Blog Update

Hi All, I have reached the maximum storage size on my current wordpress plan so will be taking a break to focus on my millinery work. Until I blog here again I hope you enjoy looking through my back catalogue of posts to help you in your own stitching journey’s. Through the work of ‘The Stitch Sharer’ and your lovely feedback my confidence has grown to the point that I have been able to start up a small fledgling business handcrafting and selling hats, headpieces and fascinators. If you would like to see how this develops please pop over to www.isabellajosie.com and follow my millinery blog.

The Making of a Trilby Hat – Isabella Josie

If you would like to see how I made this felt trilby hat, click on the image  – it should take you through to my millinery site. 🙂

Several people have been asking me how a handmade hat is created – so I’ve created a short video to show. Hope you enjoy!

 

via The Making of a Trilby Hat — Isabella Josie

All About Etsy Listing – Stocking your online shop – Part 2

If you have followed my last post you will of begun to set up your very own Etsy Shop. Please feel free to take a look at my Etsy shop (www.isabellajmillinery.etsy.com) as you work though this post as it will help you to understand what I’m writing about.

The Listing section is all about putting the stock / products in your shop. Each time you put an item up for sale in your shop you will be creating a ‘listing’. 

The listing page is quite long, so I’ve captured it in several screen shots. I’ll explain the main sections of each image as we go. The screen shots were taken a few weeks ago, and Etsy does regularly update its forms and templates so if its a while between me writing and you reading this post things may look bit different. At the time of writing a series of additional attributes (e.g. colour, occasion, celebration) have just been added under the categories section.

Opening an Etsy Shop – Part 1

Over the next few weeks I am going to be writing about my experience of setting up an Etsy Shop. If you haven’t heard of Etsy, its basically an online e-commerce site that specialises in handmade and vintage items. Here’s a link to my shop page if you want to see what an open shop looks like www.isabellajmillinery.etsy.com.

The search bar allows you to look for items in other shops, take a look around. As you will see each ‘shop’ looks slightly different as the seller is able to customise the appearance of their ‘shop’ using a series of templates.

Ok, there are some initial things I would suggest you do before you get get started on Etsy.

Open for Business – Isabella Josie Millinery

I am so excited!

Isabella Josie Millinery is ‘Open for Business’.

If you have been reading my blog for a while you may remember that I have dreamt of selling my makes for quite some time. Way back in 2013 I was writing posts about my business thoughts and it sort of went on a ‘back-burner’ until I fell in love with hats.

I’m delighted to say that I have two pieces of excellent business news to share.

I have just opened my first ever online Etsy based shop to sell hats, fascinators & headpieces. It’s called IsabellaJMillinery which was as close as I could get with Etsys 20 characters shop name limit. Please click on the link and have a look around. I’m still working on my online shop but feel like it’s at a point I can officially say ‘I’m open’!

www.etsy.com/uk/shop/IsabellaJMillinery

I’m keen to help others get started on their own online shop and I have contacted Etsy to see if I can get permission to use some behind the scene screenshots so I can write some ‘step-by-step’ opening an Etsy shop guides. Fingers crossed they will get back to me soon.

My second piece of news is that a range of my Isabella Josie hats are proudly on display in the real world in a local beauty salon called Marina Beauty Box at Port Solent Marina near Portsmouth, England. Port Solent is a great place to look around so if you live in the local area please do pop in and have a look. For readers who live further afield here are a few pictures so you get the idea.

Can you see my hats? There they are, very proudly displayed at the front door. If you look inside the shop you will capture a glimpse of a few more on the right hand side – Voila!