Catch-up and an Entirely New Handbag

Its been a while since I've written anything. It is spring and between cleaning up the yard, the day job (the one that pays the college bills!), buying fabric, creating a display, and having a show, I've been pretty busy! I've been busy lately creating a new style. I've seen this concept in several places so I thought I would take a stab at it. Its a purse which can have different style outside flaps to it. This gives both me the designer, and you the customer, a lot of options and flexibility. You can see the basic bag's picture here.  It has two side pockets, either one large enough for a cell phone.  I still have not made the cover flap for it.   More to come soon.

I spent a lot of time for my second show in late April. It was $45 for the booth - not cheap! I made a whole display and racks to hold my handbags. I took a day off from work to get it all done. Unfortunately, the traffic at the show was very poor and I only made a couple of small sales. Certainly not enough to cover my investment. Oh well, the next show will be a lot easier since I now have all the stuff I need. I did gat a few more names for my newsletter. The first one has still yet to go out. My day job keeps interfering with my creative job. Until I sell A LOT MORE, I think I better keep being the accountant. Creativity in that job though can get me in big trouble!
I've been buying too much fabric lately. I have more ideas and creativity than the time to get it done. I need to somehow secure more help from the family on some of this. I don't have a lot of luck with that one sometimes.
On the internet side things remain extremely slow. My husband created an ArtFire site a few weeks ago. So far it has not been worth the $12 / month fee to keep. I don't think my husband nor I anticipated how difficult getting noticed by search engines would be. You can not sell anything if no one knows you exist! We'll keep working on it.   I'm going to try to do a bit better on the social media side of this business.  We'll see if that really happens.   I'm always glad to hear comments - they help keep me motivated!