PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

I have a confession to make: when I launched my Dinosaurs Set 1, I promised I’d design another set if/when I sold 100 copies of the first set. And, ahem, well let’s just say that happened quite some time ago… I did start working on Set 2 in rare quiet periods while I was working on my new book, but there’s a lot involved in designing a three pattern set, so I put them to one side and concentrated on individual patterns until I had more time on my hands.

Dinosaurs Set 1, L-R: Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops

And that time is now!

As you probably know from my first set, my dinosaur designs are deceptively simple: crocheted all in one colour, so they are really easy for you to crochet, and all the magic is in the shaping I built into them. It was really important to me that the new dinos have the same aesthetic as the original designs, and I hope I’ve succeeded in that:

Dinosaurs Set 2, L-R: Pteranodon, Plesiosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex

The first set (Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops) were all herbivores, but I didn’t really want to make an all-carnivore set (some of the dino shapes are too similar to give an interesting mix of designs), so the theme of Set 2 is land, sea and sky. Coincidentally, once I started my research, I discovered that all the dinos I chose for Set 2 are actually carnivores anyway – ha!

Meet The Dinosaurs

Tyrannosaurus Rex was an obvious choice for my land dinosaur. He was the ‘king’ of the dinosaurs – need I say more?! T. rex was one of the largest carnivores, at about 40 ft long. He used his long tail to counterbalance the weight of his big head, he walked on his back legs, and had almost comically tiny arms.

Plesiosaurus is my sea dinosaur. I’ve always loved the elegant shape of Plesiosaurs. Plesiosaurus was about 8 ft long, and had an extremely long neck, a small head, wide body, and four long, paddle-like flippers. He lived in the sea and fed on fish and cephalopods.
Fun fact: some people believe that Nessie, the mythical Loch Ness monster, could be a surviving plesiosaur!

Pteranodon is my sky dinosaur; a type of Pterosaur. I was going to call him Pterodactyl, but then I discovered that the word Pterodactyl actually covers several different species (some of which don’t have that distinctive head crest!), and that the correct name for this specific dino is Pteranodon. He had a 20-30 ft wingspan, a long toothless beak, and a characteristic cranial crest at the back of his head.

I should probably mention, that, during my research for these species, I discovered that, technically, neither Plesiosaurs nor Pterosaurs are actually dinosaurs! The term ‘dinosaur’ correctly covers only a certain type of terrestrial reptile with an upright stance, so Plesiosaurs and Pterosaurs are simply related reptiles that lived in the same time periods as the true dinosaurs. I think that, for the purpose of this collection, and what people understand when they hear the word ‘dinosaur’, it’s okay for me to include them in my dinosaur set – I don’t expect anyone to use my patterns as research tools!

I hope you like my new dinosaur set! You can buy the patterns individually in the shop, or save a bundle when you buy the complete Set 2.

And here’s a bonus pic of my Dinosaurs Sets 1 and 2 – is it just me, or do they look really cute together?! (And I love those Vanna’s Choice yarn colours!)

Click to see them larger!

PS – I mentioned the new dinos on my Facebook page yesterday, and people there are already asking about Dinosaurs Set 3! Well, the same thing applies as last time: I’ll make a third set if I sell 100 copies of this one. So, if you want even more dinos, please spread the word about my new dino patterns!

You may recall that I wrote a review of my experience advertising on Facebook last November. My advertising budget was $150 and I only made around $70 in direct sales – ouch. I concluded:

I love that you can specifically target the people who are your potential customers. But the advertising costs are just too expensive for smaller businesses to justify… Personally, I won’t be advertising with FB again unless I can find another promotional voucher for free credit – it’s just too expensive for my budget.

Well, now I have just that opportunity – a promotional voucher for $25 of Facebook ad credit, so I thought I’d try another FB advertising test, using what I learnt from last time, and trying to tweak things to give me better results. And once again, I’ll share my results with you, so you don’t have to waste money to discover what I’ve already found out!

The Ad Setup

(If you’re interested in advertising on Facebook, I recommend you read my previous report first, and then come back here – it gives a good overview of the FB advertising experience which I’m not going to cover again today.)

This is what an advertisement on Facebook looks like – I’ve circled the ad in purple

With only $25 (which I know from prior experience is very easy to blow through in a single day!) I set my daily budget at $12.50, so I could try different things on 2 days and compare the results.

I chose a CPM (pay per thousand views) bid, not CPC (pay per click), as I found that much more successful last time round.

Last year’s ad was a Christmas ad, so I had to change the image this time. That means I can’t directly compare the results to the previous experiment, as I’m sure the choice of photo plays a part in my success (or lack thereof).

L-R: the old ad and the new one

I also excluded people who are already a fan of PlanetJune on Facebook, as the goal of this test is to see if I can attract new customers with this advertising.

Phase 1
I targeted all crocheters (around 150,000 people). I checked realtime stats in my shop throughout the day, and I could clearly see that customers who actually completed a purchase clicked all over my site and typically viewed 20-80 pages before completing a purchase. The Facebook clickers, however, typically looked at only 1 or 2 pages before leaving.

Phase 1 verdict: $12.13 spent, 99,000 views, 51 clicks, 0 sales.

Phase 2
I targeted only people who had listed amigurumi as an interest. This gave me a far more focused target, but only 2000 people have amigurumi listed as an interest. Could I get them ALL to click through? Or would anyone who lists amigurumi as an interest already know me, and not bother clicking?

My money went a lot further in phase 2, because I was targeting so few people. I actually managed to advertise for 5 full days using my remaining budget! A higher percentage of people clicked through (again not surprising, as many people who list crochet as an interest aren’t interested in amigurumi/toys) and people looked at an average of 5 pages before leaving.

Phase 2 verdict: $12.89 spent, 120,000 views, 207 clicks, 1 sale.

Conclusions

Targeted marketing
By focussing on only people who like amigurumi instead of crochet in general, I saw a 20x improvement in the number of people who clicked my ad. Assuming each person only clicked the ad once, over 10% of my potential audience clicked through! Targeted marking is a powerful tool. But it still didn’t lead to sales.

Saturation
In Phase 1, 150,000 people could have seen my ad – it could have potentially been seen by a different person each time it was displayed. In Phase 2, however, only 2000 people (at most) could see my ad, so that means that each person, on average, saw my ad 60 times! By day 5, the clickthroughs had dropped from about 50 to only 19, and that doesn’t surprise me: if you’ve seen an advertisement 59 times and chosen not to click each of those times, why would you click after seeing it for the 60th time?!

Return on investment
As before, I made less money in direct sales than I ‘invested’ into the advertising – here, a $10 return on $25. (Although, also as before, this doesn’t account for new people who may have found me through the ad and may become customers at a future date.)

Casual clickers vs shoppers
The one big thing I’m taking away from this experience is that Facebook users appear to be casual clickers; that is, they may click on an ad out of a vague curiosity, but not be interested enough to really explore my shop or make a purchase. This is a very different behaviour from people who find me through a google search and are actively looking for crochet patterns: these shoppers are in a ‘buying’ frame of mind and while they may come to my shop looking for, let’s say, a “sea turtle crochet pattern”, they tend to look through my entire shop before buying, and often end up buying far more goodies than they were originally searching for.

Of course, I could have seen more success if I’d managed to create a more appealing ad, but who knows?! Maybe I’d have seen more clicks, but the fact is that the people who did click didn’t follow through and make a purchase, so I could have multiplied the number of clicks with a better ad and still seen the same result.

Based on this, I’m really not sure there’s any value in my paying for advertising. People who are prepared to buy something can easily find me through Google, and that costs me nothing. I’ll stand by my conclusion from last time: it’s just not worth the money.

Over to you…

What’s your experience? Have you tried advertising, on Facebook or elsewhere? (I also tried a $100 Google AdWords advertising experiment – would you like me to report on that experience too?) Have you found something that actually works for you? I’d love it if you’d share in the comments!

After the success of the Spring Crochetalong (CAL) in the PlanetJune Crochet Designs Ravelry group, people have been asking for another CAL. I put it to the vote, and this is what we came up with:

For the Summer CAL, we’ll be crocheting two of my most popular designs: my Alpaca and/or African Violets patterns. Hopefully that will give everyone a chance to choose a pattern they like – or even make both if you’re feeling ambitious (one per month shouldn’t be too much of a stretch)…

(To add the official Summer CAL button to your blog, right click on the image above and save it, then upload it to your blog.)

Summer CAL Rules

• The CAL will run from July 1st through to August 31st, so hopefully even the busiest people will have a chance to complete one of the patterns
• Join my Ravelry group to participate in the Summer CAL chat thread, share your progress, ask questions, etc
• A CAL is most fun when lots of people join in, so if you’re participating, please feel free to blog about it, post in other groups, etc
• Share, share, share! If you’ve made an Alpaca or African Violet already, add it to the group for inspiration! And remember to add your CAL projects too and post about them in the CAL thread

CAL Discount

• If you’re taking part in the CAL, you can buy whichever pattern you’d like to use (or both) for 20% off their regular price. To do this, just order the pattern(s) from my shop and use the discount coupon code 2010SummerCAL at checkout – you’ll see the discount automatically applied to those patterns before you pay.
• You can also order anything else you want at the same time – but you’ll only get the 20% discount on the CAL patterns(s) 🙂
• If you’ve already bought the pattern(s), you can still get your 20% discount, applied as credit towards another pattern purchase. To take advantage of this, order and pay for any other pattern(s) as usual, and put a note in the comments box saying which pattern(s) you’ve already purchased and will be making for the CAL (if you have them, the order date or order number would be helpful so I can verify it more easily), and I’ll refund you 20% of the cost of the pattern you’ll be using against this new order.

Note: please don’t abuse my generosity: only take advantage of this discount if you truly intend to participate in the CAL – thank you 🙂

The patterns

Click the images to jump straight through to the relevant shop pages:


An adorably realistic Alpaca (or Llama) – for added realism, use alpaca yarn (although that’s not required!)

Finally – a beautiful houseplant that will never die and looks good year-round! The African Violets pattern includes 2 sizes and 2 different flower designs, so you can make the smaller version if you’re pressed for time, and choose the flowers you like the best.

So, how about it? Will you join the Summer Crochetalong? Which pattern will you pick?

Every time I say I’ll take a little break from AmiDogs before adding another breed, something happens to change my mind! In this case, a pattern commission from an Akita owner.

By the way, I love to get commissions for new patterns! (If you’d like to commission a pattern, get in touch – my rates vary depending on whether you’d like an exclusive pattern or if I can also sell it in my shop, and if so how popular I think it’s likely to be.)

So AmiDogs breed #16 is… the Akita!

What is an Akita, you may ask? Well, in my research for this design, I discovered there are actually two breeds of dog called Akita. The American Akita that you see here is the breed you’ll see called ‘Akita’ at dog shows etc. The Japanese Akita (or Akita Inu) looks more like a large Shiba Inu (who I’ve already reproduced in crochet!)

The Akita has a short muzzle, pointed ears and a long bushy tail that curls over his back, as you can see:

If you’d like to buy the AmiDogs Akita crochet pattern, you’ll find it in the shop as a stand-alone pattern, or, as always, you can save some money by including it in a custom set of any 3 AmiDogs patterns of your choice 🙂

I hope you like my Akita! I think he’s a cutie, don’t you?

I’m a winner

Yay – my Reepicheep has won the Craftster Fantasy Crochet Challenge, with 64% of the votes!

(Are you bored with seeing Reep’s picture yet? I’m sorry – I promise this is the last time I’ll post it!)

I am a bit disappointed though, because I thought the fantasy theme was really rich and exciting subject matter, and there would be loads of imaginative entries. I don’t know if it was the time of year, or if people just didn’t know about the contest, but in the end there were only a paltry four entries – such a shame. I was looking forward to seeing all sorts of crocheted dragons and unicorns and elves and so on… I suppose I’ll just have to make them all myself, if nobody else is going to! (My new Mythical Creatures pattern category in the shop is looking a little sparse, so that’s actually not a bad idea at all…)

Blogiversary Contest Winners

Thank you so much to everyone who left me a comment on my blogiversary post! I’ve loved reading all your comments and suggestions, and I’ve definitely gained some inspiration and new ideas to take me forward into Year 5 of PlanetJune 🙂 Now onto the fun part: the winners! I downloaded all the comments into Excel, tagged them as pattern or tool, and split them apart into two sets. I then picked a random entry from each set as the winners:

The pattern draw winner is Vicki, who said:

June,
Your blog is amazing! I love all of your patterns!! I think some additions to the farm series would be fun – goat, chicken, horse, sheep, etc…Thanks for all you do for all of us crafters! I would like to be entered into the pattern contest 🙂
Thanks!

And the Detail Stuffing Tool draw winner is SparklyShiny, who said:

You’ve had a very busy year! Your website is so easy to navigate and your patterns are truly amazing (I’m getting spoiled with your well-written directions). I can’t wait to see what you come up with next – love the idea of a dragon, and I keep looking for a realistic parrot pattern.

I definitely want one of your stuffing tools – after the experience of Chihuahua leg (before your tool was available), I know that I need to add one to my tool kit.

Congrats to both of you – I’ll email you, Vicki, to find out which pattern you’d like, and you, Sparkly, to get your mailing address!

I feel bad for all the non-winning commenters – your comments were all so sweet and really useful – so I’ve decided to email a discount coupon to all of you: now you’re all runners-up 😀 (Please allow me a couple of days to send them all out – there are a lot of you runners-up to get through – and check your Spam folder if you don’t see it in your inbox.)

So, as I said in the title of this post, everyone’s a winner – yay!

I’m happy that so many of you are enjoying my botanical crochet patterns – it’s a refreshing change for me to mix it up a bit (although don’t worry, I won’t neglect the animal designs either!). I just love nature, and now I have an excuse to examine animals and plants in detail and challenge myself to recreate the essence of what I find in a simplified, easily reproducible way. This ‘job’ makes me very happy!

As you know, I can’t make a pattern for my darling Reepicheep, but I can and have made one for the lovely water lily you’ve seen with him! How about making a realistic crocheted water lily (or lotus blossom) arrangement as a beautiful decoration or table centrepiece?

This is a bit different to most of my other patterns: there’s no stuffing involved, and it’s *gasp* not all worked in single crochet, although it is all worked in very simple stitches, so it’s not difficult at all. The pattern includes full instructions with step by step photos and clear illustrations at every stage, so you can easily crochet your own Water Lily. With two different leaf sizes, you can create an aquatic arrangement with as many leaves and blossoms as you want.

Although the blossoms are fairly time-intensive (11 parts to each blossom, but they are worth it, I promise), the leaves are an absolute joy to crochet – you can work one up in minutes! So if you’re making an arrangement, I’d suggest several leaves to every flower – in reality, each plant has many leaves and a single flower, so you won’t even be cheating!

To give a more delicate effect, I used sport DK weight yarn for my petals, instead of my usual worsted weight, but you could use worsted weight for everything if you prefer (I give size comparison information in the pattern).

You could pick up my Water Lily crochet pattern from the shop and crochet one this weekend!

I was inspired to make this by a crochet challenge on Craftster. The challenge theme was fantasy, and Narnia sprang to mind immediately. When I was younger, I loved the Chronicles of Narnia series, especially The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I spent my pocket money on a lovely boxset of the paperbacks that included the original illustrations. And then I was given a book written about Narnia that explained all the Christian symbolism C.S. Lewis had built into the stories, and I was horrified: I felt like I’d been cheated into reading religious propaganda, and Narnia lost its appeal. It took me many years, but I eventually decided to ignore all the Christian subtext and re-read them, and I discovered that the stories are still charming and wonderful (except The Last Battle, but that’s another story) and I returned to the magic of Narnia. If you haven’t read these books, you really should!

Anyway, back to my design. I thought Aslan was too obvious a choice, but I wanted to make a very recognisable character, so who better than the fearless and valiant mouse Reepicheep? The scene from the end of The Voyage of The Dawn Treader has always stuck with me, and the prophetic verse:

Where sky and water meet,
Where the waves grow sweet,
Doubt not, Reepicheep,
To find all you seek,
There is the utter East.

So, without further ado, I present… Sir Reepicheep! (Please click the pic to see the full size version – you can’t appreciate it properly at this scale.)

Reepicheep paddles in his coracle, through a sea of lilies, to the end of the world

Reepicheep was very educational to me: without him, I wouldn’t know what a coracle is (a small, round, lightweight, one-man boat made from woven wooden strips) or the meaning of the word poltroon (a coward). In fact, I think ‘poltroon’ is such a great word, we should all start using it in daily conversation!

Reepicheep and accessories took 11 types and colours of yarn and 4 sizes of crochet hook. It’s very important to me to make as much as possible from crochet, so everything you can see is crocheted. I used fiberfill stuffing, 3 different types of wire (pipe cleaners, floral wire and beading wire) to provide internal structure, and a piece of plastic canvas inside the paddle blade to keep it flat. And every single item came from my stash, so the entire project cost me nothing!

Reepicheep stands at 9 inches (23 cm) tall. His arms and legs have a floral wire skeleton to make him poseable; his tail is crocheted over pipe cleaners, and his fingers and toes are stabilised with beading wire so they are also poseable. He wears a red feather behind one ear, tucked into a gold band. The gold band gave me problems – every yarn I tried looked too bulky and ridiculous. After 3 useless attempts, I thought I’d try crocheting an i-cord with gold-coloured embroidery thread – something I’ve never tried before (i-cords are usually knitted) but had been meaning to try. It worked really well and made a neat square tube that I stitched together at the ends to form the band.

I crocheted Reep’s rapier over a length of floral wire so it would be rigid. I found some crewel wool in my stash that I thought would make an interesting texture for his sword belt. Unfortunately, you’d have to touch them to appreciate the contrast between the soft yarns I used for Reep and the coarser texture of the belt – so you’ll have to just believe me on this one 🙂

The coracle took a lot of figuring out! I decided to make a basket-weave texture using front- and back-post stitches, to give the coracle a realistic woven look, but because the sides are sloped, I had to figure out how to make increases without interrupting the pattern of the basket-weave. I eventually made every ‘woven strip’ 2 stitches wide at the base of the coracle, and, over 8 rounds, gradually increased the width of each strip so that they are all 3 stitches wide by the top edge. I crocheted tightly so that it’s very sturdy and hold its shape pretty well, and I wet-blocked it over a bowl to help it to stay perfectly round. The paddle has a floral wire handle and plastic canvas blade so it’s strong and rigid.

And finally, I love the sea of waterlilies that Reep paddles through, so I couldn’t resist making a pretty little waterlily to complete the scene! I can’t make a pattern for Reepicheep: for starters I crocheted him freeform so there is no pattern, and, of course, profiting from other people’s copyrighted characters is not legal! But I will be writing up the pattern for the waterlily flower and leaves – it should be finished later this week if you’re interested.

UPDATE: The water lily crochet pattern is now available in my shop.

I hope you like my Reepicheep! I’m very happy with him 🙂

Don’t forget to enter my anniversary contests, if you haven’t yet – they are open until Friday!

Don’t forget to enter the contests at the end of this post!

Year 4 Review

The PlanetJune craft blog will be 4 years old tomorrow. It’s hard to believe it; every year has flashed past so quickly! So what exactly have I been doing with myself for the past year? I’ve:

• Designed and published 17 new crochet patterns:



• Self-published my first eBook, The Punchneedle Handbook
• Designed and published 9 punchneedle embroidery patterns:



• Had my pincushion and needlebook patterns published in the book One Yard Wonders
• Somehow managed to find time for some other crafts and tutorials:



• Won the Critter Contest and Craftster’s Best of 2009; nominated for 3 Bobby awards and a Flamie award
• Wrote, photographed and illustrated my upcoming crochet book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amigurumi

That last item was the biggie that’s occupied most of my time since last summer; writing a 200-page book is no easy task. But it’s finally finished and I can’t wait to be able to see the finished book when it’s released in October!

Tiny Acorns…

I thought I’d take a step back and return to the first post I ever published on this blog (reproduced here in its entirety):

The tiny acorn that became PlanetJune…

When I started PlanetJune, I had a small goal – to inspire creativity by keeping track of my crafts on the blog. From that one small goal I’ve:

• Met the most amazing and inspirational creative people
• Developed the confidence to start designing patterns
• Become an artist and a teacher
• Written and illustrated my first book (with a second book on the way)

…and, in only four years, turned a little crafty hobby into my full-time occupation – something I would never have dreamed could occur when I first set out on this journey. They say to dream big, but dreaming small and having the reality exceed your wildest expectations is pretty special too!

Where Next?

That’s not to say I’m at the point I’d like to be with my business and my creative career. My goal for the coming year is to build my business to the point where I no longer have that niggling feeling that I should really go and get myself a ‘real’ job – a feeling that comes down to the grim reality of earning enough money to continue to support myself. I’m paying my own way at the moment, but I’m far from earning the salary I used to make pre-self-employment. And that’s okay: I’ve changed my lifestyle too; I no longer buy clothes I don’t need or DVDs I’ll never watch. I don’t have any expensive hobbies, and my craft purchases are all business expenses! I do what I love, and I love what I do.

But, to continue to succeed I need to grow and expand the business. I wish I had a crystal ball: I have a lot of exciting ideas, and it’s hard to know where I should invest my time. It’ll be interesting to see where I am by my 5th blogiversary!

Contests

You, my readers, have given me so much support and encouragement along this journey so far, and so I’d like to give something back! I’m running 2 contests:

1. Win any single pattern (your choice) from my store. (FYI, each PocketAmi set counts as one pattern.)
2. Win one of my exclusive Detail Stuffing Tools – a must-have for stuffing amigurumi or small plush toys!

To enter, leave me a comment on this post, including:

1. Your choice of prize – type TOOL or PATTERN
2. Tell me something, e.g. a suggestion for a future design, something you’d like to see on PlanetJune, or a suggestion for how to take my business to the next level. Anything goes – I just want to hear from you!

If you want to enter both contests, just leave me 2 comments!

On Friday 18th June at 5pm EST, I will draw one name from each set of TOOL comments, and one from each set of PATTERN comments. (In the unlikely event that the same person ‘wins’ both, I’ll contact them to see which prize they would prefer, and then draw another name for the other contest winner). Good luck!