Friday The 13th....SPOOKY!!!!

Ah, Friday the 13th!!!  Supposed to be a day of bad luck!!!!  I can say my appendix ruptured on a Friday the 13th.  I've wrecked my car on a Friday the 13th.  But one of my favorite movies growing up was a movie called Saturday the 14th.  According to this movie, Sat the 14th is worse than Friday the 13th.

Today, I had a fairly good day!!!  Only bad luck was my email screwed up when I was supposed to be sending reminders for the Judo team for tomorrow's big tournament.  I am secretary of the club and that makes me email girl.  I really don't mind it at all.  I already send out big emails for the team every week so I am becoming email savy!!!  LOL

Speaking of tomorrow, my son Sam will be competing in his first Judo Tournament in Portland, IN.  I have a total mix of emotions.  I am very excited for him and happy and nervous and scared all at the same time.  He has been in Judo since last August when he was 4.  I decided to wait until he was 5 to let him fight.  He has matured alot in the short time.  I am afraid he will be terribly disappointed if he doesn't win a medal tomorrow so I hope he does.  I am keeping my fingers crossed. 

In preparation of this tournament I got me a new camcorder.  The Sony Handycam.  I had a Samsung that broke down and Samsung wanted $300 to repair it!!!!  That's how much I paid for it!!!  Give me a break.  I will never own a Samsung product again.  I did buy the 2 year service plan in case this one breaks and I need it fixed.  Worth the $20 I think.

I know this post has very little to do with business but all I can think about is the tournament tomorrow and I am not really concentrating on etsy right at this moment although I did list a few new items!!!  Check these out.  Loving the mushrooms right now!!!  I think you will too.

Announcing The Winner Of My Blog Giveaway!!!!!

Ok, guys we have a winner in our blog giveaway!!!!  Drum Roll Please!!!

Donna R, otherwise known as dmrhas2 is the winner of the blog giveaway!!!  :-)

She wins a $10 credit to my shop.  Have fun shopping!!!

Thanks to all who entered.  I really appreciate it!!  And keep reading for my other giveaways.  I will start another one next week.

I hope everyone had a Happy Mother's Day!!!  I know I did.  My son Sam is my miracle baby.  After being told I probably wouldn't have children without help I got pregnant with Sam on my first try without any help at all.  I took 8 home pregnancy tests(no kidding) and they all came back negative.  I went in for endometriosis surgery and they did a pregnancy test ahead of time and it came back positive!!!!!!  The absolute 2nd most memorable moment of my life!!!  The first is when he was born.  The absolute most perfect baby I ever saw.  And I knew right then and there that being a mom was what I was meant to do with my life.    I can only hope that in the years to come I make his life fun and memorable.

This week for Team BNRAA our weekly bns will be held Wednesday at 10AM- 4PM.  All are invited and welcome to come!!!

Have a good night everyone.  I will leave you with my new flip flops I designed today!!!

The Great BNR Marathon!!!!!

Let me tell you what can happen when a team works together.  We can get 65 sales in one day!!!  Amazing!!  I was told by a certain member of etsy my team would not be successful since I didn't want to make it a large team.  One other team captain came in to brag about how they have 700 members.  So what?  My "little" worked together and we achieved 65 sales for our first marathon bnr.  Awesome job guys!!!  I am so proud of you!!!!

We recruited some new, quality team members and I got 4 sales today!!!  People to make heathermaizy bow addicts!!!  LOL

I just wanted to report the results of the bnr!!!  I am burned out today.  Ready for bed.

Goodnight all!!! 

My Shop Is Coming Along!!!

Slowly but surely my shop is coming along.  I finally hit 100 items in my shop today which has been my goal for about 3 mos. now.  I have retaken alot of pics and redone the look of my shop.  I am hoping this is going to help me in the long haul.  I have been seeing alot more views and hearts but it has yet to turn into more sales.  I will keep the optimism going.


I kind of feel like I have promotion burn out.  I have been working at least 5 hours a day on my shop.  By making stuff, retaking pics, listing, relisting, and outside sourcing I feel burned out.  Does anyone else feel this way???  I feel like taking a couple week break and seeing what happens.  Maybe by backing away a little I will generate some sales.

Tomorrow is our first team marathon bnr.  I am very interested to see how this turns out.  I have filled just about every curator spot and the team is excited and promoting for it.  I have a goal in mind but I am not going to say what it is in fear I will jinx it.  In our regular weekly team bns we had 17 sales this week with sales around $80.  Pretty good I think.  We are growing each week.  That's all I can expect.

Off to bed.  Have to get up early and get the bnr ready.  Here are some new items I listed today.

Wacky Wednesday!!!!!!

Today was a wacky day!!!!  Sometimes I think I am spreading myself a little too thin trying to do all of this promoting and getting business to my shop.  I keep thinking to myself I should take a few days off from it, but right now I am obsessed with making my shop work.  I can say since doing my ad on craftopolis my views and hearts are definately up, but no sales as of yet.  Today I paid a woman $25.00 to put all of my stuff all over the search engines and get myself up to the top tier of google search.  I think it will be worth it because apparently there is a glitch with etsy and google shopping.  Etsy stuff is just not showing up there.  That is frustrating.  What the heck am I paying etsy fees for???  I am also going to be on 3 different blogs.  I have sent stuff out to each person to review.

I also did a team bnr which yielded some decent sales for my team.  I think the more we work at this the more successful our bnrs will be.  On Friday we are having our first marathon team bnr.  I am excited to see how that goes.

Well I am very tired tonight and I have stuff to list.  I will blog more tomorrow.  Here are a few new listings.  These are my new boutique hair bows!!!!  I love them!!!!

Funny Friday!!!!

I have to say today I got a good laugh at myself.  I am doing my second craft show of the year.  And yes, I asked the appropriate questions this time!!!!  LOL  It's in Pendleton, IN and is down by Falls Creek.  My business associate and I got a great spot.  Right along the falls.  It's a beautiful view.

Here's the funny part.  Usually when I do a show I pay the extra $10 to be under the main tent so I don't have to go through the whole process of buying and putting up a tent.  Well, this show has no main tent so we have to bring our own tents.  Fortunately, Susan has one.  I was not investing $150 in a dining canopy for one show.  So we load everything up this morning and go down to Pendleton to set up.  Like I said we got a beautiful spot.  Very happy with it.  But the actual assembling of the tent was another story.  Susan has a gallstone and is getting her gallbladder out next week and is in alot of pain so I don't like her to do too much right now.  But I am very short and putting this thing together was a riot.  We had poles backwards and upside down and then got the thing upright and couldn't figure out how to put the tent part together.  We finally got it done after alot of sweat and laughing and admired our work.  Then we had it facing the wrong way so we had to take the stakes out and turn it.  Let's just hope it doesn't blow over or something tonight.  LOL  It's supposed to be beautiful this weekend so let's hope for alot of sales!!!!!

The other day I joined a site called bloggerdise.com.  It is a site for businesses and bloggers to get together and help each others businesses.  I have already had 4 bloggers contact me to be featured in their blogs!!!  I am very excited about it.  This is what I am talking about guys.  Things like this can only help us get our names out there and hopefully bring traffic to our shops.  I have been spending hours a day figuring out ways to get my name out there over the net.  I am hoping this is going to work.  I will keep ya all updated on how well it's going.

Read this weekend to hear how the show in Pendleton went.

Heather

First Blog Giveaway!!!!

I am running my first official giveaway for followers of my blog.  The giveaway ends 05/07/11 and the winner will be announced here on the 8th.  The giveaway is if you are a follower of my blog or become a follower of my blog and comment on one of my posts you will be entered into a drawing for a $10.00 credit to my shop!!!  A pretty good giveaway I think.

Now I want to post the results of the Team BNR from Tuesday.  All in all it went pretty well.  I think it helped that I had a preview day on Monday and people promoted it a day ahead of time.  We had 15 sales with the total dollar amount of the sales right around $55.00.  Not bad for a no min. buy in!!!  Thanks to all Team BNRAA members for your hard work and lets keep it rolling into next week.

This week had the opportunity to get free advertising for a year at an online mall.  I am pretty excited about it.  I know I did a quick mention in my last post but I am going to post the link here.

http://www.allaprimaartmall.com

I am in the fashion and beauty section.  Are online malls the wave of the future???  With gas prices at $4.20 who wants to drive very far?  The girl that runs it told me once she gets it full she is going to run a full ad marketing campaign on the mall.  I am very optimistic about it.

I decided at the last minute to do a show this weekend.  I've been looking for shows to do and this one just kind of sprung up on me.  It's a civil war reenactment and they have craft vendors there.  I know, I know how many people will show up to this you may ask.  Well, I took many things into consideration before deciding to do this.
          A.I will be the only hair bow vendor there
          B. It is the first nice weekend we have had had in over a month.  It is supposed to be sunny and 70 this weekend where it has been rainy and 50 for the last month.
          C. It is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.  I think just for that reason alone, people will show up.
          D. The booth rent is low enough that I don't have to sell very much to break even.

So even if I made a bad decision about this I don't think I will be out any money.  But it's in a small town and it won't people any time at all to get the word out that this is a little craft show and I really think I made a good decision about this.  Set up is tomorrow morning with the show starting Saturday and going into Sunday.  Stay tuned for updates!!!!

Well everyone, have a good night and don't forget to follow me and comment!!!!!  :-D

Heather