The Big Day

So it's been an extremely long day.  My amazing husband, Dale Mitchell, is a graphic designer and he stayed up all night creating these amazing tags for my jewelry.  It only took so long because I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted.

He designed this wonderful logo an came up with the tagline: "Every Design One of a Kind"

Then the entire fam spent all morning hand cutting the tags and attaching them to the jewelry.  We next took them to Edge Collectibles but the hooks weren't working right so we spent the next several hours going to nearly every store in Janesville to find something.  We finally came up with some cute ornament hooks that we bent to fit in the slots of our display.  The display is actually old slated closet doors.

I think it turned out really nice and I really appreciative of the help I received from my family.  I couldn't have done this without them.

 Of course you can still visit my online store at: alyxandreadesign.webs.com

Big day

Today is the day!!!  My husband was up all night designing a logo and the tags for the store and he is about to print them off so we can put them on the jewelry.  Then we're heading over to the store after 10am. !!

Brick and mortar

So it's official...I will have a display to sell my jewelry at Edge Collectibles at 4 E. Fulton St. Edgerton WI.  I will start on 12/1.  I'm soooo excited.  I absolutely can not believe that something I made is going to be on sale at an actual store.

Here's a pic of the necklace I was wearing to make the sale.

I also brought in ornaments and other jewelry to show her.  She loved it and is excited to have my products in her store.  She even told me to raise my prices!

New Adventure

I'm embarking on an exciting new adventure and blogging seems to be the thing to do these days so here goes nothing.
About a month ago I made a necklace inspired by pic on Pintrest.  I put my own spin on what I saw and ended up with this 

I thought I had created other people might buy so I decided to look around for a way to sell my new creation.  I had heard of Etsy through my addiction to Pintrest so I started a shop.   Here's me: http://www.etsy.com/people/amitchell182  Now I have 25 products in my "shop."  I've also had over 130 views of my necklaces.  However, I have had zero sales except for a couple of co-workers.

I currently work full time in social services and consider myself a very patient person but when it comes to dumping money into a project that I'm hoping to make some extra money from I get a little nervous.  But, today I got some exciting news as well as did some scary math.

For the scary part first...I started using accounting software to track my expenses and hopefully income soon.  I have kept MOST of my receipts so I went to town adding $1.47 for ribbon here and $6.00 for a pendant there and found out I have invested a LOT of cash into this little adventure.  I really thought I had been keeping my spending to a minimum.  I used to have a part-time contract counseling job in addition to a full-time job but with the state's last round of budget cuts my contract was not renewed.  So, I've basically been living paycheck to paycheck and I can not to be throwing money around like this.  I know it takes money to make money but jiminy crickets this is scary.  So, I have been a tad bit anxious today which has caused me to pour my stress into making more jewelry :)

But like I said I've also had some exciting news today.  Due to an amazing husband who has been working hard to build up local contacts in order to expand his graphic design/visual comm. career he encouraged me to speak to a local store that is looking for local artists to rent display space.  So we made a trip to Edge Collectibles in the lovely tiny town I call home, Edgerton WI.  I spoke to the owner and have an appointment with her tomorrow to show her my jewelry and discuss the possibility of having it on display and for sale in an actual store.  From what I've gathered in my recent research this in practically unheard of especially for people who have no idea what they are doing.  So wish me luck!!!!!