I am so excited that Artful Delight is starting to pick up in business.  A couple months ago, heck 7 months ago, I decided to change from selling a variety of craft products to selling monthly scrapbooking kits.  The first couple months, were very slow, I don’t think I had any sales.  Now to be fair I had no real way to “advertise” either.  The one girl that I would send the kits to for free in return for projects made using the kit and “advertisement” on her gallery.  Well she wasn’t getting enough traffic to her gallery and wasn’t getting any bites.  So in November I expanded my “design team” to 3 more ladies.  Oh my goodness they have done amazing things for me.  I am so totally excited.  They deserve some gold bars, or stars or something.  I just can’t believe how much interest I have now.

Now of course I have tons of room to grow and I am by no stretch “making money”  but I think that is only because I give away 3 kits a month to the design team and I am also sponsoring a blog challenge once or twice a month.  I am at least making my money back or losing a little but again when I am giving away 4 kits that I could potentially be making $120 from, I think that is good since I am not losing that amount every month.  I hope to grow pretty big, I am having a ton of fun!

So I have completely changed the direction on my online store.  Originally I wanted to sell a variety of crafting products but that didn’t go as well as I would have liked.  LOL!  I think I ended up giving away more than half my inventory. 

I have changed things around to sell scrapbook kits.  So I chose a list of papers and embellishments and ribbon and such and make a monthly kit.  Buyers can either buy a single purchase or subscribe for either 3 or 6 months.  I also have a design team that gets the kits for free in exchange for projects created using the kit.  It has really helped sales.  They are slowly but surely picking up. 

I am not sure if I want to advertise any other way.  I have thought about getting those car magnets or making shirts.  I might also think about rack card printing.  Maybe have some business cards made.  I dunno, but I like the way things are going this time around.  Things are getting pretty hectic with school and the kids so I really hope I can keep on the webstore as well.

I mentioned earlier in a post that I decided to sell off all my craft stuff.  I sold a ton of it before I decided that I didn’t want to give up my hobby all together.  Unfortunately before I made that decision, I sold one of my favorite rubber stamps.  It was from Stampin’ UP!  Mainly the reason I wanted to sell it is because I will no longer use SU products.  Or at least I will try  not to.  I have had too many bad experiences with them to desire using their products. 

BUT, the stamp set that I sold was my favorite.  It was about 5 sentiments and my favorite was the Christmas sentiment.  I wish I hadn’t sold it but overall I am happy that I don’t own the SU stamp set.

Back in August I decided I wanted to start selling scrapbook kits in my web store.  I started selling them in September and have been since.  Slowly but surely I am getting the word out.  I have made several sales and have some subscribers.  I LOVE IT! 

The prices are absolutely amazing for what I include in the kits.    The shipping is really reasonable too, no material handling charges.  I hope I can keep this up because I really am having a great time.  I haven’t actually used any of the kits I have sold yet, mainly because I would rather sell all of the ones I can.  I don’t purchase very many and I still haven’t gotten to a point that I am making my money back but overall it is great.

A few weeks ago I thought I was making the right decision and selling off all my craft paraphernalia.  My Cricut, paper, stamps….everything.  I decided to list all my stuff on a craft forum and see how well I did.   The first few days I was selling my stuff left and right.  My Cricut was the main thing I wanted to sell, I was asking $100 for it.  I wasn’t getting any bites.  If it would have gone much longer I probably would have put it in an online auction or something.  I probably could have gotten more money for it that way but that really wasn’t the point. 

A day or so later I ended up selling it.  I think with all my sales I made about $300.  That was nice.  Well I could only go about 48 hours without my Cricut before I was wishing I hadn’t sold it.  LOL!  Thankfully I decided to go pick something up at Joann Fabric on Black Friday because they have the Personal Cricut for sale for $59.99.  YIKES!  How could I not buy it.  LOL!

With as little space as I have to craft, it worked out perfect.  It is so compact that it doesn’t take up too much space but yet it totally does what I need it to.  I am happy I sold the Cricut Expression and bought the Personal Cricut!!!

I really enjoy crafting and I really enjoy having my blog and web store but I had to make some decisions this week.  I shed some tears because my first thoughts were to throw in the towel and close shop.  I was prepared to sell every last bit on my stuff.  But I love what I do, I love crafting.  The problem was that I started making cards and it seems the card world is so competitive because I felt I had to make video tutorials and have the newest of the new stuff just to keep up with everyone out there.  I opened a web store and it seemed like several people I knew did the same right behind me.  Now I am not saying it was because of me but I had to try that much harder to offer better products then so many people.

It just started to get ridiculous.  So instead of closing shop, I decided to gear my shop more towards scapbooking.  I think it is much more personal to make scrapbook pages.  Not to much competition.  I am a monthly scrapbooking kit that I sell in my store. So in order to make room in the store to strictly sell scrapbooking kits and a few extras I have a huge sale going on right now.  40% off.  Wahoo!  I posted it on my craft blog and said click here to see all the great deals.    So we will see if I get some sales and get rid of a bunch of stuff.

For all you paper crafters, scrapbookers, and card makers out there, check out my webstore.  ARTFULDELIGHT.COM I am still trying to get the store fully stocked but slowly but surely I will get there.  I now offer a monthly scrapbook kit for an AMAZING price.  You can get the details in my store or check out my blog artfuldelight.blogspot.com

Flat rate shipping to the US of $5 and do offer international and Canadian shipping (check webstore for prices).