I’ve been thinking a lot over this last week about promoting our website, ways of generating sales and boosting our positivity… we’ve had a rough year but we’re still here to tell the tale so surely we should be having a positive attitude to things and counting our blessings that we have overcome the not so great obstacles we have faced.
Our Positive Mental Attitude… Glass Is Half Full approach starts here!! Today has seen lots of discussing and planning and writing “to do” lists. A few emails have been sent and things sorted for our next craft fair in two days time.
Craft Fair on Sunday 29th November 2009
Open 10:00am until 4:00pm
Stockton Brook Scout & Guide HQ
Moss Hill
Stockton Brook
Stoke on Trent
ST9 9NW
I have recently spoken to the lovely Claire of Pawprints of Staffordshire and she has told me that there will be a fab range of handcrafted goodies just in time for Christmas, including cards and candles, teddy bears, bags, jewellery, a photographer with limited edition prints, silk scarves and accessories, wooden plaques and letters, a couple of people who do glass painted items like vases, candle holders etc, sock monkeys, knitted and embroidered gifts, crocheted and knitted scarves, wooden gifts and even a lady who makes posh dog biscuits!!!
We’re really looking forward to this event and have lots of new goodies available on our stall including greetings cards, keepsake cards, notebooks and writing sets, bookmarks and gift tags and a fab range of scented and unscented candles. We’ll have some “on the day” special offers to, so don’t forget to come along and say hello and see what bargains you can bag!!
Our next craft fair is in two weeks time and involves an overnight stay in Northampton’s Premier Inn for an early start at the annual Christmas Craft Fair on Sunday 13th December 2009:
Open from 10:00am until 5:00pm
Delapre Abbey
London Road
Northampton
NN4 8AW
We attended this event in 2008 and despite pretty awful weather, it was a fab weekend… Delapre Abbey is set in beautiful surroundings and there were lots of gorgeous handcrafted gifts for sale, as well as lots of friendly crafty stall holders and lovely customers too. Hopefully this year will be equally successful although better weather would be nice as last year was very wet and very cold lol – watch out for me this year, I’ll be the one wrapped up in a dozen warm layers of clothes!! 
For 2010, we are hope that this will be the start of something big… we are planning to expand our online presence and add our products to other selling outlets, eg. Ebay, Etsy and Folksy where currently we are only listed on >Misi< and our own website.
We are also looking to attend more craft fairs and events throughout the year, already having booked a two day event at Tutbury Castle for 30th and 31st October 2010.
As our ranges and crafts continue to expand so does our commitment to supporting causes which are close to our heart, through family circumstances and such like, for this reason we are looking to start a “Annual Nominated Charity” whereby we will donated a percentage of all sales throughout the year… this is something we are looking into at the moment and more details will be available as we progress with this plan.
We are looking into embroidered polo shirts and fleeces too, to give our stall at events a more professional look as well as being an additional marketting tool. We already have our name badges so these will be in the same colours and will hopefully help with our craft fair ‘presence’ in showing our commitment and enthusiasm for what we do.
So… all in all, our ideas are there and now we need to look into them all and put them into action, with lots of positivity, hardwork and commitment our aim is to make 2010 our year… can we do it? We’re going to give it our best shot so watch this space!! 
