A New Decade Means New Stuff @ The Krafty Lady Fair Trade Store!

Hi everyone and a very, VERY happy new year, and new DECADE to you all! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and enjoyed spending quality time with family and friends 🙂

Thanks to everyone who came by the eBay store: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/thekraftyladyfairtradestore and signed up to the website http://www.thekraftylady.com – we still need some more members so please pop by when you have a minute and join our little community. There’s forums where you can chat with other members about anything and everything, blogs, games (Pacman and Tetris! Old Skool!), news on Fair Trade and charity events we’re helping with, and loads lof other cool stuff so it would be great to see you all there!It only takes a minute or so to fill out a profile and add a piccie of yourself and it’s well worth it 😉

Christmas at The Krafty Lady was truly awesome, and a huge thanks to everyone who bought gifts for their loved ones (or for themselves ;-D ). It kept me really busy and I had great fun. Being back on eBay is much better than I thought it would be! Thanks also to everyone who has left such kind feedback – we’re still rocking at 100% positive and I don’t expect that to change this year! (In fact, I’m *hoping* we might get to Top Rated seller status in the next couple of months… I’ll keep you posted!).

I’m currently listing lots of items – some of them you will have seen at the old shop, but quite a lot of the items coming in next week are all shiny and new so drop in frequently to get the best bits! Hoodies, hats, scarves, gloves and candley things are all selling as soon as I’m listing them at the moment, and I’m starting to list some gorgeous jewellery in time for Valentine’s Day. Body jewellery and ear stretchers will be back soon, too, with some job lots at *Bargain* prices so if you run your own shop, car boot sales or market stalls it may be worth coming by to have a look. I’m also in the process of getting some of the festival bits on ready for the new Festival Season starting in a couple of months – if you missed out on the poi before you’ll be pleased to know they’ll be back, with lots of other cool festival accessories!

We’ll also be doing some charity sales soon and taking part in some local charity events – keep an eye on our blogs for more information on these and to see how you can get involved. It’s Fairtrade Fortnight coming up so they’ll be lots of Fairtrade news soon!

You can sign up to our eBay store newsletter, the website newsletter, Twitter, our WordPress blog and even Facebook and MySpace to get the latest news, special offers and new items.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2010 and looking forward to seeing you at the website or at the shop. Thanks again to everyone who has visited so far, I’ll be back blogging more news soon!

*MWAH*

Viki xxx

The Krafty Lady is Moving! :-)

 

Hi everyone!

Sorry it’s been a while since we last spoke – this year had been a pretty tough one for us at The Krafty Lady and we’ve had some really important decisions to make, which we weren’t prepared to confuse you with until we knew what we were doing ourselves!

You may have noticed that our websites; http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk and http://www.thekraftylady.fr have been down for some time now… Don’t panic, we’re still here! 🙂 Soon all of our URLs will be redirected to our new eBay store, where we will be setting up camp for a while.

We really wanted to do a complete overhaul of our website and for this reason we’re closing it down until we can find a design and hosting company that we’re completely happy with! Our website is looking rather old now, and to be able to update it properly we’re going to need a bit of time to work on it.

However, in the meantime, you can find everything that was on the website at our shiny new eBay store by typing: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/thekraftyladyfairtradestore or http://www.thekraftylady.com – as of next week ALL of our URLs will be redirected to the eBay store so you shouldn’t have any problem finding us on there 🙂 And you can still contact us through our email addresses: thekraftylady@gmail.com or sales@thekraftylady.co.uk, or via our Skype: The_Krafty_Lady (02032877574).

And of course we will still be providing you with amazing Fair Trade and Ethically Sourced products as well as our World-Famous insanely good customer service! 😉

We want to thank everyone who’s supported us this year, and hope that your support will continue during this changeover period – it will be thoroughly rewarded with an awesome, amazing, fantastic new website at some point in the next few months! 🙂 Don’t forget to spread the word and tell your friends!

We’ll keep you updated with all the latest news – for live updates follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/TheKraftyLady) or at our WordPress blog (https://thekraftylady.wordpress.com).

Thanks again, we look forward to seeing you at The Krafty Lady Fair Trade Store!

Viki & Paul

The Krafty Lady

Huge Summer Sale – Up To 50% off Fair Trade & Ethically Sourced Products @ www.thekraftylady.co.uk

Hello everyone!

I hope you’ve been enjoying the Summer Festival Season and have been behaving yourselves at the same time 😉

Just a little note to let you know that there is currently a HUGE Summer Sale on at The Krafty Lady, with up to (and over, in some cases!) 50% discount on Fair Trade & Ethically Sourced products, including gorgeous wooden boxes, cast iron cauldrons, soapstone sculptures, beautiful candle kits ideal for gifts, incense, oil burners, pendulums, wands and crystal balls! All of these items must  go to make way for new stock, so please take a browse and pass this direct link to our sale items on to anyone you know who might be interested:

http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk/specials.php

Enjoy the rest of your Summer, and we look forward to seeing you in the shop! Don’t forget to keep an eye out for our special discount code in The Festival Guide, and keep it green, people! 🙂

Viki and Paul

http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk

http://www.thekraftylady.com

http://www.thekraftylady.fr

Hello everyone!

I hope you’ve been enjoying the Summer Festival Season and have been behaving yourselves at the same time 😉 Just a little note to let you know that there is currently a HUGE Summer Sale on at The Krafty Lady, with up to (and over, in some cases!) 50% discount on Fair Trade & Ethically Sourced products, including gorgeous wooden boxes, cast iron cauldrons, soapstone sculptures, beautiful candle kits ideal for gifts, incense, oil burners, pendulums, wands and crystal balls! All of these items must  go to make way for new stock, so please take a browse and pass this direct link to our sale items on to anyone you know who might be interested:

http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk/specials.php

Enjoy the rest of your Summer, and we look forward to seeing you in the shop! Don’t forget to keep an eye out for our special discount code in The Festival Guide, and keep it green, people! 🙂

Viki and Paul

http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk

http://www.thekraftylady.com

http://www.thekraftylady.fr

Flatrate Mainland UK Postage now just £5.95 @ www.thekraftylady.co.uk

Hail Facebookers, bloggers, Twits & Fans!

I’d like to announce that we have finally caught up with other online stores and are finally able to offer flat rate mainland UK postage at just £5.95. That means you can buy as much, (or as little) as you’d like and the postage cost will always be the same. Much easier!

We’re also opening up more payment options for you, so for those of you who don’t like paying via PayPal, (even though you don’t need an account to make a secure payment), you will be able to choose from a range of payment options such as BACS and Google Checkout, (as well as PayPal). This will *hopefully* be available in the next few weeks. As we use PayPal we are already using a secure payment server, however you’ll notice that as we get new payment options on the checkout we’ll also be getting an SSL certificate (the little padlock that appears beside a secure transaction) to reassure you lovely people that all of the transactions we make are kept totally secure with the new payment options.

We will be updating the website too over the next few months so keep an eye out for a redesign. All the changes will be small but will hopefully make your shopping experience all the better, and will also make the website easier on the eye! As always, we’d love to take your suggestions because it’s your shop. We have learned so much over the past year the shop can only get better and better!

You may also have heard that we will not be taking part in the London Bridges Walk for Kidney Research UK this year. The recession has hit everyone hard, (including us!) so we’ve only managed to raise a feeble £20 even though we have been fundraising since January. Because of this, we have decided that we will donate the money we would have spent on travelling to the kidney walk and buying food in London etc. (about £70) to Kidney Research UK through our sponsorship page, as we feel that the money would be better spent going directly to them rather than being spent on us getting to the walk! You can still help though; you can make a donation at:http://www.kidneyresearchuk.org or through our sponsorship page: http://www.kidneyresearchukevents.org/thekraftylady but please remember we will not be attending the walk so this will be a donation not sponsorship!

Once again we want to thank you for your support and custom – especially this year when we are all trying to save our money for necessities; it’s great to know we’re still wanted! 🙂

Have a great time at any festivals you may be attending, stay safe, and we’ll catch up a bit later on in the Summer!
Rock on!

Viki and Paul

www.thekraftylady.co.uk
www.thekraftylady.com
www.thekraftylady.fr

Summer is Coming & So Are the Festivals!

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while since I last posted, but there’s been quite a lot going on behind the scenes! Lots of our ranges have been refined and expanded and we’re still working on a new design for the website but it’s slowly coming together.

So, what’s new?! Check out all of our new body jewellery and ear stretchers – the section is expanding and we’re getting even more over the next couple of weeks. If you need advice on ear stretching visit our “Beginner’s Guide to Ear Stretching” and our “Ear Stretching FAQs” pages – it’s had over 12,000 hits so far and I’ve given advice to literally hundreds of people for free – if the answer to your question isn’t on the page then just drop me an email at: thekraftylady@gmail.com and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.

We’ve also got a fab new “Festival Fun!” section which we’re currently working on filling – they’ll be some VERY special hats in there next week so keep checking back..! And a selection of poi and other fun festival stuff, which we’ll be adding over the next couple of days. There’s also some really nice suede tobacco pouches and Rio carnival whistles!

Our spiritual section will also be expanding soon with a wider range and new items such as chalices, scrying mirrors and tarot cards. It’s taking a while as we’re looking for products that are either fairly traded or made in the U.K. and ethically sourced, so I’ll post again when we get them 🙂

Big news! We have an advert in The Festival Guide which is available from all good festivals in the U.K. throughout the Summer. Keep an eye out for it as it features an exclusive discount code only for Festival Junkies! And it’s also a pretty good read, (the magazine; not the ad! ;-D )

A quick word too on our tube gloves; we can’t get anymore in until the Winter, so what we have left is currently all there is 😦 If you’re planning on getting a pair you need to get in there quick because they’re selling out really fast! Most styles only have one pair left now. We’re desperately trying to find some more but it’s hard as they’re imported, and we only want to get them from a BAFTS supplier to ensure they have been fairly traded.

And finally Paul and I will be taking part in the Kidney Research UK London Bridges Walk again in July this year. If you have some spare pennies any sponsorship would be greatly appreciated; last year we raised over £300 and were hoping to beat that with £500 this year… but so far we’ve only raised £20! I know that asking for money at this time is not really appropriate, but it’s a charity that’s often overlooked and they really do need your support. You can sponsor us at this web page: http://www.kidneyresearchukevents.org/thekraftylady and the money will go directly to Kidney Research UK. If you are a UK taxpayer please giftaid your donation; this means that Kidney Research will receive an extra 28% on top of your donation which comes directly from the government.

I’ll be back very very soon with more news – things are really moving now and there’s lots to do! Enjoy the rest of your day and we look forward to seeing you at the shop! Don’t forget you can keep up with all of us here at The Krafty Lady live on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/thekraftylady

http://twitter.com/VikiCollins

http://twitter.com/Paul_Rawlings

http://twitter.com/SkyTheCat

From all of us, have a good one and speak next time!

Viki & Paul

Fairtrade Fortnight & 10% OFF @ www.thekraftylady.com!

I hope you’re well and are enjoying 2009 so far 🙂 It’s turned out to be quite a busy year for The Krafty Lady – hence the reason we haven’t sent an update out for a while! I’m sitting in my lovely new organised office now, so it’s looking to be a good year! 😀

I just wanted to tell you about Fairtrade Fortnight which is taking place over the next couple of weeks. You can find out about all sorts of cool events going on in your part of the world by logging on to http://www.fairtrade.org.uk and going along to take part. We’re also joining in by offering 10% discount when you spend just £5.00 or more during Fairtrade Fortnight at http://www.thekraftylady.com, http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk, or http://www.thekraftylady.fr . Just type the following code in at the promo code box on checkout and 10% will be magically deducted from the total!

Promo Code: KRAFTYFAIRTRADE

I’m currently listing all sorts of exciting new Fair Trade products, including bags, wallets, hats… and even poi! And you may haave noticed the body jewellery section is looking a bit low – keep checking back over the next couple of weeks for some fantastic new products and ranges! There’s lots to be excited about.

Also please keep an eye out for our ad and promo code in the new Festival Guide which is out in May, and we’ll once again be donning the purple shirts to take part in the London Bridges Walk for Kidney Research UK in July; a 7 mile walk which takes us over the bridges of London – hopefully with better weather this year, although it still didn’t put us off! See our Gallery Page for photos of last year’s event, and if you’re feeling generous please go to: https://www.kidneyresearchukevents.org/profile.aspx?a=1705436132410025504 and sponsor us; the money goes directly to Kidney Research and you can even Gift Aid your donation to make it more worthwhile. We want to thank everyone that sponsored us last year – we raised over £300 for Kidney Research UK, and plan to beat that with £500 this year! 🙂

So that about wraps it all up for now – we’ll be in touch very soon with more updates, but in the meantime thanks for sticking with us and have a fabulous Fairtrade Fortnight!

Viki and Paul

Nope, We HAVEN’T Closed! Back Online This Week! :-)

Hey all!

Hello!

Wow, it seems like ages ago I started doing a complete overhaul of the shop, but it was actually only a week…. 🙂 Anyway, just to keep you lovely wonderful amazing people updated on the situation, we WILL be back online this week.

Basically, we are desperate to sell more Fair Trade items, because everyone seems to love them, we love them, and they’re really cool products; so you’re going to see a lot more of them in the next couple of months.

Our jewellery section is also expanding – the new stock is coming in over the next couple of days and I’m almost wetting my pants I’m so excited! There’s some really nice pieces.

We will, of course, still be doing body jewellery and ear stretchers – in fact, we’re going all-out and expanding the section, so they’ll be a lot more choice, including larger size stretchers, gemstone stretchers and some other cool surprises!

And our Witchcraft/Spiritual section is also expanding – there are some really nice handmade wands going in, plus lots more which I don’t want to reveal because it will ruin the surprise!

We’re also making sure our office is as green as it can be; We’ve got 100% Recycled Jiffy Bags, 100% Recycled Paper (plus we’re now able to recycle all of our old paper, thanks to the recycling Blue Box scheme we’ve just signed up to), energy-saving light bulbs will also be fitted in my shiny new office, which is nearly ready! Yay! And a whole list of other things we’re planning to do.
On this note, if anyone knows where I can get some eco-friendly sellotape, parcel tape and business cards I’d appreciate the heads-up! We’re still looking – I don’t understand why recycled things are so damn expensive, when they’re made from old rubbish! 🙂 I know, I know, it’s the factory process to get the paper back to paper…. but still 🙂

You might notice some other changes, too; but I’m not going to spoil anymore surprises! I’m working hard at the moment to get  the shop back online, and it should be ready by Sunday, so please bear with me – and thanks so much to all of you who have been to the shop and emailed me to let me know it’s offline! 🙂 We will be back and we are still The Krafty Lady, just slightly new and improved! BUT THE SAME GREAT PRICES.

I’ll send out another email once we are open, thanks again for all your support during this mental time!

Viki

Oh! And don’t forget, we’re now available at:

www.thekraftylady.com

as well as

www.thekraftylady.co.uk
&
www.thekraftylady.fr

HUGE SALE Now On!

To make way for all of our lovely new Fair Trade and Ethical stock, plus our cool new Body Jewellery, we’re having a HUGE sale! LOTS of our items are now half price or less, so check it out at the link below and see if there’s anything that you fancy! I’ll be adding more items continuously over the next few days so if you can’t see anything now check back later – it all has to go!

http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk/sale-c-191.html

And don’t forget if you spend £10 or more in September 2008 we’ll give you a 15% Discount code; just in time for all our lovely new items, and the dreaded Festive Season! So you can treat yourself or a friend to something Fair Trade, Ethical and guilt-free! 🙂

Just a Quickie…

It’s been a while now since I had a chance to sit down and do a bit of blogging, but it has been a busy old time! Where to start is the question….

Our holiday/research trip in France was a much needed break and also opened our eyes to the World of opportunity that lay ahead. It was lovely to get back and have a fresh view on things, although we’re both still finding it hard to readjust to the British way of rushing around and spending most of your life working hard with nothing to show for it! France is calling us and we have plans to move ourselves (and the business!) over there just as soon as we can.

We’ve also completed our walk for Kidney Research UK which was a fab day – thanks to everyone who sponsored us, we’ve raised £380 so far and still counting! The weather wasn’t on our side that day – you can see pictures of the event on my Facebook page (search; “Viki Collins”) or go to our website gallery at: http://www.thekraftylady.co.uk/pages.php?page=Gallery but it was still great fun and definitely for a good cause!

I know we’ve been talking about it for what seems like an age now (although this year has whizzed by and left us behind somewhat…), there are going to be some drastic changes to the shop over the next few months. My new office will be finished in a matter of weeks, which means we’ll be a lot more organised and able to get tonnes more new and exciting items. I’ve already reduced the price of some of our older stock ready to make way for the new items. We’re going to be stocking a lot more body jewellery, and as much stock as we can will be Fair Trade. ALL of our make-up section will be transformed into a ‘Cruelty-Free’ zone as we’ll only be stocking products in which the ingredients and the final product is not tested on animals. This is a huge change for us but we think it’s an important one. Fingers crossed things will be in place in time for the new year, but as always we’ll keep you posted!

Thanks so much to everyone for your continued support – it’s even more appreciated during these hard times, but we’re determined to make it through and out of the otherside – and we can’t do that without your help, so thank you!

I’ll be back with more updates soon – see you then!

Lost in the Blinding Whiteness

The whiteness… the endless…ness… Stretching on beyond the huuuuuman imagination. Desolation of the soul. OOOH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!

That pretty much sums up my feelings over the past few weeks. I knew that running a business would be hard work, and I love it – don’t get me wrong! But I am finding it hard to make a choice between working hard and keeping in touch with my friends – something I appear to be pretty crap at recently 😦 So I’ve decided that for the next few weeks I’ll be working one 24 hour day a week so that I can use the quiet of night to reply to all my friends and keep up with what everyone’s been up to!

Apart from feeling a bit low because we’ve both been missing out on some serious ‘friend action’, the shop has been through a lot of changes – all good, we hope! So things on that front are very well indeed. The front page has had a bit of a move around so you’ll notice that certain links are on the other side of the page now! We were getting so many categories that our other pages like our stretching guide and charity page links were disappearing off the bottom of the page so that’s been sorted out now which is great news.

We’ve also had so much new stock into the shop it’s been hard to find the time to list it all! But we got there in the end. There’s some great new ranges – including more surgical steel ear tapers than we’ve ever had before, including spikes in various sizes, claws and some very cool “nail” effect 4mm stretchers!

There’s lots of new sterling silver jewellery, some very cool pewter Gothic pendants, new Gothic armoured rings (which are pretty hardcore!), LOTS more bags including coffin vanity cases, new coffin wallets, Fair Trade bags and wallets….. so quite a lot! In other sections of the shop you’ll find a much wider range of things – our incense and candles section is slowly being added to and we’ll be extending the range in there soon. Also if you’re a bit of a schmoker on the quiet check out the new R2-D2 Bongs! They’re really funky – also got some other great bongs and some awesome little pipes in there. Again we’re expanding our range all of the time – especially aince I’m constantly frustrated that we haven’t got enough stuff 🙂

So it’s a really exciting time for us right now, if a little busy! It’s also really great to see the Facebook groups and fanpages are going up – would love to see some more people at “Ning”; our own social network (http://thekraftylady.ning.com) but it’s so nice to see the huge amount of support we have. Even more so as I haven’t had time to keep in touch with everyone recently, so everyone’s been really patient with me and I really, REALLY appreciate that.

On that note I will be emailing out to our Facebook friends this week to give them our brand new 10% Discount promo code – so if you want to be in on that you need to join our Facebook group – just search for “The Krafty Lady” in the search bar and our group and Fanpage will come up!

That’s about it for now – there’s lots more to write about but I am in such a hurry once again to get some more bits in the shop and have it looking nice! Hope to see you all at Ning and on Facebook, and thanks again for all of the support and kind messages we have had so far!