That's why I want to honor all you kooky, spooky early birds with a half off sale!
From now until October 10th, get half off your purchase of $50 dollars or more! Discount is automatically applied in your cart!
]]>This weekend I had the privilege of designing some frames for the purpose of creating living portraits as part of a wizard themed pub crawl. People will choose their frame, stand behind it, and then have a short video taken of them and sent to them. It's a super cool idea and I'm having a blast upcycling some picture frames that the creative director of the group that's putting on the crawl brought over to my house. So far one is finished. Try and guess which house it was inspired by...
First I made some feathers out of polymer clay, painted them bronze and painted the frame a gorgeous blue. Then I affixed the feathers to the frame with hot glue. I'm quite happy with how it turned out!
UPDATE: All the frames are finished now! I went back and decided that the Ravenclaw inspired frame needed more detail.
Here are some more pictures of the other frames:
]]>One of our favorite things to do at GracieBelleMagic is to build a custom wand with a customer from start to finish.
It was really fun making this particular wand. There was A LOT of thought that went into this wand and the customer knew exactly what they wanted and were awesome to work with. There were several Harry Potter houses that served as inspiration (Ravenclaw and Gryffindor if you can't tell), and the customer even knew the exact length they wanted for their new wand: 14.5 inches.
Here is the sketch we provided before starting work on the wand:
And here is how it turned out:
The customer not only left us a review but personally messaged us to tell us how much they loved the wand: "OMG I just picked it up and I love it, thank you thank you thank you so much for everything".
When asked if we could share those words for our blog, we were told we sure could as long as we let people know it was a custom wand and could not be duplicated!
You can read this customer review and all of our other Etsy reviews here:
]]>It was a busy month, both personally and professionally. May was the month of moving into a bigger spaces. We moved from an apartment into a house and we moved from a selling platform (Etsy) to our very own website.
Only today did I realize the parallel between those two things.
The transition from selling on Etsy vs. your own domain is very much like the transition from apartment to house. On Etsy you have your own shop name and you customize to a degree, but it's very much like renting. Your little unit is exactly like the next save from little touches, and what you can do to it is limited. There's a lot of noise from next door, and sometimes your neighbors are nice and friendly and sometimes they're a nuisance. Sometimes, unfortunately, there are even bullies.
Now, a house provides its own neighbors with related pros and cons, but you don't share walls with them. Walls that you may or not be allowed to paint, by the way.
Like an apartment Etsy has lots (and lots) of rules about how you can and can't occupy that space, the least complicated being what color the walls can be. Break one of these rules and you can get kicked out (it's important to be aware of the rules, but sometimes you can't help but miss something. In fact Etsy's rules are far more robust and complex than our rental lease.
The point I'm making is that it's possible to get blindsided even if you consider yourself vigilant. There are plenty of blogs and testimonials that illustrate the many different ways in which this can happen.
This can happen even if you're not doing any illegal or 'wrong'. That is because you do not own your Etsy store. Etsy can close your store for any reason. So renting a storefront on Etsy, and renting a unit in an apartment building come with the similar sense of "I don't own this space".
I've read plenty of blogs about business that rely's on Etsy for their main source of revenue only to get blindsided by something seemingly innocuous or innocent.
Just like we decided we wanted the security of owning our own home, we decided we wanted the security of owning our own storefront. We are all moved in to our house but we still have a lot of unpacking and decorating to do in order to make it our own.
Likewise with Graciebellemagic.com, we have purchased our own domain name and are making considerable progress on building our own site, but we still have a bit of work to do perfecting our listing descriptions, photography, titles, etc., before we're ready to fully transition from Etsy to Graciebellemagic.com. We'll probably leave our Etsy active for a while--though we have already scaled it way down and simplified it. (In fact, we may never completely abandon our Etsy business as it's an established store with over 200 sales and over 50 positive reviews, and can still be a viable source of revenue!)
By the time you're reading this, we'll have launched the site and be all moved into our new home. We thank you for visiting GracieBelleMagic.com ! Please message us with any questions at GracieBelleMagic@gmail.com
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Probably my most common purchase is from a mom or a dad who is throwing a Harry Potter themed birthday party. Harry Potter is probably one of the most popular brands on the planet but they are looking for something unique and handmade by a boutique crafter to make their child's birthday Harry Potter themed, but not cookie-cutter.
I get a lot of positive feedback from customers telling me how much kids liked the wands but the other week a customer showed me by sending me a picture of what she did with my wands that took them to the next level!
She framed a quote from Olivander (the wand maker in Harry Potter) and set up an antique looking case, with each wand individually tagged. I found it super impressive and adorable and it made me so happy to see my wands featured in such a cool, whimsical way!
I'm so grateful that this customer sent me this picture and gave me permission to share it!
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