Friday, August 17, 2012

Our First Open House

Last Sunday afternoon, we held our first open house. We invited local friends to come, and enticed them into bringing a guest by offering a free gift if you brought a guest (a magnet). B made some delicious food and we held a drawing for a gift basket that was filled with various items from our shop.

The open house proved to be a success and we were quite surprised at how many sales we had, and I even got a few custom orders that I am really excited about doing. Here are a few photos from our open house.


The yummy food table that got rave reviews!


The "crowd" of shoppers.
Our table of cards. These were a big hit.



Our doggy table. One fleece dog toy that was left and some dog cards (even sympathy cards for the loss of a pet). We had 2 doggy gift baskets that sold almost immediately.


We were very happy with the turnout at our first open house and plan to do it again. We are now going to begin working on Fall and Winter/Christmas items and do a few holiday craft shows in the fall and winter. 

We have a lot of new items to show you soon and some fun things planned!

Friday, August 3, 2012

Dragonfly and Cat Bracelets

We have been busily preparing for our upcoming open house next Sunday. I've finally found a place to find some charms I've been looking for so I made a few new bracelets this week. Once the open house is over, we are going to have a giveaway for a gift basket filled with some of our merchandise. Actually, we will probably end up doing two in the future. We will do one first on Facebook to gain some new FB followers and then one on this blog. I have a few other blog friends that are going to work with me and help spread the word with the blog giveway, so subscribe to our email list so you can find out when the giveaways are up and running or go ahead and follow our Facebook Page B and D Novelties and Gifts

Here are the newest bracelets I have made:


This photo turned out kinda dark but I still think it's pretty!

A clearer photo.




We are beginning our first try at making a jean purse. Once we get it right, we will have all sorts of purses to choose from! I'm excited about these! Also, my next project is going to be small notebooks/journals. I have so many ideas!

Friday, July 27, 2012

New Hemp Jewelry

I'm not going to add any more items to our Etsy store until after our open house in a few weeks because I don't want to add something and then sell it at the open house and have to take it down. For now, I'm just going to showcase some of the new things that we have made. I've been working on making necklaces and earrings. Thinking about selling them as a set but not sure yet. Would love some opinions?

Hemp choker. The stone in the middle is genuine Jade.


Hemp Tear Drop Earrings with small key. These keys are very small and I thought they would be very cute to use as earrings.

I'm getting better with the hemp cord and making different designs with it. Even though you can't see too well on the earrings, the hemp is in a spiral design.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Gift Bags for Every Occasion


One of our newest creations are these cute little handmade gift bags. At first, I was making them simply to give to customers when they purchased a product from us. I would place the item in the bag and give it to the custome that way. We have received some good compliments on these little bags and were told that we could even sell the bags. I had never thought of that! I then had the idea of doing custom orders for these little gift bags. We can customize them to the customer's specifications and give them special pricing depending on how many they are wanting.



We can make these gift bags for weddings, birthdays, holidays, or just as a thank you. We have a variety of sayings to choose from including:



Thank You

Happy Birthday

Thinking of You

Congratulations

Warm Wishes

and various Christmas sayings.





Along with the saying, we can also use other stamps to go along with the sayings such as butterflies, celebration confetti, a bird holding a heart, flowers, a moon with stars, and more. (I also like to add a bit of coloring to the stamps as an accent.)



The bags can come in pretty much any color you would like and each bag comes with a ribbon handle in iridescent pink, gold, purple, blue, or white.



Here are a few samples of some of the gift bag designs we have come up with so far.








If you are interested in purchasing some of these gift bags for a special event, email us and let us know what you have in mind and we will work with you to come up with the design to give you exactly what you are looking for.



Eventually, we are hoping to be able to offer other sizes and designs.


Friday, July 13, 2012

New Greeting Cards and Buttefly Bracelet

We have been busily working on new items in preparation for our open house next month. We have been working on making new and unique greeting cards/note cards and jewelry, and have been coming up with new ideas to add even more fun items in the future. Soon we will be working on making purses, dog toys, and more!

I like the idea of making unique cards like these:

Sometimes we want to be funny, or sometimes we just want to say "I'm Sorry"

Beautiful butterfly bracelet.