Candy striped booties on Kaboodle

This morning I made time to add some photos to Kaboodle, a shopping site. I am trying to advertise my presence a little more.
Time is always the biggest problem for anyone working for themselves no matter what they are doing and the fact that there is so much to look at on the internet than at a shopping centre or market means that you have to find a way of being noticed. Therefore you need to spend time finding ways of having the search engines pick up your stuff..... still haven't figured it out. I hope people like the booties anyway.

Today I have noticed that for the first time someone has added an item from my humble shop to their treasury! How kind, I have not yet been lucky enough to get a treasury list, I think I must be sleeping when they become available.
In etsy speak, a treasury is a list of things on etsy, not their own, that they group together as a sort of photo album with links that remains on view for 3 days.
At the beginning of my blog I said that I would try to add patterns, I have not had the time to do very much so I have looked for a knitting pattern on the web that fits in with cutifruity and have found an apple hat. The link to knitlist has been added for you to check it out.

It is just one month away from Christmas Day, the only gift I have given any thought to is for my grandaughter.
I have been moaning about the fact that customers haven't been in the mood for shopping, but I am equally disorganised and disinclined!!
Today is market day, perhaps today will be "the day"!
I am going to have a look at shops on Etsy for some of my presents, best do it soon hey.
I have put the first of my jackets up in the shop, I like it let's hope others do to.
This months I have tried to become more active in the Etsybaby forum and wrote a tiny blurb for the Etsykids blogsite about TweedleBee and her gorgeous quilts.

More sewing, more photos.

Here is my poppy hat. This time I have added a coloured background to add interest.

I am pleased with how it turned out.

Etsybaby seems to be a very motivated and active team that are in the forums every day. I am still trying to post every day, although I am not online when the forums have the heaviest traffic, simply because I live in Australia and the time zones are so different.

Perhaps I should soend more time looking at and commenting on other peoples blogs. I'll see how that goes.

Strawberry Hat

Here is my little knitted strawberry hat. She went online today, along with one of the handbags.
I suppose I should put my goals for November up, although I am so busy with putting photos together I cannot spend too much time doing anything else, here goes.

• Get those booties that I should have done in October made and photographed this week.

• Get some more trousers made for boys as well as girls.
• Try to add to the blog at least twice a week

• TRY not to buy any more fabric or wool, I failed miserably last month.
• TRY to add something to the shop every couple of days
  

Frill skirt in photoshop & other things.

There are so many things going on at the moment that my brain is not able to keep up!
I have managed to add at least one item a day to the shop and a few people are looking, bless 'em.
I haven't made my goals for November yet, other than to just hang in there. The weather last weekend was miserable consequently there were not many customers at either Hall markets or Old Bus Depot.
I've been learning heaps about taking photos, photoshop and etsy. I think that I should take photos of dark and medium coloured things on a light background and white or light coloured things on a dark coloured background. Although taking photos with a model looks nice and gives the clothes life the backgrounds are sometimes so busy that it makes "photoshopping" time consuming. So when I use a little person to wear the clothes I will be leaving most backgrounds in the shot, after all most of my time should be spent making the clothes not sitting at the computer for hours!
This is a photo showing one of the skirts to go onto the shop, very sweet, took a couple of hours to cut out and sew, it took a couple of hours to choose the group of shots to go onto the shop and tinker with them enough to figure out I should leave the background alone and just crop!

My other lesson was to write down my passwords, twice this week I went totally blank for two different passwords! Another couple of hours were wasted trying to remember them getting help e mailing across to the other side of the world and feeling really, really stupid.

Cherry booties

I have finally got around to taking a fair number of photos.
Here are the first pair of booties don't they look cute, I will have bibs and hats to match of course. I am quite happy with them and will have sizes from newborn - 18 months.
I forgot to mention earlier that I have been looking through Christina Purdues blog where she has generously set out ideas for revamping, or as in my case setting up a shop on etsy. I have created a link to her blog so that others can gain from her experience and ideas.
I have managed to put together a banner with a couple of photos from my shop and a picture of a baby in a cupcake hat. Again I simply followed some instructions from an etsy forum.Speaking of forums I have been looking through and have decided to try to join etsybaby and etsykids where people who make toys clothes etc. for children work as teams to help promote one anothers work.

Goals

I nearly forgot to write down some goals that I would like to to reach.
Week one goals;

• Sort out fabrics for the first group of clothes to go into the shop. I would like to keep up with the idea of fruit and floral designs in both summer for Australian children and winters for European and USA kids.

• Go through design ideas for banner etc for etsy site.

• Make and photograph enough booties to open up the shop on etsy.

October goals;

• Start a blog, which of course I have done, yeh me!

• Have booties and bibs made and photographed.
• 
  
• Look into joining some forums to get ideas and help from those more experienced in this sort of thing.

• Not buy any more fabric or wool!!!

I have enough to do this month will consider my next step when these are completed.

So it begins!

I am an absolute novice as I mention in my introduction, so please be patient as I put my thoughts down via the keyboard.
This is day one of my blog; I won't be able to do any more to my blog as I still have to sew for the markets tomorrow. My head is teaming with ideas though. Since I will not be restricted by the same guidelines as I am at the Old Bus Depot Markets here in Canberra, I will be able to broaden the age range I create for. I have a couple of items that are ready to be photographed, perhaps I will get them onto my new site this week. They are some booties and hats for littlies.
I am also considering what sort of banner to place on etsy. Fruit? Trees? Baby? None of the former? I know that it will need to be pleasant and inviting for the people when they first see the page. I also need to work out to go about it.
I have seen a number of people on etsy who sell banners to other etsiers, I would really like to try my hand at something simple with what I have to hand, or on my computer.