New Product

It's been a quite a few months since we have posted anything in our blog. We have been busy working and have created two new items to add to our shop. First we have created a clutch, it's the perfect bag for a nice night out or when you don't feel like carry your big purse around. You can find these great bags on tiffmanhandbags.etsy.com. We have also added some fabric keychains to our line, a great way to carry your keys in style.

Stop by our shop and check out our newest listings. Thanks for stopping by our blog!!

Come See Us

On August 7th and 8th we will be at the 18th Annual Lincoln Summer Craft Festival in Lincoln NH. If you live in the area or are here on vacation stop by and say hi and check out all of the other amazing craft booths while you are there.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Tiffman Handbags

Great Shop on Etsy

If you are looking for a hand painted item this is the place to go http://www.stellababy.etsy.com/. Stella Baby Designs has hand painted ornaments, hand painted letters for a child's room as well has wine glasses and drawer knobs. Make sure to stop into this shop and take a look around. I can tell you as I have personally bought from this shop before that the items are absolutely beautiful and there is nothing like having a personalized ornament for a baby's first Christmas.

Stella Baby Designs can also be found in Little Sweet Pea Boutique on Manchester Street in Concord NH. So if you would like to see these items in person be sure to stop in. The store hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 - 6 and Saturday 10-2.

Coming Soon....

Ok so we took our much needed break and now we are going full steam ahead! We have been busy adding new inventory to our shop on Etsy so please take a moment and go check it out.

On a more exciting note we are in the process of creating some new items so you can expect to see something in the coming months and maybe we will even post some small previews along the way!

Happy sewing!!!

Tiffany & Amanda

WE'RE BACK!!!!!

After a much needed rest we now have our etsy shop back up and running. In celebration of this we are offering a 15% discount for the month of July 2010.

Please visit our shop at tiffmanhandbags.etsy.com. We will be listing new items daily throughout the month so please keep checking.

Happy shopping,

Tiffany & Amanda
Tiffman Handbags

TIME TO GET SERIOUS????

We have a show coming up and now it is crunch time....Amanda and I have a tendency to lallygag when we should be working and I think now more than ever because we may just have a touch of spring fever. When we are under pressure is when the two of us really shine...not so much when have all kinds of time.

We were however, discussing our inventory the other day thinking that maybe we are a little hard on ourselves when we are preparing for shows. We have about 75 handbags and a bunch of accessories and for some reason we were thinking that wasn't enough. That is a pretty good amount and we started thinking that maybe we just need to keep making them at a normal pace but no need to push ourselves so hard when we have a very nice stock.

Anyway, wish us luck next weekend as we do a show that is new to us. If you're interested the show is at the Phanzone Sports Center in Hampstead NH. Hope to see you there.

New Craft Show Display!

So we bit the big one and purchased an all new display for our craft shows. We have yet to set it up and think we are just going to do it for the first time at our next craft show in three weeks. Is that crazy?? It will make our space look more like a store and give us our own space so that we don't have to feel like other vendors are invading our space. It will take a little more time to set up than our old display but will be well worth it.

I think the display is key in being successful at a craft show. We started realizing that our old display was a little distracting to people (at least we came to this conclusion ourselves based on reading people in our booth). We had a small rack that held about 25 bags and then the rest were arranged on a table and that was the part that seemed to be very dysfunctional.

Well we'll take pictures of the new display and post them after our craft show.

Tiffany

At what point do you know you have road rage???

So living in New England you would assume someone would have a little more patience on the road, right? Not so much.... When we have a snow storm I don't get stuck behind the little Ford Escorts or Honda Civics, that I can handle. I get stuck behind the Subaru's....Always a Subaru. Ahhhhhhh. They have all-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive so what's the deal. I'm not asking you to drive like a race car driver just the speed limit that's all. It's just snow not ice....DRIVE, please I'm begging you for the love of life DRIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

Is that bad? I probably need help don't I or maybe I'm not the only one maybe there are more like me. What do you think is this road rage or just I want to get to my destination before my next birthday????

Tiffany

Our Display - Tell Us What You Think

As most of you in the craft show world know, creating your display is the most important and sometimes the most difficult thing you have to do. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of creativity to make your booth look as though someone is walking into an actual boutique and while doing so trying to keep costs at a minimum.

With just a few table cloths, curtains and drapes we were able to create a inviting space for customers to shop. This is a picture of our outdoor display, we would love to know what you think.

Amanda and Tiffany

15% OFF

We're having a sale in our shop through Sunday, January 25th. Come check it out.

15% OFF all items!!!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5302244

Where did our organizational skills go????

It’s the day of our first purse party; we still have to add items to the inventory, tag and price. We also have to pack everything up and pray to god that we have everything we need as the party is an hour and 15 minute drive from where we are. Now we have to make a stop at the accountants which should only take a few minutes. An hour or so later we are finally on the road of course we are reciting with each other what we brought to make sure we have everything. Shouldn’t all of this been done the night before?

We get to our destination and start setting up and of course we didn’t really give ourselves enough time to set up because in the midst of it all guest are starting to arrive, grrrr. Just as we get everything set-up Amanda whispers to me…psssst, we didn’t stop and get change at the bank. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Who forgets money at a purse party? Well, hopefully everyone pays with check or credit card. The party went perfect and we held ourselves together. We had a great turn out and made out well in sales.

Looking back, on this we are realizing that this is not the only time this happens, it happens every time. Every party or show has some sort of (what we think is) a catastrophe. When are we going to get our organizational skills back?

Tell us about your stories, bloopers or even your perfect days…..

Where is Summer??

I know it's only January and I live in New England so I really have no room to complain about winter but come on enough is enough. It seems like everytime we turn around we are getting another 5 to 10 inches of snow here. You can't see around corners when trying to pull out of a street and the roads are narrowed because there is so much snow on the side.

I just can't wait to be able to walk outside and take a deep breath without feeling like my lungs are frozen. To be able to see green grass and water free of ice, to not have my car covered in salt and have it be too cold to wash off because my doors will freeze shut. I can't wait to walk outside without a jacket on and be comfortable. I would ask for Spring but in New England Spring just kind of stops in for a minute and goes, we seem to jump from Winter to Summer here.

I know I can't be alone in this feeling. I know that there are a lot of people who enjoy winter sports like skiing, and snow mobiling, and all that fun stuff but isn't one month of this enough??

Work

Good morning everyone,
Just thought I would talk a little about work today. Tiffany and I both have full time 40 hour a week jobs, and it's amazing how much that gets in the way of our own business, imagine that.

For those of you who have your own business and work full time jobs how do you do it? I find most nights I am so exhausted by the time I get home, squeeze in a workout, cook dinner, clean up and try to find a few spare minutes to spend time with my family that I have absolutely no ambition to go into my studio to work on the one thing I acutally love to work on, bags.

Someday we hope to be able to make our bags full time and open a B&M store and the only people we have to report to are ourselves. This way when we're completely exhausted from work at least it's because we're doing something we love.

Craft Shows...Luck of the Draw

So how many of you have signed up to do a craft fair and had such high hopes for it? Then crushed by the realization that it really wasn't what you thought it would be. Well let me tell you we have certainly had quite a few of these experiences in 2008.

Let me start by talking to you about a large event called Pumpkin Fest. Pumpkin Fest is a large festival done every year in Keene NH. Tiffany and I decided to participate in this in 2007. We had such a good time and such great sales that we decided it was worth doing again in 2008. This festival takes place in October, outside, for several hours. The first year we did this we had fantastic weather, unusually warm. This year not so much. In the beginning the weather was cooperating other than the fact that it was a little chilly. Coming upon 5 pm it began to rain, prior to this it became quite windy. By 9 pm when it was time to pack up and go Tiffany went to get the car while I held down the tent, literally. Needless to say it was a cold, windy, wet night and we could not wait to leave. To top it all off sales were down by half of what they were last year.

After the Pumpkin Fest debacle we had 2 fairs lined up in November. Again, we had high hopes for each of these 2 day events. Other than meeting some very interesting people each event brought in less money than we paid out.

This isn't to say that we have had all bad shows, it just goes to show how doing these things are truly luck of the draw.

Women in Business Showcase

On October 1, 2008 we participated in a showcase that was focused on women in business, and we have to say that it was a great success for us. We met a lot of great people and participated in a great networking function. This was a great event for us, we are very proud of the work that we do and it was nice to be able to share it with so many other talented women.

We finally were able to come up with a functional indoor display. We were so proud to have such a nice and professional looking table among all of the other exhibitors who have been doing this for so long. We felt that our display really stood out and helped us to be noticed by the crowd.

We were honored to be photographed and featured in the local newspaper CHECK IT OUT. Imagine our excitement to get up this morning and receive a phone call from a friend telling us that our picture and a short write up of our business had made it into the local paper. To date this may be one of our proudest moments as business owners.

Amanda and Tiffany

What We Have Been Up to Lately

Summer is winding down and the craft fair season is among us. We have both been very busy preparing for the upcoming Pumpkin Festival in Keene NH. We have added one new line of purses and are excited to showcase this on October 25th at Pumpkin Fest. Pumpkin Festival is not the only fair we have coming up we are also joining two craft fairs in November in the Lakes Region. In between all of our fairs we also have some purse parties that we have booked.

It's amazing how much there is to do when you are preparing for a show. There is the constructing of the product, tagging, pricing, inventory, and for us ironing and packing up. We both have full time day jobs so when we get home from work at night we are both in our studio's trying to get as much done in an evening as we can. While this can be exhausting the end result is rewarding.

Wishing all of our fellow crafters much luck in the craft fair season.

Amanda & Tiffany

Time Management...

So Amanda and I were just discussing or should I say complaining about not having time for anything...ever. I was just wondering if anyone else out there feels the same? We have so much going on in our lives (Amanda more than me this year and me more than her last year) that it is just suffocating us. Amanda is getting married in three weeks and she is really starting to feel the pressure but it seems that no matter how much gets done for the wedding the pressure gets stronger and stronger. I know how she feels in a sort of way since last year my life was consumed with purchasing my first home and boy the pressures of that, whew! Anyway, my biggest question is...Are we ever going to be able to have fun again or is all our time going to be consumed with the undesirables in life?

Tiffany

Introducing Tiffman Handbags

Well...we would like to introduce ourselves as new members of the blogging community. We are both very new at this and will do our best at making this blog informative, fun and entertaining. Our shop address is tiffmanhandbags.etsy.com and we are quite proud of it so we hope you will visit it often. We are still working very hard to get our internet shop out there as there are so many sellers on etsy so it is truly difficult to make ourselves seen...slowly but surely we will get there.

We hope to share all of our adventures right here on this blog with all of you. We plan on posting as often as possible and showing you the nuts and bolts of Tiffman Handbags!

Thanks for reading!

Tiffany & Amanda