Auctions

So I decided to enter last minute in Princess Bowtique's auction. I was thinking about it before, when I first heard about it, but had too much going on with packing up to come home and figuring out my jobs, and my foot of course. That's been getting in the way of a lot of things...

 

But in entering I decided... I want to host my own auction. I've seen a lot of pages do it to try to bring in more fans, so I think I'll do that! Which means, all you lovely fans will have a bunch of people coming to YOU to sell stuff. Well. Kind of. They'll be coming to the page, but it means you don't have to go anywhere special and don't have to like a bunch of extra pages, except if you find something you want to bid on. Then you'll have to like that page.

 

I still have too much going on to organize it right now, but I'm hoping before I go back to school for the year to do it. And I'll have to wait to get settled after my second foot surgery, so I'm thinking end of July, beginning of August. Any thoughts of how long it should run, types of stores I should harrass to see if they want to be in it? This would be one of those auctions where the store gets all the money for it, they're just advertising through me. Kind of like a department store auction, I guess?

I'm pretty sure anyone can comment, but with a Google account (Gmail) you can comment with that, so it's pretty easy. I'd love to get some feedback :)

All Dressed Up!

Well... Not really dressed up.

But, I recently found a blog, No Model Lady, and every Wednesday she does a post with pictures of what she wore and you can link up blog posts of what you wore! It doesn't have to be dressy and I wanted to share this shirt, which I actually wore yesterday :)

It's a pretty fab shirt from T-Shirt Laundry and I was SO excited to get it! For those that don't get it (which is probably most of you...) this is a "Firefly" shirt :) Firefly was a tv show in the early 2000's that was like sci-fi meets western... Which sounds ridiculous, but was actually awesome. The hat on the shirt is a hat made for Jayne Cobb, my favorite character, by his mother and is appropriately named "Jayne's Hat" or "Ma Cobb Hat" if you look it up to buy or make :) Which, I have made a couple, but the yarn I used I'm not really pleased with because I think it makes it look too fancy, and it's supposed to give the idea that it was made with scraps of yarn that his mom had left over. But, I have a different brand in mind, now I just need to find all three colors in a store...

Underneath the hat it says "How's it sit? Pretty cunning, don'tcha think?" which is a quote from the show when he opens it :) If you'd like one, it's listed as The Hero of Canton (because Jayne's the hero of Canton, mistakenly, anyway). They also have one that says "Big Damn Heroes" :D

Sew Many Ideas...

This is going to be my sewing summer! And I can't waaaitt. Of course, I had to make a "punny" ;-)

I wanted to share with you my project list for this summer! (Just to make sure you know that I'm all certifiably insane.)

First off, I'll be making two bags that look kind of like this, with some of my flair thrown in:

These bags will both be for friends, but it's a design I'm going to be tweaking and putting in the store for people to buy! Annnddd with my spiffy new sewing machine, I can still take orders for them when I get back to school. If I have time. This is going to be one of my military fabric designs, for those mil SO's out there...

I also want to make a purse for myself with Cars fabric. I wanted Mater fabric, but the closest you can get is the fabric used in my bag above, so that's what it's going to be. And guess what? The purse is going to be another military fabric design, post tweaking :)

And here we come to my clothing projects for this summer... I realize there is no feasible way I'm going to finish them all, so the knit dress and two flower skirts are my top priority because I think I'll wear them most.

I'm going to make a mash-up of these dresses:

With this fabric:

And make it a short cowl neck dress. I actually bought the fabric from another store on facebook who was trying to get rid of some of their stash :) I'm almost always willing to relieve someone of fabric... I rarely leave Jo-Ann's or Walmart without raiding their fabric remnants...

So then I'm going to take these fabrics:

And make skirts out of them. I have ideas in my head of how I want each of them to look, but no patterns. My mom and I will figure it out :) The red/pink one is actually already a skirt - I got it at a yard sale for 25 cents so I could remake it :) I always check Goodwill and thrift stores for those shapeless "old lady dresses" for patterns I like that I can make something else out of - cheap way to get fabric!

And then there's the other dresses... Which actually started this tirade of sewing projects. My mom had this huge pile of teal polka dot fabric that she was going to make curtains out of but then decided she didn't want to. I used some for my mock-up for the Nautical Hobo Bag, and decided I liked it and planned to make another bag with the mock up (Oh right, I wanted to do that this summer too...) And I decided I wanted to make a dress out of it.

Wait. Clothes out of fabric that was passed up for curtains? You must think I'm CRAZY! Well, you'd be right, but it's really not that bad, I swear! I found a teal fabric to match the polka dots, so they look like this:

See, it's not THAT bad, right? I don't think so, anyway.

I'm going to make this dress:

In mostly teal with polka dot accents. And then this one:

In polka dots with teal accents.

And thennnn the green flowery fabric, remember that? I'm going to make this with it:

With a black lining that I think will be the same as the green, but I'm not entirely sure that will be opaque enough so I may have to talk to my mom about that... May need some black lining fabric that's very light and drapes as closes to the green flowers as possible, because it's a very sheer, flowy fabric.

Ok, last clothing project. I got this fabric:

To make a pencil skirt out of. I thought it would be kind of cute business-y to wear, probably to my apprenticeship this fall. If my feet are good enough for heels.

Oh, kidding, that wasn't the last clothing project. Just the last one for me.

What else might I be sewing this summer? Well, my roommate Sara is getting married in October (well... the ceremony... they got legally married last October). So, this summer I'm making her wedding dress, her sister's bridesmaid dress, AND their mother's mother-of-the-bride dress.

And, I might be making a friend's bridal and bridal party jewelry, but I'm not sure yet.

Oh, but guess what... That's not all.

I'm also going to be a vendor at the Maine Firefighter's Convention in Waterville, a gig my roommate hooked me up with since basically half the Waterville fire department is her family, or might as well be. It's the 10th anniversary for 9/11, so it's going to be HUGE. And while I'll be taking custom orders there, I also want to have a TON of items ready to buy for firefighters, police, EMTs, both men and women, and for their kids and other family members. Which means a ton of money up front, but I'm hoping to get enough sales to at least break even :) I'll be posting new items as I make them, but I may not sell them until after the convention, I haven't decided yet.

Hope you enjoyed an insight to my crazy busy to-do list!

FYI About Small Businesses

I realized my last post was last Friday... and I intended to blog more than once a week, because it's important to keep it active otherwise no one will care. So this is a note that I wrote on my personal facebook page awhile back, when I saw a couple facebook business pages either shutting down or thinking about shutting down because of rude and malicious comments on their business pages. I was going to post it on here at some point anyway, so might as well post it now! And I'll try to keep up with it more... Guess I'm not off to a great start!

As a head's up, it's kind of strongly worded, and since it was on my personal page, it would only be people I know that would be reading it so I wasn't really concerned. It's not vulgar of course, but it may come across as rude itself. It wasn't intended to be rude, but as a "hey, think about what you're doing" kind of thing.

"Maybe it's because I'm stressed out and extra cranky right now, and maybe it's because in the past month I've seen two business pages want to shut down because of facebook drama, but I feel the need to say something.

For those of you who don't know how one-person businesses work (and some people clearly don't), this is how it does: There is ONE person who orders supplies, ONE person who deals with suppliers when orders go wrong, ONE person who answers emails, ONE person who maintains the website, ONE person who manages orders, ONE person who organizes supplies and tools and ONE person who makes the actual products. To be clear, this is not one person each - it's one person for everything.

In case you didn't get the hint, it is HARD to be the only person running your business, to be a "one-woman-show" as I've seen it called. Because not only are they doing all this, but they are probably working another job, taking care of their household, any kids or pets they have, and taking care of themselves.

Some people seem to think they're perfect, and they never make mistakes in the things they do, so obviously no one else should either, including these one-person businesses. And these people take it upon themselves to slander one-person businesses on the business pages, saying things that may or may not be true but are clearly rude.

Fortunately, I have not been subject to this behavior - yet. I'm sure it will come in time. But I've seen just too much of it recently. If you have a problem with your order or with the way someone conducts business, you take it up with them personally. You don't publicly berate them on their own page. People who are rude deserve rudeness back, so if you're going to dish it out you better be able to take it back without complaint (golden rule - treat others the way you want to be treated). There is a way to get your point across tactfully, and some people need to learn that. The pages I've seen this behavior on get much more positive feedback than negative, but these people don't seem to think that their problem could possibly be a fluke that could easily be corrected if they politely asked the business owner about it.

There. I feel better now."