Giveaway #1 WINNERS!

Thank you to everyone who entered my first ever giveaway!

I used random.org to generate three numbers - each person was assigned x amount of numbers according to whether they Tweeted, bought, etc. The winners are................

#1 Patricia from Verre Designs

#2 handknittedthings

#3 RetroReDesign

I will contact the winners through email/Etsy and thanks to everyone again for entering and looking and promoting! Check back soon for my second giveaway (probably through the awesome site IndieNorth) featuring a monster pouch! :D

I HIT THE JACKPOT!

That's right, I hit the jackpot! Well, my aunt hit the jackpot FOR me. She went to a flea market/bazaar type thing over the weekend and found this HUGE bag of thread. Thread of beauuuuutiful colours. Maybe it's a little nerdy to enjoy colourful thread to such a degree, but laying them out of my table and taking photos... too gorgeous! I absolutely can not wait to use all of these colours for my monster pouches. They almost look like bottles of paint!

Did I mention that this bag of thread cost $6? Canadian dollars too. Haha - like I said, JACKPOT!

Small update

Hello all! I've been missing in action from the internet / Twitter / blogging world for a little while due to studying.

A small update:

1) This morning I woke up and rikrak emailed me saying I had won her giveaway! There's probably no better thing to wake up to! You should check out her shop if you haven't already - filled with gorgeous eco-friendly stuff like wallets, iron-ons, clutches, coasters, etc. I chose a custom wallet for my new business cards (that are on their way) and two iron-ons!

2) My button giveaway is ending soon and I AM keeping track of everyone's entries! Enter before May 1st and have a chance to win!

3) I have started sewing for the Big on Bloor Festival and have done 8 pouches already (in between the textbooks). Stay tuned for a blog entry about my progress! I think my goal is to have 70-80 pouches for the festival in June! Any unsold ones will go into my Etsy shop.

I will be back soon! :D

Giveaway #1!

I'm suffering from pre-exam stress and what better way to battle it then hold a giveaway! Actually, I'm not sure how that works but I figure giving away fun buttons to fun people = happy people = happy! Yay!

To enter the giveaway:

1) Visit my shop

2) Come back and comment on which is your favorite item, and be sure to leave your contact info (Etsy shop/username, email, etc.)

3) For 1 additional entry Twitter/blog about this! For 3 additional entries purchase anything from my shop! Mention any of these in the same comment - no need for a new one! :)

Three lucky winners will be chosen as soon as it is May 1st and will win their choice of three buttons from my shop! If buttons are sold as a pack you can still choose just one or two or all three!

Yay! Good luck!

School versus crafting!

It's a classic match up - SCHOOL versus CRAFTING. I found one of my plushie stencils on my desk and it shows EXACTLY what's happening with this battle. 

Here we have a cute little stencil of my miniature plushies. I put the paper to the fleece and cut accordingly. Anyway, what paper did I use for it? Those are slides from my accounting class. "Financial reporting under ideal conditions" is one of the slides. Haha. 

What's even greater is the back of the stencil. I was scribbling things to memorize for my marketing test. A lot of it seemed like "common sense" but when you list things out you do actually apply it to your own business. Here's a lesson:

THE FOUR P'S OF MARKETING:

Price / Place / Product / Promotion

THE THREE C'S:

Consumer / Competition / Company

What do you do with the market?

Segment the market, target the ones that are valuable, position yourself within those markets

Business strategies (which one do you use more of?):

Production - lots of quantity

Product - quality products

Selling - push products through first-degree selling techniques like craft shows, etc.

Marketing - push products through marketing such as online ads, etc.

Societal marketing - a marketing concept to make good marketing decisions based upon consumers' wants, company's requirements and society's long-term interests

Obviously in class we were taught that the "societal marketing" strategy was the best combination of various factors. As I said, pretty common sense, but it's good to know the terms nonetheless.

So you see, this plushie stencil actually contains some valuable information! Not only the dimensions and shape of my plushies, but boring school stuff too. :)

A new monster baby is born!

Since it's exam time in two weeks, I haven't had time to do any sewing. But, last week my little cousin calls me up and says, "I have a friend who wants to buy a monster pouch" and lo and behold, a twelve-year old emails me his monster pouch color & style choices. It was quite hilarious because he gave my little cousin cash at school, and my cousin had to give him some change back. A few days later and the cash ends up in my hand - but of course I owed him the change he gave his friend. So instead, I just gave him five bucks and told him to keep it - middleman fee! It's like some bizarre shady transaction with twelve-year olds. Haha. Another few days later and my cousin calls me and says, "are you done yet? My friend really wants it..." but NO, I have SOME sort of self-control and had to study.

But today, the pouch is done! It's the white one with the green mouth. The other two are the only remaining ones I have in stock. Until May 5th my hands are only busy flipping textbook pages. :(

Anyway, I hope my cousin's friend likes it! You can also see this pouch in flat form under my previous post.

Run-ins with snail mail

So, I was on Twitter tonight and up came a post by needlings, a fellow awesome Canadian Etsian complaining about, you guessed it, Canada Post. Prior to being a crafter/selling online, I had at most sent 2 pieces of snail mail in all my life. I mean... paper? Pen? Write? With a hand? I'm a part of the online generation (whether that's unfortunate or fortunate). Anyway, a bit over a year of selling online and by now I've had a lot of experience with shipping. Trust me, when we Canadians complain about Canada Post we are not exaggerating. It's the ridiculously expensive price (compared to other countries), inconsistent service, and did I mention ridiculously expensive price?

I think this sums it up quite nicely:

That led to a conversation about trying to shove our packages into those tiny 2 cm slots in order to save on shipping costs. Anyway, that also led me to remember the time I sent three pinback buttons to a buyer in the States and THIS HAPPENED:

THAT IS MY ENVELOPE! With cuts and holes and yes, BURNS. Two of the three buttons had completely disappeared and the last little guy was bent up. Apparently the US postal service shoved it into another bag and slapped on a "sorry" note. First time something like that has happened and it's pretty insane. Godzilla ate my packet!

Last example - a few days ago I had an small envelope packet returned to me with a "Return to Sender" sticker with absolutely no explanation (despite there being checkboxes and a comments space). The person had scribbled I needed double the amount of postage that I had put, which was completely wrong. 

More than ever I wish I had teleportation powers.