A somewhat wordy post about the happenings of ambette (part 1)

Holy moly it's been a while since I've blogged! Not because I haven't been doing anything, more because I've been pretty busy.

There are lots of things to fill you in on, but I think I'll start with the most recent first:

The Finders Keepers markets:
Well, what a great day! They were without doubt the best art & design market I've been to in Melbourne - I loved them! The only problem I had was just the feeling of being so overwhelmed by such awesomey awesomeness, that I couldn't decide what to buy and as such, ended up going home with hardly anything.

My plan was that I would collect the cards of the designers that I might like to buy from and go home to browse their online shops at my own leisure. I had assumed that everyone was like me and had some form of online shop that they surely sold their wares from. Not so. When I got home I excitedly laid out all the cards and made a list of everyone's websites in anticipation of the online shopping bonanza that would surely follow.

To my disappointment, when I further explored the websites, most of the designers at the market either did not sell online (only listing their bricks and mortar stockists), or did not have the full range of their goods that I had seen at the market. Oh the humanity!! Needless to say, I spent a good half hour kicking myself that I hadn't checked first that the designers did in fact have everything available online.

Let that be a lesson to all you artists and designers out there - I'm sure I'm not the only one who did this, so you're losing sales by not having a full online shop, and also for not making it clear to potential customers that your lovely goodies are only available on the day of the market.

Anyway, I did manage to buy a couple of things. I got these fab earrings from Madz has Runaway

I loved her range of jewellery, and found it quite difficult to choose.

I also got these extremely cool earrings from Made by White. They are so retro-awesome! Ironically, the only people I bought from actually do have a decent online presence.

Georgie Love:

I have some rather exciting news, which is now a few weeks old, but it's new to you guys! A selection of my laptop sleeves, iPad sleeves and iPhone cases are now available through Melbourne-based Georgie Love. If you're not familiar with the site, it's run by Sally Morrigan, and sells a pretty decent-sized selection of handmade items by Australian independent designers. Pretty handy with Christmas coming up!

On a related note, since I was asked to stock some of my items on Georgie Love, Sally and I have been communicating solely via email. On the weekend I thought it might be nice to go introduce myself to Sally at the Georgie Love stall at the Finders Keepers markets, and meet her in person. I introduced myself as Liz, and was preparing to explain further that I was the maker of all the 'Ambette' items on her site. She initially appeared to know who I was, so I didn't clarify. About halfway through the conversation I started to wonder if she really did know who I was, but by this stage I felt a bit awkward about asking if she knew who I was, so I said goodbye and ran off after she gave me a lollipop and told me about a sale they were having.

Anyway, I emailed Sally today and explained that the weirdo on the weekend who spoke to her as if she knew her was in fact me. Turns out she did think I was a customer, who expected her to remember me from my order history. Haha! I felt a bit silly, but I've learnt my lesson - even if someone seems to know who 'Liz' is, in future I'll leave no room for confusion!

Playing with my banner on Illustrator:
The other day I was looking at my banner and for some reason decided I was a bit bored with the green. I had a play with a few new colour-schemes (they're a bit easier to see if you click on them and view at full-size).

I definitely don't like the bottom one as it's too hard to read, but I don't mind the first couple. I think they look quite summery, and I was thinking of occasionally changing the colour scheme of my banner just to keep things interesting, but I'm not sure if I should stick to the current scheme for the sake of consistency and branding. What do you think?

Right, I've got more stuff to talk about, but this blog post is already getting pretty wordy, so I might leave the other stuff for the next post (I promise the next one won't be 3 months away!).