Looking Forward to the Year Ahead : Happy 2017

Our stall on Manchester Christmas Markets - and my Dad who popped down for a visit.

Well, here we are in 2017 and we are really looking forward to the year ahead. 2016 was a fantastic year for us and our little business. We had our best ever year on Etsy and on our own website, got accepted for Not on the High Street and had a fantastic year of fairs and shows.  We were fortunate enough to be invited to have a chalet at Manchester Christmas Markets at the last minute and very enthusiastically snapped up the offer.  It was very hard work - 41 days of selling on top of managing our Etsy shop and our website - but totally worth it. After 2 months of nothing but work and packing orders, we treated ourselves to New Year in the sunshine and went on a Caribbean cruise. It was definitely what we needed and now we are fully refreshed and recharged and full of enthusiasm and new ideas for the year ahead. In fact, we loved it so much that we have already booked to go again this New Year ;)

Rum punch in the Barbadian sunshine 

We have been selling on Etsy for a few years now. Our Etsy products range from assembled gemstone and charm jewellery to hand stamped, personalised pieces and handmade polymer clay and resin jewellery. We have lots of gorgeous things and love making and assembling every piece. It really is a great feeling when someone parts with their hard-earned cash for something we have created. At the moment, we are focusing on developing our hand stamped range further......here is one of our handstamped keyrings, inspired by the episode of Friends where Ross and Rachel first get together. These have been really popular in the last week or so, presumably because they make great Valentine's gifts :

Handstamped You're my lobster keyring.

We also have a lot of assembled gemstone jewellery and with February on the horizon, we are featuring a lot of beautiful amethyst jewellery. Amethyst is February's birthstone, so we thought it appropriate to make lots of new amethyst pieces......such as this lovely raw amethyst necklace :

Raw amethyst necklace

It is all looking very exciting for 2017. We have added a lot of new fairs and shows to our diary, including the Great Yorkshire Show and Chatsworth Country Fair - which we are really excited about. We are desperately hoping that 2017 is the year we can both work full time on our business. James is still working his day job, but I have been full time on the business for nearly a year now. I had to give up my career due to illness (lupus) and this little business has been a life saver for me. We are always looking to expand and develop our business further and late last year, we added a range of sourced jewellery and gifts to our collection. Our own website features lots of animal-inspired jewellery and gifts and although the site is still very much a work in progress, there is plenty to see there. Our newest addition to the site are these cute cat watches : 

How cute is this cat watch?

I am a huge cat lover, so any excuse to involve cats is welcome!

Anyway, I guess I best swing by Handmade Monday in it's new home and check out what everybody else has been up to lately......and then get on with some more product photography and website updates. 

Have a great day xxx