I say, I say, I say...have you heard the one about....?

Clowns, originally uploaded by soja.

I made some adjustments to the original pattern and methods, and added to the first two clowns.

The hands were ok, but a bit thin and floppy, so I have lined each hand with polar fleece, giving them a nice rounded, padded shape and feel. All details are stitched on, so if really necessary they can be washed in a machine. I tested this by washing the first two. They came out fine, but the felt was more felted, the rest of the clown (body, hair, trimmings, costume) were completely unaffected. It worries me when I see toys made for youngish (or even oldish) children that can't we washed.

I also decided that the black and white clown needed a hat, and the red multi-coloured clown needed three pom-poms, not two on his shirt.

I also handsewed quite a bit, I unpicked the original hems and re-did them by hand and I think it was worth it. The felt and some of the buttons came from an Etsy seller - Fuzzy Fish, very colourful, and now I know where I can reliably get hold of acrylic felt.

I've registered with etsy as a seller, rather than just a buyer. So now am just procrastinating and thinking about what to do next. I've really enjoyed making these puppets, so that's a good start. The plan is to make up a few things now, after all, I am sort of unemployed until September/October, perhaps getting things ready for sometime in August or September.

There is quite a lot to find out. I need to find out the postage costs from Spain to various countries, this could be a problem as it seems it's cheaper to send things from the UK to Spain, than Spain to the UK, the USA also seems to have a much cheaper postal system - lucky them! Well, I'm going to try and get a list of weights and cost.

I read lots of interesting articles on opening a shop over at etsy, lots of food for thought. Etsians seem to be a friendly helpful bunch, there is a lot of advice posted, though I might not be able to follow all of the recommendations - if I paid myself a 'minimum wage' for making these - it would make them far too expensive - I guess I am a slow maker! ;-) Still, it hadn't occurred to me that by selling at too low a price I would be undercutting someone who was trying to run a business and relying on the income. Hmm, I don't think I'm going to be giving up the day job any time soon!!