On my desk... week 6

Predictably this week is all about making up orders and trips to the post office. I like it when it gets busy with orders and I can concentrate on making (my favourite bit of the job!). Thank you so much to my lovely customers this week, your parcels are on their way to you.

This is the last of these 'on my desk' blog posts I'll do for this year, as I think it will get rather boring if I just showed you a pile of orders each week. You can just assume I will be slowly more weighed down by parcels on each trip to the post office.

And if you'd like to add another parcel to my pile (I really don't mind!) you can get 25% off Christmas cards if you sign up to my newsletter this month - http://www.sayithandmade.co.uk/newsletter.html

On my desk... week 5

Well, Christmas has definitely arrived here at say it! The main aim of this week has been to make up as much stock as possible of my Christmas card designs.

Making up retro pattern Christmas cards

When I create a new design to list in my shops I usually just make up one card. I normally don't hold much stock and simply just make up the cards to order as they are needed. But as it gets busier leading up to Christmas it's helpful to have more stock ready made. And I'm also doing a Christmas fair at our local church which was very well attended last year so I'm hoping for good sales.

Completed Christmas stock so far - I need to keep making!

On my desk... week 4

It's starting to get busier here. Yesterday I made up three personalised travel journals. I thought the popularity of these might die down now the summer is over, but it seems that people are off on special Christmas adventures or buying them as Christmas presents for holidays planned for 2014.

I've added last order dates to my Folksy and Etsy shops to ensure your order arrives in time for Christmas. I'm planning to take a proper break so the shop will be closed from 16th December to give me chance to get the last few orders out before I go away. I won't reopen until January so I'm looking forward to a proper rest. It's nice to have that booked in my diary :-)

Alongside making up orders this week I have been writing my November newsletter. I use Mailchimp, which makes it nice and easy to edit the text and add pictures. I just have to decide what I'm going to talk about! It's not always easy to work out what my customers want to hear. Generally I try and feature a little piece of news about the shop, show off some new products, and give an exclusive special offer.

Adding Christmas cards to the November newsletter

Speaking of special offers - would you like to get 25% off Christmas cards? If you sign up to receive the say it newsletter I'll send you a copy so you get access to November's special offer. It's exclusive to newsletter subscribers though, so simply sign up below so that you're on the list.

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On my desk... week 3

Apologies for not doing an 'On my desk' post last week - I wasn't feeling too well and didn't do much besides the essentials.

This week I have been thinking Christmas. Whilst the shop is still reasonably quiet I'm trying to get prepared for the Christmas rush, making up stock and prepping materials for personalised items that are made to order. I've been cutting up a lot of cereal boxes ready to make notebooks and stitching the inside pages. I've also been stocking up on materials and some new packaging which will hopefully make it super quick and easy to send out orders.

I have a LOT of board backed envelopes on my desk! 

Today I am working out what Christmas advertising to apply for. So far I have decided not to do Craftfest, which is a bit of a shame because it is great fun but it is also quite a lot of work to prepare for. I am definitely going to join in with The Crafty Network Christmas album and will apply to the Blog and Buy Sale Christmas Wish List. I can submit five items to both, so just got to make the final decision on which ones to choose! It's hard to decide how much to spend on Christmas advertising. I don't normally pay for much advertising during the year, but I think it's worth putting aside a little bit of a budget for November and December. A lot of my customers find me through Folksy and Etsy search so I should hopefully be pretty busy with those orders, but it's always good to draw in new buyers who don't necessarily think to go to Folksy or Etsy for their shopping.

I'm hoping the Christmas rush doesn't start too soon though, because I still have a lot to organise!

On my desk... week 2

This week I have been trying to get my Christmas cards listed in my online shops. A long overdue task that I had aimed to complete by the middle of September. Why is it when you finally have time to take photos the weather becomes so dull?! Up until yesterday I've had the lights on inside all day, so it really wasn't bright enough to take clear photos. But today I woke up to find the sun shining, so I had barely finished breakfast when I got my camera out, just in case it disappeared!

I don't have any fancy set up for taking photos. Where I take them depends on what time of day it is. In the afternoons my craft room gets the light and the windowsill in there is perfect. But since this was early, the lightest room was our bedroom. So I set up on top of our laundry basket! I just use a piece of white card for the base, to capture the shadows, and don't worry about the rest of the background as I find it's easiest to just cut that out in photoshop afterwards.

So the rest of the morning was spent photo editing. Not my favourite job! I've learnt quite a lot about taking photos though and they have improved enormously over the last 2 years (you can read more about that journey and what I learnt in my post about photographing handmade items).

The photos look so much better once they have a nice white background. I'm amazed what you can do in photoshop to turn a rather poor photo into a product image that looks ok in the shop.

I hope to have most of my Christmas cards in my folksy and etsy shops by Monday. So if you're the organised type you can get shopping!

On my desk... week 1

Earlier in the week I mentioned that I have a couple of new blog post series for you, and I'm pleased to launch the first one today. Each week I'd like to give you a little behind the scenes look at what I've been up to. It's called 'on my desk...' and the plan is to share with you a photograph of what is on my desk at the time. Hopefully it will be something interesting!

On my desk this week are...

... a lot of part-made travel journals. The summer may be over, but people still seem to be off on their travels and orders for my personalised travel journals keep coming in. This week I have made journals featuring Thailand, China and Australia. Lots of Australia - it appears to be a very popular place to visit.

I try to make up the component parts in batches, so that when an order comes in it doesn't take so long to put together the journal. I have been sewing the notebook insides whilst watching Pointless on iplayer, and cutting out lots of covers from cereal packets. I've got everyone saving cardboard for me. As it's only used to strengthen the covers and won't be seen in the final journal I like to try and be as eco-friendly as possible by reusing cardboard that would otherwise end up in the bin. It's also quite interesting to see what cereals my friends eat...!