Category / Craft business organization

by Nancy at HisThumbprint

Take a pause

 

I’ve not posted a lot, I know. I was working on some projects, work has been insane, and well, the shipping fun. More important than that is that I started to question how much I wanted to do this business.

I suppose everyone who starts a business has that feeling at one time or another, especially near the beginning. It gets frustrating. Things aren’t selling like you were sure they would. Customers have complaints or ‘suggestions’ with no regard to the fact that you look at your crafts as art, not  just ‘stuff’ you make. It sucks the wind right out of you. Trust me.

Time to pause

I decided to take some time and really give this some thought. Was it worth it to me to feel the stress I’d been feeling? Was I putting the stress on myself? Yes, I believe it’s worth it, with some change in my perspective. Yes, I’m putting some of the stress on myself.

forest-for-the-trees

I think most of my crafts from here on out probably won’t be ‘custom’ and if they are, there will be very little that can be customized. I want to create and if people like it and buy it, then that’s awesome!

Sometimes  you just have to make the decision to make your business the way it makes YOU happy. I’m not doing this for a living. Just for fun! I need to keep it that way.

Thanks for visiting with me today! I’ll have a few more things up on the shop soon!

Have a great week!

~Nancy

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by Nancy at HisThumbprint

Shipping Snafu

Or….best laid plans of mice and men. I’m not sure which is a better title. Hold on for a story of frustration and ridiculousness!

As I mentioned before, I’m in the process of making t-shirts for my great nephew’s team for a JDRF walk that happens to be this Sunday. (The shirts are for sale in my shop if you’re interested. 50% of the proceeds from that shirt will always go to JDRF.) The closeness of the date of the walk is a very important part of this story. On September 6 my niece placed the order for the shirts for her family. I placed the order with the blank t-shirt distributor the following day. I got the confirmation of the order and the next day I got 3 shipping notices.

One shipping notice was for 2 XL shirts and the walker of honor’s (great nephew) shirt. Another was for all of the medium and large shirts. The last notice was for my adorable 3 year old great-niece’s shirt. Shipped all by itself. The latest ‘deliver by’ date was the 15th. That was for the XL shirts and the youth shirt. Little A’s shirt had an expected delivery by the 13th.

A day or two later I ordered the shirts for others that had ordered and all were expected to arrive by the 16th. I planned to get all of them done and delivered to my brother and sister-in-law’s house by the 18th. All of the shirts arrived ahead of schedule. Except one.

This is where the story turns ridiculous. I called UPS (and was, of course, connected with who knows where) and told them that the shirt had shipped and was 5 days late. Granted, I probably shouldn’t have waited that long but it’s status was “we’ll be in your area so we will deliver to you instead of transferring to the USPS.” It was sent UPS Sure Post. So, the young lady on the phone was very nice and took my complaint. She told me to contact the seller as well, blah, blah, blah, but they’ve opened an investigation.

My plan became ‘run to Hobby Lobby after work on Monday and get a gray shirt’. Much to my surprise and delight, while I was eating lunch on Monday, the UPS man delivered a package! Yay! I won’t have to go buy another one! Wrong again.

The package was a box, which seemed odd since all of the other shirts came in shipping envelopes. It also made a ‘clunk’ sound if I shook it. On the outside of the little suspicious box was what was obviously the original label from the shipping envelope-and pieces of the envelope itself,  complete with the correct tracking number. Inside the box, however, was a 60 yard roll of industrial grade duct tape. Yep, duct tape. Oh, and the packing list that said ‘XS youth t-shirt, Charcoal gray’.  Now, to the credit of whoever did that (obviously someone at UPS), the tape is gray. That’s the only similarity.

Needless to say I called UPS right away. They returned my call about 3 hours later and I’m waiting for them to ‘make this right’. She said she was going to call the shirt company and have a new one sent out. So, I wait. We’re down to the wire and 2 days past the date I planned to deliver the shirts. I did get a shirt at Hobby Lobby, but it’s a lighter gray.

Anyway, the point of this story is….yeah…you can’t make this stuff up.

Thanks for reading! Don’t forget, sign up for the newsletter and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest!

~Nancy

t-shirt-tape

by Nancy at HisThumbprint

Labor Day

This weekend is Labor Day weekend and I’ve mostly been taking it easy. How about you? I had lunch today with my kids and then went swimming at my brother’s house. Lots of fun! Tomorrow it’s back to work.

Aside from taking it easy, I’ve been working on my next little endeavor. I’m going to start making t-shirts. Some of them will be for charity. The first one I have on my shop is for the JDRF One Walk. 50% of the proceeds will go to JDRF. My great-nephew has Type 1 and they do this walk every year. I’m doing the shirts for them this year! I’m so excited about it, plus, I had been considering getting into making t-shirts to sell as well. We’ll see how it goes!

My sister, and I are trying to come up with something to put on a shirt to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association. Our mother had early onset Alzheimer’s and passed away when I was 21. Obviously, that’s a cause close to our hearts. Another one on my list is the Adult Congenital Heart Association.

Anyway, the heat press is on order, the space is ready for it. I’ll place the order for the shirts and vinyl as soon as they place their orders on Etsy. This is the ‘small business’ lesson for this post. Always get money up front. Even if it’s family that you’re doing the work for. Not to be mean, of course, but when you’re in business for yourself, you can’t take a risk by putting out money ahead of time. When I get to the point where I have money in the bank from the business, then I’ll keep some inventory of shirts and vinyl on hand. I’m not there yet.

Well, this is a short post, I know, but it’s been a busy weekend, for sure! I’ll be back in the swing of things tomorrow and hopefully posting in the next day or so!

Have a great week! I hope it’s a short week for you, too!

~Nancy20160607_143753656_iOS

 

by Nancy at HisThumbprint

To the Family Go the Prototypes

Hi guys! This afternoon I started working on some Christmas ornaments. I have them all designed in my head so it was time to build ‘prototypes’. I’m not going to sell anything on my shop that I am not comfortable making. I want everyone to get a good product. As close to perfect as possible.

So, to that end, it was time to break out the Christmas ornaments and get started! Ornaments, check. Glue, check. Glitter, check. Paint, check. Headache…on order.

First of all, let me tell you that glitter and I have a love hate relationship. I love the look of it. Especially at Christmas! It’s perfect! The more glittery the better. I have green, red, white, silver, gold. I’m ready. I could look at it all day. It’s beautiful! I love it as much as my grandson does! G loves a good glitter project! But then…

There’s the hate part. Glitter is insideous. That may be strong language but it’s kinda true. It starts out pretty and innocent. It sticks right where you want it to (glue needed). How beautiful! But then….(again)…

You move. There’s glitter. You move again. How’d it get THERE? Look down at the cat. How did he get glitter on his nose? He wasn’t even in the room! Oh my gosh, there’s glitter on Spiderman! It must have jumped off the table-or did it get caught in his web? Anyway, suffice it to say we may have some sparkly dinners coming up. Maybe I should call them ‘glamourous’. Yeah, that works.

Then the glue. I used spray craft glue and sprayed it inside the ornament. First off, that stuff has FUMES. I had forgotten that. Anyway, it seemed to be a great idea until it puddled in the bottom of the ornament. It got all over inside but there was that puddle. I swirled it around for a few minutes and thought I had it spred well, so I poured in the glitter. Guess what. There’s a clump of green glitter in the bottom. The puddle came back.

Next up, pink paint for a ‘baby’s first Christmas ornament’. This didn’t go too badly. I squirted paint in and swirled and swirled and shook and shook. It covered halfway decent. Then I tried a brush. That worked great for the bottom of the ornament but I still had some pretty big spots to cover. I squirted in more paint and swirled some more. I still ended up with a couple empty spots. See the pictures.

What I learned from this is…with the glue, swirl a little more and let it dry a little more before using glitter. I may also try liquid glue. With the paint…I think a little bit of water will thin it enough to spread easier.

The title of this blog? Well, what do I do with these prototypes? Use vinyl or embellishments to cover this clump or that empty spot and give them to family and close friends! They love me no matter what! Buyers might not!

Don’t forget to visit and favorite my shop so you can see all the new items over the next several weeks and months! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest and sign up for my newsletter so we can stay in touch!

 

~Nancy

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by Nancy at HisThumbprint

Organizing the craft room

Hi there! I’ve had a little time this week to get my craft area set up a little more. Organize it, I should say. It’s not there yet but it’s much better. Yesterday I bought a white 5 shelf bookcase with 4 cubbies in the bottom. That took me about 2 hours to put together. No big mistakes and no cuss words, so I’d say that went well!

I moved toys from a ‘toybox’ (storage bin) to a cabinet all their own; put the items I have finished and listed on Etsy up on the top shelf of the new bookcase; found new homes for some tools and various other things as well. I still have ‘blanks’ to put away. Good times!

I also designed the shirt for G to have his picture taken in each year. It has Class of 2029 (oy vey) on the front, and his name and room for handprints for each year on the back. I need to pick up heat transfer vinyl for that tomorrow. I was at the craft store today and it didn’t cross my mind. Until I was almost home. Isn’t that always the way?

So, organizing. I love to organize things.I have to say that the disarray in my dining / toy / craft area has been a bee in my bonnet for a while! I’m feeling much better about it. Like I said, it’s not there yet, but one step at a time. I’m trying to keep my teeny, but alive and slowly growing, business organized, too. And it is growing. I’ve had a LOT more views on here and especially on my Etsy site lately. I’m thrilled about that! It’s not stagnant, so that means it’s growing! Yay! I signed up for the free trial on crafybase.com to see how that goes. It’s basically an inventory and financials tracking system for craft businesses. I’ll let you know how that works out. As I have mentined in the past, I schedule my pins for Pinterest through Tailwind and that has helped me so much! I can sit here and watch TV and find pins I like or whatever and schedule them and not have to think about them again. I love it! I need to start scheduling Facebook as well. Honestly, I have no excuse there. I can schedule as I write! It’s right there! Oh well. I always plan to write 2 or 3 blogs ahead as well, but I’m not to that yet either! I’ll get there, too!

I guess I still have some work to do! To that end, I’m going to go take pictures of my new listings! I hope to have them online tonight!

Thanks for stopping by! Don’t forget to follow, pin, like, etc! I’ll be looking for you! Oh! And sign up for my newsletter! I’ll send you a coupon for 10% off anything in my shop and the newsletter will have lots of valuable blog and Etsy tips!

Catch you later!

~Nancy20160703_233934203_iOS