Busy, Busy, Busy!

For this blog post, I thought I’d tell you what I’ve been working on over the long weekend (yippee for German bank holidays).....

Over the past few weeks, most of my ‘free’ time has been devoted to one of my 2 current BIG projects.  In April, I held an open house party to introduce Crafted by Carly to the world (well, just to friends, neighbours and friends-of-friends actually).  It was a HUGE success, and I’ll be forever grateful to my mom for planting the idea in my head and encouraging me to go ahead with it (despite my nervousness about ‘showing’ my stuff for the first time)!  Thanks mom!!!  I think I’ll write a special blog post on the event one day, as I reckon that holding an open house party could be a fantastic first step for any crafter wanting to start selling their wares (not that I’m an expert)!!!  Anyway, back to the point of THIS blog.....  I’m still getting orders off the back of the party and, over the weekend, I managed to get up-to-date with them all – phew!  Here are some of the things I was working on:

The other BIG project I’m working on at the moment is TRYING to get together a collection of things to sell in the online shop I’m planning to open.  The plan to start selling my things in this way has been simmering away for a few months now.  But, other projects have been getting in the way!  The long weekend gave me a bit of extra time, and I was able to make some more bags to stock my little shop with.  Here’s a sneak-preview of a few of the things you might see for sale in the Crafted by Carly Shop:

Hopefully, I’ll be ready to welcome customers pretty soon - I’m VERY excited about it!!!  I LOVED playing shops when I was younger, and setting up my own little crafty shop online is like playing shops for grown-ups!!!  Watch this space for more on playing shops.....

If anyone out there has any experience of selling via online handmade marketplaces, I’d love to hear from you!  Which marketplace(s) do you use?  And do you have any ‘top tips’ for newbies?

Oooh, and I also started making myself a dress.  It’s only my second attempt, so I’m not sure whether I’ll be sharing photos of it or not!  We’ll see.....