to design and build the perfect cutting table and maybe even a sewing table for my machine as well.  I'm getting excited just thinking about the things I will build/make!

Lately I've been working to network my shop in new places and improve certain aspects of my online presence.  I had created a Facebook page awhile ago and added a couple things but never really used it to list sales, new prints, etc.  Facebook has also changed the way these pages are laid out of as well so last week I created a new cover graphic to match my Etsy shop graphics.  I'm slowly getting the info updated there but I have been posting links to new prints and other little tid-bits like selling 10 bags in a 24 hour period over the weekend has to be a record.  I also added a COUPON CODE in the notes section for $2 off your next order.  Kinda hoping it will drive people to my page to like it and then get/use the code in my shop.  One can hope anyway :)

Our household goods are being picked up July 10th and I haven't decided if my shop will go into vacation mode until we are in Kansas and I have all of my bags again or if the bags will be packed in a suitcase to come with me (they are very portable) so I can keep selling.  We are going to be very busy in Colorado renovating a tiny house my husband bought off his dad so we can finally rent it out so it may be too much to do all at once.  If I do close my shop for 5 weeks I may reopen with my sale for a month afterward, we'll see!

**UPDATE**
This post was created and saved on June 19, 2013 when I meant to post it *sign* moving can get so chaotic!

Update

I'd like to say I've been bustin a move making new bags since September but I have to admit I've had stretches of inactivity :( Who knew husband's could be so distracting?!

My whole shop sale was a success and lasted from December thru the end of February. I tried to get my item count up past 40 but I'd list a few bags and then sell out of a few.

I've got 10 new bags that are finished and waiting for pictures. If it would stop raining maybe I could get them taken tomorrow. I've been digging thru my vast stash and have the potential of 40-50 new bag prints to add to my shop (about 50/50 drawstring/zipper box). Now if I could just quit my day job and work full time in my Etsy shop I'd be in heaven and would get my stock up past 80 bags in no time at all.

I admit it, I'm someone who loves fabric. I could go to FAA (Fiber Addicts Anonymous) and just gush about the different fabrics I've found different places. But after realizing how many new prints for my shop I have, I've put a moratorium on buying anything more until I've made at least half the bags I talked about above. Guess I could call it a fabric diet. The same craving and temptations still occur. Especially when I get the sales emails for the site that gives free shipping on all orders over $35. When you live in Hawaii, the free shipping alone saves you $12!

Now did I tell you I've been craving knitting something too? Its a cool 68 here at night and I'm usually snuggling in a sweatshirt under a blanket. For a girl who's lived her whole life in upstate NY, you would think I'd be screaming "heat wave!" in the beginning of March but my blood thinned about 6 weeks after I moved to Hawaii and I get cold when it dips below 70 now. I could probably get away with knitting a shall at night but alas, the buying moratorium extends to all things fiber related :(

Well TTFN. I need to make sure my camera battery is charged for potential pictures tomorrow!

Yikes!

Well my whole shop sale didn't come to fruition unfortunately over the summer. For personal reasons I got sidetracked and then very sidetracked. My life finally eased up last month and I've been working on bags ever since!

I have 20, yes 20 new bags in the wings. Some have been photoed and I just need to install Photoshop to finalize the pics and some still need to be graced with some Hawaiian sun and a glamor shot! BUT I have 16 new zipper box prints cut and in the queue to be sewed now that my custom color zippers are in!

But what about the whole shop sale you ask? Well it is now my intentions to have a holiday blowout sale starting as late as November 1st but might start as early as mid-October and lasting through January 1st!

**HOLIDAY BLOWOUT SALE**
Drawstring Project Bags - 20% off
Zipper Box Bags - 20% off
Clearance - 35% off
*all sale prices will be listed!
Shipping Special still applies...buy 1 bag and get free shipping on all the rest!

Annual WHOLE SHOP sale info!!

Normally I run a whole shop 20-35% sale in June each year to kick off the summer but for a few different reasons I'm delaying it 1 month and it'll last July thru August!

I have been a busy woman making tons of new drawstring bags since my last post and have 17 new prints just waiting to be photo'd so I can start listing them. This is part of the reason for the delay and also since I've been hard at work on these, I haven't had a chance to start working on more zipper box bags! I have more fabric to list tons of the popular zipper box bags and have been loading up on tons of new fabric sets for many more new ones! What would a whole shop sale be without tons of zipper box bags to choose from?? My husband is going back to the mainland for 3 months next week for training and once it's just me and our dog Hoss, I'll be a mad bag lady again with zippers and fabric flying all around.

My goal is 45+ drawstring bags and 15+ zipper box bags before the sale starts with many more in each listed throughout the rest of the sale!!

OH!! I've also worked on a new bag design that I hope to unveil sometime during the sale as well :)

Quick update but full of news!

Wow has life changed since I last posted! My business is still up and running but now in Hawaii!

I met an amazing Army man thanks to my mother's insistence that I meet her neighbor. I did the eye-roll "Ok mom, why not" figuring what could it hurt since I wasn't picking any winners. We hit it off and started a 150 mile long distance weekend relationship where we fell in love and decided to get married! Duty called and my man was off to Iraq for almost 10 months. When he got back, we got the news he was being transferred from NY to HI so we moved up the wedding and in 3 weeks we put it all together and had our family come in from all over! Two weeks later all my belongings were boxed up and shipped over to Oahu. While I dealt with some left over stuff in NY, I ran a huge sale that depleted my stock down to a handful of bags. My boxes arrived a week before I came to the island and I've been a mad bag lady ever since trying to create more stock before the Christmas rush! Unfortunately I had to wait for some supplies to arrive before the majority of it could start but I'm listing bags again and that is all that matters!

On a sad note, my fur-kid Sophie passed away from kidney failure at the age of 10 not long after I arrived in Hawaii. Thankfully she was in good company at my mom's house and was buried with our family pets there in NY. I miss her constantly but I know she is in a better place where she's chasing after bugs and laying in the sun.

Another milestone!

I just noticed I'm at 500 hearts!! I have been kicking around doing a 500 Heart Celebration Sale that is better than the sale I have now! Check out my shop later this week or stay tuned here!!

A day late and a Twitter account short...

If work hadn't been a little on the crazy side yesterday I probably would've seen a mention about Etsy Day somewhere in the forums. Instead it caught my eye in the Announcements section as I was on my way to post a "JUST LISTED" post in the Promotions section. I wish I could've helped the movement yesterday! I've been thinking about starting a Twitter account but I'm still trying to decide if I want a personal acct where I can post personal and etsy stuff or an etsy only acct. I don't think I have the time to update 2 accounts so this is why I'm still trying to decide what I want. I'm always telling people about Etsy and this would've been a great way to help out our awesome community as a whole. That's one thing I love about Etsy. It's driven by the community that uses this amazing platform to buy and sell hand made goods! Since opening my shop I now tend to lean towards picking the hand made item or the local shops and restaurants over the mass produced national chains. I love supporting the hard working small businesses like myself!!

Check out the Wall Street Journal article about it

Shop Milestone!

I'm so excited! Today I listed my 300th item in my shop! 15 months after I opened my shop with the inital 10 items I've reached such an amazing milestone! :)

Florida Sunshine

I had been hoping for some more sales in my Etsy shop so I didn't end the month on the worse month in my shop history. Today, I made the decision to relist 1 bag that was expiring in a few days to help me promote a relisted item and put me in the list of newly listed items. I noticed 1 sale right before I left for work and then it was like a buying frenzy started in my shop. I noticed they were all coming from around the same area in Florida and figured I must have been lucky enough to be posted somewhere good to get noticed. Then lovely Michelle replied back to my "thanks for purchasing a bag from my shop" convo in Etsy, saying that she loved my bags and passed along my shop link to all the people in her knitting group. More purchases kept pouring in. I'm in shock, so excited and grateful. I met my monthly goal today thanks to them. Tonight once I'm home from work, I'm going to be packaging everything up and running to the post office to mail them since tomorrow we are forecast to have a blizzard all day. Most of the prints that were sold today I have more bags made in so they will be relisted this week. Wow, this must be what a sneak attack feels like :) I can't stop smiling!

Ravelry Market Listing Ad

I only took me 20 days to finally design my little market listing ad for this month.


I need to research what is acceptable to put in the market listing graphics. I'm curious if I can advertize a sale there like I would in a group forum banner.

First post of 2009!

I'm not one for resolutions since I always fail at them but I really do want to post more in my fiber blog this year. My goal is to post something every 2 weeks. So far it's almost 3 weeks into the new year and I'm already failing LOL but I need to start somewhere right?

The Holiday rush was very good to me. I sold 83 bags from October through December. I successfully saved up enough to pay cash for my washer and dryer too thanks to everyone buying gifts! Now if only I could get my butt in gear and buy it but I'm being the thrifty buyer and waiting for a sale on the set I want :)

I was going to take January off from sewing new bags for my shop but had a stack of bags I wanted to finish before I took my break. As of this morning I only have 2 zipper box bags left to do that are half finished. These will be done tonight! Since I've been working on bags so much this month, I'm going to move on to designing my new bag and then *fingers crossed* take February as a craft for me only month! I actually finished 1 of the new bag design this past weekend but I think I want to modify it just a tad before I make it my final design. Hopefully I'll have a bunch ready by the end of the month!

I haven't knit anything is probably 4 months. Even then I was only working on a cabled hat (similar to the pink one I knit before but the rim is not a fold over) but accidentally did a few too many repeats on the main body before I started to tapper it off. So that will need to be frogged! Thankfully the yarn won't be ruined and I can just start over. My Aunt has breast cancer so I think my first knit project next month will be this same hat but in a fiber that isn't so scratchy on a bald head!

February "craft for me only" Projects:
1. Hat for my Aunt.
2. Floor length crimson red fleece rob, pattern modified for buttons inside of wrap around tie belt. (I feel warmer just typing this).
2. Fingerless cable gloves (first attempt at gloves!).

1 YEAR ETSY-VERSARY!!!

I can't believe it's been a year since I opened my shop with my first 10 bags. I've sold at least 175 bags so far. It's crazy but I thought it would take a year to pay off my sewing machine and it only took 8.5 months! I'm already past 50% saved for my washer and dryer set. I've met a ton of awesome people in the past year that has helped make my shop experience out of this world!

FREE SHIPPING to celebrate! Now thru November 14th!

First Craft Fair

The JL Holiday Market weekend was a bust. The crowds just weren't there and even the seasoned craft fair vendors were upset over the lack of people there to shop. I only sold about 30% of what I needed to to break even :( It was a learning experience at the very least. I'm actually not that upset about losing as much on the entrance fees as I thought I would. Sure it sets me back on how much I have saved for my washer and dryer but my product won't go bad. I just won't be working my butt off for the next craft fair in the beginning of December. I've decided to concentrate on making my Zipper Box Project Bags instead of the drawstring ones and also try to get the design down for an accessory that will work with both to hopefully make it's debut by Cyber Monday. I also have decided to have a Pre-Holiday Clean Sweep Sale to help sell off some of the prints I have decided not to carry in my shop anymore. Well a few I'll relist but the majority won't. I've got my booth pictures to show soon as well!

Holiday Market Craziness!

I'm on the verge of becoming a crazy fiber luni!

The JL Holiday Market is in 10 days and I have SOOO much still left to design and get done.

I ordered my business cards from Moo yesterday morning and paid way too much for express shipping but I can't chance regular shipping from England.

I finished my booth banner design last night around 2am but was too exhausted to create the final JPEG to email to the Etsy seller who's creating the banner for me. This I'll finish before the Pres debate tonight.

I need to order my white shopping bags from an eBay supplier today during lunch (just put a post it on my monitor so I don't forget!).

I'll get all the rest of the stuff for my booth setup Saturday.

I think I might do generic price tags this go round as I don't think I could design and get cool ones done before it starts.

I'm still worried that it's going to hurt me that I won't be able to accept credit cards at the event. I wish they had a wireless connection there cause I could "borrow" our test laptop from work for the weekend and people could pay via PayPal. Oh well, I'll totally be open putting a bag on hold, sending a PayPal invoice and then meet at a mall foodcourt to deliver.

I also want to finish another 30-40 bags before the end of this weekend which is totally do-able since I have Monday off. I just have to really hunker down and do it.

I can't wait till the craft fair is over because then I'm not touching my sewing machine except to sew an awesome Halloween custom for at least 2-3 weeks. I also plan to take the month of January off from sewing. Course I say this and would totally not turn down any custom order requests.

Ads

I finally got my butt around to creating an ad for Ravelry so that maybe I can get even more business from there.



I have a bunch of customers who love spreading the word about my bags so I thought it was time I did a little advertizing as well! My best customer has not only sent 4 people my way but has also decided to feature me in her first huge swap as well! Nine custom zipper box project bags is so awesome! I've had fun grabbing new prints to use! Course I've also been thinking about the huge craft fair I'm in in 6 weeks! I haven't started to panic yet but I'm sure it's the calm before the "omg I have how many bags still left to make??!!" storm.

I'm offical, almost!

So I was invited to be in a Holiday Bazaar here in Rochester this coming October but in order to be apart of it I needed to finally become an offical small business with my own tax id. This week has been productive and not just because I've added 9 new prints to my shop too! I obtained my DBA (doing business as) last Tuesday and finally got answers to my tax form (NYS DTF-17) questions yesterday so I could submit the form online! Hopefully by the end of August I can start getting supplies and not have to pay tax :) Mailed my bazaar deposit today. Then after I survive this weekends civil war reenactment (picture me in a long sleeve multi-layer dress complete with corset and 90°+ with high humidity), I have to start my goal of making 17 bags a week! I've been going over the logistics in my head and I think I can handle it without going nuts but talk to me in a month!


Me: Boo, smile!
Sophie: Not today, I'm feeling frizzy.
Me: Then get out of my picture!!

Shop Featured

Oh cool! I was featured in someone's AllAboutEtsy blog!

OMG

A woman who purchased a bag back in the beginning of February finally left feedback...negative feedback. She says that the first time she closed the bag, the drawstring broke. I am feeling a rush of emotions right now. I'm horrified that this woman potentially ruined my reputation on Etsy without ever speaking with me first. I didn't expect her to leave feedback since she purchased a bag from my shop so long ago and to get negative feedback before ever talking to me to try to work something out, how rude! I use quality materials and I sew the crap out of the 2 ends so that they do not come apart. How she broke the drawstring is beyond me. I am extremely honest person and I stand by my workmanship! There is a part of me that thinks the bag she bought is fine and she's just out to get her money back. I checked what feedback she left for others and she has left negative feedback for someone else today as well but wrote that she did make an effort to contact them but didn't hear back. What am I chop liver that I don't get the courtesy of a convo first before she ruins my Etsy life?!?! I was about to celebrate my 6 month etsy-versary with a sale but now that'll have to go on hold until this mess is cleared up. So I sit here needing to vent and on the verge of tears trying to come up with a polite emotions in check convo to send to her to try to "Kiss and Make Up". Is it so wrong of me to have doubts since she made no effort to contact me first to try to resolve the issue before leaving feedback?!

You know when...

You should stop sewing and go to bed when you sew thru the side of your finger because you decided to wipe away some lint on your quarter feed foot while the needle is moving!

My Inspecter

Before listing a new project bag in my shop, each bag is inspected to assure optimum quality is upheld!


"well the bag is the right height, looks like you've attained the right amount of holding space"


"front looks good but kinda floppy"

Silk

As if I don't have enough project keeping me busy, I have to have an Esty item peek my interest in raising silkmoths for silk.

So inbetween calls at work I have been searching google for info on it. Just how hard would it be to raise my own and then process the cocoons? I've found a couple interesting sites that look like the owners have taken a lot of time to put their sites together with a ton of resources.

I'm interested in learning to spin yarn but it would be cool if I could use silk with the other yarns or pure silk yarns. I'm having visions of beautifully woven silk scarves from my loom. Dying to my own specific colors.

I'll probably be consumed by this till the weekend and then lose interest. Well maybe in just the raising part. I can only imagine my furball trying to eat the moths and finding the food/leaves to feed them would probably be a pain too. I need to research if I can buy bulk cocoons somewhere on the net.

http://www.kiva.net/~daylight/moth.html
http://www.wormspit.com/index.htm