Full Inventory!

I now have ALL of my inventory on hand! I picked up the rest of my inventory while I was out at my mom's after Christmas. The main reasons for doing this was because the packaging information and prices were out-of-date, and also because I wanted to list some of the items in my Etsy shop.

I am also excited to start making some new items, including adjustable pom rings, fabric flower earrings, and fabric button bracelets. But first I need to track down the supplies, which are pretty limited in this area. Looks like I'll be headed online for them.I also plan to make a photo box, now that I have an adjustable desk lamp, so I can improve the photos of my items; the light and color on them are not right at all.

I will be posting some new listings on Esty soon, so keep an eye on it!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Etsy shop open!

My Etsy shop is officially up and running! It's still kind of in the construction phase, and I would really like to take better photos of my items, but feel free to visit.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BettyBowBlue

Etsy Shop Update

Setting up my Etsy shop is turning out to be more work/stress than I had imagined! Between getting my photos to come out the right color, getting my items to be positioned they way I want them to, and writing the descriptions, I'll be lucky if it's ready by Christmas!  Why do I have to be such a perfectionist? :-) Hoping to have some of it up after this weekend. Until then, email me for orders!

Many Thanks

Thank you to all for the successful day at the Book, Bake, and Craft sale at the Canton Library today! I really appreciate the business from past and future customers. I hope to be able to get my Etsy shop up and running this week, so keep an eye out!

Thanks again!

Coming Soon: Betty Bow Blue on Etsy!

I have decided that after my last craft fair of the holiday season this weekend, I will be posting some, if not the majority, of my items on Etsy. I am hoping to reach a broader "clientele" that way and see how things sell. I will still be accepting custom orders through email or personal correspondence, but most of my ready-made items will only be available to purchase through Etsy, (unless you know where I live and stop by my house).

I am excited about a few new designs that I have been working on, including headband "sliders". These are hand-stitched, felt headband pieces that are removable, interchangeable, and hopefully collectible! They will be making their debut at a craft fair that I am attending this weekend. I also kept getting annoyed after attaching a bow or pom on a headband, only to realize that when I tried it on, I had placed it in the wrong spot. I also noticed that the right position for my head is not necessarily the correct placement for smaller heads (I totally tested this on my sons). So from here on out, all of the bows and poms that I create for headbands will be sliders so they are positionable. And don't worry, they will not fall off the headband on their own.

Wish me luck for the craft fair this weekend and for the "Opening-Soon" Etsy shop!


P.S. If you take a look at the above tabs, you will notice that I now have a "Sold Items" tabs. This will help me keep the galleries of my on-hand inventory shorter, but also allow folks to see other items that can be made. 

New Headband Design: Bows

I spent three days, off and on, finishing this newest headband design:

Please excuse the poor photo quality; I took this at 11:30 last night.

I started by hand-stitching two pieces of fabric together to create each of the five bows. Then each bow was hand-sewn together and attached to a bright pink headband. Ribbon and a little bling are the finishing touches. I certainly will not be creating many of these, nor will they be custom orders, since they take a lot of time to make.

I would be lying if I said that this design was an original idea of mine. I was inspired by this headband from Ruche:

Found here

I'm still working on the pricing of mine, but it will be nowhere near the $32.99 price tag on the Ruche headband.

So, how do you think it turned out?

Christmas is Coming!

It's time to start your Christmas shopping, and Betty Bow Blue items will make great gifts for the ladies in your family. I have already received a few gift requests for both custom orders and in-stock items, so if you are interested in purchasing items for Christmas, now is the time to start ordering! I will be heading back to work (part-time) on Monday, so the sooner I receive your custom orders, the better the chance that they will be shipped in time for Christmas.

A few points about placing orders (as described in the "Policies" tab above):

• To place an order, please email me. If you are requesting a custom order, then include all details in your email. 
• I do require payment before shipping orders. Please read the Policies tab for further details.
• On most orders, please add $1.50 for shipping. If you are receiving several items, then I will let you know if the cost will be different.

Not sure if a Betty Bow Blue item will work for anyone on your list? Here are a few things to consider:

Hair clips are the right size for a stocking stuffer.

Headbands are a great idea as a last-minute gift for your daughter's best friends.

Order a custom-made pin for your child's teacher this year.

Holiday headbands and pins are ideal for family Christmas photos or parties.

Ditch the holiday sweaters this year. Poinsettia pins and Christmas-themed pom necklaces add a subtle touch of the Christmas spirit, perfect for the office or workplace.

Don't forget anyone on your Christmas list this year. Betty Bow Blue items are perfect for your:

• daughter/granddaughter
• mother/mother-in-law
• grandmother
• sister/sister-in-law
• wife/girlfriend
• aunt
• cousin
• niece
• teacher
• friend
• roommate
• co-worker

Check out the items that I currently have in-stock, or the fabrics available for custom items, and place your orders today!

New Headband Design

In my mad dash to build up a stock for my bomb of a craft fair this past weekend, I came up with this new design for a headband and whipped up four of them:

They are made using fabric, felt, ribbon, and embroidery thread. This design takes a little more time than my others because the fabric is hand-stitched together. It didn't turn out exactly as I had envisioned it to (do they ever?), but the headbands did receive some good "reviews" at the craft fair. Many women and girls commented on how cute they were, and how they haven't seen headbands like these before. Would you believe that one woman, after looking at these headbands, turned to the other one next to her and said, "These are so cute. I need to figure out how to make these myself. So and so would love this." Right in front of me. Seriously?!

Unfortunately, I had no sales with these items and I'm questioning whether I have them priced too high. I priced them at $12, mainly because they require different supplies than the others, and more time. What do you think? Is the pricing off?

New Items Added

My first craft fair was yesterday, at Edwards-Knox Central School, and it was a huge flop! I had six sales in 6 hours. It was kind of relieving to find out from others vendors that their sales were awful too. A lot of traffic, just no one buying anything. Fortunately, that means I have many items on hand now. I have posted new items in each category, so be sure to check them out! And since there were so few of them, here are the items that I sold yesterday:

My first sale was one of these elastic headbands, (I had two available).

The cutest little girl, dressed in a Halloween cardigan, came right up to the table, grabbed the headband, and announced, "I want this one, Grandma", and proceeded to pull out her money. She was a girl who knew what she wanted! She wore the headband immediately. I sold the second one later in the day.

Another woman purchased a set of "Gloria" hair clips to send to her granddaughter in Maine:

A really nice older woman, who happened to be one of the vendors at the fair, fell in love with the pom necklaces and purchased the "Autumn Leaves" one.

As we were packing up to leave, my friend Beth, (who was selling the best-ever cupcakes at the fair) bought another pom necklace. She purchased the "Sophia" necklace, which was fitting because as soon as I had seen that fabric, I immediately thought of her. (Unfortunately I had already used her name for a different fabric).

I also sold a flower headband, using the "Autumn Leaves" fabric, but I do not have a photo of it to share.

All in all, the first craft fair was a good learning experience, but here's hoping that the next one goes a million times better!

In Scramble Mode!

Earlier this week, one of my friends informed me of a craft fair that she is participating in and asked if I wanted to join her as they are looking for more vendors. I excitedly agreed, the only problem being that it is next weekend on the 29th! And all of my current stock is packed up two hours away! So I am officially in scramble mode as I work to rebuild a stock large enough to bring to the craft fair. (Wish me luck!) This also means that any new items that I am making are obviously not available for sale right now. Everything is being reserved for this craft fair. However, items in my mom's possession are still available to be placed on hold.

For anyone local, it is Saturday, October 29th from 9-3 at Edwards-Knox high school in Russell. Come check us out!

New Items: Rolled Fabric Pins

My first craft fair hasn't even happened yet, but my mom has already sold five items for me! Yay, Mom! Two items were single pom elastic headbands (one a mint green and the other a "Laura" pom), which I didn't get a chance to take photos of. She also sold one of the "Autumn Leaves" necklaces and a "Larkin" headband. The last item was the set of "Lucy" hair clips, which are no longer available as I only had a few scraps of that fabric. This leaves me feeling hopeful for the actual craft fair.

Of course this also means that I should really start a new stock of items for a potential craft fair in December, so I'm not scrambling at the last moment. I am starting to experiment with a few new designs and finished two rolled fabric pins last night:

Christmas Pin

Yellow and blue pin.

I really like how the Christmas pin turned out, and will probably add this one as a "made to order" (M20) item soon. I am contemplating adding a tiny pearl on the red rosette to hide the little bit of glue that is showing, but I forgot to do it before taking the photo. I really like how the red rosette looks by itself with the leaves and may make it into hair clips also.

The yellow and blue pin uses the "Sweet Aida", "Erica", "Allison", and "Kaylee" fabrics. I'm not too crazy about how this one turned out. In hindsight, I probably should have replaced one of the patterned fabrics with a solid, but too late now!

When I get a moment, or rather, remember to do it, I will take the measurements of the items, and also a photo of the pin on to get an idea of scale. But until then, opinions on these? Keep making or scrap? How would these look as headbands (in a different arrangement)?

Packaging Problems?

As I was preparing my accessories for my first craft fair, I decided that it would look great if each item had some sort of "packaging". It was my intention to attempt to make them look a little more professional and presentable. The problem I had was that I don't exactly have the money to spend on ordering fancy packages and such, so I decided to make my own out of empty cardboard boxes. I simply cut out a template for each specific item and traced it onto the inside of the boxes.

I was then able to use the packaging as advertising for my blog website and could easily add prices to each item.

I thought that this was a brilliant idea to use up old cardboard, and of course to save some money! However, I am now wondering how professional it actually does, or doesn't look. From the front, everything looks fine, but from the back? You see something like this:

So what is your opinion? Is this an ingenious method of recycling, or are you completely turned off by seeing an enlarged photo of a supreme pizza and the directions to cook it? Presentable packing or unprofessional repurposing?

Prices are Here!

I finally bit the bullet and decided on prices for all of my current items in stock. I really had no choice in the matter since I was preparing to send them with my mom for the craft fair, and had to label them with prices. This was difficult for me to do because I only have boys and I had no idea what items like these sell for, or what a reasonable price is. Luckily, I have many friends, family members, and acquaintances who have daughters and was able to ask them for ideas. What I ended up doing was taking the average of the suggested prices, looking at comparables on Etsy.com and figuring out my prices based on that. I have heard suggestions that perhaps my items are underpriced, but I did have to consider my location, sale venues, and target customers. If I were to list these items on a site such as Etsy, which has a worldwide customer base, then I would be more likely to price them higher to cover the fees that come along with it. As it is, based on discussions with several people, I think that these are reasonable prices.

Price ranges are pretty standard for each item, however, they will vary depending on how much fabric was used, time spent on a particular item, if any embellishments were used and how many items are included in a set. Here's a rundown of what to expect:

Pom necklaces: $16.00-$18.00
Pins: $3.00-$5.00
Headbands: $6.00-$10.00
Hair clips: $2.50-$4.50
Hair ties: $2.00-$4.50

I will be listing prices on individual items soon.

New Fabrics!

Another perk to having my mom come to visit this past weekend (other than picking up my items for a craft fair), was that she brought along her bin a fabric scraps for me to pick through. I now have a larger selection of fabric to choose from, including colors that I didn't have before, like orange. Of course the one downside is that because I am using scrap fabrics, sources are limited for each print, leading to a limit in the amount of items that I can make with each. Thankfully, features of the fabric itself will help me to decide which items to make. For example, some fabrics are printed on only one side, while the back is almost white. This fabric would work best as flowers, where seeing the backside isn't important. Fabrics that are dyed all the way through, will work great for poms! The holiday fabrics that I have will most likely be used for flowers rather than poms. The texture and "stiffness" or certain fabrics will also determine what they are made into. All new fabrics will be listed soon.

Those few people, who had the chance to get a sneak preview of my blog and galleries while still in the early stages, will notice something different. I have assigned each print fabric a female's name. This has made it easier for me to keep an inventory of the items that I have out at craft fairs, and to keep track of which accessory is using which fabric. Now I can avoid having to list three different "yellow floral" fabrics, or describe something as "blue background with pink and purple flowers". One name is much simpler. Each accessory using a specific fabric will also be labeled using that name, or names.

Before anyone asks me where or how I came up with the names that I chose, it's quite simple. The majority of the names I selected are the names of women I know, or those of their daughters. So if you are an acquaintance, friend, or family member of mine, and you come across an item using your name, or that of your daughter's, and are wondering if it's just a coincidence, it's probably not. I totally stole your name. J Consider it a compliment.

First Craft Fair

My mom is attending a craft fair at the start of November and volunteered to take my items to sell along with hers. I would have liked to have gone myself, but it is too far away for me; I would have been gone all day and would have needed to find someone to watch the boys for the whole day. So this past weekend I packed up nearly my entire inventory (appx. 85 items!) and sent them home with my mom. I am hoping that she will be able to sell a good chunk of items, at least that way I will get a better idea as to what will be the more popular items and which ones I should spend less time on making. I am leaving up the listings of all items that she currently has in her possession, but will mark them "@CF". However, that does not mean that you cannot reserve an item to purchase. If you see something that you like, let me know and I will ask her to save it aside. I will update the listings after the craft fair is over.

I am also looking into attending a few local craft fairs within the next couple of months as well, which means that I need to start building a new inventory since my mom has all of my current stock! Wish me luck!

New Items: Headbands

I have recently completed a few new items that I am really excited about, meaning that they turned out a lot better than I had anticipated. Each of these items happens to be headbands, two 3-pom headbands, two flower bands. 


The first two 3-pom headbands that I made were actually just thrown together on a whim. (They can be viewed here and here). I really liked how they turned out and decided to make more. One of my favorites is the "Dorothy" print one. (See below). It features a blue and pink floral medium pom, and two small navy blue poms on either side. I used a bright pink ¼" headband to balance out the blue and bring out some of the pink shades in the print fabric. I really liked how it turned out and ended up making two of these.

"Dorothy"

The second 3-pom headband that came together nicely uses a new favorite color pairing, blue and yellow. The middle pom is made from the "Sweet Aida" print and the outside poms are a bold blue shade. They have been attached to a ¼" yellow headband. Only one of these is available.

"Sweet Aida"

The third headband that I feel came out beyond my expectations uses the "Larkin" print. This print has a great combination of pinks and purples, with touches of glitter here and there. I was hesitant to use this print at first because I thought that it felt rather "old-ladyish", but I bit the bullet and went ahead and made two flowers with it. They came out much better than I had expected and I ended up attaching them to a deep purple ¼" headband. Two of these are available.

"Larkin"

The final headband is a Holiday-themed one. It features the same poinsettias that I used for my poinsettia pins. They are made with a deep red and a dark green fabric and are embellished with hand-sewn gold beads. A ¼" red headband is used for this one. Two of these are available.

Poinsettia

All headbands can be found under the "Headbands" tab above.

Welcome!

Welcome to my informal online gallery of fabric accessories. This is a place for friends and family to view the available pieces that I have created, as I have received several requests for pictures of them. Currently, I am trying to build up a stock for an upcoming craft fair in November, and I will be doing this again a few times in the near future. If you see anything that you are interested in, or have questions about, please feel free to contact me via email. If you see any items that you would like to "call dibs" on, then let me know and I will make sure that it does not make it into the craft fair stock.

Please note that prices have not been included on any items as I am still in the process of figuring out suitable costs for each item. Hopefully I will have decisions made soon. This is a work in progress and I am just starting out, so please bear with me as changes and improvements are made to this site (including the temporary title and design of this site).

New items will be added as they are made, so check back frequently.

Thank you for all of the feedback and support that I have received. Enjoy!

Krista