Many thanks to Barnsley College, for inviting me to have a stall at their Christmas fair this week. I met lots of lovely students and staff, and since then I’ve been working on getting orders ready for their personalised wooden Christmas baubles.
Here is the latest bauble that I’ve cut so far today:
… and this is me boxing it up, ready to send off this afternoon. (Woo, get me with my TikTok ‘boxing-up’ videos!)
All of the hard work by me and my elves the last few weeks has paid off, and we have scored a Christmas #1 on Amazon!
At the moment when you see the wooden letter baubles on Amazon, they have a little orange flag with them that says “#1 Best Seller”:
I’m really happy about that! But of course, it’s only a Christmas #1 in a sub-sub-sub category of Amazon (i.e. “Handmade Ornaments”), and at the moment it’s still #9 in the “Handmade Products” category:
One day I’d like to get to number 1 in that Handmade Products category. Especially because at the moment #5 in the chart is a joke “million piece jigsaw puzzle”:
I suspect that people buy those as Secret Santa gifts for colleagues, and I have a strong suspicion that their colleagues would prefer to receive a nice wooden bauble rather than a plastic bag full of sawdust π
Having a craft business means that the “Christmas rush” starts early. Normally I begin sending boxes of my lasercut gifts off to Amazon in September, but this year my existing lasercutters both broke, so I had to order a new one – but it couldn’t be delivered until mid-October. Since then I’ve been frantically trying to catch up with my cutting schedule, making alphabet baubles:
This is what I look like for most of the day at the moment:
However there’s so much to do that it’s not just my Laser Lair that gets full of baubles. The rest of the house becomes part of my little factory…and the rest of my family become my little Christmas factory elves. Here is one of them putting ribbons in the baubles:
LaserSister factory elf #1
…and here are two more making up boxes and putting the labels on them:
LaserSister Christmas factory elves #2&3
Hopefully we’ll get all of them sent off to Amazon in time for the Christmas rush!
Click here to see if I managed to get them to the warehouse on time, or if they are sold out. (The link shoud go to my Amazon Handmade page, so you can get a live view of the baubles.)
Woo, get me – I’ve been trying out 21st-century technology today, and have discovered how to put a lasercutting video onto TikTok.
I’m not sure it was worth all of the effort, to be honest. I’m hoping that TikTok goes away, and that I never have to interact with it again. Either that, or I’m hoping that as more middle-aged people (like me) start using it, TikTok will realise how much people hate the bossiness of an app that immediately starts playing video and audio content as soon as you open it up. Ugh.
Anyway, in an attempt to train TikTok’s algorithms into at least showing me more relevant looping streams of video, today I’ve been trying to teach it that I like crafts and art – especially laser-cut and polymer clay art.
Below is the actual video I uploaded. My first ever attempt at uploading some content on TikTok. It was such a giant, convoluted hassle that I might never bother again. But just in case I do, I wrote a reminder to myself on my KayVincent.com website, vaguely showing how I managed it.
It was a speeded-up video clip showing my laser cutter in action, cutting this ‘M’ Christmas tree bauble decoration:
Maybe I’ll stick to YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram, and leave TikTok for the kids. Dunno.
Sander sadness…
In the meantime, the reason I’ve been making lasercutting TikTok videos instead of sanding the decorations is that my sander is broken. It’s the second sander this year that has spontaneously conked, so I’m going to hunt down the receipt to see if it’s still under warranty. In the meantime I’ve ordered another sander, but have gone for a more industrial model, rather than the (literal) home or garden version. Hopefully by Friday my little sanding station (in the garage) will be back up and running. Because I definitely don’t want to be hand-sanding hundreds of wooden Christmas decorations.
Last month I wrote this article about experimenting with Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) programme – where the basic idea is that sellers ship a load of products to an Amazon warehouse, then Amazon do the picking, packing and postage for them. I’ll try to remember to do a more detailed report when the dust has settled and the Christmas rush is over, but for now let’s just say that the experiment appears to have been successful. In fact it’s been so successful that I have scored a “Christmas number one” this week, and here is my screengrab to prove it:
As shown in the screenshot, my personalised Christmas letter bauble is now officially an Amazon Best Seller.
When is a #1 not a #1…?
OK, it’s a bestseller in a subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory. But I’m still taking it as a win!
It was hard work, though. In order to get to that stage I’ve had to sell a lot of bauble ornaments. And in order to get to that stage I’ve had to make a lot of bauble ornaments. For six weeks in the run-up to Christmas it felt like my whole house was a mini factory full of baubles, wood sheets, ribbons, boxes, and wrapping materials. My family became my factory workers, and my cat became very confused.
The final batch of ornaments was only processed by Amazon yesterday (21 December), so maybe that’s too late for even Prime customers to order my products. But in the meantime I’m just going to bask in the glow of having achieved a Christmas #1 in the charts.
They keep selling out, so by the time you see this they might all be gone again. And in that case it won’t be worth looking at any of my shops. But for just this brief window in time, I’ve been able to achieve a bit of an ambition to be a chart-topper on Amazon.
(Feel free to skip reading this post if you aren’t interested in my laser-cut products and services, because that’s basically what this post is about. The basic suggestion is that the perfect Christmas family gift is one that I’ve made with my laser cutter…)
Apparently the December 2020 issue of Family Tree Magazine should be available for uploading and reading today. I already have a subscription to it via my local library, but I’ll be interested in this particular issue because it contains my first-ever advert in a magazine.
The issue includes a picture of what could be the perfect Christmas family gift…a personalised bauble:
OK – I probably should have put one of my family tree artworks in the ad instead of the bauble design (what with it being the “Family Tree” magazine), but
I wanted to be friendly and wish the magazine a merry Christmas, seeing as it’s their December issue, and
My family trees are bigger and more expensive than the baubles, so maybe fewer people would be interested in them.
So if you’re reading this post because you saw my ad in Family Tree Magazine, then welcome! Here is a picture of a Christmas tree ornament that could (literally) have your name on it:
This is one of my family tree artworks in comparison:
My Etsy shops:
I’m currently in the process of moving from my old ‘PolymerKay’ Etsy shop to my new ‘LaserSister’ Etsy shop. However, the personalised baubles should hopefully be available from both shops by the time you read this.
The shops contain a range of baubles; from pre-made letters to completely personalised messages.
…so in answer to the question of how to make a perfect Christmas gift for the family? Basically just visit one of the shops above, make an order including the family name, and I do the rest. Easy!
Do you have an idea for a personalised artwork that is a bit more ambitious? If so, please feel free to contact me, and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.
(Free downloadable laser-cutting resource file of a Christmas tree bauble shape that can be personalised by etching it with a name, date, image, etc.)
Quick! Christmas is coming! (*or not, if you’re reading this in February.) The whole world is trying to cash in on it join in with the festivities. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just relax for a moment and create a quick and easy laser-cut Christmas tree decoration (or room/door/window decoration, if you make it bigger) without having to put any time or effort into designing one for yourself? Well, that’s what this free downloadable SVG file is for. Download it, open it in your graphics package, insert a name, then cut it from your preferred wood or acrylic. Hey presto – you’ve got a quick Christmas tree decoration. You’re welcome π
It’s very quick and easy to cut from sheet of wood (e.g. 3mm laser-grade plywood), and makes a great (fast!) gift.
The downloadable file is a PDF file, but if you prefer a different format then I have also posted the design on Vectorstock.com as a free-for-personal-use file in various different formats.
I hope you found this resource useful. If you can think of any more tutorials or designs that you’d like to see in future then please let me know. You can use the comments section or the ‘Contact Us’ page, or interact via the social media buttons.
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