Giveaway Contest!

I decided to have a giveaway for Valentine's Day. It's pretty simple. All you have to do is heart an item from my shop and post a comment saying which item you hearted. The prize is any card from my Valentine's Day section.




To get additional entries, you can:
- Subscribe to my mailing list.
- Post about the contest on Twitter, your blog, the Etsy forums, etc. To tweet about the contest, just copy and paste this in to Twitter:
"Win a free Valentines's Day card from @movetheneedle! http://tinyurl.com/vdaygiveaway"
- Follow this blog.

You'll have to let me know in the comments section of this post if you do any additional entries. That means you can get 4 entries altogether. The giveaway ends next Monday the 8th (so I have time to send the card out to the winner before Valentine's Day). Winners are chosen randomly.

Good luck! Feel free to comment if you have any questions.

Multicolored Hearts

I got these new cards up that use a multicolored heart paper. I think the multicolored heart paper is fun and makes it so you can give it to anyone.

Multicolored Hearts Valentine's Day Card



Multicolored Hearts Sweetheart Card



Multicolored Hearts Anniversary Greeting Card



I also have this card I listed a while ago that uses the same paper:

I Love Hearts Greeting Card



Which one is your favorite?

I'm so glad it's the weekend. I needed a break from classes. I'm going to be featured on a few different sites soon. I'll let you know about them when they get posted. :)

New Cards and Updates

I meant to blog every day this week, but I've been really busy with school. I got these new Valentine's Day cards up though. These are both made with this handmade paper I bought that has dried flowers in it:

Valentine's Day Rose Paper Greeting Card



Valentine's Day Rose Paper Greeting Card (Version II)



The flowers in this one are recycled from an old vintage card I bought. I have some more vintage greeting cards coming soon too:

Vintage Rose Valentine's Day Card



Since I said I'd feature an older card each day too, here's an anniversary card. It's not exactly for Valentine's Day, but fits with the love theme:

Red and Gold Glitter Hearts Anniversary Greeting Card



I'm thinking of sending one of my handmade cards for this Special Delivery event where Etsy sellers are sending handmade Valentine cards to Citymeals-on-Wheels. I just have to decide which card to send. Which card do you think would be the best to send?

New Valetine's Day Journal and Card

I'm trying to list Valentine's Day items all this week. Here's a card and journal I recently listed that both use the same decorative paper.

Tan Heart Ribbon Journal



Rounded Heart Valentine's Day Greeting Card



I wanted to showcase some older items from my Valentine's Day section every blog entry I talk about new Valentine's Day items. This card isn't necessarily just for Valentine's Day, but it would be good to give out to a friend on Valentine's Day or someone who loves animals:

Heart Shaped Zebra Print Card



Here's another item I listed a while ago. It has an inspiring quote on it:

Love Deeply Inspiring Quote Greeting Card (Pink Version)



You can see all my items in my Valentine's Day section. Do you shop/buy gifts for Valentine's Day? Do you still give out cards?

Valentine's Day Section, 365 Project and Updates

I started a Valentine's Day section in my shop. I got these new items up that are in the section:

Pink Heart Greeting Card



I love this fabric. I've had it for years and had a little bit extra that I made this card out of.

Red and Gold Ribbon Journal



I made this journal a while ago, but I never listed it and put it at The Market House that sells some of my items. I decided to list it on Etsy anyway for Valentine's Day. If someone buys it, I'll have to take it out of the shop or make a new one.

I'm going to try to list a new item every day this week and have all my Valentine's Day items up by February. If I can keep it up, I'll blog every day with the item I listed and talk about some of the other items that are Valentine's Day related.

I got featured in this treasury. I think this treasury is neat because it uses items from members of EtsyU, which are Etsians that are also in college. My card is in the top center:



I decided to start a 365 photo project where you post a photo every day for a year. I've wanted to do this for a while, but never started it because I didn't know if I could keep up. I decided to do a theme of food so every day it will be a photo of something food related. You can see the set here and add me as a Flickr friend if you'd like. Here are my first 2 photos:





I sent my e-mail list update out for January. It's like my blog in e-mail form, but monthly. I only have a couple subscribers so if you want to get e-mail updates, be sure to sign up on the right hand column. You can see my January update here.

New Journals, Classes and Dog Shelter

I started classes today. It's exciting to be in a new semester. The two classes I had today are continuations from last semester - art history and figure skating. It's nice that I get to take figure skating more and it's fun that I get to take it at the same time as the winter olympics. I'm excited for the Olympics. Any ideas for Olympic themed items I can make? I got these new journals listed:

Mini Math Journal



When I was making another journal, I had extra strips of folded paper that were this long shape. Instead of throwing them out, I decided to make a journal with that shape. I used math paper for the cover so it'd be good for doing math equations or for people who love math.

Upcycled Swan Flyaway Journal



I made this journal out of an old children's book about a year ago. I had a problem with the inside, but I was able to fix it up. I remember reading it growing up and it was one of my favorites.

I still have a lot of new items I have to list including some Valentine's Day journals and cards (I'm going to try to get those up by next week). I'm almost at 150 items in my shop.

I got 3 craft show applications for this summer in the mail today. The craft shows are all juried and they cost money, but I'm going to try to do at least 1. I've never done a juried show so it should be an interesting experience. I was looking at another site about craft shows in Pennsylvania and noticed it cost over $700 to be in one show. I can't believe a craft show could cost that much! I don't even know if I'd make that much money if I sold all my items.

This isn't related to crafting, but I went to the dog shelter a few days ago before I came back to school and I thought I'd share some photos that are on my Flickr. There was this dog named Monday I really liked (the puppies were named after days of the week):







My family might get a puppy. I had a couple dogs growing up, but I haven't had one for a while. Feel free to leave any recommendation for good dog breeds. :)

New Items, Birthdays and Craft Challenge

I listed some new items:

Sunflower Collage Journal



I made this journal this summer, but I didn't list it right away because I wanted to fix some things about it. I love the paper I used.

Pet Sympathy Greeting Card (Blue Version)



Pet Sympathy Greeting Card (Gold Version)



These pet sympathy cards are variations on this pet sympathy card I made that was actually one of my first sales on Etsy. They're good to give out for somebody who just lost a pet.

Vacation Bird Wavy Greeting Card



Yellow Flower Birthday Greeting Card



I also listed this vacation and birthday card. The bright colors remind me of springtime.

I made a new Calendars and Planners section. I still haven't put my new planners up because my camera's still not working, but hopefully they'll be up soon (at least sometime in January). They're really nice, I'm using one of the planners I made.

I won 50% off this shop for being the 200th person to heart it. I'm not sure if I'm going to take advantage of the offer yet.

I celebrated my Dad/sister's birthday the other day. I got my Dad some handmade envelopes. I'm going to be listing envelopes in my shop soon. I'm just not sure how to list them. Do I list them by color or size? Should I do it one at a time or in sets?

I got my sister this cute moose stuffed animal from this shop in my town that sells crafty things. It's the same one pictured here (without the Mariners logo). I love how round it is. The shop had a lot of unique, inspiring things. They also had a couple sheets of decorative paper for sale and I picked up a few sheets of paper.

I also saw these cute food penquins on Craftster and had to try them myself. They look pretty much the same as the picture below except I didn't do feet. You can see how to make them here.



By the way, you can vote for my Gingerbread City on Craftster right here. I don't expect to win, but it was fun to enter. I think I'll try to do more craft challenges in the future.

*DATE Thanksgiving Main Dishes

If you want to try something different than a traditional turkey for Thanksgiving, try one of these dishes below. They are all vegan. Feel free to experiment with them and add your own ingredients. Many main dishes can make a great dish for Thanksgiving.

This Roasted Acorn Squash is stuffed with wild rice. It is gluten free and vegan. Try stuffing other vegetables, such as bell peppers, if you don't have acorn squash.

Mac and cheese can be a great main dish. To give out a Thanksgiving spin, try this Butternut Mac and Cheese is made with cashews and butternut squash

Try this Simple Summer Corn Soup which can also be made in fall. It uses fresh corn and be a main dish or appetizer.

What do you like to cook for Thanksgiving?

Gingerbread City

I'm entering a craft challenge for a gingerbread house on Craftster.org. It's not related to paper crafts, but I just wanted to do it for fun. I did one challenge on Craftster.org before where I made a set of playing cards. You can see them here. I ended up selling them later on Etsy for $40!

I wanted to do something creative so I decided to do a city instead of the traditional Gingerbread house. It's based on the Chicago skyline because I'm from Chicago, but it can be any city. The blue part is the lake. Everything is edible.

I started with gingerbread dough and cut it to different shapes that made up the sides of the building. I tried to make real buildings in Chicago, but it was hard to get them right. The building on the left is based on the Sears Tower/Willis Tower (even though in real life, it's taller than the other buildings).



I dyed white frosting a yellow/orange color and used it to make dots that represent city lights. I had to do each side of the building which made it hard to get everything accurate.



I made white frosting and dyed it blue to make the lake. I used white frosting to glue everything together.

I used coconut flakes to represent snow on the ground near the buildings.



I'll post again when the poll is up and you can vote. If the pictures get cut off on my blog, you can see my entry post here.

Reflecting on 2009

This kind of goes along with my last post. I found a forum post with questions about your etsy shop in 2009 and I thought it'd be good to answer them and looks at statistics of my shop.

New Items

I can't remember every item I listed this year, but I estimated about 60 of my items were listed this year. This was actually my first full year on Etsy. Some new items I listed:

Heart Shaped Zebra Print Card



Postcards from Europe Coptic Stitch Journal



This Little Piggy Bank



Visitors

Looking at my Google Analytics, my Etsy shop got 8,880 visits and 18,874 pageviews in 2009. Most people visited 2.13 pages and spent about 2 minutes on the site. Most visitors are returning visitors. I sold 22 items this year (about half on Etsy and half from craft shows).

I only kept track of statistics for this blog since the middle of the year, but it's got about 1,500 visits and 4,500 pageviews. Most people visit 3 pages. A good thing about the blog is it has a really low bounce rate, which means people actually read my blog and don't just leave the website quickly (the bounce rate is a lot higher in my shop). Most people spend 2 minutes on my blog.

Top Referrers

It's important to look at referrers because it shows where people found your shop from. The top traffic referrers to my site were Google, Twitter, StumbleUpon, this blog and LinkReferral. Some other sites that brought a lot of people were the Craftcult page, the EtsyVeg team blog and Craftster.org.

It's nice to see Twitter is helpful. Even though people don't stay as long as people who might read about a feature of my shop on a blog would, it still helps bring traffic. I did pay advertising on StumbleUpon. It got me a lot of visitors, but most people didn't stay that long and just sort of clicked off the site. I always like seeing that my blog is helpful because I probably put the most effort in to that.

For this blog, most people came from Blogger, Google or Etsy. That makes sense, even though I was surprised that more people came from Blogger than from Etsy (it could be people who are following me reading my blog through their Blogger page). Twitter was also helpful in bringing in traffic. I also noticed images.google.com brought me 76 visitors, which is good because it means my photos are showing up in Google's image search.

Most Viewed Items

These items were viewed the most this year:

Black and White Faces in Crowd Greeting Card



Little Gold Crinkled Address Book



Oversized Envelope Sketch Book



Hearts

I received 175 hearts this year. I couldn't figure out how to see how many items were hearted the most this year, but altogether, these items have the most hearts:

Blue and Gold Marbled Journal



Little Golden Tree Bark Address Book



Rewards

One of the questions was what part of running my business was the most rewarding and what did I dislike the most.

It's always rewarding for me to make items and list them. I experimented with new items this year (e.g. making a heart and snowflake shape journal, making collage style cards and journals). I like hearing feedback about my items and seeing what people like. It was also rewarding to blog, use twitter more, start a mailing list, do my first craft show and get my items in another shop.

There's not a lot I dislike about running my shop. There were periods this year when I didn't get a lot of sales and those can be discouraging when you put a lot of work in to something and nothing's selling. It was also frustrating to try new types of advertising (some paid) and not seeing effective results.

If you have a shop, feel free to use this format to make a post in your blog (or in the comments) to write about reflections in your shop.

Happy 2010!

Happy New Year! I hope 2010 is a great year for everybody. You can see some of my favorite (non craft related) stuff from 2009 here in my other blog. I thought I'd write down my resolutions/goals for my Etsy shop.

*I want to get some more items in shops offline. I have items in 2 shops right now. One I haven't heard from and I'll probably take some of my items out of there because they haven't been selling. I did sell one journal at the Market House and that seems to be working well. Setting a number goal, it would be nice to have items in about 4-5 shops.

*I also want to do more craft shows. Move the Needle has only done a couple craft shows so I want to try to do some more. I sent in a request for an application for some juried shows in my hometown. You have to pay for them, but I think it'd be worth it to try at least one of them.

*I want to continue making new items and develop my skills in paper crafts. I might take a bookbinding class which would help develop my skills and allow me to try new ideas. It'd also be fun to try to learn new skills I've never done - such as how to make my own decorative paper (such as by screenprinting).

*I'd love to get more sales or sell more consistently. I have 39 sales in my Etsy shop right now and I got 10 sales this year in my Etsy (and some more in craft shows). I'd say my goal is to double that and get 60 sales in my Etsy total (which would be 20 more by the end of the year). Besides just the quantity of sales, it'd be nice to sell more consistently, like maybe selling about one item a month. I seem to sell pretty randomly.

I also want to continue updating my blog at least weekly. One of my goals I wrote down earlier was to get a domain for this blog, but I already did that. : )

I tried selling some items on EBay just to see if they would sell any better than on Etsy. None my items sold except this blue and white marbled mini journal. I accidentally set the starting price to $0.99. I meant to make the starting price higher, but it sold for really cheap. I feel kind of bad because I really like this journal and it uses some nice paper I got from Italy. I guess it'll be more like a gift/giveaway to her then. At least it will help get the word out about my shop a little. This was the journal that sold:




I will have new planners up soon. I decorated some 2010 Moleskine planners and I really like them. I can't get them up yet because my camera is having problems connecting to my computer. I will try to get them up as soon as possible though!