Hey Everyone.
Well I have a bit of a change to my schedule. Every Tuesday I will now be posting what is referred to as Small Business Spotlight. In this post I will feature Etsy shops and other small businesses. It will highlight what they sell and introduce you to the face behind the wonderful stores.
This week we have the beautiful Fiona Littlewood from Little Dragon Jewellery.
I’m Fiona!
I’ve been married for 10 years, have two kids (a boy and a girl) and am moving house in the next few weeks!
I trained as a florist and worked in the trade for over 15 years, one of my favourite things to do were the bespoke funeral tributes I made a Harley Davidson from flowers for a bikers funeral once. I also really enjoyed doing small-scale wire work for weddings.
I started the business after I had the kids and was on maternity leave as we moved 100 miles, leaving me with no job to go back to!
I make jewellery, planner goods and crochet/knitting notions. Mainly from polymer clay and wire. Every item is made by hand, by me. I love making creatures. I think my unicorns have probably been the best sellers in the last two years, but my ultimate favourite are the dragons. Any size, any colour, any item can have a dragon.
My shop is named after the year I was born! It was the chinese year of the dragon, but several family members had also been born in previous dragon years making me the Little Dragon.
My shop logo was designed by a lovely graphic artist who used a dragon necklace I had made as the basis for it, I still have the necklace as I never listed it for sale after the initial drawings!
I currently use a Websters pages in caramel for my daily planner this has everybody’s work/school schedule (shifts, trips, clubs etc) on the monthly pages and the week to view has checklists for daily reminders and to do notes. The inserts were made by Kirsty at Just so and they are wonderful! I think I may have planning peace in this one!
My business planner is a Pear Saffino. It was my second ever Filofax and it is sooooo beautiful! I use a diary in this one to block out my work week into times for making, networking and so on. I also have sections for ‘want to make’ ideas which seems to have become an endless list, business developement ideas, current orders, notions and creature club (two pre-order ‘clubs that I run through my Etsy shop, I name a theme and people purchase the items before I make them. I can offer a discount on these items as making more at the same time makes it more time efficient) and a running stock list. Its my business brain!
I have found since having the kids that I’ve usually got so much going on that if I don’t write it down, I will probably forget about it. The act of writing it sets it in my memory, which is why having a planner works so much better than the electronic equivalent for me.
I don’t really have a unicorn planner, I’m really happy with the planners I have. I would love to try a TN of some description Uglydori’s are amazing, and a couple of the other leather makers I’ve seen have been beautiful. I currently also use a Lyradori for all things ‘house’ (we’re moving soon, so it’s got packing lists and new colour schemes in, amongst other things) and I have a purple Filofax Flex that I’ve modified with elastic that I use for tracking crochet projects and my yarn stash.
You can find me all over social media now. I started out on twitter and gradually added others. Now I tend to use twitter the least, and Facebook and Instagram the most,
www.littledragonjeweller.etsy.com
www.fb.com/littledragonjewellery
www.twitter.com/dragonjewellery
www.instagram.com/littledragonjewellery
Thanks for reading and tune in next week for the next Small Business Spotlight.
The Stationer Geekette x
Read, Write, Inspire 