free paper chain download

I, for one, am very excited as tomorrow is December 1st. December is, without a doubt, my favourite month of the year; full of celebrations, cosy evenings in, all things mulled and good times with friends and family. It's hygge defined in a month. 

free printable // christmas gift wrap

Apologies for not writing a great deal this week. The whole stealing thing took a lot out of me, so I decided to focus purely on processing orders (thank you!), and getting ready for Christmas markets. Now, I'm feeling a lot better after some thoughtful advice from another seller, and I'm ready for Christmas craziness.

As this Christmas is my first one in business, I began planning ridiculously early. Like, July early. One of my favourite ideas was to sell a nice handlettered wrapping paper, but after researching and researching, I decided it was too costly for my first year. So, as a little thank you for your support, have a free printable of two gift wrap designs! All handlettered and illustrated by me.

They're available as size A4, so you can just print as many as you want/need to cover your gifts. Remember to click 'fill page' when printing so there aren't any large borders.

merry and bright | christmas tree

please note: these are not to be resold, reproduced in retail, or used irresponsibly. 
If you do take a picture of your pressies all wrapped up, tag me in it so I can see!

one-girl-band // marketing hours plus a free printable

When I first started selling these little paper goods, and created social media accounts to link to the etsy shop, a pal at my then-current job (who also sold crafty things and had a wealth of knowledge up her sleeve) gave me a piece of paper with days and times on, accompanied by many, many hashtags. They were all the marketing hours she suggested I'd use to gain more followers and get the business out there.

Personally, I had always hated using hashtags. I had only known them as things you used to gets likes on Instagram/be annoying in general, and I hated that, so to begin with I was sceptical of using them for my business. I didn't want to seem fake. However, I soon discovered that this little piece of paper was incredibly valuable, and I had to get over my aversion of hashtags to grow this little business.

The many marketing hours that go down on Twitter every evening are a great way of showing your latest work, introducing yourself and your business to fellow sellers, and getting that all-important promotion. I can't tell you how much these marketing hours have helped me, and whenever I'm at a craft fair and I'm chatting with the fellow stall-holders, I give them a piece of paper with them all written down, just like my pal did, to hopefully help them with their start of their journey on social media. If you are brand new to Twitter, they are a brilliant way of gaining some followers (and even friends) who are more than happy to retweet and support you. Just remember to do the same for them, and support one another.

Here you'll find a little download of the times I use. There are many more for different types of makers and for different countries, but I stick with these ones for my type of products, so it may be different for you!
Save it, print it and put it by your workspace as a way to remind you. I find putting alarms on my phone for the important ones also helps. 

Let me know if you download it and whether it's helped you!

Also, thank you to that colleague, you know who are and I owe you so much.

P.S- This is a brand new series I'll be working on over the next few months. I'm fairly new to self-employment, so I don't have a world of advice much like others who blog about this, but I wanted to mark it all down for myself, so I can look back and see all that I've learned, and hopefully it'll help someone out there who is just starting out. 

part of the one-girl band series- a series looking at being the one-girl-band behind your small business, plus the trails and tribulations that come with being self-employed.