A New Website for Grace's

Firstly a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sister Bec for tomorrow! Hope you are reading this in case I actually forget on the day :)


So about two months ago we were looking to get a new website for Grace's Goodies. We had been using a simple one for about 12 months but really wanted to upgrade to a new one where we could offer our products for sale and show what we were all about.

I spent a few days researching and emailing and was even more confused than when I started. Then I had an epiphany! I remembered a fantastic web designer that we had used to do a template for us when we started selling on Oztion. Her name is Gayle Wilson - Ideas Woman and she is just fantastic!

I searched through my emails for her address and within hours of contacting her, she was back to me with answers and ideas and I just knew I was onto a good thing (actually 3 days later I was still waiting for replies form some of the other people I had contacted - silly people)

We told Gayle what our likes and dislikes were, what we wanted from our site and put our trust in her capable hands. I checked my emails literally every half an hour waiting for our mock-up to arrive and when it did we were just so excited and pleased with the result. You can see it here. She had created a website and shopping cart for us and a short time later we were adding our products in. We also had a logo created, and at the moment she is doing us a banner for linking sites and emails.

Just goes to show the value of customer service and speedy response to emails does for business. If I had heard from the others before I thought of Gayle, it would have been too late! Something I will remember forever while we are starting out this new web store of ours!

We have used the logo for our new business cards and jewellery tags which I will show you this week. We are doing so many exciting things at the moment but I really need to upload a couple of items into the store!

Time Flys...

Today I have spent most of the day taking and cropping and adjusting photographs of our jewellery to upload onto Graces Goodies.

Its unbelievable how much time it takes to upload 100 photos, chose the best ones, crop and sharpen the edges, re-name, re-size and file them in the right place.

So after spending several hours staring at the screen (in between all the mum stuff like making lunch, washing the clothes and generally being needed) I have managed to upload a whopping 2 new products into the store...I know, I'm slow but getting there inch by inch!

This is an absolutely gorgeous Swarovski crystal and pearl bracelet that I made recently, it can be found here. It took me a few hours to make and ended up looking nothing like the vision I had in my head when I began. Each bead is attached to the chain with a wrapped loop that I just love doing (although after about a hundred of them my thumbs start to hate me).

The other piece I loaded was this funky sea foam glass necklace. I just loved the colour of these beads when we got them last week and had to make something straight away. They remind me of the ocean, cool and clean. You can find this necklace here.

Cathie is working on a funky black and white combination, with some acrylic and glass beads that I can't wait to see and will load a pic when she is done.

So here goes....



Actually it's harder than you think when you have to sit and write about yourself. I've been thinking about what to write all afternoon and had these amazing witty, descriptive sentences all ready to go in my head. Now as i sit here to share them with the world I am blank, all of my super-cool writing has escaped somewhere, the story of my life!

Anyway what i really want to do today is tell you who Grace's Goodies is.

We are Cathie and Bianca, Mum and Daughter (Me) from NSW who have recently begun to sell their handcrafted jewellery online and in Markets.

The main aim of this blog is to keep people up to date with what we are creating, give sneak peeks into our upcoming collections, share what inspires us and how we go about creating our jewellery and accessories.

Hope you can follow us on our way, the journey for us is only just beginning....



(above pic is a necklace that Cathie created last week - Sterling silver accu-flex and clasp with cultured fresh water pearls and swarovski crystals. Find it here).