Craft Fair Season

Craft fair season is upon us...who out there is getting ready to work flat out until Christmas?
I am going be working on a new line of products. My first fair is in October, so I need to get busy like a bee.

Vote HandMade

REPLY

Votehandmade.com has been re-skinned to make it more of a handmade feel. We have altered a lot of the core functionality to be easier to navigate. Today we are starting our full Launch. We did a soft launch here for Artfire members to get in and start building Karma early.

VoteHandmade.com

New website allows members to vote and submit art links from all over the web

Tucson, AZ – Today marked the launch of a new social media website, VoteHandmade.com. Powered by Reddit code and ArtFire.com, Vote Handmade serves as a link sharing platform for artisans and crafters of all types and specialties.

On VoteHandmade.com, users can share handmade items from venues all over the web with fellow users, up voting and down voting just like on Reddit. This allows artisans the opportunity to not only socialize and share links, but also to promote their quality product and drive buyers to their online studio.

VoteHandmade.com also aggregates news, instruction and business tips for the online craft world. With hundreds of thousands of handmade sellers and millions of handmade items currently listed for sale on the internet, VoteHandmade.com is a great place to see the best of all venues and all artists as voted on by their peers.

VoteHandmade is like the world’s largest juried craft show. Any user can submit an item from any site. VoteHandmade is free to use, free to join, and free to promote.

More About ArtFire.com

ArtFire.com is an interactive craft marketplace designed to bring artisans from different geographic locations and backgrounds together. On ArtFire, artisans are able to not only set up a customizable studio, but also are given the chance to meet fellow sellers though a number of interactive features available on the site. Artfire is more than just a venue, it’s a vibrant artisan community.

“We wanted to give artisans the chance to promote their items in a way which was not only free but also fun,” said John Jacobs, CEO of ArtFire.com. “Vote Handmade allows them to share and interact with artisans from the many different venues on the web.”

“We felt it was important to build tool specifically designed for artisans,” Said Tony Ford, COO of ArtFire.com. “It is our hope that the crafting community will use VoteHandmade .com to further their business and networking online and shoppers can go to one place to see the best of the best artisans in all

Craft Fair Season

Craft Fair season is upon us. It is a time when us artist and crafters can get out there and share our wares.
I have done a number of craft fairs over the years between the US and Scotland.
It is a time when we can meet the very people that keep us in business and give us the motivation to do what we do.
In my experience of craft fairs...some you win...some you loose..and some are just so much fun it doesn't matter whether you win or loose

A check List for fairs from someone who has been there, done that and bought the t-shirt

* Never have your table too full
* Have a variety, but not too much where it confuses your customers
* Always iron your table cloths
*Have clear signs with business name
*Always have business cards and literature about your business
*Make sure you have plenty of change
* Make sure you have bags for all different size of items( I did a craft fair were most of my things were small, but I had made a couple of long scarfs..when I sold one I had nothing to pack it in, I was very embarrassed)
* work on your craft when you are there if possible
* Make sure you customers can either walk into your booth or around it
* Smile, you are not being tortured
*Never accept offers..not a good image for your business
* Take your own food or you will end up spending all your profits..maybe you should just shove earplugs up your nose so you are not tempted by the smells of that fair food
* Last but not least..have fun.

Susan Boyle....One of the eight wonders

Susan Boyle is one of the eight wonders, she comes from the holy land which is Scotland.
Watching her flourish over this past few weeks has been amazing. As a fellow Scot who moved to the States 2 years ago, I am so very proud of her.

She is an example to all of us. We all judge a book by it's cover and Susan Boyle is an example of the very reason why we shouldn't. People are judged for how they look, how they speak, and how interesting they come across. Well Susan Boyle was judged for all of that, then she literally blew away the world with what came out of her mouth.

I am rooting for her to go all the way. I hope she blows everyone away once again when she performs.
Go Susan!

All aboard the crazy train

The crazy train features artists who sell their art through Artfire.

Today we are featuring :

Silver River Jewelry

Fine artisan jewelry made with a variety of techniques including wire wrapping, metal smithing and lapidary (rocks). I make elegant, affordable, well made jewelry with a touch of whimsy.

It's Monday!

Hi everyone. I can't believe another Monday has rolled around. I didn't get to blog last week as I was busy creating for my store.

I sold my first item on Artfire last week wooooooooooooo. It was very exciting.

My goals for this week is to redo all my photographs. I will master the art of good photo's :)

I hope you all have a good week.

Here is one I created last week............JUST FOR BOYS.......................

All About Daisies

All about Dasie's Hat was inspired by my love of daisies. Daisies bring back beautiful memories of childhood, it reminds me of sitting in the tall grass of Scotland in the middle of summer and making daisy chains. Every little girl should sit in the middle of a grassy garden and make daisy chains.

Share with me a warm fuzzy memory of childhood.

Google Keywords

We all know how important it is to have the right keywords and titles for our products.
I found a great link yesterday that enables you to find keywords for your products that rank in the searches.

The link is:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This what I will doing all day, I will be changing my tags, keywords and titles..I will let you know how much a difference it makes in driving traffic to my store

Give Away of The Week

Everyone likes free stuff, I am giving away this week, this adorable clip holder.
All you have to do is visit my shop http:www.daisyleedesigns.artfire.com and tell me what your favorite item is and comment back. You will be entered into a draw for this week.

Good Luck

Shop Of The Week

I would like to feature my Mum, She has been with etsy for about a year now, although she has not many sales through her store, she has done incredibly well. She has been knitting since myself and my siblings were tiny tots, she continued knitting for her grandchildren and now she knits for business...you go Nana....

Her name is Helen..aka Nana. She lives In scotland with my brother Paul and my son Sean ( who is over there for university). I hear she is knitting everyone socks at the momeny..very cold in Scotland.

She has 5 children and 11 grandchildren. She also has many adopted people in her life from both Scotland and America..every where she goes people love Nana.

Everyone give her a big cheer.....

Etsy Verses Artfire

I am with Etsy and Artfire. I have been with Etsy for over a year. I love Etsy, the forums there are wonderful and very easy to navigate. The people are great and the array of hand crafted items are marvellous.
The down side for me with Etsy, I find it so overpopulated with certain things. I gave up selling my jewelry over there, there is far too much competition. I will continue with Etsy as I am an Etsy fan.

I have been with Artfire now for a couple of weeks, so I am no expert. One of the things that I believe sets it totally apart from Etsy is the load product page. It is fantastic, I load more there as it is so much easier to use than the Etsy page, it is faster, more efficient and you can work on your description while loading your products.
I think that there are some things they need to work on, but overall I am very happy with Artfire.

My latest creation with the most beautiful little model ever :) Thank you Beka for being so super

Is everyone enjoying spring break?

I Hope you are all enjoying spring break. The weather here in Missouri is lovely. I am enjoying having the kids home and catching up with all the projects that pile up.

Hope wherever you all are, that the sun is shining...well! I know my family in scotland will say that it isn't :)

Wishing you all a happy spring break.

Part of my Spring/Summer collection.

Cats Paw Artifacts

Judy Richards resides in Portland, Oregon where it rains this time of year. A well kept secret is that it doesn't rain all year around.

Judy is a member of the Portland Bead Society, the ORBS (Oregon Regional Beadmakers Society) and the ISGB (International Society of Glass Beadmakers). She also belongs to PdxEtsy, Etsy BEAD team, and CGGE.

Judy makes lampwork beads and designs jewelry - unique and hopefully artful jewelry. She is always striving for new ideas, new shapes in glass.

Judy is inspired by nature (flowers, birds) depicted in glass. She loves abstract lampwork most of all with layers of glass and complexity. She is always striving to that goal.

You can visit her shop
http://www.catldy99.etsy.com

You can visit her blog
http://www.catldy.wordpress.com

See Judy in April at Art and Elegance in Beads at the Portland Convention Center

Spring is here, I am buzzing with ideas for a spring collection

I have so many ideas to play about with, I am hoping that most of them come to fruition.

When i lived in Scotland, I worked at a school that ran a story book program. It was to help and encourage kids to read and understand what they read.
One of the ideas I have is to design some story bags. I am very excited and cannot wait to get started.
I am hoping they will be a hit at the craft fairs this year.
I need to shop for materials to make the bags and then shop for the things to put in them.
I don't make stuffed animals, but I will be on the look out for some hand made ones...so if any of you bloggers make stuffed animals, let me know and give me your link.

I will post the progress of them, hoping to start them this week.

A beautiful design by Daisyleedesigns. Part of my Spring/Summer collection

Knitting class at my house. My Mum (aka..Nana), giving a friend also Nana a knitting lesson.

Craft groups are so much fun

A cute Tote bag for Easter.
Visit http://www.daisyleedesigns.etsy.com

A Day In The Life Of A Mother

A day in the life of a mother is never dull and always busy..here is a day in my life.

Thursday19th March 2009

6.00am... woke first child up for school and helped him get himself together.

6.30am... woke second child up for school..my high school child..I assume that is enough explained.

6.45am... got first child off to school..he rides the school bus

7.00am... woke third child up for school...my little girl, big mistake as she got to bed one hour later than usual the night before.

7.15am... drove second child to school and listened to third child screaming about how tired she was.

7.25am... made breakfast for third child, that was once i guessed what she wanted, it only took five attempts.

7.40am...fought with third child to get dressed, ended up dressing her.

7.55am...drove third child to school

8.05am...the house was quiet, finally had time to get that coffee...maybe I needed it at 6am.

8.15am...ran round like a crazy woman trying to get dishes done, all the stuff picked up off the bathroom floor and fighting with the laundry machine trying to get as much in it as possible.

9.15am... time to get dressed for work to leave by 9.30am, threw on clothes, through on make up..who knows what i looked like..never had time to look in mirror too much.

9.35am... headed out the door with garbage in hand to drop in trash can.

10am... time to start work.

1pm... finished work, thinking if I could get by with not having to go to the store.

1.30pm... got home, time for a quick bite to eat..really need food..had no breakfast

2.00pm...Husbands birthday...need to wrap birthday presents and clear the dinning table so we can eat

2.30pm... first kid will be arriving home soon...only 10 minutes to get some more things done

2.40pm... he arrives home..spend time talking about his day, but the only thing i can think of is needing to make a birthday cake.

3.00pm... try and get the laundry out of the machine and into the dryer...what a fight..I guess I had put too much in.

3.15pm... second child cam home from school, spent time with him asking how his day went....still thinking about birthday cake.

3.30pm... time to go pick up the third child..wonder what mood she will be in..hope it is a good day.

3.50pm... got back from pick-up, spent time asking her how her day was

4.pm... time to prepare a birthday dinner and bake a cake

4.30pm... cake is in the oven, dinner is ready to go

4.45pm... get laundry out of dryer, fold and sit it there..maybe I will get to pout it away before I have to fold it again.

5.00pm... Take cake out of oven, put dinner in.

5.05pm... trying to get cakes out of pans, hope i don't need to do a patch work job.

5.15pm... put breakfast dishes in dishwasher..oh here comes the teenager with what looks like my whole entire dish collection.

5.30pm... need to ice the cake...still is slightly warm..hopefully it will be okay.
I guess I did need to do a patch work job, the icing is running off the cake and I only have three candles for a 38th Birthday. Let the little miss cranky pants lick the bowl.

5.50pm... sit down to dinner, burnt the potatoes so had to scrape them out the pan..oh well!

6.00pm... Husband opened birthday gifts and we served the cake siging Happy Birthday in all different keys.

6.15pm... time for missy to go to soccer practice, need to try and clean up while husband takes her and before I leave at 6.45pm to go to ladies fellowship.

6.45pm... managed to at least get the dishes from the table to the kitchen. Told the middle child to wash them up only to be told "uh! I am supposed to be at school for 7pm". Gosh I had forgot about that.
I run out the door with him, get in the car and remembered I was suppose to take snacks to fellowship.
Run back in the door, grab whatever I can fin, back out the door.

6.55pm... drop child off, rush to get to fellowship.

830pm... Back from fellowship to find little missy not in bed yet. dad says he was just coming..yeh! right.

8.45pm... need to wizz round and clean up as I have my daycare baby tomorrow.

9.20pm... get the others off to bed..except the teenager who goes tpo bed the same time as me.

10.00pm... watch the news and catch up with the world.

10.30pm...can't believe it is bed time

And tomorrow we will do it all again.

Who said that Mothers are not superwomen..we are the ultimate "supermommy".

Oh! and sometime in that day I managed to blog to you all and talk to my Mommy on the phone.

Almost Friday

I can't believe it is almost friday. I had great plans at the start of this week.
I was going to load up my store, design some new items, post in all the forums and blog away like a crazy person...guess what I got done?
I got as far as cleaning my work room and making one pair of earrings.
why is it always like that?
I am not a to do list type person, but maybe if i do a to do list for next week, I might graduate to a higher degree.

Am I the only one who has this problem?

Monday morning blues

Who gets the Monday morning blues?
Monday roles around once a week, it is the start of a brand new week....much to do....appointments to set...calls to make and the hope of fulfilling our to do list that grows week by week as we role over our things from last week.
The thoughts of what will this week bring..will it bring good things, we hope but more than likely we will face the mountain of the week, probably face disappointments, we will work too hard, we will eat too much and we will probably not get everything done than we would like...but there is hope because there is a brand new Monday waiting for us next week.
I hope you all start off this Monday on a positive note and hopefully the rest of your week will not feel like a mountain.

It's Friday

who loves Friday? I do, it is the end of another week, the list that started at the beginning of the week of all I wanted to accomplish has yet again not been fulfilled. I am the only one that has this problem?
Maybe one of these days I will fulfill my list so that it quits getting longer.
This week has been busy with business, work, kids, construction, cleaning, cooking, and generally running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.
I have had two children sick a husband pretending to be sick so he has a reason to procrastinate ( that is a blogpost on it's own) and wouldn't you know mommy was sick too but who would ever know because we still need to plod on regardless. No procrastination for Mother's...Hey that would make a great title to a blog post.

Maybe next week will be a little less crazy and stressful...I think not.
Hope you all a great week.

Designs By Daisy

Designs By Daisy......is where you can find all things girly. take a look at my store and if you don't find what you like email me and I can custom design something.

Summer Bags and bows coming soon.

Motherhood is a Journey

Who said being a mother is easy, it is one of the hardest journey's you will ever take , but it is so rewarding.

I have 19 years experience as a mother with four children. People always think that I have wisdom beyond wisdom, but the truth be told some days or trials that we face, we feel like a brand new mother.

Just the difference between boys and girls..I had three boys and then a girl, I really thought I had it down with the first three, then when i had my little girl it was like it was the first time being a mother.

If there is one piece of wisdom that I have gained as a mother of 19 years, it is to cherish every moment.
You believe when you have your first child that you have a whole life of being a mother ahead of you....It goes in a heartbeat, more quicker than you would ever think. Cherish every moment, laugh at every little thing, be patient with all the stresses, scoop up all the hugs you can get, say a million" I love you's". Before you know it, they are all grown up and leaving on their own journey.

For all the Mothers out there, you are worth all that God and life has to offer, more valuable than gold.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I guess it is time to enter the world of blog...everyone is doing it so here is my attempt at blogging.

I am a stay at home mom, have been home for more years than I can remember. I have four wonderful children and a wonderful husband of 16 years and counting. I am originally from Scotland, but moved to the USA a couple of years ago.

I have been running my own business for about 5 years, originally started in Scotland selling my jewelry through part plan parties. After moving to America I am finding out it is a different market, so I am leaning more toward children's products and selling through craft malls, craft fairs and on-line through my etsy site.......daisyleedesigns.etsy.com

It is a learning process, but I am getting there and having fun doing it but at the same time enjoying raising my children.

I hope I can build a successful blog and be an encouragement to others through it.