So this is the New Year...

So my first Christmas season has come and gone. Well my first season selling online at least. I was thrilled with all the attention my work received during that one quick month. With a boatload of sales and a full time job, I really saw where I needed to improve my work method.

Shipping was the first big one, it takes me far too long to package things, sometimes longer than it takes to build them! I will be switching to domestic priority shipping, and first class international shortly after the new year, this will save on materials and time. On top of that it'll be very easy to know when a package will get somewhere.

Having 3-8 orders to build and ship at a given time also helped me realize how inefficient my system was. I'll go into detail at a later date about this, because I think I've learned some critical lessons that will likely help others. I'll try and put together some tutorials this year on productivity.

Expect to see a whole bunch of new designs and pieces flooding through my shop in the next few months. Thursdays will be the official new release days, but not starting this week though. I'll have all new packaging and cards as well!

New Release Thursday

New Release Thursday is a new Etsymetal series, where everyone puts out their new work on Thursdays. It's meant to be a Group effort to get everyone noticed together, the real success of it will be in the consistency of doing it every week. Check out the Etsymetal blog for more details.

In other news I received a ton of new tools today and some much needed tools to finish some pending orders. If you're reading this and you have an order that hasn't shipped yet, know that it will be on it's way very soon!

Below is my new piece for today.

News

So I chose to go with different photos after all, you can see them in my shop as of now. The clean white background seems to do everything more justice. On top of that it's easier to get them all to look the same.

Lot's of people are having ultra-mega sales right now, online and in stores, although I don't have sales myself, I am upgrading all my domestic shipping to priority for the holidays for free, just so people can have a better piece of mind. Around this time of year 1st class mail is more like 3rd class mail, and might make it to where it needs to be by next Christmas!