Here's to a more peaceful 2016

Hi everyone!

It has been a long time since I wrote here and I hope you enjoyed my latest giveaway.
You are probably wondering why the huge delay between posts, well rest assured I'm doing fine and nothing major has happened. Actually it is quite the contrary. 2016 started with full of wonderful surprise on my side and some elements has lead me to questioned this incredibly fast-paced lifestyle I've had so far.

Kirameku is a wonderful journey - do not get me wrong! I love every second of it, and every interaction I have with you is most precious to me. It is simply that I have been trying many tactics to ensure I reach all of you properly and get you as excited as I am about my new projects. But this rigorous schedule unfortunately led to major lack of sleeps, especially around the time of craft shows.  To get you in context, in 2015 a typical week looked like this :

* 14-20 posts on Facebook, 5 posts on Instagram, 25 posts in the Etsy forums, 1 blog post, Create 5 items, 1 photoshoot session, 1 post on Pinterest, 1 post on Wanelo, involvement in Facebook and Etsy forums, a full time job

And on top of this, depending on the weeks, you do need to add : Shipping orders, Developing new promotional material, Get craft fair applications ready, Stock inventory, Attending craft shows, Fill in custom orders, Develop new collections, Cooking - and I do cook a lot, Typical household chores, Transportation... You get the drill.

So let's just do the maths together : there's 24h in a day, you sleep 8h, and work 8h, travel about 2h, and try to do the best you can with whatever is left - even if sometimes it meant cutting back on sleep.

Why do I share all of this with you? Well because I want you to see that I was doing too much. Weeks quickly turned into months and first thing I knew, Christmas was over and 2016 was already here. 2015 was a wonderful year, and I'm very grateful for everything accomplished in it and all your love and support.

I decided to take a small break from this routine in January 2016 and re-evaluate it all. It suddenly hit me - how many hours a day I spent in front of a computer instead of enjoying summer for instance. I came to the conclusion that instead of sharing articles with no substantial content, I would take this time instead to create new pieces, or work on giveaways and spread the handmade love.

I will also take this time to reconnect with nature through food - one of my biggest inspiration for my creative process. Hopefully, 2016 will be full of new flavours, colours and discoveries that will translate in my jewelry and artwork.

Don't you miss taking the time to enjoy a good cup of tea with a freshly baked scone while bathing in the sunlight? If you are like me, I totally do. I believe that taking back the time to enjoy the simple pleasure in life is important, that exploring new horizon is better than any pay check and that life is too short to let it slip by.

On this everyone, I raise you my steaming cup of Earl Grey tea- To a more peaceful, carpe-diem paced 2016,
* M *

February Giveaway & first ever product review!

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful week. In the spirit of Valentine's Day I wanted to share the love of this new boutique I just discovered called Lyli Craft on Etsy. Lily (the owner) is absolutely adorable and she wanted to share her handmade product with all of you dear readers! She is giving away the beautiful purse you are seing on top! (Giveaway link is at the bottom of the article)
But first, I  want to share with you my first ever review of her wonderful boutique.

The wonderful handmade creations for Lyli Craft right out of their enveloppe!

Lyli opened her shop in 2011 in Malaysia. Here is her intro on how she started this adventure :
'' I've grown up with my grandmother in the village and she like to sew during her free time. She sew my clothes, gown, pajama and making soft toys for me when I was a little girl. I always wanted to be like her, very talented and creative. Then I'm going to school and play soft toys with my friends during our free time. They like it and ask me to do it for them. Since then I'm making soft toys and selling it to my close friends.'' 
Her lovely shop specializes and pillows.  Her cute cosmetic purse just grabbed my attention, I couldn't resist their adorable vintage genre and colorful patterns.

The beautiful handmade purses for Lyli Craft!

Her cosmetic purses are simply lovely so very well crafted. I really enjoy their small yet very versatile size and the soft padding added to the clutch. They are big enough to contain all the cosmetics you might need - even that big foundation bottle that never fits in your pharmacy - or even a small pocket camera. The soft padding make it so you don't have to worry that anything breaks, it is well protected for your trip! The purse is small enough to be skidded into your backpack or luggage without taking too much space.

Each purse has a removable wrist strap that makes it easy for you to carry them around. Lyle just went the extra mile in mine and added a lovely name tag inside. I mean, how perfect is it? You can easily see them offered as a personalized gift to your bridesmaids or include the nickname of your BFF or sister for a beautiful custom gift.

Lyli Craft can add a personalized touch to every of her purses.

The sewing is elegant, precise and the zipper flows very smoothly. You can see how much care Lyli puts into each of her creations. I did take longer for me to get her purses because of the distance Canada/Malaysia, but in the end, it was totally worth it...! :)

Follow the link below to get a chance to win this beautiful handmade cosmetic purse from Lyli Craft!

On this you say, I want to have mine as well! Well, you can either enter below for your chance to win the beautiful marine vintage postcard purse (or purchase it here), or visit her boutique here!

You can also follow her on her Instagram or Facebook page!

On this everyone, best of luck! :D
The winner will be announced around the 24th of February.
* M *

Cosmetic Purse Giveaway from Lyli Craft

January color inspiration

Hi everyone!

Long time no see! As the new year started, I decided to take things slowly and carefully plan the year ahead. Taking a bit of time off did wonders as it allowed me to focus back on what is essential, both for me and for Kirameku.

I hope you all had a great year so far and you have lots of exciting projects coming up. Here I launched my first 2016 instagram Giveaway on the 18th with the delicate and new Pink Quartz Berry Ring to celebrate the official Pantone colors of 2016.

As my suppliers orders are slowly coming in, I decided to share with you my top 3 favorite colors for this January.

I hope they will inspire you as well! If ever you have some special requests, please comment away :)

On this everyone, have a wonderful week!
*M*

Cheers to 2016!

Hi everyone! :)

I hope you all had a marvellous Holiday season! With this very first blog post of 2016, I want to wish you all a wonderful new year, may it be full of lovely surprises, joy and love!

My Holidays were unusual this year - but never the less magical. I didn't had the chance to post pictures of snowy landscapes as our winter was very hot - which is abnormal for this time of year. We had our first snowstorm of the season just a few days after Xmas, and now we can finally say that it is winter.

So as you noticed, I took a little break from blogging, as between Holidays orders I was planning the collection for 2016, but more importantly I was asking some very important questions about Kirameku. I was seriously considering opening a store on Amazone Handmade or another similar platform, as despite my love for Etsy, I feel the market there is becoming quite saturated with both wonderful and not so wonderful products. I feel it is becoming harder and harder for me to get my Berry Rings out there on a part time basis. Because yes, Kirameku is wonderful and I put a lot of work into it, but I still have my day job. At one point, I believe one must be realistic, I can't compete with a full time jewelry shop that has over 500 Etsy items listed.

Finally a white winter in Longueuil!

All that being said, I am considering having my own online shop on my website, but for now I'm still debating on which service provider I should turn to. All this is a bit technical but mainly, these are the 3 main reasons why I left the Holiday Gift Guide be my last post of 2015.

But not to worry, my Etsy store will still be open for a long time! I took down many Berry items that weren't very popular on Etsy to make more space for new ones. You can still purchase them through Paypal on my Facebook page and custom orders are always welcomed! :)

I have many surprises in store for you for 2016 and I'll open the year with a Giveaway that is coming up very soon, please stay posted on my Instagram page for all the details!

On this everyone, have a fantastic year!
And how was your Holiday vacation? :)
* M *

Holiday Gift Guide 2015

Hi everyone! 

I hope you are having a wonderful week! As there is only a month left before Christmas, I thought I would share with you my favorite handmade picks for this year. Many shops are from Montreal, so you can also buy locally if you who are big on helping out our fellow crafters. But may they be from here or around the world, all those shops are fantastic in their own way! I can tell you that I have bought from many shops here and loved their creation, it's quality and their passion for their work. 

Without any further due, please enjoy this Handmade Gift Guide for 2015! :)

1. For your mother in Law - Hand painted silk scarf by HanaKratochvil

2. For your cat loving friend - Cat sleeping mask by JulienEmilyDesign

3. For your yogi bff - Vintage Floral Tatoo Sleeve Hoodie by Ahpeele 

4. For your vintage-loving friend - Magnolia Poster by MarcadeVintagePrints

5. For your beloved sister - Berry Necklace and Earrings Set by Kirameku

6. For your friend that just moved in - Salad Servers by BlisscraftandBrazen

7. Stocking stuffers for the entire family - Natural Lip Balm by PrettyMommaBeauty

8. For your beer-loving brother - Beer Soap by EntreBullesetMoi

9. For your friend that wants to save Earth one step at the time - Eco Sponges by ToriLynnes

10. For your couple friends that are expecting - Adopt a Monster Plushie by TabbynSkates

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If you'd like to shop local to meet those great sellers in person, some crafters will be busy with craft show just before the Holidays! You can catch them at :

JulienEmilyDesign
Marché Casse-Noisette (November 26 till December 6) - Montreal

BlisscraftandBrazen 

One of A Kind Show (November 26 till December 6) - Toronto

Puces Des Neiges (December 11 to 13) -  Montreal

TabbynSkates

Annual Holiday Craft Fair (November 28th and 29th) at the Hudson Community Centre

Annual St. Edmunds School Holiday Craft Fair (December 5th) 115 Beaconsfield Blvd. Beaconsfield 

On this everyone, happy shopping! :)
* M *

Kirameku's website - The Wix experience

Hi everyone! :)

As many of you already know, Kirameku has now it's very own website! dances in joy
It was a very dear project of mine and I'm so proud it is finally online! Between the craft shows and getting my Black Friday promo and the Gift Guide ready this week, it suddenly hit me : although I'm super excited about this project, I shared the good news very briefly here and on my social medias.

So, I thought I could let you know about my first experience with Wix, for those of you who are interested by this platform. Many of you might have seen their Facebook ads in their newsfeed and wondered what it was all about. Briefly, if you haven't heard of Wix just yet, it is a website building platform made for everyone, using a basic drag-and-drop design method.

So, very quickly, you might ask me why I  went with Wix since I know about both Dreamweaver and Wordpress, especially with the big success and many beautiful and responsive deigns in the Wordpress platform. Well, it is very simple actually. Dreamweaver is great, but starting a website from scratch is time consuming; plus you pretty much spend most of your time fixing your design instead of taking your design further. As for Wordpress, it is gorgeous, easy to work with and it is my first choice, however, the hosting fees can get pretty high pretty quick...

With all of this in mind, I decided try out Wix, mainly because they offered free hosting. My goal for this year was to create more brand awareness for my jewelry shop but still with a very limited budget as I left more space for giveaways and goodies for you instead of spending it on administration fees.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the service. Wix makes it easy for you to design a website even if you have no web design knowledge. It's easy to pick up from the many free templates design to get you started and go from there, upload your pics and texts. They have a very accessible SEO tool that helps you make sure your website is relevant to Google and other search engine. And, did I already mentioned free hosting? Their free account options are impressive, diverse and and you can pull off something very professional despite not paying a cent.

But....! If you are a graphic designer like me, you like having control over everything. That means that you might loose a few hairs while trying to edit the background to make the different sections into full-screen colors (wich is not possible with my template), in trying to figure out at what size you are supposed to insert the images for the full-screen slider (which took sooooo many trials), or insert a few basic HTML codes here and there. Also, you are having a hard time of selecting many items at once, so dragging complex group of text, images and lines is pretty difficult.

For me, it was worth the extra time spent figuring out how it all worked and where I could take my template's designs. But it might not be the case for you. If you want to have control over everything, go with Wordpress. If you want a simple page to start off, go for it. If you wish to know more if Wix is the right platform for you, I recommend this great article by Jeremy Wong that points out all you need to know before jumping in.

So, with all of this, would you like to try out Wix? And what do you think about Kirameku's website?
Have a lovely weekend everyone! :D
* Maxime *

Good Shepherd Craft Show & November Blues

Well hello there!

I hope you all had a marvellous week! I took a bit of time off the blog to get the last things ready for the Good Shepherd Craft show last Saturday and filling up this week on the sold goodies.

I had a wonderful time at the fair and I hope I had the chance to meet many of you! It was a special fair for me as I usually have bigger tables, and I must say 6 feet long is a bit tiny for all that I have to offer, but I believe I made the most out of it. All of you who stopped by really enjoyed my display and I'm so happy about it!

For those of you who were a bit too far to get to the fair, no worries, here's a picture of my Holiday booth...! You can also meet me at my next show at Marie-Victorin's CEGEP on November 18th. And this one will be epic, it will be the biggest table I I've booked so far - I'm so excited! - 12 feet of pure goodies, it's going to be great!

But what if you are not in Canada? No worries, you can take part in my Flash Friday Sales till the end of November and enjoy my Holiday Specials there too.

Kirameku's booth at the Good Shepherd Craft show

But despite all of this exciting news, I have a little confession to make and apologize to you dear readers. I was very excited this summer and worked on a dear project of mine, I don't know if you remember the Bridal bouquet accessory? It was supposed to be listed in late-summer, but I wasn't able to do so.

The project turned out beautifully and I'm really proud of it, but it is a very time consuming project and I ran into some supplies problems (the beads are back-order at my supplier). I'm sorry to say I have to push back this lovely item for 2016.  I'm really looking forward on a making some pieces for your wedding that you can keep with you forever. But it is as important to me to make sure that you get your orders in as soon as possible, and between managing my Etsy shop, all the custom orders I had and fairs this year; topped with us moving out and settling in, there wasn't enough time for me to do that. So I prefer to push it back till next year and focus on bridesmaids gift sets first.

But, I don't have only bad news for you today. It may be Friday 13, but let's not be superstitious. So, on a more joyful note, I hope you are slowly getting in the mood for the Holidays. Here we don't have snow just yet, which is kind of odd, but I will post winter landscapes here as soon as we will have snow in Longueuil. Never the less, I'll be putting together a Handmade Gift Guide so I can share with you all my favorite items from Etsy sellers and inspire you! I discovered many great products this year and I want to share them with you. I'll be having 10 wonderful shops featured, so please stay tuned! :D

On this everyone, have a wonderful day and happy Friday 13th!
* M *