After a lot of agonizing over the math I have a couple related announcements when it comes to the prices of my jewelry:
1) Starting January 1, prices on my jewelry will be going up.
2) Also starting January 1, I'll no longer be charging shipping on my jewelry.
Basically costs of both shipping and materials are going up for me and the increases I need to make would leave me with fairly awkward prices (for example $31.60 for a standard octopus necklace and $3.25 for shipping for a total of $34.85) but if I include shipping in the prices I can price things more easily as multiples of 5 ($35 for standard octopus, $40 for Cosmic, $45 for Steampunk). Also from a promotion standpoint this will help me on places like Google Shopping where free shipping is a sorting option.
As for my other items: Prices for sculpture I've already finished and have for sale are staying where they are however new pieces will probably be priced higher and I will be increasing their shipping costs once the new shipping prices go into effect next year. Ornaments and other small items like the decorated tins will be going up much like jewelry with free shipping.
These changes won't be happening until January 1 so you have a few days to snag some jewelry at the current prices in my Etsy shop.
So Saturday was my first art show of the year. Here's how it went. (scroll down to the bottom if you just want to see the photos) Friday 7:00 PM-9:30 PM: Janet threw a party for the Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show. I was the graduate this year so they sponsored my booth for the show on the Common.
The party was a lot of fun. There was wonderful food provided by some of the artists in the show and Janet's house looked gorgeous with all the art displayed. The party didn't go totally smooth, shortly after it started a big thunderstorm hit, so we lit candles around the house just in case the power went out.
10:00 PM: I get home and with my dad get the truck packed up to go. I don't get to bed until 12:00 AM.
Saturday 5:30 AM: I get up to get ready for the show. I got maybe 4-4.5 hours of sleep. This was not a good idea. We also had to repack the truck to make sure none of the boxes got wet because it was raining a bit.
7:00 AM: Arrive at the show, check in, start setting up the booth. It was still raining but lightly.
9:00 AM: Show starts. There was a good crowd starting off pretty early and the first half of the day went great. This is when I made the most sales and got a lot of compliments on my work. I sold one of my octopus necklaces to a lady who wanted to give it to her daughter who's a veterinarian and octopus lover which was just great.
Why do so many people break the rules? The show stated very plainly that dogs were not welcome but there were so many there. I have no problem with well trained dogs (and most were wonderful and friendly) but why bring a puppy that isn't even leash trained yet? Luckily I had no mishaps with dogs knocking things over but it was close.
12:00 PM: Friends Danyelle and James come to help me out the rest of the day.
12:30 PM: 10 minute downpour. Unfortunately this is when the show started dwindling in visitors, the rain drove off a lot of them and they didn't return. Still had a good crowd but not as good as in the morning.
There were a ton of kids at the show, a lot more than I've seen at other shows I've done. Most of the kids were great and a lot of fun. There was one boy in particular who was probably about 9 or 10 who loved my squid necklaces. He came and looked at them then ran off and brought his mom back, she said no. About 5 minutes later he was back with his dad who also said no. I'm surprised I didn't see him back with a grandparent. I felt kind of bad for him but I don't blame his parents, the necklace is $30 and while my necklaces are fairly tough I don't think they could survive an active 9 year old boy for too long.
4:00 PM: Show wrapped up and with Danyelle and James' help I got everything packed up pretty quickly except the canopy. It had started to rain again just after 4 so we waited under the canopy until my dad arrived with the truck.
Good:
There was a great crowd with a lot of enthusiastic people.
The organizers and other artists there were all incredibly friendly and helpful.
Sales met my goal, obviously selling more would always be great but the show is about getting my name out more than making a lot of cash.
Bad:
The weather.
Visitors did skew to older folks and couples with young kids which are not my best audience.
I didn't set up my booth in the best way I think. Too much high priced sculpture, next show I'm not bringing so much. Also I should have arrange the tables in an outward face U that people could walk around rather that face in because not enough people could fit inside the area.
Things have been a bit crazy the past few days but in a good way. Here's what's going on:
Tuesday was my birthday! I'm 27 now. Thursday some friends threw me a little party complete with a cake that had an octopus.
I've had the combination birthday/Yart deal going with half off shipping for jewelry and free gifts going from the 9th and going until tomorrow the 14th.
Squidoo made some major layout changes including the introduction of themes so I've been updating my lenses to take advantage of them.
Still preparing for the art shows coming up.
Between replacing what's sold during my special and preparing for art show I've been busy making new jewelry including these weird specimen jar pendants.
The show I'm doing July 11th has a $200 jewelry prize so making something special for that.
After avoiding it for a long time I decided that Noadi's Art really needed a logo. Graphic design isn't something I have a lot of experience and it took me a while to get the hang of using Inkscape to trace and color the sketch I made. I like how it looks though.
Here's the full color logo on the background color I use in my shop banner. I have several versions like the grayscale, and black and white along with a few others. One of the nice things about using a vector program like Inkscape for this is it made it very easy to do the color swapping. Of course my logo is of a cuttlefish.
I'm excited about doing some cool faux surface cuttlefish and stuff. The other two are more to help me on the business side of things and I'll be reviewing them on the Handmade Business Blog in the next few weeks.
Things have been pretty crazy here lately, between the holidays, running Noadi's Art (I had a very busy holiday season), and the horrible cold I'm suffering from. I hope you all had a great year and that 2009 will be even better! Once I'm over this cold I plan to do some retrospective blog posts talking about how 2008 went for Noadi's Art however right now cold meds are messing with my concentration.
I bought Noadi's Art a Xmas present: a postal scale. Should really save time and my dad's patience since I often ask him to do post office runs for me.
To kick off the big holiday shopping weekend I'm offering free shipping on all jewelry and ornament orders, reduced shipping on sculpture, and free tentacle charms with all cuttlefish jewelry between Friday November 28th and Monday December 1st. You can check out the deal on both my Etsy Shop and my eCrater Store.
My other announcement is of a new blog. I just launched the Handmade Business Blog. It'll be all about the business side of creating, marketing, using different websites, goign to craft fairs, etc. I really hope it becomes a good resource