CyberMonday Tales

OK, I was on the Etsy forums last night trying not to get to depressed because nothing has sold. SewnGreen boosted my spirits by liking my animal stockings. As it turns out she has a really neat shop selling Christmas ornaments which would go well with my Christmas stockings. Hint Hint for others out there. I thought I would post a picture here of the ornaments. I would also check out her blog. She is checking out other finds on Etsy. I may do a few of those too at some point, but right now I don't have the energy. I would like this blog to go in some direction besides talking about what I'm doing. That can get boring quick. I have an idea and I have hubby looking into it. After all I am president of this company!
Where has my energy been going to? I'm going to try something slightly different, but something that would go well with my handbags. I love to knit when I'm watching a movie at home. I can't have my hands idle at such times. I will be posting a few of these on my Etsy store soon. That's my husband's job! I know he was having trouble getting some good pictures. We'll see how he does.

Black Friday Weekend Bust

I have not posted in a few days. Too busy! I spent a lot of time trying new Christmas stocking ideas. I really liked them. Took a few days to visit family in Ohio and put up Christmas decorations. My husband spent time on Thanksgiving at his parents marking tags, proces, and descriptions for the Etsy sale. That didn't go over too well. No sales. I did see a spike in traffic yesterday according to Analytics, but alas no sales. I was up to 2AM last night with my newest bag, a hobo bag. I think it came out really well. I have quite a few hours into it. It was not a cheap bag to make. Ny husband did put up a new facebook page yesterday. I need fans so if you read this blog please do me a favor and fan me please ?
In reading the Etsy forums tonight I came across someone who was writing a nice blog about what they are finding on Etsy. I'll give you that info in my next post. I also have some new stuff I'm trying. In the meantime, I'm tired and I need a break. It will be along day at work tomorrow.

Holiday Stockings

I'm in the Christmas spirit! Check out a couple of my newest creations. I've loaded these and one other onto my Etsy store. I took off a half day at work and between last night and tonight have been working furiously on my new holiday stockings. I'm still in the process of creating them but I have a lot of ideas. I was working on a new bag and then I got side tracked on the stocking idea. Let us just hope they sell. If they don't I'm going to have a lot of stockings in the house. Maybe if I hang a lot of them Santa will fill them up.
The whole Etsy experience (MiladyCreations) has been a large time sink. Not on my part - I've been too busy creating and making. My marketing VP has been grumbling a bit about it. It didn't help much when we had to recreate the store. Hopefully that part is behind us now. I see some shops selling like crazy and others (like me) sitting in the shadows. My high paid marketing VP ( e.g. husband) is still working on our ZenCart store. You can see bits and pieces of it on the website. I've kept him pretty busy at night loading items and taking photographs. He is getting better at photoshop. You can see he added the Milady name to some of the photos. It is a real trick to take some of these items in their "best light". The white stocking in particular look much better in reality than they do in a photograph.

Rise from the Ashes II

Here is the inspiration for the dog bag I talked about yesterday. Looks just like the picture doesn't it?
It is always interesting to look at the views on Etsy. Bags I like don't always get a lot of looks. Sometimes it works in reverse. The bag that I've sold the most, an Elvis tote, has surprised me. The Elvis tote has been all local sales - but when people see them they've wanted them. I'm too young maybe to be a big Elvis plan.
I'm still thinking about what I can make for Christmas. The other thing I'm trying to figure out is how to "tag" my bags. Milady Creations is just way too big on a tag. I have one idea about a symbol that I'm wondering about.
I've included a picture of my next creation in the making. Doesn't look like much at this stage does it?
Next week will be tougher than normal to get things done since Thanksgiving will be here. I can't believe the holidays are here! The weather here is supposed to degrade next week. My husband needs to get the leaves done. He also needs to load up more stuff and get all of our inventory up on the site. He also needs to finish our own web site. I better watch it - he reads this blog and looks to see if anything he says ends up here. In terms of being the marketing VP for this company I think he should be fired. The internet sales just are not there. I look at some of these Etsy shops with anticipation when I see how many sales they have had. I have a long way to go.

Going to the dogs

Today this blog goes to the dogs. This is for dog lovers. I'm finding out that I can do all kinds of dog breeds. This is just one of them. I usually make the first bags for myself for "testing" purposes and R&D. You can guess why I picked a papillion. She is (usually) a sweetie. She is stubborn though and likes her own way. I've been thinking about trying a special order line like these. I'm sure there is a lot of dog lovers out there that would love to have their dog and the dog's name on their bag. I think its something any pet lover (I include myself in that category) would like. I'll probably test the waters with this one and see what happens. Not much going on
today. I'm still thinking about something for special for Christmas. Ornaments, stockings, - just not sure. I'm not in a very creative mood tonight.
I'll have to take some food to my hubby now in order to make sure that he uploads some stuff to the store tonight. We still have along way to go just to get back to where we were. I still miss Ladybags. Maybe I can call these doggie bags! Better check the trademark first...

Rise from the Ashes

Monday! Monday's are always busy at work. Then I had some errands to run tonight and bought materials for a new creative Christmas item - completely non-bag related! I uploaded here a new bag I made and uploaded onto the Etsy store as well. This makes a total of 6 items up at the Etsy location with more to come. I just realized I haven't uploaded my favorite pet totes. I have a couple of embroidered totes with a cat on one and a dog on another. The fact they just happen to look like my cat and dog is purely coincidental. Maybe I'll try to get that up tomorrow here or at the Etsy site or both. I thought it would be neat to do custom orders on this. Put your dog or cat's name on it. With the dogs I can even do an embroidered breed. I really like it.
My husband has the web site up - sort of. It's at miladybags.com - pretty similar to myladybags but for Milady. It even has an access portal into the Zencart store. Right now he is operating this as a catalog showroom. He had the paypal figured out with the old location. We're keeping the name at the web site as Milady Creations, which of course sells bags and accessories. Perhaps we should secure that internt name as well.

The official death of myLadybags

OK,
The wedding was fun. It was good to get away for a little while. The weather was just perfect yesterday. I also did manage yesterday to get a lot of new patterns at Joanns for $1. With any luck, modifications of these may make it here. I have so many ideas and so little time.
The weather today is not like yesterday. It is really ugly with drizzle today. I guess it's a perfect day for trying to get new web site stuff up. I'm still mourning the lost of Ladybags. Instead of vacation mode I delisted the entire shop and now it is just a blank shell. The inactive listings are there though. What I didn't realize is how much work it would be to switch. A new Etsy shop is sort-of alive. What a pain. The name of the new shop is Milady Creations. Yes I have checked the trademark considerations. I still can't believe my rotten luck in getting stuck with coming up a name that was trademarked.
I should have mentioned that I'm NOT the one doing all of the transferring, but my wonderful husband is doing it. I have to say wonderful otherwise he wouldn't be doing it. I guess that is his payback - his only payback. As of the writing of this blog I have a total of one handbag transferred to the new Etsy site. I have so much more. I have a new Christmas bag that I just made. I've posted it here for all to see. Who know when I get a chance to get it up on the web site. While the Internet stuff has not went well, the local stuff is doing OK. I just but the bags in at Granger Florist and gifts. If your from around the South Bend / Elkhart / Goshen area you might want to stop there and take a look at what I have. I have some of my bags posted here on the blog. I can put things up faster up on the blog than anywhere else.
I have to figure out how to make my husband work faster and get this web stuff going. I know he is buried in a photoshop manual now. I've been unhappy with the new banners and images and have so many creative ideas. I just know I will not being doing it photoshop. He has put just a little more "stuff" for me on this blog. It looks better than it did. I now have some more ideas ...

Store Bust IV

Another new creation. No store to sell it at though! The thought of reloading everything into Etsy is not appealing. Still thinking about store names. Thinking about different combination's. Thinking about what is easy to put on a bag. I think I'm still in mourning over the old store name! In any event, I don't think much is going to get done today. I have a wedding to go to this afternoon and evening.
My husband said he did figure out out to transfer the new unseen ZenCart store to another domain. I don't know if we're ready for that or not. It is getting close to more tuition time though. Lots more money going out the door.
We should be close to doing something ...
That is it for today. I need to fix-up this blog some more. It is so bland and uninviting. Some really neat stuff is out there.

Store Bust III

OK, I'm keeping really busy at night. Check out another one of my new creations. This one is just in time for Christmas. The web site is not going well. Hubby was working way too long last night and having difficulty. Too many things linked into the myladybags name. He had difficulty making the banner. First he ried working with the old web site. Then he worked on the "new one" which is a ZenCart-based web site. I didn't know what a Zencart was but I guess its a *FREE* commerce store. Right now he had as a showcase. Of course there are links to the old Etsy store that have to be redone. Then when I came on this morning I noticed that the facebook stuff was still up. Now that has to come down. Not sure what we doing with Etsy and names are still floating around. All I know is I don't wnat to have to do this again. Unfortunately its a minimum $275 for a trademark. Ouch!. Probably had that in time cost thought with everything linked to this name.

Store Bust II

OK, somehow this will rise from the ashes again. It has not been a good month. I am still working at night on new purses. I've included one here. Hubby has been working on a new banner and website. He does not know Photoshop very well and is running into all kinds of issues. Of course I've been a pain in the *** asking for "more complicated" things. Of course new business cards have to be made, etc, etc. This is a big pain. The only good news is that this blog remains the same. It was not tied into the myladybag theme. In hindsight having more independent components might be a good thing. The bags I've made were not really tagged in anyway - another good thing. I had been working on that concept but didn't really finish it. Now I have the golden opportunity to make a new tag! Its early in the morning and a long day of work is ahead of us.

Store Bust

I think this blog should be about the trials and tribulations of a small tiny start-up company. Dreams, but not much else. Anyway as both my husband and me were working last night he noticed an email had come over from the web site. Very few emails from the web site have come over - this was very exciting - until you read the subject line. We were being told to immediately stop selling myLadybags because of trade mark infringement against the name Ladybag. We had actually looked some of this up and thought we were free to use it since myLadybags did not come up in our searchs at the USPTO web site. This is where to go for looking at trademarks. After reading some more it may have caused expensive lawyers to find out. Thus the store came down and the web site came down. Now we ponder what is next. It seems really difficult to insure that somewhere you don't possibly infringe on someone. Oh well, now for the hard part. What is next ?