Sidewalk Days!

Well, another Sidewalk Days has come and gone. This year was certainly interesting! First off, we get there at 6:15 am to find that we have been moved from our spot in the square (our spot last year) to a spot up the street near Willow Tree Gifts. So, thanks to someone's poor planning, we had to make some major adjustments to our set up, going from a nearly flat space in teh street where we could use the entire 10 x10 space to a sloped (in two directions!) space where we lose a foot of our tent to the curb. Oh, and you haven't lived until you've had tractor trailers roll by your tent, about 6 to 12 inches from it!

Lance and I had to think on our feet and make the best of the space we were given. Using jewelry trays to prop up our tables on one end to keep things from sliding off and sitting out next to our spot (in the sun -- yikes!) instead of inside our tent. We had a lot of people tells that they thought we decided not to return this year since we were not in our spot from last year, but I was glad people bothered to look for us!

Overall --- despite the sunburn, tractor trailers and sloped space ---- I'd have to say we did have a great show, and I was pleased to find more people familiar with Etsy.

41st Annual Greencaslte-Antrim Sidewalk Days!

Greencastle-Antrim Sidewalk Days
July 11 from 8:30 am to 8:30pm
July 12 from 8:30 am to 4pm

Over 100 vendors will be at this event, located in and around the square in Greencastle, PA. My space will be located in the northwest corner of the square, near the First National Bank.

If you have some time this weekend, please stop by and check out this event!

Summer Jubilee- July 4th, Waynesboro, PA

Here's a quick photo of my booth at the Summer Jubilee (July 4th). While it wasn't hot, it was rainy off an on all day. It didn't seem to bother all the people who came out, but it did make keeping things dry hard! LOL We ended up running to my mom's house and borrowing her red tent sides to keep my displays and tables dry.

This friday and saturday is the Greencastle Sidewalk Days.
More info on this event will be posted soon!

Getting Ready

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This Friday, July 4th, I will be doing a local craft show in Waynesboro, PA - Summer Jubilee.  This will be the first time Zen Creations will be vending at this event, so I don't really know what to expect.  This will also be the first time we will be using our new folding shelves that we bought at Ollies a few weeks ago.  I love them for 2 reasons, 1. they fold nice and flat - great for transporting them, and 2. they can hold 3 displays on each shelf. My displays were really tight at the last show, so this will allow me to display more goods in less space and put it at the customer's eye level.

Our new shirts from VistaPrint came in today. Very pleased with how they turned out.  Maybe I can get Lance to model the shirt and hat on Friday and post it here! My labels also came in today, so I spent about an hour sticking them on various sized white jewelry boxes. I think they add a nice touch, and hopefully bring customers to my Etsy shop in the future.

Still waiting on an order from Firemountaingems.com . Hopefully it will come in tomorrow and I can use the new displays I ordered on Friday.  Tomorrow night will be filled with packing up my displays, Lance packing up the car and organizing beads and findings to take and work on during the show.

Cross your fingers that it doesn't rain on the 4th!

Old school Etsy

I should have added this last week when I was celebrating my 3rd anniversary, but here's a screenshot of what Etsy looked like when I joined:

What I have learned over the last 3 years...

Tomorrow (june 19th) I am celebrating 3 years of selling on Etsy.com.  Tonight I spent an hour or so looking through the first few pages of sales I had on Etsy, going over the photos, reading the listings, and thinking back to when I first started out.  The site, my work and my shop has changed a lot in those 3 years!

So, what I have I learned?  Well, I learned that it takes a lot of time to sell online.  Time creating, time photographing, and most of all, time promoting.  3 years ago I had no idea what a blog was, how to make a banner, barely used forums, and didn't even know what an avatar is! LOL 

Photographing your work in a way that not only shows off the piece, but will also catch your customer's eye is key. My early photographs were badly lit and taken from too far away.  Once I learned how to use the macro on my camera, experimented with using different colored backgrounds and photo editing software -- my photographs really improved.

Probably the most important thing I learned was that YOU have to promote your shop.  A lot of times people sign up for a shop on Etsy, list their items and expect to sell right away.  You really do have to work hard on getting your name and your work out there.  It takes a lot of time and effort, but it's worth it in the end.  Sure, sometimes you get lucky, the right person sees your work at the right time, talks it up and your shop takes off.  But that's not always the case, so you have to make things happen for yourself.

Celebrating 3 Years On Etsy! Sale!

Zen Creations is celebrating 3 years with Etsy.com on Thursday, June 19th at http://zencreations04.etsy.com.

From 12am to 11pm EST I will be offering 15% off all regular priced items in my shop . To get your discount, enter this code in the Message to Seller box when purchasing: 3RD YEAR . Complete your order, but Do not use the payment link Etsy provides. I will send you an invoice with the discount applied to your total.

Don't forget: etsy has a shopping cart function, making shopping on Etsy even easier!

2 buyers will be chosen at random to recieve 20% off, 1 buyer will get 25% their total purchase and 2 people will get a free gift! All orders over $80 will get FREE shipping!

Greencastle, Mercersburg and Hagerstown residents - if you want your order delivered or arrange a pick up, please let me know and I will remove the shipping fees.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, or you can find me from 8pm to 11pm EST in a chat room at Etsy.com. The location and password for the chat room will be posted in my shop that evening at 7:55pmEST.

To enter the chat room, you will need an Etsy.com user account. To get one, go to http://etsy.com and create an account. It only takes a few minutes, and it's free to sign up!

Please feel free to pass this information along to family and friends and watch for more new items to be listed throught the week!

Treasury!

Here are 2 great treasuries that feature some of my jewelry. Thanks MonkeyBuns!


and JewelryCreations!

A sneak peek...

The last 3 weeks I have been getting Rituxan treatments for ITP. I spend 1 day a week at the hospital getting it and the next few days not feeling all that well. Trying to make the best out of this sitation by using this time off from my day job to work on new pieces. The result is several new pieces which will be listed in my Etsy shop over the next few weeks.

Here's a sneak peek for my loyal blog readers!

New Website!

Check out the new Zen Creations website!

 

Zen Creations Jewelry

I'm loving the design!!! I don't have a shopping cart yet, so for now, everything will link back to the sections in my Etsy shop. It's geat to have matching business cards, blog, website, banner, car magnets and Etsy banner.

5 tips for making the best out of a bad craft show

OK, so we've all been there. You sign up for a craft show, spend weeks getting ready, you get there, set up and then.............. nothing. If you're lucky, you make your space fee back, plus a little extra, but then there are times where you just don't sell a thing. It's even worse if it's a craft show that you've done well at in the past.

So, what do you do? Quit? Go home early? Stop doing shows? No. You make the best of it. Here are my top 5 tips for making the best out of a bad craft show:

1. Work on new pieces. This has 2 benfits. The first is you get somework done instead of just sitting around all day. The second is people can watch you work on your creations and a lot of times this sparks interest. People like it when they can see that what you selling is handmade by you. Even better when they've watched you make the piece they bought.

2. Research - Customers. Listen to what people are taking about when they are looking at your goods. What pieces get the most compliments? What pieces get overlooked? What colors are people drawn too, etc. Listen to your target audience and what their needs are so you can work on filling that need.

3. Research - Displays and packaging. Take a walk around and look at other people's displays and packaging. Find inspiration from that for your own displays. Take some time to consider your displaying needs, what works in your booth now and how you can improve it for the next show.

4. Find your "hot spot". Every booth at a craft show has a "hot spot", that one place where people always seem to notice first in your space. That spot that, whatever you put there, people notice it and it draws them in. Once you've found that spot, try changing the pieces that are there every so often and see which draws people in the most.

5. Network. This is the perfect time to network with other crafters in your area. Talk to the other vendors and found out about future craft shows, contact info, suppliers, etc. These are people that you will most likely run into again and again at local shows and it doesn't hurt to get to know them a little bit.

Strawberries!

This Saturday the Mercersburg Lioness Club is hosting the Strawberry Festival in Mercersburg, PA. If you're in the area, stop by the Lion's Club Park from 9am to 3pm and check out the crafts, food, strawberries and fun dog show. Don't forget to look for us while you're there!

Here are some great Strawberry items that I found @ Etsy.com!

Etsy Buy Handmade zencreations04

The little things count!

One of the things I have learned over the last 3 years is that all the little things make a difference with advertising -- never miss an opportunity. For instance - your bags at craft shows. Bags are a perfect opportunity to advertise your goods. You should always include your business cards in your bags. I usually use some of the downtime at shows to stuff bags with my business cards. That way, if you get a rush of customers, your bags are all ready to go.

Another thing I started doing was decorating my bags. You don't have to spend a lot of money on your bags, and it only takes a little time to spruce them up a bit. Since I sell jewelry, I can get away with smaller bags. I purchase the brown paper bags from the grocery store and decorate them with 3 different stamps. The first one is a long bamboo stamp, the second is a Z stamp and the third is my business stamp which includes my Etsy shop address. They're cheap, simple and look better than plastic bags.

Banner, part 2.

It's finished!

 

I painted in the larger areas first, concentrating on the black and green. Next I painted in all of the smaller areas, the lines and dots. Finally, I did the lettering and painted an off white boarder around the outside. I am very pleased with the end result and I think this will work well for the front of one of my tables. Next time, I'm going to make a larger one for one side of my tent.

Making my own banner, part 1

I've looked over all my options for a banner for my craft show set-up, and none of them seemed to be what I wanted. Too costly, too little choices for design, etc. So, I decided that I should just make my own, and I couldn't be happier with the results so far.

Here's what I did:

1. I made a trip to our local Joanne's Fabric for muslin and paint. Muslin costs only $1.99 a yard, easy to cut and paint on. I bought 2 yards of it, plenty to make a couple of different sized banners, but right now I'm focusing on just one. Next, I blew up my postcard and taped the pages together.


2. I taped up the blown up copy of the postcard and traced it on white paper with a black sharpie marker. The black sharpie can be seen through the muslin and makes it much easier to transfer the design onto the muslin.


3. Next I postioned the black and white copy under the muslin and traced the design onto the muslin.


4. I don't own a sewing maching, so I iron on stips of fusing web to create neat and clean edges.


5. Now I am ready to paint!

Zen Creations - table set up

Zen Creations
Originally uploaded by zencreations04

One last picture for today. This one is of my table. I think Suzy took a much better one, but I like how I caught Lance making his way behind the table in this one!

Tomorrow I will post some more pictures from this event.

Shared table - Project Felt and Hobbledehoy

Shared table - Project Felt and Hobbledehoy
Originally uploaded by zencreations04

Liz and Tara's table. I really think their stuff looks great together!!!

Syd of Dottedwithhearts and ShopofLittleHorrors

Syd of Dottedwithhearts and ShopofLittleHorrors
Originally uploaded by zencreations04

Just finally getting back into the swing of things after this weekend. The craft show went really well, not as busy as everyone would have liked, but I think we all had a great time getting to know each other, hanging out, selling a few things, etc. Seph did a fantastic job with the music and everyone seemed to love the unusual setting.

Here's a picture of Syd from Dottedwithhearts and Shopoflittlehorrors at her table!

Uwishunu.com write up

Sara did a nice little write-up about our craft show, check it out: http://www.uwishunu.com/not-your-grandmothers-craft-show-this-weekend/

Promos are packed and ready to do in the Jeep. I'm really impressed with the promos that were sent from such a wide variety of Etsy sellers! I will take a picture of the promo table on Saturday and post here as soon as I can.

Now I just have to finish getting vendor info organized, $$ to pay for the venue ready and get the car packed up tonight. Tomorrow its a short day at work, followed by a 3 hour drive to Philly to get the venue ready for Saturday. I can't wait!

Craft show in Philly this weekend!!!!

If you are in the area on Saturday, please stop by and join in on the fun!

Corner of 48th and Woodland Ave. - across from the ball field.