It’s no secret to those who’ve followed this blog for years that I want a little online store – nothing fancy, just a sale or two here and there. The first hurdle I faced was procrastination, followed by crisis of confidence, and lastly; to register or not register a business name.

I did a bit of research which involved trying to make sense of the taxation website as well as typing every Victorian hobby business into the Business Register Search that I could think of and came to the conclusion that a) roughly half of the businesses I searched for were registered, b) if you’re not trading as your own name then technically you need to be registered. There was a lot of grey so in the end my husband made the decision for me and said ‘register as you never know what the future holds and you’ll kick yourself if you can’t get your name’. So I registered. I couldn’t get ‘The Red Wren’ which was a little frustrating as I’d had my domain longer than it had been registered, but all was well and I could have ‘The Red Wren Boutique’ which requires no real change to my branding. Phew.

No sooner was this registered that I took up a request of a friend’s to make mini crayon rolls as party favours for her sister. This lead to a few more orders of crayon rolls, which in turn boosted my confidence and I can now say I’m actively creating stock and will be ‘open’ by the end of June! It’ll be a bit of a mish-mash of stock until I discover what works for me and if my ideas actually come into fruition.

Other happenings at present include my commitment to make more of my own clothes. I’m being quite ambitious and have vowed to make my winter wardrobe (Winter is sneaking up rather fast though). I started a new blog to document garment making which can be found here. There’s no much there at present, bear with me!

Lastly, I’m slowly working on some ideas I had way back at the start of the year to do with printables. I love free printables and I’d like to give back what I’ve taken, so look out for some freebies from me soon!