May Madness Treasuries

I was featured in a few treasuries this month, and I love Etsy's new Treasury East, where anyone at anytime can make one. Don't get me wrong, I still pounce on the old treasury at magic number 333, as I write this I have 20 minutes before a new one opens up. But it is good practice to check out other Etsians, look at color, texture, photos, and that first picture really does matter. Here are two of the treasuries I was in this month:

This one just looks plain yummy:

Cute babies make for excellent treasuries!

Ruffles, Ruffles, Everywhere!

Ruffles are everywhere! Dresses, shirts, bags, and my hats. I have received more and more requests to make a hat, but can I add a ruffle to the brim instead of the roll brim? And my answer is always "of course!" I can pretty much customize any hat, including color, flowers, antenna, and brims.

Ruffles can really change the line of a hat, they make a hat more girly, they frame a baby's face and provide a bit of shade.

So go whimisical, try a ruffle!

Every Day is Earth Day with Natural Kids

Team Natural Kids has been busy planning a treasure hunt like no other for this April Earth Day Celebration. So I invite you all to explore other Natural Kids shops, look for discounts and buy wonderful handmade all natural items for your loved ones.

My promotion? On April 22nd find the gnome and get a discount on your order!

Labels are for Cans not Crafters

“It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.”
~Margaret Mead

CPSIA vs FTC labels, what goes on what? What needs to be on the front? What HAS to be included? What is exempt? For every product it is different, and while yarn is exempt for some things, I must still label my items with the basics.
And from my reading the basics between the labels are:

CPSIA label

- Your company, shop name, or RN#
-The city, state/territory, & country where the item was completed
-The date of manufacture of the product
-If you make many of the same design then you may also need a batch number, but only if the pieces are identical looking and made of the same exact raw materials as each other and were made or completed on the same day (think hair bows and such)

FTC label

-Your company, shop name, or RN# (sound familiar?)
- Fiber content by %
- Fiber country of origin
- Care instructions

And apparently the Washington brilliants who came up with these tags both want their tag to be important and they cannot share space and they both need to be on the front. This is the only reason I can see for two tags. But hat sellers? If you don't use wool? You don't need a FTC label, don't ask, don't complain.

So I am on a mission to find sellers of labels and good examples of labels. Here are my findings:

Etsy Sellers:

Cherry Hill Designs custom printed iron on clothing and fabric labels CPSIA certified safe

Custom Couture Label a variety of labels including fabulous-looking iron-ons

Green Beans n Strings custom made eco fabric tags

JennifersJewels custom printed fabric or satin labels

Miss Label custom printed satin labels

World Wide Label large order custom woven labels


Web Retail:

Name Maker custom woven and size labels, quantities start at 20 for basic labels with their design, 50 for two printed lines no design, 200 for larger custom designed labels

NameLabels.com for the smallest label, it is more like camp labels, but it can work

Sterling Name Tape you can chose a wide variety of custom woven or fabric in batches of 100

Northwest Tag and Label custom woven and satin labels, batches start at 125

Fancyweaver custom woven and satin labels, batches start at 200

Everest Label custom labels, you have to request a quote and the minimum is 1200!


Organic Lables
Avery Dennison offers organic woven labels, minimums and prices are at request

Cruzlabel offers organic twill labels, minimums and prices are at request

BCI very nice, and eco friendly, but they are expensive and require large minimum quantities

Make your own lables:

German Doll's Tutoral about making her own stamp for her items. As a member of NaturalKids, these are all natural labels, way to go!

CurlyQDesign's Tutorial on how she made a template and printed her own label.

Jennadesigns Tutorial on how she made a template in PhotoShop and printed her label

DuhBe's Tutorial on how to make your own label, even one at a time, and what needs to be on your label

TamisCozies Tutorial on how to make ribbon labels with transfer sheets.

Jo-Ann fabrics has these printer fabric sheets for printing

Rubber Stamp Champ you can upload your label, pick your stamp size and use fabric ink to stamp you label in clothes

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FTC Official Website very confusing, but if you take the time, information is there on what is needed on your labels

CPSIA Official Website on tracking labels. Really does not offer too much help though.

Go for the Gold Treasury

The Olympics are on and this clever treasury was created with my little blueberry hat in it. Thank you to katsinthebelfry a member of the NaturalKids team for creating this treasury.

Boston Beanies Hits 100

Snow is pounding various parts of the nation, but it seems to be skipping my city, and Bostonians are sniffing the air and thinking of Spring. This week I hit 100 sales in my Boston Beanies shop. A nice milestone since I opened up under this name less than a year ago. It was a hard decision to do so, but I am glad I did, and it is nice to know that returning customers can find me and new one too!

Oh, and the hat that made 100? The bunny, very seasonal. Hop, hop, hop

Stand in the place...

I often get asked, "Where did you get your hat display stands?" I had to shop around, because when doing craft fairs I wanted items that were fairly easy to transport, and would give me a nice clean uniform look to my table.

My Table Topper Stands
I found them at MathewsWire on eBay. They are made right here in the US and are sturdy but good for transport. They have only tipped over during one very windy outside craft fair, and with a little rearranging, even then they were fine.

My Floor Hat Stand
My friend got this for me for free from a candy shop. It used to display puppets, and they were getting rid of it so she snagged it for me. I am very grateful, floor stands cost hundreds of dollars. The stand however is rather heavy and does not spin, which a lot of people think it should and then they try and then it could tip. But it looks good with the table toppers when it is full of hats and a nice clean display is what I am all about.

My Basket, Bookends and more
I like to have a sale basket on my table, it attracts people who are looking for something quick and it helps me move some inventory I want to get rid of. Funny, this is what can draw people to a table, but then not everyone always buys from a sale basket. So people still want what they want, regardless of price or a discount. The bookends are mine, and were a great idea of a friend of mine to display my hat and book sets, but people are always picking them up trying to buy them. I could put not for sale stickers on them, but then people would still just ask how much are they, so I just smile and say they are for display only. The plastic displays for my sign and brochures I got from Staples.

So whether I use the floor stand or not, I like to have varying heights for my display, a sale section, and take away info. The bright colors will attract people, but having what someone wants is what is really going to make a sale.

Local Business Adorns Adorables

http://diasphoto.com/blog/?p=465

My brother got married this past October and he and my sister-in-law used a fabulous photographer for all their pictures. As a thank you, she gave him one of my hats for their little baby, and then he featured me in their blog...an entire cycle of thanks, with one adorable baby at the center! What a great way to start my weekend!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

The northeast just had our first measurable snowfall last night and it is now a winter wonderland outside. So what perfect timing that this beautiful treasury is up on Etsy, I love the earrings in this treasury, and am honored to have my little hat included. It was 70 degrees a few DAYS ago and now we have snow, ahh New England!

Purplicious!

I have a passion for purple, and lucky for me it is the new hot color of the season! Look in department stores and boutique children's clothing stores and you will find all sorts of purple cropping up everywhere, which is fine with me!

I love designing purple hats, but I make the classic fruit plum too, so this season, get purpled up!

Harvest Craft Fair!!

I am doing just ONE Craft Fair this season, since I am so backordered. It will be at my alma mater, Needham High School, Saturday October 24, 2009. I will be selling all my hats that I have in stock, and offering free shipping to all who place an order with me at the fair. So come on by!

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

So in June many of us were upset by Etsy's meta-tag stuffing, and when upcoming changes were annouced, a lot more of us were thinking "what's that Lucy, a football for me to kick?" (Gilmore Girls reference)

And when our views vanished we were left floundering, frustrated, and wondering what happened. Many Etsy sellers threatened to jump ship, the forums were flooded with angry and upset sellers, myself one of them, but now, I believe the dust has settled and things are back on track. So much so that I am over a month backordered and I had to close down my low selling shops and just keep Etsy open. But I promised to do my Google experiment again, even though I knew the results would be off since my other shops are closed. But I still wanted to see how people are finding me.

So here goes. First I logged out of Google, and then I cleared my cache, browsing history, everything I could think of that would leave a trace on my computer. Not an exact science, but it helps. Then I did several searches. I searched for "pumpkin hat", "knit pumpkin hat", "pumpkin hat boston beanies", "apple hat", "knit apple hat", "apple hat boston beanies". I did all these searches without the quotes, and I only looked at the first 10 pages.

Here are the results:

"pumpkin hat" search
none of my items found

"knit pumpkin hat" search
Etsy-page 1 shopping guide
iCraft -page 2 shopping guide

"pumpkin hat boston beanies"
Etsy-page 1
1000Markets-page 1
Cosaverde-page 1, 2
iCraft-page 1
my blog-page 1
Artfire-page 2 (a review)
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft

"apple hat"
1000Markets-page 6
CosaVerde-page 7

"knit apple hat"
iCraft-page 1 shopping guide
Etsy -page 1 shopping guide, and there was a link under another listing show more results from Etsy, I clicked that and there was my listing on page 1, but how many searchers are going to know to do that?
iCraft- page 4 (a different listing), page 9 another different listing
1000Markets- page 6

"apple hat Boston Beanies"
1000Markets-page 1
CosaVerde-page 1
Etsy-page 1
iCraft- page 1
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft.

So what did I learn? I had no expectations for Artfire, 1000Markets, or iCraft to turn up in the searches. In fact it shows how on top keeping clean their listings Artfire is, as I recall my Artfire listings made it in pretty quickly into the searches last time. Also, Etsy and 1000Markets are now in the searches, in places that I can expect them to be, so this is GREAT news.

The only problem is that to be seen, shoppers have to enter terms like "knit" in order to narrow down some of their searches. I hope they know to do so, or they may be frustrated with their hits. But an Etsy product was always on page one, driving a customer to Etsy, and maybe that person will shop there and try and see what else is available and...

So make a good product, take great pictures, and use helpful, thoughtful tags, and the customers will find you.

Ready to Ship!

Don't want to wait for a hat?
Order one of these ready-to-ship hats and I will ship it out to you the next mailing day!

Bah Humbug Cotton-Small
Winterfrost Cotton Sweater-Small
Purple Crayon Cotton- Medium
Whimsy Citrus Cotton- Large

FRONT PAGE AGAIN??!!

Missed seeing this one by an hour! But as always I am so thrilled to make the front page again, and another list made by the Etsy admin! Still have a waiting list, but at this point it is better to get on it as I will get to your order as soon as I can. If you wait, the list will not get shorter until after the holidays.

While I was sleeping

Amazing things can happen while you are sleeping, like I made the Front Page. I have only ever seen my items on the front page just once, but I am thankful for that, and am thankful for each time my hats are chosen for a treasury. It's a nice way to wake up on a Sunday.

Picture Perfect

One of the suprising things I discovered about being a hat seller is that photographers love knitted hats. Knitted hats make great photo props on babies. Which probably explains why I often get asked for free hats in return for pictures. This sounds good on paper, except photographers often want 10-15 specific hats in specific sizes and this takes me some time to make, and then I am at their mercy for the images.

Because I was receiving so many requests, I started a photographer's rate, my wholesale price with no minimun requirement. But I got burned on this too, with no images from the person, but at least I got some monetary compensation.

Out of all the inquiries from photographers I have only had one positive experience, a woman from France www.butterflymoments.fr/en/ she buys at my photographer's rate, tells me what she would like, I ship them out, and she then sends me these wonderful photographs and I give her credit on my hat listings. A great relationship.

So now I am excited for a new partnership with Boston-based photographer http://www.dianasechrist.com/. She found me on Etsy and I am very excited to be working with a local photographer who has experience photographing children.

For all the photographers out there who are wondering, how do I get a deal like that, keep asking, and try local, it worked for me.

From Caroline Shimanek, photographer, Lyon, France:

The perfect yarn bag

To my supreme delight my brother and sister-in-law gave me the most wonderful yarn bag for my birthday from the Walker Bag Company.




They got me the lilac, and it is the perfect size for my hat and or sweater projects. They also got me another long bag for my needles, scissors and such. What a treat! I am so glad they told me about this company.

Fourth of July Front Page

Again, I sing my praises to The Vault, that's how I found out about my little hat making front page late 4th of July night, just as the fireworks were ending!

Birthday Wishes Front Page

So a very Happy Birthday to Me! I come back from vacation, and I notice a high number of hearts on a hat in my other shop. Did you know that you can search old front page treasuries from the delightful tool on The Vault from Craft Cult? It's amazing, saves you hours of looking for your missing "I was on the front page does anyone have a copy of the treasury?" I don't have a screen shot of the front page, but I'm good with that, I am in the Vault!

Sing it Dean!

Continuing with my music theme, with all this rain we are having here in New England, I can't tell if it is Spring or Summer, regardless, these fun items from EtsyBaby and NaturalKids remind me of summer, enjoy this treasury.