Change Can Be A WONDERFUL Thing!

Good morning everybody! Yep, I'm up and at them at 7:00 am which is pretty unusual for me. So as I always say, "If you can't sleep, get up and do something". 

My something this morning was reflecting on how my blog and Etsy shop has grown over the few months. I'm almost at 100 followers on here! UNBELIEVABLE!!!

 I love and appreciate all of you for sticking with me through the changes with this blog. I first started out as 'ChibiLolita's All Kinds of Cute' mainly promoting my shop. Then I changed it to 'Crazy Beautiful Unique' because I wanted to talk and share more with my readers than shop updates. Yeah, I still post stuff about my shop and Etsy in general, but I also talk about my life, my goals, and just craziness in general. Thank you again for sticking around and reading my posts. 

I'm thinking of doing a giveaway when I reach 100 followers! So exciting! If you want to contribute anything, that would be awesome. You can contact me at cawinchell06@gmail.com 

Making changes to my Etsy shop has brought about a multitude of sweet people opening their arms to embrace me and my items. My first shop concept was jewelry. I made beaded jewelry, earrings and necklaces mainly, trying to make a name for myself. Well, that was really hard. You see, everyone and their Mom sells jewelry on Etsy. Lol! And if a customer is loyal and comfortable with a certain seller, there's no way they will jump from that train to mine. So, I thought about it for months as to what exactly had to change. This is what I came up with:

1. Items offered in shop

2. Shop name

3. The way the photos look

4. More promotion

I went from making ordinary beaded jewelry to creating jewelry from polymer clay that completely reflects me. My shop named changed from 'ChibiLolita's All Kinds of Cute' to 'A Girl and Her Clay'. The new name is easier to find, easier to understand, and just makes plain sense. I changed the background for my photos from colorful paper to plain, white paper. This allows all the attention to be drawn to the item.

See?

       

As for promotion, I opened up a Twitter account, created a business page for my shop on Facebook, and opened up a Pinterest account. Now when I post a new item, I can let my followers know on Twitter and Facebook and also 'pin' a picture of it on Pinterest. The results have been wonderful! I still have much work to do, but the changes I've made so far have worked out. 

Bye Bye Chibi Lolita...

Hello everyone! Yes, I have completely changed my blog AGAIN. But I have a really valid reason for doing it this time, I promise.

Recently I've been worrying, stressing, and fighting with myself over my Etsy shop. I loved the items that are there, but they just don't seem like they fit together. You can't just throw a bunch of cute handmade items together and think they will eventually mesh together. So, I finally did what I started fretting over 2 months ago - changed the name of my Etsy shop ChibiLolita.

I love that name! It was the very first name I came up with when I decided to open a shop. But, I don't think it was the best name to pick. I love the Japanese culture and wanted to pay homage to it by naming my shop ChibiLolita, which means "small girl". In the end, I think this name hurt me since most of the shoppers on Etsy have no idea what ChibiLolita even means. 

As you guys know, lately I've been doing a lot of creating with polymer clay - it's my new "craft love". I've decided to dedicate my whole Etsy shop to my clay creations to create a cohesive atmosphere in my shop. You ready for the name? A GIRL AND HER CLAY! Pretty simple name, but it's easy to recognize, understand, remember, and from a glance you can tell what will be in my shop.

Since I changed the name of my Etsy shop, that meant I had to change my Facebook page, my twitter username and last but not least, my blog name. I had a blog previously on WordPress called "CrazyBeautifulUnique" where I just talked about whatever. I want to do that with this blog also. I'm not associating this blog with my Etsy shop like I did with "Chibi Lolita's All Kinds of Cute". This blog will be about me, my life, my crafts, my cooking, my stories, my whatever I want to talk about. That freedom feels so amazing!

I hope you guys will still follow me, leave comments, and have a good time while you're here. Let's continue to grow together :)