It’s the height of summer and as usual I am very restless. The weather is good enough to get out and about, tons of festivals and special events are going on all over the country. Also, as usual hubby’s work schedule is screwing up any fun *I* might have had this season. I have wanted so badly to go to the World’s Longest Yard Sale for the past 3 years; the ONE weekend in August that my husband HAS to work is the same weekend as the sale. SURPRISE! SURPRISE! I haven’t been doing much of anything so far this summer other than hitting the local yard sales. It’s SO hot here! I didn’t think it would be anywhere near this hot in Wisconsin. I remember summers in New York and they weren’t anything like this. I’ve been mostly trying to find things to work on inside the house like some sewing here and there or running outside just for a minute or two to stripe and paint things. I’ve decided that I want to try selling my wares at a market of some sort. I’m not sure where or when I’ll start, but I’ve found some really cool larger items to upcycle that I think other might be interested in purchasing. I also find so many cool breakable items that I’m afraid to sell online because of them needing to be shipped. Even when professionally packed I seem to always have items that I ship get broken and people want their money back. It did seem to stop when I asked for a photo of the broken items before I would refund the money. LOL.
Speaking of selling items, I have changed all of my shop info for Etsy, the name and the address. It is now Bel et Vieux. I wanted something pretty and cool that would describe what I sell in general without being so specific that it would be limiting. It’s taken me years to come up with a name that I coule REALLY be excited about like I am this one. Bel et Vieux is french for Beautiful & Old. I sell beautiful things and old things in many forms and I like the whole French flea market style thing. It’s fitting and looks great on tags! My father has been her for almost 2 weeks so I wasn’t really able to get around to getting the shop ready visually. I havn’t updated the blog, worked on projects, taken any photos, read any books, watched any movies or gotten the graphics for my new Etsy done yet. Hopefully I can change all that in the very near future… It’s not like I’ll be going to the World’s Largest yard sale or anything!
I wanted to do the WLYS one of these days too. As far as selling and shipping: pack it appropriately and charge for insurance. If it really is broken they just need the insurance receipt. They would then take it and the broken item to the post office for the payoff. I had to do this once with an ebay purchase that arrived broken. If the amount is over some limit (forgot the $) they mail everything off for approval from the powers that be and it takes a bit to get your check. Anyway, it takes all the trouble of second guessing if someone is honest ot not out of your hands. And I just shipped my first package to Australia for a vintage swap today. Everything bubble wrapped individually but also insured.
I used to offer insurance but no one wanted to pay for it. Seems like people expect you to be able to ship 10lbs worth of glass for $3 AND include insurance & delivery confirmation. lol. I always wonder how people on Etsy can afford to do free shipping on everything. I mailed a pedistal bowl with insurance once and she claimed it was broken when it got there. I called the local PO and they told me that unless I could PROVE that they had broken it, they wouldn’t honor the insurance I had bought on it so I just sent her back her money for the item + shipping. Maybe it was just MY local PO there in Tallahassee. They would always spend 5 minutes drilling me as to whether or not my media mail was comic books or not but would take 15 minutes to answer any simple questions I had. They would hassle me about giving my any of my packages that had my shop name on it because my DL didn’t list me as “Atomic Swank” (my old ebay name). For a while they were even turning away my flat rate boxes for being too heavy, which I can say none of them came CLOSE to 40lbs. LOL. Thank goodness we moved. Nothing worse that people being paid $20 an hour to do nothing and still finding a way to be even lazier about it! lol