Thursday 18 October 2012

About Business and Butter

For those of you who didn't know, I work for Carat Media, one of the biggest media agencies in the UK. Working there has taught me a lot about running promotional campaigns for big clients, generally online. However, when I opened my craft shop, I immediately realised something - everything I had learned, every strategy and tactic, was never going to work for a business like mine. I simply didn't have the resources, budget or manpower.

So it was time to go out on a tangent and look at this as something different - not just a shop, but an entrepreneurial project, a microbusiness, with a different strategy, different tactics and different ways of promoting. Once I started thinking like that, not only did things become easier but a lot more enjoyable too, and the feeling of being stuck faded away. Because once you change your perspective and start to think like an entrepreneur, your mission becomes clear, it's easier to know what to do and how to do it and everything becomes generally easier and more enjoyable.

Another thing I discovered when I went down this route is that I love looking at businesses in this light. So many people are stuck in the "I started a business/opened a shop but it's not going very well and I don't know what to do" phase, that I decided to start helping some of the ones in my immediate circle, reworking their whole concept so it stopped being a headache and started being fun and exciting again. This went down well, and I started thinking of all the other small business owners that are currently trying to weed through tons of information, make sense of it and try and apply it to their business but not getting anywhere.

I want to do this in a bigger scale. That's why I've decided to run a series of blog posts on this topic, covering strategy, tactics and promotion among a lot of other things. I'll tell you more about it soon, but for now, I can promise you the series won't be scaringly technical, full of corporate speech, vague, unrealistic or difficult. In fact, it's going to be a lot of fun and I'm really excited!

Now, on a completely unrelated note...

... I churned my own butter last week. Yep. Did you guys know it was so easy? I didn't. In case you don't know how this works but are experiencing a "lets go back to living in farms" inner revolution like me, here's what you do.

You buy a pot of double cream and pour it in a measuring glass. Then you grab a blender and start airing the cream, which basically means you move the blender in up-and-down motions, getting it to go a little above the cream and down again. For a few minutes, nothing will happen and you'll start to despair. Then, three things will happen in a very fast sequence. The cream will whip, then clot (at this point the blender will get stuck in the glass and you'll have to use all the adrenaline you have left in your body to un-stick it and keep going - I almost lost my arm in there) and finally, the butter will separate from the buttermilk. Success!

Get it out of the glass and place it in a wooden chopping board - it should look something like this:


Now, you grab a wooden spatula and start patting it like crazy, which will cause the rest of the buttermilk to separate from the butter.


Do this until it looks like most of the buttermilk has come out, and there you go, you just made your own butter! Now put it in a nice jar for brownie points (I put it in two, salted and unsalted) and show it to anyone who visits, including the man from the gas company. And since I was feeling confident and fortunate, I also made some bread to go with it - so good.


Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Saturday 13 October 2012

Time to Give Back - Farplace Animal Rescue

As you'd probably guess looking at my shop, I love animals. All of them. Even the ones that are slimy or have 8 legs (butterflies not so much because I'm hopelessly scared of them, but as long as they don't come close, I'm groovy). There's another thing I like: helping people in whichever small way I can. It's important for me to support ideas and enterprises that give something back. Today, I'm combining these two likes - for the next few months, I will be donating 10% of all sales from my shop to Farplace Animal Rescue.

The reason I'm doing this is because these guys rock big time. Their work focuses on animal welfare and rescue of animals (including many animals other people turn away), and on environmental protection, habitat creation and development. They also operate under a no kill policy and are the home of St. Strompus Hospice for Sick Cats - a haven for feral cats who are FIV positive.

You gotta love this guys, and they need all the help they can get. That's why, if you buy anything from my shop during the next few months, you can be assured that 10% of the sale money will go to them. If you don't want anything from my shop but still want to show your support, there are different ways you can do it:

· You can go to their site and join their monthly donation scheme through a text message.

· You can join the Great North Run to fundraise for them (this I won't do because every time I run more than 1 mile my lungs end up feeling like sugar coated almonds).

· You can go volunteer, or adopt a little furry one from them.

· You can buy them a little something from their Amazon Wishlist - items start at just 1.21 gbp!


As for me, and apart from the 10% donation, I'm going to make a bunch of cat toys to send to them. I'm really excited about this because I've never made one, and I'm sure the cats won't mind if it ends up looking like an aberration of nature.

If you decide to help them, make sure you share it in the comments below, I'd love to hear about it!


Monday 8 October 2012

And the winner is...

It's over! After a week, we've had 14 giveaway entries so pretty good chances for everyone.

I wasn't sure how to go about selecting the winner, so at the end I've asked a random friend to give me a number from 1 to 14. The number I got was 3, which means the lucky winner of our lovely fox pin is Hayley!

Congratulations Hayley! Make sure you send me a message or e-mail with your address so I can send it to you. For everyone else, don't despair, I will be running another two competitions each with bigger and better prizes! Next one will start on November 1st, feel free to join!

Tuesday 2 October 2012

The Benefits Of A Support Net


I met a lovely girl today. Her name is Nicola and I found her while reading an Etsy forum were people based in Manchester hang out. She was asking if somebody would want to join her and do some craft fairs around here and I jumped at the opportunity. Not only because of how useful it is to have someone to share a stall with (you don't appreciate toilet breaks until you're doing a fair alone and you have to enthusiastically talk to a potential customer while you're breaking down in cold sweats), but because I know how important it is to have like minded people around that understand why you're doing what you're doing and make you feel as if, perhaps, you're not actually crazy.

Being someone that doesn't feel quite cut out for corporate life but doesn't relish the idea of living in a van by the river either, I've met people on both sides of the spectrum. People that love the cubicle culture, that are pretty happy crunching numbers, making a lot of money and playing golf with the director of the company on the weekends on one side, and people whose main life goal consists of selling bracelets in Ibiza and despise you a little bit because “it’s not about the money, man” on the other.

I’m not judging either of them. I mean, if they’re happy, I’m happy. I just find it hard to relate, and I know I can’t talk about my plans and goals with them because they not only won’t be able to relate either, but will probably try and find faults in them and I rather use my energy elsewhere, rather than trying to explain why I chose to do what I do.

I’m quite lucky, to be honest. I have a lot of very supportive friends who think that what I’m doing is groovy, but I’m also aware that it’s not easy to meet new people – especially people with similar interests - once you’re past natural friendship breeding grounds like university. So, when someone shows up and I feel like we’re in a similar wavelength, I latch onto them like a barnacle to a ship.

I met Nicola for a coffee in town and she showed up with an entourage consisting of two friends and a boyfriend. They were all lovely and funny and interesting, and I’ll be happy to meet them again. I always like meeting new people, especially the ones that don’t even raise an eyebrow when I tell them I’m planning to attempt to churn my own butter this weekend, and as a bonus I now have a lovely stall mate for my future craft fairs.

And it made me think of the importance of having that support net. For all of you that might feel like you’re too busy with your day job, your crafts, your blog, your side business, your training for a marathon or whatever it is you devote your efforts to, and don’t have time to go out and meet some like minded people, think about it. It can get pretty overwhelming and lonely when you don’t have anyone to share your successes and failures with, someone who doesn’t need explaining why you want to quite your safe job with the fancy title and steady pay check, who encourages you when your last project goes to pot and gives you some words of wisdom when you’re feeling a bit blocked. Similarly, it will feel great when you can do the same for them.

So get out there, join some forums, read and comment in some blogs, make some twitter friends, post an ad in your local coffee place, join a knitting group (or start one!). Start with something small, and once you get started, it will get easier. You might meet some strange people, but eventually you’ll meet someone who knows exactly why you’re saying why you’re saying, and when you do, remember, latch onto them. You’ll be glad to have them around when you are celebrating your 100th sale or wailing in despair because your last creation has made it to the Regretsy front page.

Plus, if everything else fails, at least you’ll have some company in that van by the river.

Monday 1 October 2012

Giveaway Time!

I'm really excited to be announcing my first ever blog giveaway! I'm going to run this giveaway for 3 months in the run up to Christmas, first one (October) starting today. They will last for a week, with the winner being announced on the 8th of each month.

To participate, all you have to do is leave a comment below saying "I want a pet fox", along with your name. The prize, as you will surely have guessed, will me one of my little fox pins, which look lovely anywhere you pin them, if I may say so.



Good luck to everyone!