Fun Faces and Shipping Takes a Lot of Time

      As always after one of my live sales, it's time to post some fun faces and talk a bit more about what worked, and what didn't work. And time. Time is a big factor in this particular series. For the fun faces I just started the video and took random screenshots. I actually got some pretty good ones. I have this one with me, mostly smiling, while I am adjusting the camera (I think). 

     I have talking and smiling after I put my hair up. That happened quickly, it gets warm in my little room when I started "running" around. 

     I got really lucky with my photo grabs. Even when I am starting to look down (pretty sure what is happening here) I seem to be smiling. I put every photo I grabbed into this post. None of them were super goofy. And I know I probably made some goofy faces in 3 and a half hours. 

      There was of course some rounds of empty closet doors. I try to stay on camera, but not everything is in reach so I have to step out of the frame sometimes. I do try to keep up a pretty constant chatter. I was working on packing and shipping labels on Sunday and had the live playing in the background for a while. I talk a lot! This was something I knew about myself but it seems nearly constant during the live sale. At least in the first half hour. 

      I had to move the camera at one point during the live since my battery was running low and the charger cord is not super long. You got to see a different view of the closets and this deep concentration face, likely while I read a comment. 

      After the camera was moved I found out very quickly that the angle of the overhead light made seeing the items nearly impossible, so I turned it off. That didn't stop me from needing to background them against my hand so they could be (sort of) seen. Everyone who stuck with me for the live sale is super amazing. I hope you weren't too bored. 

     No matter where I stand in the room, I end up having to look down a lot during the sales. My notes are low, the items are low. It's unavoidable. At least my hair was cute. 

     As promised, here is at least sort of a funny face. I LOVE bold lipstick, but I hate how it will either wear off on the inner portion of the lips, or maybe my lips just don't like to hold onto lipstick, no matter how good it is. This stuff is pretty amazing though. For anyone that cares it's Maybelline lip ink in some dark shade I don't remember the name of. 

     While I was taking screen shots I jumped back to somewhere in the middle and got this one. Still not really a goofy face. As long as the miniatures sale ended up being, I seem to be smiling for most of it. I like that. 

     Shipping is an enormous undertaking, another of which would be easier with a helper. The way I do it is to put everyone's claim bag (a paper lunch bag with their name on it) in alphabetical order by first name. Then I make a list of everyone, in that order, and gather up the email addresses that I was hopefully sent. After that I will grab one bag at a time and invoice that person and pack up the items for shipping. I left all the mailers open this time in case I had to fix and order. Facebook was duplicating comments sometimes. Anyway, now I had each person's items in a mailer (or a box if it was needed) and I wrote their name on it. 

     Once the invoices started being paid I grabbed the postage scale, my laptop and all of the packages and started printing postage in order of payment. I would just weigh, enter that info (measurements for boxes) print and leave them all in the printer and move on. When I finished printing all of the labels I cut them all out (are you seeing where a helper would be super useful?) and once they were all cut out I started closing packages and applying the labels. I had the names on the packages so this was a very easy and efficient way to do it. 

       I did postage until everything that was paid for was done and I cleaned up and went to bed. I was really tired. Saturday was hours of prep and live sale but Sunday was all day with invoicing, packing and labels. Doing a live sale is definitely a lot of work, on both the front and back ends of things. I still have some things left to be paid for and shipping to do, I'm out of tape (I need it for labels) and I am tired. But even though the sale was long, and things did not work out perfectly, I think it was reasonably successful. It may be the only one of it's kind that I ever do but maybe I will order some of the more popular items and offer them during my doll sales. That might be a happy medium.