Beginner Floral Embroidery Pattern

January 24, 2020 Laura

Free Floral Embroidery Pattern for Beginners. Home is Wherever I'm With You DIY home decor. DIY hoop art decor. Beautiful free embroidery pattern download, suitable for beginners. Make this gorgeous embroidery with this simple DIY tutorial.

My husband and I recently celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. It’s funny to look back at those fresh faced younglings we used to be, full of anticipation for what the future held. Well 10 years later, and many adventures later, we may look a little more tired and haggard than we used to but I’m happy to say that he’s still the one I want to do all my adventures with. I’m not me without him and in all the places we’ve lived, the homes and in-between homes, home is always wherever I’m with him! Ok, super sappy portion of this post over. On to the good stuff! I had so much fun designing this floral embroidery pattern and stitching it up for our home that I’m giving the pattern away to you for free!

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I just love this quote. And I suspect I’m not the only one. It’s such a beautiful sentiment and I think it really resonates with people. It helps remind us that home is a person, it’s relationship and connection, it’s not a material place.

I think this pattern is suitable for beginners. There are several stitch types in it, but nothing too complicated. I didn’t do up a stitch guide, so if you don’t know how to do a particular stitch you may have to look it up.

If you make this floral embroidery pattern I would absolutely loooove to see it! You can tag me @yellow_birdhouse on Instagram, or shoot me an email. It seriously makes my day when people make the stuff I’ve designed! I do a little happy dance and scream at my husband about it. Lol!

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32 Bonus Gift Ideas for Etsy Orders

December 7, 2019 Laura

32 Bonus gift ideas to include in Etsy orders. As an Etsy seller, you need to set yourself apart from the rest. One way to do that is with little add-on gifts to include with each other. This adds so much value in the eyes of the customer and turns your reviews from 'ho-hum' to raves!

What’s going to set you apart from all the other Etsy sellers out there? That’s a question that should inform a lot of your business decisions. One excellent way is by creating a super fun unboxing experience for your customers. Pretty packaging, a thoughtful note and a great little add-on gift. Here are the best 32 bonus gift ideas for Etsy orders that I could find!

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Making a little extra effort is what will help you stand out in the minds of the customer. It’s what turns ho-hum reviews into rave reviews. It’s what makes your work instagrammable. (Sure, that’s a word!)

Make recieving one of your orders a youtube-worthy unboxing experience!

Plan to include a relevant bonus gift in your Etsy orders that will add huge value to the customer, without costing you all your profit.

The idea is to find small items in bulk so that it doesn’t cost you much per order but makes the customer really impressed with your thoughtfulness!

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How to Use Your Etsy Stats to Grow Your Business

December 6, 2019 Laura

How to use Etsy stats to grow your business and help you create a thriving shop! Learn how to read and interpret all the data Etsy collects in stats in order to make informed decisions about your shop.

When running an Etsy shop, you need as much straight up fact as you can find. That’s where your stats come in. They contain a wealth of information specific to your own shop that can help you understand your business and the direction you need to go in. I want you to create a thriving shop and learning how to use your Etsy stats to grow your business is a very important step.

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Just like me and your hips, your Etsy stats won’t lie to you. They contain some cold hard truth about your shop, which you can use to make informed decisions about your business.

This is Part 5 of my Etsy series, Your Shop, Your Way. I’m sharing everything I know about running an Etsy shop in the hopes of helping you develop your own successful strategy. I’m not promising massive sales or explosive results. Most of us average, earth-dwelling shop owners see slow and steady growth. We work hard and learn as we go and figure out what success means to us.

For me, success is running my business, my way, in a way that suits my family and lifestyle. In a way that brings in some money and satisfies my personal crafting goals.

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How to Decide What New Products to Sell on Etsy

December 5, 2019 Laura

When you're running a handmade shop, you can't just make whatever you want and hope for the best. Learn how to apply a little strategy to coming up with new design ideas for your Etsy shop. Create a thriving shop full of items that sell!

Etsy loves fresh content and so do your customers. Plus new ideas keep your creative brain moving and shaking! So you know you need some new listings, but how do you decide what to try next? Designing new products, stocking inventory and creating new listings are a crap-ton of work. You don’t want to do all that work in exchange for zero results do you? So let’s apply a little strategy to the process of coming up with new products to sell on Etsy.

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Creating new listings is a vital part of keeping your content relevant and in front of customers eyes. It’s a great way to boost views and confirm to Etsy that your shop is active.

When you post new listings, all the people who have favourited your shop will see a notification. Curiosity might just get the better of them!

In my experience, I’ve had to strike a balance between making the things I love to make and making the things people actually want to buy. Unfortunately those 2 things are not alway the same.

I love being a maker, I love being an entrepreneur, and both those things requires a little sacrifice of the other. I’m primarily a maker, I just don’t always get to make the things I want. And that’s ok, I’m not a sell-out. I just also want to run a profitable business.

And I want you to run a profitable, balanced business too.

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How to Promote Your Etsy Shop on Social Media

December 4, 2019 Laura

Once you hit ‘publish’ on your Etsy listings, you are NOT done. So don’t expect sales to start pouring in. You gotta promote, promote, promote and take advantage of every free marketing opportunity the internet has to offer. This is Part 3 of the Your Shop, Your Way series and we’re gonna talk all about how to promote your Etsy shop on social media.

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You can’t rely on Etsy to draw all of your customers in for you. You need to use every tool at your disposal to attract customers for yourself. I touch on this in Part 4 where we discuss Etsy stats and how to use them to grow your shop. Etsy brings in about 58% of my visitors, I bring in the other 42% myself.

You need to know how to promote your Etsy shop, in a way that isn’t going to eat up all your time or drive you insane!

I’m not talking about ads, or paid promotions. I have not yet cracked those codes.

I’m just talking about all the free ways to promote your shop that you should be taking advantage of.

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