june summary, july goals

'lilith', one of my newest beauties in my shop


my goals for june were:

• sell 25 items in my shop, bringing my total to 81 items sold
• look into another wholesale opportunity
• clear out my tile pendants
• reach 360 hearts
• have lots of fun! i'm going to a book signing/reading of my favourite author, chuck palahniuk, this thursday, then saturday brandon and i are seeing eddie izzard! my best friend sarah and i need to plan my bachelorette party, too. and i want to read a bunch of the books i just got in the mail :)
• join an etsy street team?
• work on my french and biology stuff

here's what actually happened:

• i sold an amazing 44 items in my shop... wow! as of the end of the day on june 30, i reached 102 total sales.
• i did more than just look into wholesale opportunities; i landed 2 new wholesale accounts, got a reorder on my previous one, and have 2 pending wholesale accounts! all this happened the last week of the month, too, so i'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed (but in a great way!)
• immediately, all but 4 of my tile pendants sold out. i still have 4 left, and they are still $4 and waiting for good homes :).
• i surpassed my goal and made it to 363 hearts ♥
• i did have a ton of fun! i did all the stuff i planned, although i didn't get as much reading done as i wanted.
• i found an etsy team to join and contacted the team leader (EAST - earthpath artisans street team, by the way), and all i have to do now is go through their checklist to be in compliance and participate in the team :D. they seem like a really nice group of people, and i think me and my shop will fit in nicely.
• okay, now hear me out! i totally didn't do anything for my biology class :/. i really need to do that; summer is quickly passing. i did practice my french a bunch, but i need to start studying my textbooks in addition to practicing.

june was a fabulous month! i'm really excited, because everyone says summer is slooooooow, but i'm getting so much accomplished.

here are my july goals:

• sell 45 things in my shop, bringing my total to 147.
• complete all these wholesale orders and delve into the new ones
• reach 430 hearts
• introduce my new washi fortune cookie line (thanks for your enthusiasm and advise, ryan!)
• start preparing my inventory for christmas, as i will not be able to do a whole lot of new creating once college starts again at the end of august
• attend my bachelorette party and have a blast! :D
• take care of the rest of the wedding stuff, because, again, i won't have as much time on my hands when college starts in august
• plan brandon's birthday (august 9)
• do all that biology and french stuff (for real this time!)

here's to a fruitful july, everyone!

♥,
melissa

'japanese wedding'

i just made a new batch of my japanese washi fortune cookies! these feature cute little white cranes in flight. cranes are a staple of japanese weddings.

these are now listed in my shop :). to read more about them, go here.

i needed to actually make some so i could take pictures for the listing, so i went ahead and made the 20 of these i needed, but with my wedding 'thank you' fortune inside. now that i'm done taking the pictures for the listing, i can mix these in with the sakura ones i made for my other washi fortune cookie listing! if i hadn't done this, these cookies would have just gone to waste, because i make these custom-ly per customer. how effecient of me, yes?

also, don't forget to stop by my shop and check out my $4 tile pendant necklace sale! i've got to clear them out of my inventory so i can replace them with aanraku bail versions :).

♥,
melissa

april summary, may goals

here's a recap of what i wanted to achieve in april:

• sell 10 items from my shop
• finish writing both of my history papers
• begin my biology class (and send in my extension request
• finish my film class
• write my last literature paper
• no more lupron in my system! :D
• file my first quarterly sales tax return
• make and list new and exciting items in my shop!
• mail the wedding invitations
• entertain friends at my house at least once

of these, i completed most! actually, i sold 16 items in my shop, so i nearly doubled what i aimed for. i wrote my literature paper, finished my 6 months of lupron shot therapy, filed the sales tax return, listed a lot of new and cute things in my shop, mailed the wedding invitations, and i even managed to have friends over (allbeit on the last day of the month, yesterday, haha). i haven't written my history papers yet, finished my film class (although i only have an essay and the final left), or started my biology class, but i did file for the extension for biology. i still have a few days left before the other stuff is due :p. overall, i'd say i did pretty well!

also, i watched seasons 3-7 of 'the x-files' for fun, 'fargo', 'moulin rouge', 'lost in translation', and 'spiderman 2' (bleh) for my film class (i love/own all those movies except stupid spiderman, haha), 'elizabeth' and 'elizabeth the golden age' for my history class, and 'memoirs of a geisha' last night, and even 'the forbidden kingdom' at the theatre.

i haven't lost any more weight, but i have started exercising more. i cleaned the house. i read 'the handmaid's tale' by margaret atwood (my third time reading it).

'washi by maoiliosa' achievements:

• sold 16 items from my shop, with 11 customers
• landed my first wholesale account (with a really cool online shop), and was approached for another (haven't spoken with the owner of the shop yet, but it's a physical shop, not online!)
• in all, made enough money to pay my half of the mortgage bill
• was featured in several treasuries
• bought supplies for some cool new items for my shop, including more gorgeous washi paper designs!
• had 3 custom orders (including two batches of my washi fortune cookies!) and 1 pending custom order request
• ran projectwonderful ads and got 3 confirmed customers from them ( i spent $60 on the ads and got about 1000 clicks)
• gave away a lot of cute, free goodies with my customers' orders :).
• made closer friendships with a few of my fellow etsy sellers :D.
• had my first international sale (!) to a sweet girl and fellow beatles-lover in england, and after realizing that mailing overseas is a lot cheaper than i thought, i lowered my shipping prices to canada and the u.k.

best thing that happened in april:

• i accomplished a lot college-wise

worst thing that happened in april:

• well, i can't really think of anything other than i got minor colds like 3 times

craziest purchase:

• i didn't really buy anything out of the ordinary. i mainly just bought a lot of supplies for my shop :)

and now, onto may!

may goals:

• sell 20 things in my shop
• complete my first wholesale order, and see about taking on the offer for the other wholesale account
• have a give-away (details soon!)
• order new moo business cards (i'm almost out!)
• finish all my school work from the spring semester, and begin my biology class
• start to study my french textbooks, workbooks, and vocabulary cards so i can test out of 16 credit hours of french at the end of the summer (i just need to refresh my memory. i've got 5 years of learning french under my belt)
• buy my wedding dress!
• list cool and cute things in my shop!
• reach 300 hearts?
• entertain friends at my house a few times
• read some books for fun

overall, my shop is really picking up speed! i couldn't be more grateful :). this is really what i want to do with my life, and it feels so good to be rewarded for my hard work!

also, in case i didn't mention it: i'm having a sale! now through may 5, save 10% on your order! just check out, and i'll reimburse you 10% of your merch. cost through paypal :).

well, i'm off to pack up an order from a customer in germany (yay!). talk to you soon, the internet :).

♥,
melissa

lower prices and new merch!

i spent the last few days doing tedious improvements for my shop. i started by cutting the ribbon off all my pendant necklaces, cutting a new ribbon for each, and finishing up each piece with crimp beads instead of sealed knots. then, of course, i had to take new pictures to reflect the changes i made. and while i was at it, i thought i'd go ahead and shoot a more interesting main pic for each item. the problem is that i have some 90-or-so pendants, so this took a lot of time!

• time spent redoing the pendants with crimps: 5 hours


• time spent reshooting pics of the pendants: 2 hours


• time spent replacing the old pics with the new ones in each listing: 6 hours
  

^before



^after! ah, much better!

then, i decided that i am going to start attaching a free tag to each pendant necklace when i sell it that has my shop info on the front and a to/from area on the back. the tags are cute and simple, and i love them, but i wanted to advertise this in my shop, so i had to go back into each description and add that info :p. that took another 2 hours. all the time spent was totally worth it, though. my stuff looks a lot better now :).

also, after much thought, i have decided to lower the prices on my pendant necklaces to $11. so basically, now my items have a lot more worth, because 1) i changed to crimps (which looks much nicer and more professional), 2) they each come with a free gift tag, and 3) they cost $1 less than they did before!

additionally, i lowered the prices on my prints to $5 last week. those are slow-selling, so i think i'm going to discontinue most of them when the listings expire next month. i'll keep a few of my favourites around, though :).

and one more super exciting thing: i made something completely new!




you can read the description here, but basically these are little washi fortune cookies that i personalize with messages, names, fortunes, whatever you want! i'm really excited about these! i listed these 2 days ago and i've already had over 100 views, which is a TON for me! the ones you see above are the ones i made for my wedding :)

okay, time to go make some more rings with some new paper i bought!

♥,
melissa