New Years Resolution...

newest earring design

I'm crazy right? Christmas is not even here yet, and here I go spouting off about the new year and whatever it is that I plan to resolve.

It's a symptom of my new found businesswoman status.

I've spent the last few months playing catch-up, and figuring out the hard way....you know how it goes. The short of it is, that my early entrepreneurial experiences have motivated me to a more proactive mindset. Measurable results of that mindset have yet to be achieved of course. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere.

You see, I am definitely a seat of the pants kinda girl. I thrive in the moment, and shine at the last minute. I find myself immensely frustrating sometimes.... but that is a whole other blog post. I have been learning to appreciate this side of myself in some ways, but in the realm of well strategized business plans, I tend to stress myself out and wait until 6 hrs before a craft show to try and pull it all together. I think I get a few extra gray hairs every show I do lol!

The new plan for the new year, is to give myself the rest of December to enjoy making holiday gifts, while filling orders on etsy of course. My guess is that the online shopping season is nearing it's end anyway. In the new year, I plan to make one item a day, for the month of January, and I'll start by restocking things that are listed in the shop. After holiday shows, at this point I could potentially be left with an empty shop so I have been leaving things listed that are easy to replicate and turn around quickly, like the snowflake earrings. Anyway, after two months of this behavior, I think less than half of what I have in the shop is actually made at this very moment, and if I plan to grow my business, I could easily get myself in trouble by not having ordered items available in a reasonable time frame.....so I will fix that forthwith after the first of the year. And I will ask you all to help keep me motivated and accountable....because it's always much more fun to make what I WANT to make instead of what needs to be made lol! So, with eyes on the prize of being well stocked and prepared for farmers market season, I will begin the new year.

Where does the time go!

Why it seems like just last week we were on a quiet sleigh ride throught the Wenatche National Forest.....

Oh wait, that WAS last week! Must say we had a most fantastic Thanksgiving holiday. We were able to take off for a few days to spend time with my Dad and his wife. Never having been to Lavenworth, we were just giggling with oodles of glee when we pulled into town! It is the best christmas town in America you know, according to HGTV.

Leavenworth is a little Bavarian village nestled in the mountains. We had to cross two passes to get there, only had to chain the tires once. We were in fact glad to be away from the dreaded memories of the frozen pipes, car repairs, and general mayhem of the days prior to our little excursion.... and our thanksgiving trek did just the trick.

There was sledding, a sleigh ride, and much frolicking in the snow. Me and Hubbs even escaped to town on foot for a much needed "date". Nothing says romance like hot cider and an international cheese tray appetizer in "cafe Motzart".

The littlest one had a fountainous runny nose upon arrival, so she and daddy opted for a nap instead of the wonderous sleigh ride.... but general merriment was had by all. We checked out many of the small shops, and yes, I did put the viking hats on the kids...just for pictures of course.

There's nothing quite like the look of "mom. is this completely necessary? really?" upon your darling child's face.

Well, upon our return, general mayhem resumed. I hate how mayhem can be so prompt. The rest of the family got the nasty crud that the little viking had the week before, and our serendipitous decision to buy christmas lights for the house resulted in another vehicle breakdown. sigh.

Alas, my wings are clipped as we are currently a one car family.....the problem with my purple-people-eater- of a minivan is one of those intermittent electrical gremlins chewing on the wires type of problems, and barring a winning lottery ticket, it will likely not be replaced any time soon. So I am stuck home when hubby is working. And I'm an out and about kinda girl, so when the general call for "girls night" went out via text message in my circle of aquaintance, I sent the "please come to my house I am STUCK HERE" plea and was graced with the presence of two kind friend bearing pizza and cookie dough---half of which we baked, and the other half, well......

now they are gone, and I am left alone in peace and quiet to work on some christmas presents. Thankfully I am all caught up after "Black Friday" and all that, so the shop can wait whist I create some pressies for the girlies....

Amigurumi. I didn't know that was a word. Anyway, being that my children are of the three and under genre, I can still get away with making them cute stuffed whatnots. We don't have cable or an antenna so they thankfully are spared from the onslaught of toy commercials, and are delighted by anything made of pink yarn. I actually found a bunch of free patterns for crochet playfood.... so I am busting out my yarn stash. Sadly, after straying for a few years from yarncraft, I pared down to one small bin of yarn. And it seems I didn't keep much plain worsted, but a quick trip to the craft store fixed that. Vanna's choice 2/$5? can't beat that. I'm gonna make play cupcakes, and dollies. And whatever else I can get my hands on patterns for.

I did a market research test of course before major crochet toy production began, and upon receiving this more traditional amigurumi cat, my daughter promptly asked for another kitty with legs on it. And eyebrows. (?) so I will be filling that order as well. I'd like to also make an amigurumi nativity. My mom had this cool plastic canvas one when I was little. It was nice to have a non-breakable baby Jesus. I always appreciated that, so maybe it's time I passed on that tradition to my wee princesses.

Anyway, 17 points for making through that post. Tomorrow we visit Santa at Home Depot. It's probably a ploy of theirs to get us to buy a tree while we are there, and, well.....it will work I can tell you that. :-) And while the budget doesn't allow for new LED lights for the tree (I am looking for a set of LED in twinkle lights....haven't seen such a thing yet.) We did end up purchasing a small amount of lighting for the outside of our house. Now. It's still early, and this is our first year on this block, but we are the only ones who seem to have made the jump into the new and mighty bright LED christmas light technology. Amidst the few houses lit with old-school bulbs, our house has a mildly radioactive appearance. Them things are seriously bright! I think I hear airplanes circling.

Today only....

Free shipping on Jewelry today....

www.krystledawne.com



(and the little secret is that the ten percent discount code THANKFUL10 is still good today! Stock up on gifts!)

I'm happy to ship directly to your recipient.... just let me know at checkout, I'll include a personal note and giftwrap.

Because I am Thankful....

The powers that be at ETSY have bestowed upon us the useage of cupon codes! Yay! Just in time for Black friday/Cyber monday...whatever the heck tomorrow is..... Anyway, we are having a party around here because the school district is giving everyone an emergency day = an extra paid day off because of the weather. We have several inches of snow, and the roads are a skating rink. More about the weather tomorrow. Today's post is to tell you that because I am feeling so very thankful for all of the wonderful people in my life----like you tatters all around the world--- I am offering 10% off purchases from my etsy shop now through Monday. Just use the code THANKFUL10 in your order. Yes, that includes thread! I don't have much in the way of HDT to offer in the shop right now, and Dr. Vonthreadmore has resigned herself to the fact that we probably won't be doing any more thread until after the holidays.....but she is content to sit and scheme...ehem, I mean plan for the grand opening of her own etsy shop. It's not often that you will find our hand dyed on sale, so grab up a little of what's available this turkey day season. And always know that I am ever so grateful for every bit of encouragement and support that you give. And my husband is ever so grateful that I have found an outlet for all of my tatting enthusiasm that doesn't involve him listening to me babble on about it all day :-) So thank you blog land! Happy thanksgiving my friends!

Let it.....oh no!

Well, so much for my nice temperate Washington weather.....

Dearest husband of mine is working an overtime shift today, there is a church that meets his school (he is an assistant chief custodian currently) and once a month he gets to work on sunday. 8 hrs of doubletime pay, plus, the girls and I go to that church when he is working so we get to say hi and see him a little. It softens the blow when he has to be away on a weekend day.

Anyway, my darlingest one called me early in the morning....."just checking to see if my alarm was set"....really he was too excited about the white stuff on the ground. Really, he forgot that the church has two services and I was planning on sleeping in as the children had a rough night and I find myself lacking in the zzzzz's department today.

So, as lovely as the snow looks, (this is the baby's first snow!) I now have the pleasure of getting it off my minivan so we can drive to church. Yay. Lol....I haven't pulled out any winter gear for the under 3 crowd around here, I guess that task is now at hand. After Coffee. And a shower.

Snow Snow Snow!

At least maybe now I will feel more inspired to get some more snowflake earrings made for the next holiday show in a few weeks.

It gets me through

Isdihara called it. In her comment on my previous post....

The last thing I wanted to do last night was tat.

(gasp!)

I absolutely love tatting, and I am sooooo thankful that it's providing for my family right now. But the factor that has changed, is the reality that tatting is no longer "me time". It used to be that if I needed some time off from the kids, or life,.........I would want to sit in my corner and tat. Now, there are good portions of the week where I have to sit and tat. It's no longer optional when an order has been placed for a custom item :-) Compounded by the holidays of course---it's a smart business choice to offer snowflake and winter items that are easily reproduceable.... but one can only make so many white snowflake earrings without going a little nuts (well, me at least lol). I think the biggest part of it is that all of this high production time that I am focusing on (I have another holiday show in three weeks) I am left without "creative" time. I haven't designed anything new lately because I have been busy filling orders. I thrive on the in the moment, the improvisational, and the unexpected. That's just my personality, probably where the performer in me comes from. Expression of self is key to my sanity.

Anyway, I was in a funk about it last night, until I made the realization that a little "me time" would probably fix me....... so I called upon an old friend.

His name is Gibson.

Most of you know that in my previous job I was the worship director for the church we were attending. For those who aren't used to the churchy lingo, that means that I led and directed the team that plays all our music on Sunday mornings at services.

Now that it's no longer my day job, I have teamed up with a friend of mine who has a home recording studio. We are working on some cover tunes, stuff we can play in coffee shops etc. and he lets me come dink around in his soundbooth and sing to my hearts content. So, my creative outlet has again taken a musical swing, and last night in my need for creative release I took out my Gibson ES-135 (for non-guitarists, that just means I'm a spoiled girl and daddy gives me awesome guitars). It's a sweet guitar. We were made for eachother really. (The inside of the case is hot pink after all...) After a mad and fruitless search for headphones, I resigned myself to an unplugged solo jam session on the couch. Headphones would have allowed me to plug in to some fun noisy guitar pedals. Although after a mention of my lack of headphones on facebook, several friends offered me a pair and I will be thankfully accepting a pair this afternoon so I can have some fulfillingly-plugged-in "me time" this evening.

After the orders are filled of course.

The show must go on

It's a crummy cell phone picture, but you get the idea of my setup at the first show.. I had two craft shows, the first on Friday night which I mentioned briefly in the last post. The weekend was quite a whirlwind, as I arrived home from fridays show at 10pm, and had to sort and price tag all of my hand dyed thread for the next morning's show. I don't usually take thread to shows, but this one was the guild's Lace Day event. I offered to be a vendor in hopes that maybe I would sell a few skeins of thread, and I took my jewelry along to maybe at least show a modern use of lace techniques. I wasn't really hopeful that I would bring home much bacon, cause that really wasn't why I was doing this event. Anyway, my expectations were GREATLY surpassed --- as soon as I sat down from setting up my stuff, I was swamped with sales.....both jewelry and thread! I was so honored and touched by how well my work was received. Several of the ladies who do wonderful bobbin lace work took home some jewelry as gifts. I sold almost all of my larger (more expensive) necklaces and bracelets... and a whole load of thread. It just blew me away! In fact, my sales total from the lace day event, is more than the past two shows combined. And after a very slow two weeks on etsy, things have suddenly picked up and I am doing custom work and filling orders and loving every minute of it! It's funny how success can bring it's own sets of problems, I have an aunt who sells jewelry at gun shows and she wanted to take several pieces on consignment......well,..... I sold all of those pieces....so now I am trying as hard as I can to fill remaining orders as well as do some larger pieces for her to take, as well as some more snowflake earrings. One thing I know, is next year, I will start making snowflake earrings in june lol!

Horray for the holiday sale---And the Dr. wants her own shop

I made enough at today's craft show to make the whole ordeal worth my while for sure. Yay! I sold a couple of snowflake items, and several of my flower necklaces. And some wonderful folks have pulled Dr. Vonthreadmore out of her funk by generously purchasing some thread.... in fact she is so far out of her funk that she INSISTS that she should have Her very own shop on Etsy. Her reasoning? Well, if I am doing craft shows more regularly, why should her threads then be unavailable to the rest of the world ? (I put the shop on vacation mode when I do sales for obvious reasons)..... after all I don't take my thread with me to shows. And, when I go to guild meetings once a month, I take my thread stock with me.... so I of course shut down the shop so I don't sell something that sold at the same time online...but that takes my jewelry out of the mix two, because deactivating a few listings for a few hours is a real pain. And, she argues, she only gets one category in our current situation... the jewelry takes up all the rest of the categories. There just isn't room she insists! So, I gave in. After the first of the year I said, she could move into her own Etsy storefront. Right now I just don't have time to make her a banner....do all the setup and move all the listings..... but we will be sure to inform you all, in the Dr.'s ususal insistent manner.... when she indeed has made the switch.

Gulp.

Thread sales seem to have dried up. And, admittedly, revenue from my HDT addiction is a big part of what keeps us afloat around here.

Dr. Vonthreadmore won't even speak to me right now.

She is sulking because I have been so busy making jewelry and whatnot that she hasn't been given the opportunity to work since our last batch called "velvet". It was a large batch for us, on the heels of much thread success in the past two months.....and so far we have only sold one skein.

I keep encouraging the Dr, and trying to reason with her..... really I am sure that tatters everywhere are just tightening their spending habits for the holidays. The hope is that jewelry sales will pick up a bit during the gifting season should hopefully (prayerfully!) balance things out, and her fans should be back in force in the spring.

Of course, none of what I said meant anything to her. But when she saw that I was making some flower hair pins in her latest creation, she insisted that I give you all a look at them.

(really the color is hard to capture....this is under my daylight lamp. The purples are deeper and more rich than I am able to show)

Tatted in size 10 "Velvet". These little bobbies are on their way to another Bazaar tomorrow evening/afternoon. I know, another weekday show----weird right? It's even in a dental office lol! But they sought me out, have been advertising well, and expect traffic of 300-400, so here's to hoping for the best.

I hope you all are having a wonderful time whipping up holiday gifts of tatted lacy love! As always, you are all sooooooo encouraging and I appreciate every comment and bit of advice or cheer that you leave for me here, My fabulous friends! I sent in my application this week to teach some jewelry classes at next years Shuttlebirds workshop, so hopefully I will have good news about that soon. Wouldn't that be a blast!!!!

Snowflakes are falling.....

I've been tatting up a flurry over here! Had my first Craft sale of the season last wednesday, and did pretty well! I sold two necklace and earring sets, a pair of snowflake earrings, one of my more expensive chokers, a bracelet, and another of my dimentional flower necklaces....and a couple other pairs of earrings. Not bad for a midweek, 10am - 3pm show. :-) So now I am gearing up for an evening show this friday....making up some of what was sold etc.

Pictured above is some of the result of the tatting craziness...I've done my snowflake earrings in vintage silk thread, an icy aqua blue and a silvery grey. I think they are kinda classy :-) So far I have sold 3 pairs of the snowflakes, which is great for the first week that they've been available. The crazy thing that has happened to my brain since I became a business....is I find myself thinking about planning for valentines day and spring designs already!!!!! That is out of character for me to be thinking that far ahead, in any aspect of my life. But I won't say no to positive change lol!