Weekly Inspiration

Here's a beautifully composed product photo.

"Me and my shadow" for my Etsy shop, originally uploaded by Jen Kiaba Photography.

Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

Establishing a Theme

This week's long post isn't going to be very long. I had planned to do a book review but my books didn't arrive in time for me to be able to finish reading and absorbing the information. So instead I'm going to write a few ideas about branding.

Is there something special about your products that you want people to associate with you? This can be a tough question. For me it was pretty easy, I make jewelry of cephalopods (squid, octopus, cuttlefish) and so I would love for people to think of me when they think of an octopus.

So once you've answered that question it can be used as a starting point for your branding efforts. We'll use the example of someone who makes bags with screenprinted daisies.

White, green, and yellow are colors associated with daises, you could tailor your website, banners, business cards to have that those colors.

Design your logo to have daisies working into it.

At craft shows have vases filled with fresh cut daisies.

Shrink down some of the designs from the screenprinting and have them made into rubber stamps. Rubber stamp them on your packaging, notecards, invoices, etc.

Want to Write a Guest Post?

I could use some help from my readers. My area of experience is in selling jewelry and sculpture, so I would love to be able to feature articles about selling other products.

Type of topics I'm looking for:

• Hiring and working with a model (or how to convince friends to model) for clothing photography.
• Getting started selling candy or other foods online.
• Sources for sewn in clothing tags or how to make your own.
• Wholesaling your products.

Those are only a few examples. So if you have some knowledge to share please drop me an email with a short description of what you want to write about. Guest writers will get a short intro paragraph about them and a link to their shop.

Quick Tip #6 - Create Impressive Slideshows

Slideshows are a perfect way to show off your products. There are a number of options for creating video slideshows that you can then upload to youtube and use to promote your shop.

Tips
1. Make sure you add your website/shop url to the video description so people can click it. It should also be in the credits of your video.
2. Get good music. Some services offer music you can add and Podsafe Audio is also a great resource for music (most is under creative common licenses, with artist attribution required). Make sure any music you use is available for use in videos or you risk having your video pulled by YouTube.
3. Give your video good tags, for example etsy, handmade, jewelry/soap/clothing/etc. and put it in the appropriate category (How To & Style works for most handmade stuff)
4. Get the word out. Embed the video on your blog, add it to facebook and other social networks, add it to a Squidoo lens, etc.

Online Slideshow Makers
I'm only linking to online slideshow makers since they should work on any operating system. There are a number available online for download and you can also use most video editing software to make them too.

• Animoto
• One True Media
• Slide.com

Weekly Inspiration

From the new Flickr Group. Some nice packaging and photography.

My creation, originally uploaded by crossmyheartjwlry.

Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

Flickr Group

I just started a Flickr Group for the blog. Join and add your handmade business related pictures to the pool. I'll pick the Weekly Inspiration from the group as often as possible (hopefully every week but I don't expect that until the group has grown some).

Handmade Business Flickr Group

I Create a Shipping Center

This article is being written as I do what I'm writing about. I'm tired of scrambling to gather all my shipping stuff when I get an order. It was all more or less in one place just as a big messy stack of stuff with no organization. So here we go.

I'm only working with what I currently have and it has to fit in a corner of the room.

Before
I'm a bit embarrassed to put this picture but we need a before.


Storage
So since I'm committed to doing this with what I already have I need to consider the storage I have available.

• 1 wide plastic set of drawers 24 inches wide 36 inches tall
• 1 narrow plastic set of drawers 12 inches wide and 36 inches tall
• plastic shoe boxes
• Various cardboard boxes
• Various other storage containers
  

What I Did
I'll spare you the horrendous photos of how messy my living room got during this process. Suffice to say you can't organize anything without first tearing everything apart to sort through it.

1. First of all I need a flat surface to construct the packages on and keep my scale. The top of the wide plastic drawers works great. The shipping area is directly across from my computer so I can just wheel the chair over when I need to pack things.
   
2. On the top of the drawers are my postal scale, box with gift bags, receipt book, calculator, packing tape, scotch tape, scissors, box cutter, business cards, box of brochures and promo packs. Also some packing paper that didn't fit anywhere else.
   
3. Small flattened boxes went in the bottom drawer. Larger flattened boxes tucked between drawers and wall.
4. Tissue paper saved from orders, gifts, etc. in a cardboard box. Box then went into the top drawer.
5. Bubble wrap in the top drawer.
6. Envelopes, extra packing tape, small box of saved packing peanuts, and other miscellaneous small items in the middle drawer.
7. Assembled boxes arranged in a neat stack. Larger boxes stored in downstairs closet until needed.
8. Less frequently used items stored in the smaller set of drawers that has been moved to where the larger one used to be. In it are gift boxes, ribbon, wrapping paper, etc.
9. Next to the small drawers are some more boxes.
10. Hung my t-square on the wall, I use it for cutting down over sized boxes.
11. Packed up the art paper, mat board, and other stuff that didn't belong in boxes and they're stored downstairs as well. Organizing my paper is for another day.
12. Threw out a lot of trash and broken boxes. The stool with my pasta machine went back where it belonged next to my art desk.
    

After
Here's the result of my efforts. It's not pretty but it's neat and functional. I hope it inspires you to consider how your shipping and studio is organized.

Some Links on Organization

• Home Office: Organization and Productivity
• Life Organizers: Home Office
  
• Office Organizing Tips