New Headband Holder

I know that I haven't posted the survey results for the headband holders yet, but I wanted to share one that I made today. I wasn't really planning on starting these already, but I had received two requests through Facebook for one. Then I found out that there is an upcoming craft fair in town that I am trying to sign up for (waiting for the woman in charge to email me back). So I decided to make some of these earlier than planned in anticipation for the craft fair (on February 18th).

I prepared all of my materials the last night:

I had high aspirations of finishing two of these today.

And impatiently waited until naptime today to "whip" one up.

Here is the first one that I have made up (excluding my "mock-up" that was shared in the survey):

The blue fabric is for the next one.

This darn thing took me about TWO hours to finish! And that's not including the time that it took me to measure and cut the fabric and the batting the night before.

I'm not really sure if I like how this one turned out. The pom fringe doesn't really look how I had pictured it would, and I think it might be a little overkill once headbands and hair clips are added. There is a dark purple in the fabric, which coordinates with the ribbon and fringe, but it's a little difficult to see in this photo. There are two hair clip ribbons on this one (the consensus from the survey was to have two), and the padded lid removes for extra storage inside, for hairbrushes, combs, hair ties, etc.:

Tabs inside prevent it from falling inside the container.

I am still debating whether or not I want to try to track down some bases for these, as shown in the mock-up, using one of my votive bases:

What do you think, don't worry about a base, or definitely include one? Ditch the pom fringe, or keep it?

A Farewell to Bethany

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the loss of "Bethany", a beloved member of the Betty Bow Blue family.

You will be missed.

With one final snip of the scissors, Bethany was no more. She had a good run while it lasted, and was a favorite of many. Throughout her lifetime, Bethany was able to produce a pair of hair clips, two flower headbands, a flower pin, two pom pins, FOUR necklaces, and most recently, two pom rings. She was a bestseller.

If you are one of the unfortunate few who do not own a piece of Bethany, now's the time to act! One pom pin, and one pom ring (see photo below), are still available for purchase. Move quickly before she is gone completely!

For now, let's take a moment of silence to remember the best of Bethany:

And for the record, yes, I am fully aware that I am a dork. :-)

Shop Update

My Etsy shop is up and running again after some price revamping for that market, but don't balk at those prices just yet! Yes, they are higher, but remember that those prices are going to be different than my local/craft fair prices (which have also had a slight price adjustment to reflect time and materials). Anyone who placed a custom order with me prior to this price change will still be charged the old price. Also, contacting and buying from me directly, (not through Etsy) will result in a discounted price (from the Etsy prices), as explained in my earlier pricing post. No more losing money for me!

Here's a look at things to come in the next month or two.

Rings: I am awaiting a shipment of ring bases to begin working on those. (Survey results coming soon). You can expect to see some of those in my shop by the end of the month. Update: Ring bases arrived yesterday!

Bracelets: I am getting ready to place my order for bracelet bases and as soon as I receive all of the supplies for these, I should be able to start on those right away and have those in my shop by the end of January or beginning of February.Update: Supplies for bracelets were purchased today!

Headband holders: I will probably start making these in February (unless you contact me earlier for a custom order), as I have already had some interest in them. Canisters are being collected and the kinks are being worked out now. I don't know that I will be listing these in my Etsy shop, or just offering them through Facebook and personal sales.

Headbands: I have had several questions about headbands for infants, so I am now going to start offering crochet head wraps along with the elastic and fabric-wrapped headbands. These will be available for fabric flowers, 3" poms, and the "coming-soon" felt flowers. The fabric-wrapped plastic headbands that I usually use are starting to get a little difficult to find in different colors. This may mean that they are on their way out and will need to be replaced by something else, (another reason why I now sell my fabric flowers by themselves).

Felt Flowers: I really love the one I made, so I will be making these within the next month or so too. They will be available as pins, clips, and headbands. Flower designs will include dahlias and sunflowers, with the possibility of others.

I think that may be it for updates right now. Starting next week, I will be working two days a week (baby-sitting on Tuesdays and subbing on Fridays), so that will help move things along, I hope.

The Power of Pricing

If anyone has happened to stop by my Etsy shop in the last day or so, you will notice that I am "On Vacation". I'm not really on vacation, (although after hearing the weather forecast for the rest of the week and weekend, I wish I were), I am making some much needed adjustments, and hopefully improvements, to my shop. Other than taking new photos using my photo box, I am also in the process of adjusting my prices. 

I have been told by several people that they were surprised at how low I have some of my items priced. I have also been told that I am undervaluing myself. I rolled my eyes at them at first, but then I sat down and actually did the math, and after figuring in the fees that Etsy and PayPal charged me, I realized that I ended up losing money on my Etsy sales! Obviously, this is no way to run a business (unless I'm trying to run it into the ground), so I needed to make some changes.

I enlisted the assistance of my fabulously helpful sister, and she directed me to what I will be referring to as the "Magic Pricing Worksheet", or MPW. Some brilliant person out there came up with an Excel worksheet (complete with formulas! No need for fingers and toes!) for dummies like me to help price their items. Prior to this, I was doing a lot of estimating, and basically pulling prices out of my tushy. Sure, I was looking around at similar items and what they were selling for, but basically my prices were guesstimates. (Side note, I find it interesting that Firefox does not recognize "tushy" as being a word, but it does "guesstimate").

Basically, what the MPW does is calculate different prices based on cost of materials, overhead (which for the purposes of my business, includes the cost of packaging, printing, materials that I cannot really estimate for, like glue and thread, etc.), and labor. It gives you four price figures: your total cost, wholesale price, retail price, and a "Safe Price Range" . I love that it does this, because these three different prices are perfect for the various places that I could sell my products: craft fairs/personal sales, online venues like Etsy, or a "brick and mortar" storefront that sells items from local artisans.

I don't know about other people who sell their crafts, but personally, I plan to have different prices for each venue. This may not sound fair, or the ideal way to conduct a business, but let me break down the reasons why. If I am selling my items at a local craft fair, then I need to be aware of who my customer is going to be, and most importantly, my location. Someone who is shopping around a craft fair in the boonies of Upstate New York is most likely going to spend less money on items than someone in New York City. Right? The typical craft fair visitor in my area is not going to be shelling out $30 for a felt flower headband, regardless of how well it is made or how much time has been put into it, (there are always some exceptions though). So ideally, my prices should reflect that if I want to make any sales and try to establish my business with "the locals", which I feel is an important thing to do when just starting out. As long as my prices are fair, and I'm still making money rather than losing money from these sales, then I see no reason why I can't sell them for less, using the wholesale price from the MPW.

Now let's take a look at selling on Etsy, or other online venues. In case you were unaware of this, listing items on these sites is not free, nor is it free to sell them. Etsy charges a fee for each item that you list. After a certain period of time, (a few months), if your item has not sold, then you can relist the item, paying the fee again. Etsy also charges a fee for each sale that you make. They will charge you a (very small) % of the purchase price of the item, (does not include tax or shipping). Unfortunately, the fees do not end there. If your customer is using PayPal to pay for their order, which they most likely are, then PayPal will charge a fee based on the full amount of money received (including tax and shipping). This is a small %, plus $.30 for each transaction. So, with all of that in mind, items that I list on Etsy should be priced higher to help cover those charges.

Another thing to consider when pricing these items is that Etsy has an International customer-base, which means a higher chance of reaching customers who will pay $30 for a felt flower headband (which they do). It would really be stupid of any seller not to take advantage of this, and this is where the middle "Safe Price" figure comes in handy.

The retail price would most likely apply to items being sold in stores. Although I currently don't do this, there are several local stores/venues that sell items for local artisans, kind of like a consignment shop. My sister does this, and if I remember correctly, she has to pay a fee each year for her space in the store, and they also collect a 30%-40% commission from the items that she sells there. Obviously, this means that she has to price accordingly if she wants to make any money at all, hence a higher retail price.

So with all of this in mind, last night I sat down with my receipts, (or at least the ones I had the foresight to save), and the MPW and got to work figuring out what I should be charging for my items. I calculated what it cost me to make each item, figured out how much time it took me to make each item, and plugged them into the MPW. Holy moly! What a difference in prices! I realized that the biggest difference in pricing my items was that I wasn't figuring in my time, the labor that it takes to make each item. Although, for some random reason I was doing this with my necklaces, but not my other items. Apparently I must think that 15 or 30 minutes of my time is worth less than one hour of it. In other cases, I underestimated how much it actually cost for the supplies to make certain items.

One of the tips that I see over and over again regarding pricing, is that pricing your items low (thinking that they will sell better) will actually hurt your sales. Apparently when people see a product that is priced low, they assume that it is cheaply made; they are more likely to buy a similar item at a higher price. This makes absolutely no sense to me because I always shop around and compare prices for the biggest bargain. I am all about finding the best way to save money, not spend more of it. But speaking of comparing prices, I also learned that it's best not to price your items based on what others are selling similar items for. The main reason for this is because you really have no way of knowing how those people are figuring out their prices. They may not have as much time invested, or as many material costs.

Overall, I think the biggest issue that I have to overcome is being able to appropriately value myself and my items. I often think, "Why would anyone pay that price for one of my items?". I guess I don't think that people actually consider the amount of time and work that I have invested in an item when looking at the price. They compare my products to similar items that they can find in the store, and think that I am overcharging for them. (I must assume that everyone is a bargain shopper like myself).  But here's the thing, yes, items in a store are going to be cheaper, there's no getting around that one. But in most cases, they are also cheaply made using cheaper products. I don't use prefabricated items for my products, (with the exception of the "hardware" like headbands and hair clips, but I challenge you to try to make those from scratch). I don't take a plastic or silk flower and simply glue it to a headband and resell it. I don't buy cabochons in bulk, glue them to a ring base that I have bought in bulk, and resell them. Each one of my flowers, each one of my poms, is unique. Each has been hand-cut, hand-sealed, and hand-assembled. I take my time with each piece, and put my best effort into making them look "perfect", and that extra care is worth something.

The Purple Dahlia

I have so many new ideas to try out on my To-Do list right now, and I finally made the time to try one out today. Months ago I came across this tutorial on Holidash. It's a tutorial for making a felt Dahlia brooch.

Credit: Megan Reardon

I really don't mind this flower as a brooch, but I also like the idea of it as a hair accessory and have seen many of these on Etsy. I wasn't making mine today with the intent of adding it to my Etsy shop; I was just experimenting with it and wanted to see if I could do it, (not to mention that I have many sheets of felt hanging around, left over from a project I lost interest in).

I picked out some purple felt for my flower, mainly because purple is my favorite color, but also because it was one of the few whole sheets of felt I have left over. I am not about to recreate my step-by-step process, as I basically followed the above tutorial to a tee, but I did make a few changes. For one, I did not include the cardboard base because I wanted my flower to be more flexible since it will be sitting on a round surface (unless someone out there has a flat head?). If I were to use this as just a brooch, I would probably include the base.

Secondly, I used a hot glue gun. This crazy woman used tacky glue and sat around waiting for her 37 petals to dry, twice! I did not have the patience for that. If I can use my glue gun in place of another method, then I will. Here is how mine looked starting out:

This was a very tedious process of cutting and gluing. It ended up taking me over an hour to finish, and technically it's not even finished yet. If I were to make any more of these, which I'm pretty sure I will, I plan to cut out everything ahead of time (in multiple colors for multiple flowers) and then glue them at another time. I have found that doing things in steps like that makes it seem less tedious. (I usually spend one night cutting out all of my fabric circles/petals for my headbands, then another night gluing them, and finally a third to complete finishing touches, like adding the clips, chains, etc.) Here is how my (nearly) finished flower looks:

I have not finished the center yet because I have not decided how I want it to look. In the brooch tutorial, the woman, (her name is Megan), used the same red felt for the middle.

Credit: Megan Reardon

I can't decide if I want to do that with mine, or add a little extra color instead. I was thinking about a yellow center? Though  suppose, technically, it may not be considered a dahlia anymore... Decision update: I have decided, for this particular one, since I am keeping it for myself, to keep the center purple. I am contemplating attaching it to my fleece scarf (it's concord purple) because I really like how to two purples look together. We will see.

Overall, I enjoyed making this flower. The tutorial was really easy to follow, but I did find myself trying to keep my perfectionism at bay. (I really wanted to make a cardboard petal template so all of my petals were uniform shapes and sizes, but I held off and ended up winging them). I think I might make a few more of these, their purpose as of yet undetermined. I have some navy blue, pale pink, and turquoise felt that I might use. I think this would also look great in a cream, tan, gray or dare I say, black? :-) (Did you catch that one? A black dahlia? Ha ha ha. Nevermind. You can say it, I'm a dork). It has been brought to my attention that some people may not have understood my vague allusion to the Black Dahlia. So in brief, (Google or Wiki it for more details), the Black Dahlia was the nickname of a woman who was a victim of a brutal murder during the late 40s. Well-known case then, but perhaps no longer now? Unless, of course, you watch American Horror Story, but I knew about it before that and had assumed others knew as well....)

What do you think of this flower? As a headband? Hair clip? Brooch? Suggestions for the center of my purple dahlia?