Sewing To Sell // Book Review & Giveaway!! **GIVEAWAY CLOSED**

Sewing To Sell // Book Review & Giveaway!! **GIVEAWAY CLOSED**

• Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Hi friends! I'm taking a bit of a break from my blogging hiatus (have you noticed??) to share something I find very useful and am pretty excited about!

When I was asked if I would like to do a review of Virginia's (of Gingercake Sews) new book, Sewing To Sell, I jumped at the chance. You see, I have this little Etsy shop. It's tiny, but I am rather fond of it. But I opened it without a clue. And even as I continued on in the little adventure most of the questions I had about an online shop lingered. Well let me tell you, after reading this book I feel very enlightened and inspired! 

I sat down one afternoon to "start" reading the eBook and ended up not quitting until I was at the end! I found it to be very inspirational. I mean, I constantly get an "I should make and sell this certain thing!" idea, but what's so awesome about this book is that Virginia includes 16 patterns that are there for you to use exactly as written or tweak to your liking and you are free to sell any items made from them! This is a rarity in the blogging community. It is so generous of her to share her hard work in the book.

And not only does it include the patterns, she offers a wealth of advice from getting started, to the business end of things, tips on sewing your products to save time and fabric and even tips on how to photograph your items for online listings.

I decided to go ahead and give the Two at a Time Oven Mitts a try because I thought they were super cute and my kitchen drawer is in serious need of some new oven mitts!

I'm in love with the result!

**Be sure to read to the end for a chance to WIN your own copy of the book!**

I had fun with adding some cute personalized tags. The next set of mitts that I plan to make I'm going to try out a hang tag so these pretties can be hung and displayed in the kitchen and also add my shop tag to it. I would very much like to add these to my shop in the future!

And just in case you thought you needed a professional photo setup for nice photos of your products, I'm showing you this pulled back shot just for fun. :)

The light in the nursery is always lovely in the afternoon so I set up a little display using a white folding table and the pale blue walls (newly painted, I might add. Woohoo!) as the background. You'll notice the covered up rocking chair looking mighty fine in the corner. I used the step stool to get some shots from above.

Oh and I baked muffins. Just for the photoshoot. And maybe for us too ;) But really, who doesn't like food photos? And since oven mitts are used in BAKING... I had to.

Giveaway: Now that you know how awesome this book is if you are looking to open an online shop or if you already have one, like me, and just want some great guidance, wouldn't you love to win a copy?? C&T Publishing and Virginia Lindsay are generously giving away 1 copy to one of you, my lovely readers! If you would like a chance to win, leave a comment on this post. Please make sure to include your email address so I can get in touch with the winner. If there is no email given, sadly I will have to skip over your comment :( The giveaway is open to US residents only and will run until 10pm Monday, January 26th. Winner will be announced Tuesday, January 27th! Good luck!

UPDATE: The Winner is Jessica. Congratulations, Jessica!