Hi!  Welcome to my blog Joyful Threader!  My name is Jessica.  I am a mom to four beautiful little girls and a wife to a wonderful and supportive husband.  A few months ago, I began sewing and knitting a variety of items for my niece's baby girl and my brother's baby son.  I was so proud and happy with the items I made, I just had to show them off to everyone I knew on and off of social media.  The overall response I got was "Jess, you should open up an Etsy store!"  I did!  See over there  ---->

It didn't take me long to realize that there really is a lot more to this then just opening a store.  It's like a whole other world!  Who knew so much went into beginning an online store?  Seriously!  Once I realized this, I did what any good student does, I bought a book.  Not just any book though...I went to my "go to" series of books whenever I want to learn something new...the "...for Dummies" series.  Yes, I bought the "Starting an Etsy Business for Dummies" book.  It's a great book!  If you haven't read it, you really should.  It talks about really basic things such as how to actually sign up for an Etsy account (the for dummies part I'm assuming), but it also talks about what to include in the About section, your store policies, SEO, shipping, how to handle returns, etc.  I'm still reading it actually because as I read I actually try to implement and/or tweak my own Etsy store. It's one of those books that you are going to want to highlight and bookmark pages so you can go back and reread them again and again.  (That concludes my free plug for the "Starting an Etsy Business for Dummies" book, you can thank me later).

Why start a blog?  Well, good question.  It's not like I don't have enough to do already with homeschooling my girls, shuttling them all over the place to extracurricular activities, being a wife, crafting at night, and working on my actual Etsy shop inbetween everything else.  All of this free time?  Why not?  Actually, it is recommended that you do secure a blog or a website early on with your shop name.  Hopefully, people will somehow magically find your blog among the millions of other blogs out there and actually take the time to read it, see your shop, actually click on your shop to peruse it and do I daresay...maybe "buy" something?  So...bottom line...you start a blog with your shop name in hopes of having yet another platform to gain and herd more traffic to your shop.  Honestly, I just want to document my own journey and perhaps help some other newbies out.   

Don't worry, I won't talk the entire time about the items I make.  After all, I do need to keep it interesting.  I plan on discussing/sharing a variety of topics (yes, there may be a post on something new I made for my shop) such as other platforms to sell handcrafted items on, SEO, maybe some tips I pick up myself along the way because I am new myself.  I also would like to showcase a specific shop each week from either Etsy or another platform.

There you have it!  My first post on my blog!  Stay tuned for Feature Friday, where I will showcase a shop from a fellow Etsian (aka another Etsy seller...see we even have a whole other language to become familiar with!) 

See you on Friday!