Sailorgirl now had an idea of how to make a seasonal living, craft shows!
In 2004 I dragged my laundry table out of my basement, covered it with a bright blue tablecloth and carefully placed my first pieces of jewelry on display. It was a beautiful sunny day, people loved my jewelry and I loved them and the whole experience. This was the very humble beginning of Sailorgirl Jewelry, (shameless self-promotion here) my company where I make and sell handmade glass jewelry.

My company is a little different in that it is a “lifestyle business”. 8 months a year I make glass beads and jewelry and sell at craft shows and online. The other 4 months I live on my sailboat in Florida/Bahamas. My online business is open year round. I’m a huge believer in creating the life you want and defining your own success.
In a previous life I worked at a software development start up that began as me and my boss in his living room, when I left it was at 80 employees. It was really fun at the beginning, and then it was not. Life is too short to spend time doing things that aren’t fun so I quit that job in 2001 to forge my own path.
With my background in the start up I thought that starting a jewelry business would be easy, after all, I knew about business. I was wrong. What I discovered is that selling work that you have made is far different than selling a product like software. Selling a product is just that, it’s a product. Selling handmade is about selling me, the artist, the creator, I am as much a part of the product as my jewelry is. Selling handmade is about selling a story. Fortunately I have a story, now I just had to communicate it to my people. Communicating what you do is marketing The beginning of Sailorgirl Jewelry was not without challenges. I was learning flamework. I was learning how to design and make jewelry. I was learning how to sail. I was learning how to live on a sailboat. I was learning how to sell my own work. I was learning how to run a microbusiness. There were a lot of sleepless nights and bad words said.
From the beginning I have opted to sell only at shows and online. I briefly flirted with wholesale however I couldn’t reconcile how that would work with my lifestyle. I refuse to do consignment for many reasons. The craft show season dovetails perfectly with my lifestyle. In a typical year I sell at 11 – 15 shows. Most of these are summer shows, outdoors in a tent. I take a bit of a break in the fall and then do a couple of large holiday shows. Then I pack it all up and hit the road.
As I was starting up the world around me was a changing landscape. When I began neither Facebook nor Etsy existed. People were only just beginning to sell online and blogs were few and far between. I coded my first website by learning HTML and using a notepad. People were leery of shopping online. For the first 5 or 6 years I simply hung a “Gone Sailing” sign on my website during the winter.
I have had a website from the beginning, as I already had a website called Sailorgirl where I published my writing about cruising. For the jewelry I added a small section with my craft show list and a few photos. Over the last decade being online has become a necessity for any business to survive. Every single person or business absolutely must have a website, even if it’s only a portfolio and contact information. I tried Etsy, it didn’t work for me, instead I have my own site on Shopify along with a WordPress blog and social media. I admit, I’m not the best at maintaining all of this but at least it’s there.
Technology has made my lifestyle a possibility in ways that I never could have predicted. I have an assistant in Canada who ships my work. I’m able to sit on my boat down south, read my email and forward orders to her. She ships them out, and the money is in my bank account! How awesome is that? I send a monthly newsletter to my list subscribers and do the social media from where ever I am.

While this sounds simple it is anything but. A business like mine requires a LOT of organization. I live by my planner and to do lists. When I finish my last huge craft show on December 1 (11 days, 12 hours a day) all my fellow exhibitors will be heading for their couch for a well deserved rest. I will be heading to the studio the next day to make enough inventory to cover 5 months of online sales. All of this has to be made, tagged and inventoried. There must be new items made and photo’d for next season so that the site remains fresh. Show applications for next season have to be sent in. My shipping process has to be documented so that I can hand it off to my assistant. She has to have enough shipping supplies for the winter, which must be bought. The list can sometimes seem endless.
Many of my non-crafty friends bemoan my lack of free time in the summer here in Canada. I can’t go to their cottage on the weekend because I’m at a show. I can’t go out for dinner during the week because I’m torching as I have a show coming up. I miss a lot of events due to my schedule (as does everyone on the show circuit). However I will be snorkeling for the entire month of March and during the summer I get to spend my days melting glass and making wearable art. How awesome is that?

We’re sick of sitting around.

We’re selling our boat. I think I might have mentioned it (a lot).

It hasn’t sold yet. I know it’s only been 4 weeks but I’m not one to sit around and wait patiently. To get the boat ready for sale we emptied EVERYTHING out of it. It’s amazing how much stuff you can have on a little boat. Piles of stuff. And the boat is not in the water, it’s sitting on blocks in a boatyard. We climb up the ladder to get into the boat. It doesn’t rock gently. It does sway a bit in the wind but it is not the same thing.

We promised ourselves that we’d sit here until the boat sold. We’ve done a bunch of boat projects, stuff that we’d always meant to do but didn’t because we’d rather go sailing than work on the boat. Seriously, the boat has never looked this spiffy.

And we sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

The waiting is driving us crazy. I have to get out on the water! I have to see dolphins beside the boat, and drift along lazily in a gentle breeze. Or scream along madly in a wild wind. And swim off the boat in the morning. And take pretty pictures for you to see!

MUST GO SAILING!

So the smart thing to do would be to continue sitting here and try to sell the boat. But boats can take years to sell. Life is short, I’m going sailing.

there’s another world down there, in the deep blue. it’s a graceful world of gliding and twirling. it’s a world of motion, slow drifting with darts of speed. it’s a fluid world.

to blend into this world you must imitate the motions of the creatures who inhabit it. flippers add length to ungainly limbs turning legs into fins. i spiral and flip and dance through the blue and imagine that i am as elegant as the angelfish.

truth is i am more of the clownfish.

flipper earrings available here, $35. 

It’s time. Time for this lovely little boat to go to a new home.

She’s taken us far and wide. We learnt how to sail on her. We explored far away beaches, weathered a few storms, laughed a lot and had a ton of fun.

Now we’re ready for new adventures in a new space. We are looking to move up to a bigger boat with a bit more room so that I can run my business from the boat part-time.

On the market now, located on the west coast of Florida.

<a title=”CS27 Sailboat for sale” href=”http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/40755″>Check out the full listing here</a>. Pass this on to anyone who might be interested.

always look for a new viewpoint in life. too bad you can’t see the waves crashing over the bow. that required 2 hands to hold on and no hand for the camera.

not all of it, still working on that, however this is a decent shot. it is absolutely fabulous!!! we are SO much faster now! especially because the last sail had an accident and was held together with duct tape. (yes duct tape, it’s way better than sail repair tape).

the new sail is a 135% coastal cruising sail. 135% means that 35% of it extends beyond the mast. because it’s so new and crisp we are able to point much better, meaning that we can sail closer into the wind. sailboats can’t sail directly into the wind, we sail to a degree off on either side, that’s what tacking is. we aim to sail 45 degrees off the wind on either side. with this lovely new sail we can point better than 45, fabulous!

a huge thank you to all who participated in my valentines sail/sale and contributed to this sail.

Is this not the most exciting thing ever??? LAUNCH DAY!!! It’s never a good thing to see your boat walking down the yard in the slings, boats just weren’t meant to swing in the breeze. But then there’s that magic moment when the travel lift slows down and you can see the boat sitting on her waterline. Floating. Ahhhhh….

Tonight I will sleep in my floating home. With the sound of the wind in the halyards.

Oh, and the sound alligators slapping their tails in the water. Did I mention those?

oh boy oh boy oh boy!!! it’s here!!! the new head sail (the genoa) arrived!!! it’s still in the bag waiting for the boat to go in the water in a couple of days. we can’t put the sails onto the boat while it’s in the cradle on land. I can’t wait to see it. any day now…