Summer's End

Labor Day is upon us.  It's been a busy summer.  We try to get ahead so we will be prepared for the holiday season.  It's right about now that I start feeling the pressure to have more inventory of Scrabble jewelry and Vintage Art Frames completed for the holiday buying season.  As anyone who has a crafting business knows, it takes a long time to create products.  We hate to lose out on the sales during that time of the year, but we can only do so much, and quite honestly we sometimes need a break from the long hours it takes to get everything made.

At any rate, we had a couple of big orders come in the last couple of weeks.  That was good because with the end of summer and the transition to starting school, it always slows down for a few weeks.  Always scary to see those revenue dollars drop, but at least it is somewhat expected.

I made a set of frames that last few days.  Our frame inventory is quite low and will be limited this holiday season.  I did enjoy making them.  They were a nice break from the Scrabble bracelets.  Even though I love how the Scrabble bracelets turn out, they do get tiring to make at times with the precision that is needed.

Well, the next time I write, it will be September and fall will almost be here.  I do like that our summers here in Washington tend to run into September and even part of October at times with warmer weather and little rain, but the leaves will still drop and the daylight hours will still get shorter.  By October and November the rains will be back and cooler temps will move in.  That's okay though.  I love fall and the start of the holidays season!

Here are a few of the frames that I made last week:

Brittany Dog Photo Frame

Border Collie Picture Frame

French Bulldog Frame

Looking towards the fall, here are a couple of bracelets just for the season!

Fall Leaf / Autumn Scrabble Bracelet

Halloween Scrabble Bracelet

Till next time, we hope you have a safe and fun Labor Day!

New Year Organizing

It’s the New Year!  We got through the holiday season – as busy as busy can be!  We now know what is possible during the holiday buying season and look forward to upping our inventory for next year.

But…for the past few weeks, we have been catching our breath, organizing and doing some listing on our other site Vintage Antique Lane.  We love Paws In Time and creating upcycled art, Scrabble jewelry and our vintage art dog frames, but we needed a little break and we also love searching for vintage and antique treasures, so between those two passions, we are always creating, learning, searching.  It’s great exercise for the brain!

With regards to our organizing, we have created an Excel sheet on the computer that tells us how many Scrabble bracelets, Scrabble pendants and dog frames we need to make a week in order to have the inventory we’d like to have by the next holiday season.  As we record sales and production each week, we can see if we are on track, if we need to make extra the following week or if we need to adjust our projections because it’s just not humanly possible keep up with the production schedule we’ve set.

That’s the logical, time management part of the business - knowing that we have to have a production schedule.  We have to have a plan.  Hmm…what about creativity?  What about not making this so much “work” that we don’t enjoy our handcrafted business.  That’s where we had to (have to) find balance.  We’ve also created a daily schedule that allows us to have time to do our Tai Chi and walk the dogs in the morning, time to list some vintage treasures on our vintage site,  a little bit of down time to just “be” and on the Paws In Time handcrafted business side the schedule we need to make this little handcrafted business of ours our livelihood. We’ll see how it goes.

Next week is our first real week of trying the schedule out.  We know we'll still need flexibility because, after all, life does happen.  That’s why we’ve left some room in our production schedule.

I admit that what really gets me excited is creating!!  Now that the planning is somewhat in place, I'm looking forward to getting back to that.  We’ve already released Marilyn Monroe and John Keats Scrabble bracelets,

as well as replacing some of our most popular like our newer Star Trek Bracelet that says, “BEAM ME UP” on the inside, our French Bulldog Bracelet and Banned Books.

We’re off and running in the New Year, we just don’t want to run so fast that we miss all the scenery along the way.

Happy New Year everyone!