Building the dream

Building the dream

I got back into crafting in 2014 with the birth of my beautiful god-daughter and started stitching away and whilst Cross Stitch remains my first love I have started making other things. I completed two crochet courses and as I got asked to be godmother to three others, got a niece and nephew, more friends gave birth and I got more adventurous my crafting “portfolio” expanded as I wanted to create personal gifts. In July 2017 I arranged a girls weekend away and part of that was a baby shower which I made all the things for that. A trip to a craft fair introduced me to paper craft and so my craft stash has expanded and my bank balance decreased! Throughout all of this my friends have said “you need to start an Etsy shop” or “you should sell some of this” or “you should start a business”

Have you ever had that thought – if I won the lottery………I have, many a time!! This dream started as a shop in one of our local towns, the shop would sell crafting supplies and completed crafts by myself and some select others. I would also have space to hold workshops. I work for adult social services and unfortunately see a lot of loneliness, and people who have knitted/ stitched etc. who can no longer fulfil their passion due to ill health. Therefore a key thing for me would be free workshops for the elderly and work in association with Age Cymru, Action on hearing loss, RNIB etc. to develop a way that those people who have lost the ability to carry out their craft to start again! There would of course also be workshops for all other age groups.

I do a lot of miles for work and one day I drove past a caravan site and my mind started developing my dream into perhaps a more sustainable business plan. This would definitely need that lottery win though!!! I would love to have a few lodges and a campsite/ caravan area with a site centre that would house my craft shop and workshop space (as well as conference facilities). By having those lodges in place I would be able to hold “crafting retreats” – a weekend of crafting with guest hosts. I would also like to be able to host crafting fairs.

However, that is the big dream and without a lottery win I can’t see this being possible so we will start out a bit smaller than that!

I started by creating an Instagram page dedicated to my crafting– as I thought that not everybody would be interested in yet another card! For this I needed a name! I wanted a name that was clear what I did but not specific to one craft. Also, I wanted it to be personal to the area I live and so Ithon is the name of the river that runs by where I grew up and by where I live now. Therefore Ithon Crafts was born. From this I received yet more compliments – and yet more “you should start an Etsy shop” comments. The next step was to create this blog. There are some fabulous crafters out there who are very successful just from their blogging – Sarah Froggle at Bella CoCo for starters! So I thought this was another step to getting known! I’m not very confident and so doing things in small steps helps to steadily build that confidence up!

I have taken a deep breath and posted on Instagram yesterday about Mother’s Day cards for sale! So far no purchases but then not many people may have seen it. I have therefore created a Facebook page today but I am yet to publish - far too scared to!

Eventually I think I would like to go to craft fairs with cards and other small items for sale and maybe even create an Etsy shop. My colleague sells her crafts and after a discussion with her I feel like I want to make more and try and sell some but then my anxiety kicks in and I don’t think I am good enough.

I studied business studies at university and a key part of creating a business is knowing your market therefore I created a survey monkey questionnaire that I have circulated to a few friends and so if you are reading this I would appreciate you completing it: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ST6PL3N  

So that’s my dream……………….if you see #buildingthedream its another step towards achieving it x