Canva - The Secret to Looking Professional

I spend a lot of my free time trying to figure out how to better my Etsy business, which basically means I'm constantly trolling the online forums. There's lots of good info there if you take the time to sort through it all.

Someone posted a question a few weeks ago asking buyers what turns them off to a shop once they click on an item. Most of them said pictures and a lack of shop policies (which I was very guilty of), but one person mentioned that they don't like when a shop doesn't look put-together. Namely, no banner, no logo, etc.

For the last year my banner on my page has been a pretty generic picture of roses and baby's breath that I took a couple of years ago. I never really thought twice about it, but it certainly didn't fit with what I sell or say anything about me or my business.

So I finally posted a question of my own. How do you make a banner? For free, because I'm a cheapskate.

And thus I was introduced to Canva. The secret to looking professional on the internet. I had to download a new browser to use the site (my preferred Safari isn't yet compatible), but it was totally worth it. It's super user friendly and there's tons of free options so you can really create something that says something about you without having to spend a penny. Granted, there are even more options if you're willing to shell out a few dollars, but that's beside the point.

This is what I came up with for my new banner:

Simple, clean and effective. It gets my shop name out there in a very low-key way. I don't want my banner or my logo to distract from the items I have for sale, but I want it to look like something that a professional did (hopefully I achieved that, lol).

The opportunities are endless on Canva. You can create banners, business cards, facebook pages, blog pages, even your own custom-sized image. I'm officially addicted.

I was messing around with it one night and came up with a new design for my business cards.

All my boyfriend could say was, "Looks good. But 'crafter extraordinaire'? Really?"

Hey, I was just having fun. And what's more fun than that?

Get out there, guys! Try Canva for yourself and let me know how you like it :)

Burlap Christmas Wreath

What a week! My booth is officially closed at the local antique mall and my Etsy views have increased 300% this month, due to my tweaking, re-tweaking, and triple-tweaking of all my listings and my SEO. Not to mention that I've added more than I ever have. Granted, 11 items isn't really a lot, but I'm getting there.

One of this week's projects (I've been a busy bee) was an adorable little burlap Christmas wreath. While I generally prefer the glitter and pizzazz of a decomesh wreath, my boyfriend absolutely hates them. When I told him I was going to make a burlap one he actually volunteered to drive me to Michaels with the hopes that it would replace the one that I have ready to put on my front door after Thanksgiving.

No such luck for him. It's too small for a front door wreath and our door is exposed to the elements anyway, so it just wasn't to be. So it is now posted on my Etsy site, hopefully soon to go to another loving home.

I love it! I'm pretty strict about having seasonally-appropriate decorations up in my house, but I'll admit that I've got this thing hanging on the wall in my hallway right now.  It's so simple, it's the perfect addition to a "rustic Christmas" theme.

I've got to say that I'm really digging the little faux-stitcheed deer on this ribbon, too. It's made to look like a knitted sweater and as much as I love the look of it, I can tell you from experience that it's a bit of a pain to actually knit those things. Tangled and overlapping yarn, a cat trying to drag off the skeins and making a huge knot of the whole thing . . . Nightmares.

I'm a sucker for a double bow like this one. I've made some of the round bows (the kind that I can only ever think of as a "fair ribbon" bows) and used them on various wreaths, but I always seem to come back to these. They're almost peppy, somehow.

I hope you like this week's craft as much as I do!