Promotion

I  found this great site that offers free product promotion, and at the end of the month you get to vote on the items and possibly be eligible for a spot of free advertising for the next month if your item wins.
Even if it doesn't, it is still advertising for your shop for the month, then the following month you can put another items up and start the process all over again.
Now, in all truthfulness, it wasn't actually a find per say, as one of my team mates was announcing a new site she had started and wanted her team mates to participate and maybe spread the word to get more people to participate, so I am doing my part :)
Won't you stop over, put up a item from your shop, and maybe vote on some of the other ones posted and lets see who gets their product spotlighted this month :)
Shop Owners Flea Market

My newest find on Etsy

I found a really cute jewelry shop on Etsy today, and I know, there are a lot of jewelry shoppes on Etsy. How these guys manage to get noticed with all the competition on there is beyond me.

Now I don't usually make a habit of looking at jewelry, because as anybody who knows me will tell you, me and jewelry don't go together very well. Just ask my husband, who has probably at last count bought me 6 new diamonds for my band because I keep losing them in bakery mixers, cement, you name it and I have probably lost one in it.

This one showed up in my activity feed today, somebody was liking a item from her shop and it caught my eye, so I went to check it out.

I just love these, I couldn't wear it because of what I do for my day job, but it definately has the potential of making it to my daughters wrist for Christmas, and let me tell you, she definitely loves it when I do my shopping on Etsy :)

These are just a few of the gorgeous finds in this shop. Well worth the time to visit, so why don't you stop over and check her out, and tell her Ruth @ Gabby's Quilts sent you.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/WirequeenJewelry

I have been featured

I have had the opportunity to participate in a give away through this blog, enter for you chance to win some really great baby gifts for that perfect someone. There will be five winners, you can't win if you don't enter, so please check it out;
http://savoriesoflife.blogspot.com/2012/07/baby-clothing-giveaway-worth-82-5.html

Pin It To Win It for Saturday July 14th

http://pinterest.com/pin/175710822932404137/

General News

Well the this week has been a really busy one, I can't believe how fast the time is going, before we know it summer will be over. I know, nobody really wants to hear that, but I swear every time I blink it is speeding by faster and faster, funny thing is my daughter said the same thing to me the other day.

Lots of things going on, I made the decision to put some of my handmade items back up for sale, they are in the one shop now with the supplies, it is easier to promote that way. Having a handmade and a supply shop just didn't make any sense with my work schedule the way it is, we are gearing up for the upcoming craft fairs this fall, any free moment that I have I have been sewing up a storm. Some of it is already being posted in the shop, others have been set aside to go to the craft fairs. I have found keeping things separated works better for me, that way when the date comes around all I have to do it grab the bins for the craft fairs and we head out the door.

Well that is it for now, headed off to spend some quality time with my son, before he doesn't have time anymore. Enjoy the rest of your week and the hot weather that goes with it :)

The sights we see while in the country

These were seen wandering around the countryside on two separate days. Me and my husband while out doing our inspections came across these beauty's when we stopped to complete our paperwork, both were just wandering across the back parts of the property, it was almost like they were posing for the camera. They were not the least upset that we had stopped to take their pictures, the deer just continued to eat her lunch and the turkeys were on high alert, because if you look very carefully at the picture, you can see atleast 6 little chicks trailing along after the adults, but they just continued their stroll across the back into the woods just beyond. 

I really miss seeing sights like this on a daily basis, what I would do to go back in time when we were first looking for a home, and insist that we had looked in the country instead of only looking at homes in a city setting. 

I am really starting to envision a possible quilt project in my future where I take all these pictures I have been accumulating, print them out on fabric and make a really nice country living quilt. :)

Decision

Well I made a very difficult decision  concerning my Hand Made shops, after intense conversations with my husband, I am shutting them down due to lack of sales.

After constant critiques of my shops, and trying to retake pictures, to no avail, and trying to learn a photo doctoring program to get the pictures up to par, it still wasn't working. No matter what I do the pictures are too bright or too dark, and with a paying job that takes up on average 60 plus hours a week, I also have run into the problem of not being able to make new product to keep it "fresh".  We are still doing the Craft Fairs, that has actually turned out to be the best business solution for my items, people can touch, feel and see the true colors up close, and I actually make sales that way.

The larger items have been donated or given away already, and the quilt tops that are finished will be donated for raffles and given away as gifts just like before. There is too much completion online for what I make and no matter what I did off of the sites to get my name out there for the handmade items, nobody bothered to check them out, so the Etsy shop is already gone, and Artfire is paid up to October 31st and will be gone by then as well.

I had also explored the option of a eCommerce web site through someplace like Weebly, but with the hate relationship between me and my camera, I didn't see that working out any better then what I had before, you still need nice crisp pictures, and that is something I just don't have the ability to do, and paying a professional to do it is not in the budget at this time.

The only shop being left open is going to be the Supply shop, that has received good comments and reviews so we will have to continue down that avenue for a online venue that actually will work.

I honestly don't think people really appreciate Hand Made, and until they do, my shops were doomed from the start, I just didn't realize it at the time. I, at this point, consider it a lesson learned, and so we made the decision to continue with what works and drop what doesn't. I truly would much rather make things to sell, then order from my supplier, but I guess it wasn't in the cards.