Beginner’s Luck and Thank You Freebies

As of this writing, Sunday night, I have sold 8 of my sketchbooks since opening my Etsy shop on Friday evening. Well, that sounds like a blog post to me! So I thought I would share a fun little nugget of one of the things that makes shopping on Etsy so much fun and how I’m now doing it as a seller. They’re called freebies. Otherwise known as “thank you” gifts.

More often than not, when buying handmade items, or supplies on Etsy, along with my order has come an enclosed free gift. It’s certainly not a requirement of sellers, but some do it anyway. I’ve received things such as an extra little ziplock bag of buttons with my button order, a pair of earrings to match the bracelet I ordered, even an extra item just like the ones I ordered, sort of a surprise buy 3 get one free. And there’s almost always a nice thank you note.

So, here’s a little show-and-tell of the thing I included in my first orders, all from stuff I already had in my studio. I can’t promise I’ll always tuck the same thing into every order, but you’re sure to get a something extra in your package if you shop my Etsy store.

For my first shipment, I used the following:

• Little glassine envelopes, left over from a different project
• Note cards cut from vintage blue index cards, stamped with a “Thank You” from my custom rubber-stamp collection.
• Sheets of red and white labels -because everyone loves a label!
• Bakers twine (from huge spools purchased on ebay, great deal and obviously, I use it for everything!) wrapped around little cardboard spools that I found in tiny bundles at the thrift store.

Each journal was wrapped in vintage legal size typewriter paper, sealed with my personal label and tied up with (again,) baker’s twine and vintage button.

Why go to all this trouble to wrap and add extras? Because everyone likes to open a gift wrapped item now and then even if they did buy it, and… it’s just plain nice.

Now that everything is wrapped, sealed and ready to ship, I realize I left out one very important item from 7 of the 8 packages…my business card. (What a rookie.)

Oh well, it’s to the post office first thing tomorrow- Hooray!