Brighton Etsy Team Blog Hop

I've been nominated by the lovely Kate of Actually I do and Anna from the wonderful Anna's Drawing Room to do a blog hop post as part of the Brighton Etsy Team! Here we go:

What inspired you to start your business or Etsy shop?

I started making pieces of jewellery for myself when I was in school but didn’t truly discover a passion for jewellery design until around five years ago when I signed up for evening classes to learn silversmithing. Learning about different types of metals and gemstones and how to work with them was really interesting and made me realise the design possibilities with jewellery are endless. I'd been shopping on Etsy for a while and always dreamed of having my own shop so nearly three years ago now I got some designs together and thought I'd give it a go!

We're looking at goals in the Brighton Etsy Team this month (you can follow along with #btnetsygoals!) Can you share one of your goals for your shop for the next six months?

My goal over the next sixth months is to try out some new designs I've had in my head for a while now but never got round to making and to be better at every aspect of social media!

What are you working on at the moment?

I'm doing a couple of courses over the next month or so and working on my spring/ summer collection, hoping to have a few different designs to what I usually do ready by around May time.

If you could give other sellers or someone looking to start their own design/craft business one piece of advice what would you say?

I think my main advice would be to just go for it! You can spend too much time thinking about doing things rather than just giving it a go. Definitely educate yourself as much as you can as you can never learn too much, whether it be on different techniques and materials or on marketing. I would recommend joining a website like Etsy where it is relatively inexpensive and simple to set up a shop. There are great communities on there that can help you with every aspect of your business. Joining a local team can be really helpful too. I’m a member of the Brighton Etsy Team, I've found it so valuable and I’ve met some really lovely people through it, it's so important to be able to talk to people who are going through the same trials as you with setting up a small business. Etsy has also given me the opportunity to reach customers all over the world, which I think is really exciting knowing that there are people wearing my jewellery in countries that I've never even been to!

For the next blog hop I nominate Mooshpie, The Emporers Old Clothes and Forever Foxed