You Can't HANDLE the Cuteness!

I went to JoAnn Fabrics on the 4th of July to buy a zipper. When I walked in, I was greeted by a bin of clearance summer fabrics! Hey, it's still summer! And they're still cute!
Custom orders at Burst of Happiness!



And this one has been in my collection before, but it's fab, so I bought more:

Weird but adorable fabrics

Although I normally make my bags out of fairly "normal" fabrics, sometimes I am drawn to stranger things. Here are two of them:

Calaveras, from Cheap Threads:


Asian good-luck cats from The Pirate's Royal Bootie on eBay. This one I'm going to use to make a small gift for my hair stylist, who is part Japanese and has a cat statue like this in her salon. I saw this fabric and it reminded me of her:


Cherries and Senoritas from Cheap Threads:

Do cuter fabrics exist?

My thing right now is fabrics that are in coordinating colors but different patterns. I am going to design some new patterns, as well, of purses and totes.

My business picked up. I sold three things in a week! I know that was probably a fluke, but it was great. That's six things since mid-December, but I guess these things take time. I've been promoting more through business cards. Lots of etsy sellers accept business cards that they throw in with their sold items, so I've sent some of those out and also some with 10% off coupons. I also leave a stack of cards at places where I see they let people do so. I have been handing them out to friends who know a lot of women, also.
Every time I post an item for sale, I also cross post it on my blog, on my myspace page, on the etsy myspace page and on craftersbuzz.com.

Ultimately, it would be great if I could make this work to the point that I could work from home for a while if we decide to have kids, but I don't have high hopes for that. That would be really hard to do because there are only so many items one person can design and sew in a day, and to make what I make now, I'd have to sell A LOT of things every day. And I could never keep on top of making that many things.

I'll also be doing a craft show this summer, but I'll post more on that later.

On the other hand, I was exploring some Web sites with purses and totes and they are priced very high. Perhaps when I get established I can sell my stuff for a lot more. We'll see. For now, it's off to the sewing machine. I ditched school today to sew -- both for my school projects and my business.