Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Hi Folks! I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas (or insert other holiday!) as well as a peaceful New Year. Today starts my self-decided Christmas vacation.

See you in 2013! It will kick off with a road trip & a big new addition to K. Batty Design & Stationery. Stay tuned!

PS in case anyone is freaking out too much, the big new addition does not have 4 legs...or legs of any kind. It does not need to be fed. You can calm down now.

High 5 For Friday

This week has been business, business, business. Last minute orders going out. Thoughts turning to the next year. I have been reading like a mad woman. Here are my top 5 resources:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

1. Blacksburg Belle - written by April Olin, a former indie business owner turned indie business coach. She saw a hole in the market when looking for resources to help move her business forward. She bravely shuttered her shop to help other small creative business people build theirs.

2. I will continue to sing the praises of my Etsy street team, EtsyNY. We have such great sellers who are full of resources & always willing to share them. I just found a post on our blog about all the monitoring & analytics tools you can use to track your shop, blog, whatever! Yes! There is more than Google Analytics!  And some of these  - like Hubspot - give you advice on how to improve where you need it.

3. Mayi Carles - of the Heartmade Blog. If you are an indie creative business person, Mayi is a familiar face,  unless you live under a rock. This video from last Friday about social media was both a great reminder of best practices & taught me something new.

4. Rena Tom - I love her newsletter & often find myself combing through her archives for whatever information I need...and finding it. So helpful! She is probably coming to NYC in early May & I hope I get to see her speak.

5. Via Twitter, I found Stephanie Peterson & Fairground Media this week. Already I'm in love. She has a great post about how to talk & not to talk to your customers on social media. After reading her post, it feels like a no brainer approach. Next thing I knew I'd read 5 more of her articles. Several are booked marked for later.

There are more resources to share & plenty more people I follow or read here & there. If you want to know more, let me know in the comments! These are just the top 5 from this week...

Happy weekend!

High 5 for Friday

Woot, woot! It's Friday!

1. Pantone's Color for 2013 is Emerald. YESSSSSSSS!

2. My Sonos system has been the secret behind my sucess this week. I have gotten so much accomplished in the last 5 days thanks to the tunes I have pumped through it.

3. Real Simple Daily Thought - I get so much email junk, but I actually look forward to this every day. There's no telling what it will be & it's a bit scary how often it's something that applies to the day I'm reading it. Sign up on the Real Simple website or check out their Pinterest board full of Daily Thoguhts. Any lover of type & color is going to appreciate it.

4. The Christmas tree is up! Almost all vintage ornaments from my parents & grandparents. It makes me happy to look at it. Think it might need more ornaments though...and ribbon...Hmmm...

5. I called my mom on FaceTime after I finished the tree to show it off...And the dogs wanted to talk :) On the left is Scout, her lab rescue. On the right is Murphy, her terrier mix. Look at those faces...so sweet. Sorry, Cat People, but there is nothing like that look or the kisses that usually follow.

Happy Weekend!

Don't forget! It is not too late to get your holiday cards or personalized stationery in time for Christmas. Hit me up & I will hook you up :)

Like High 5 for Friday? Join the link party over at From My Grey Desk.

Lightening Strikes Twice!

Guys! For the second time this week one of my products is a daily pick on Paper N Stitch! Wahoo!!!

Did I tell you about these? Somehow I think I dropped the ball on the new product announcement. GIFT BAGS! For your holiday "cheer" which is code for booze. Just add your friend's favorite Pinot, bubbly or scotch & voila! You're good to go. It would also lend a great touch to bottles of nice olive oil or vinegar...some kind of marinade...or wine. I already said that.

Check out my wine bags...errr, gift bags...on Paper N Stitch, as well as other great holiday items. Go! Go!!!

PNS Daily Pick!

 Attention!! I'm a daily pick today on the front page of Paper N Stitch today! Yeah!!!

Go see it!!!

Postable :: Usable?

Thank you internet! You bring such interesting things into my life each day. Yesterday, you brought Postable to my attention. Actually, I think it came from Tara Bliven at Ephemera...anyway...

This looks like a great site! At the Handmade Cavalcade, I took an informal pole - Do you send Christmas cards? The answer was yes as often as it was no & the reasons for not sending them often related to a lack of addresses. The marrieds that came by all had them 'cause they got married. But, what is the rest of the world to do?

So! I'm trying out Postable. I have most if not all of the addresses of the people I know (I'm one of those marrieds!) but! As someone who is in the card business, I think it's my duty to check this stuff out.

It looks SUPER easy. You sign up & get your own URL to pass around so that your peeps can give you their digits. Boom! Done.

I'll report back.

PS It also asks for people's birthdays!

MAN DOWN!

I try to be religious about keeping liquids away from my computer. Apparently either myself...or someone else (ah-hem!)...has not been as careful as once thought.

Friday night I updated my MacBook Pro, (brand new as of July) shut it down & mentally started my weekend. On Saturday morning, I started to fire it up for something...only it didn't fire up. Made zero noises, flashes or any signs of life of any kind. Not even the spinning beach ball of death (Mac owners, you know what I'm talking about). Holy. Sh*t.

Today's trip to the Genius bar at the Soho Mac Store revealed the culprit. After I SWORE to the technician that I had NEVER spilled anything on it, he brought back evidence to the contrary. Ugg...What really gets me is that the liquid that got into my computer was a TINY dribble. TINY!!!! Seriously?! So small & seemingly insignificant that it's no wonder I swore liquid never touched it. There was zero evidence on the outside of the machine.

So, my laptop was medi-vaced to wherever the Mac hospital is to be repaired for an enormous fee that is still less than a new laptop (Merry Christmas!) and will hopefully be back in my loving arms by the end of the week. Pretty quick, turn around actually.

Now I'm shaking in my boots because even though I thought I was all backed up...or at least backed up for the most part...I'm realizing how much time goes by between back ups. Usually as soon as I'm done with a project, it's moved to my external hard drive. But my own stuff? Ummm...I'm not as diligent. So - a plea to the people who are working on my laptop -

Please treat it with the utmost kindness & care, returning it fulling functioning with all my work on it. Please. Puuulllleeezzzze!!

When my laptop gets back...safely with all it's contents fully intact... I'm putting up the following in my office:

WARNING! If anyone who is even holding liquids so much as looks in the direction of my laptop, you. are. toast.

Handmade Cavalcade DeBrief...

Holy smokes you guys. Remember the holiday market that I have been shamelessly promoting? The 5th Annual Holiday Handmade Cavalcade? It was last weekend. And it was awesome.

Check out my set up...I don't know about you, but I love it. I've got a bunch of vintage boxes. My table cloth is a big piece of tan linen fabric with white pinstripes. I painted my previously white card rack gun metal gray. It all really came together with my rough brick wall in the back :)

Selling-wise - Obviously, 'tis the season for holiday cards, so those were a hot item. For the market, I ran a offered a special set - any 10 individual holiday cards for the set price. Big hit there! I may add that to my Etsy shop, but not sure how it would work...

Tons of visitors brought their dogs. How cute is this guy? He's just checking out my wares. Over the 2 day market, we had 2,000 people show up. Yeah!!

I started selling holiday banners. Gotta get those up on the web as well. I sold 1 of each of variety - Be Merry, Noel, Merry Christmas. Oh, except poor Happy Holidays. That one didn't get any love, but it's no wonder. I was short on space to display it. Note to self on the outcome. 

Also, I got great feedback on my wine gift bags & holiday cocktail toppers. I was calling them cupcake toppers but I realized during the show that perhaps I should sell them as something you use in your hors d'oeuvres or cocktail olives to broaden the market. If you have a better name for my festive tooth picks, please share it!

The location turned out to be great. I was skeptical, but that probably just speaks to how little I know my way around Williamsburg. Lots of people just walked by & found us. The guys who run The Space. Are. Awesome. Seriously. Mike & his crew at Villain (the actual brand business who runs The Space) were SO helpful throughout the weekend.

It was loads of fun to sell with my teammates! The Etsy NY team is a great group of people. Plus, we had some food vendors this time. The picture above is of delicious pretzels from a vendor...who's name I forgot. Damn. There was also an awesome beef jerky vendor from Vermont, called SlantShack.

Overall, great experience. I got to meet a few people I previously knew only online. Some friends stopped by. Each time I do this type of selling I learn a bit more & I am looking forward to doing more markets next year. I might try to squeeze another one in before the holiday. Even so, there is still time to get your holiday cards! Check out my Etsy shop section for options.

PS Thanks to my buddy Eric Vitale & his girlfriend Saara who came by on Saturday. I am so thankful for your support! Also, he took that top picture of me. It's my new favorite! He's a fabulous photographer & recently started his own Etsy shop. Go Eric!!!