Team TBCH South East Cornwall Meetup – meet Halyey, Buffy & Chris
Written by Buffy…who is The Twisted Felter
So earlier today I met up for brunch with the lovely Hayley aka The Northern Smuggler and Chris The Chris Artist. Chris paints beautiful artwork from the surrounding areas and Hayley creates fabulous Resin artwork and jewellery inspired by the local Cornish Coast. Luckily Chris had chosen the best café (award winning @olivecocafe thankyou…delish!) and so I turned up to meet 2 complete strangers thinking I should have worn a rose in my lapel?! Sadly I was lapel-less so I took a chance and sidled up to a random man sitting on his own who fortunately turned out to be Chris and Hayley joined us soon after.
My brain is a busy one so I had brought along a list of things I wanted to ask (I feel like a bit of a duffer with the whole online selling and social media stuff as I’m new to the game) and was pleasantly surprised that they too had the same questions and doubts. As Hayley put it ‘Fake it ’til you Make it’. Although Hayley was not giving herself credit as she had lots of great media tips and advice and has her own professional branding which looks fab. Chris is already self employed so gave me good advice around tax returns, a boring but necessary part of it all. It was sound advice…pay an accountant!!
We chatted about The British Craft House website and how we were finding navigating our way around. We wondered when Dottie (our Illustrious Leader, advice giver, encouragement officer and all round good egg) EVER SLEEPS?!? She seems to be sending encouraging posts in the middle of the night!
We talked about how isolating working alone and from home can be sometimes and how fab it was to meet up with the real people behind our sellers names. We shared contacts for work in the local area, craft initiatives,the best Apps, training days, ideas for display and presentation, photography and we laughed at ourselves a fair bit. We talked about the insecurities of seeing the imperfections in our work and whether they are good enough to sell, the vulnerability of putting your work out there in front of people, the difficulty of feeling comfortable promoting (non-stop!) yourself online. And we arranged to meet again of course.
So this is my first blog. I’ve no idea whether it’s good. Or not. But I’m venturing right out of my comfort zone writing it AND putting a photo of myself online. That’s how rock and roll I am today. I’m a blogger. Boom!