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Monday 13 September 2010

131/365 Christmas Shopping

Hello friends, today we are having a little break from photography. On Friday of this week I get the results of my Open University short course, and I'm getting a bit jittery.
I decided instead to turn my attention away from photography for just a short while, and talk about another pet passion of mine - online shopping.
I really used to hate Christmas shopping, going to a huge shopping mall, wandering round looking at all the overpriced tat that was put out as "must haves" for Christmas, until about 7 years ago, when I discovered on-line shopping. Since then most of the High Street retailers have lost my business. To start with I used known names who offered home-delivery, such as M&S, BHS, Amazon etc, as well as the large toyshops when the grandsons were younger, but last year I discovered an enormous army of online stores offering unique hand crafted and handmade goods for sale, and since then I've used nothing else.
So in the run-up to the major Christmas shopping rush I have decided once a week to promote one of the now well established on-line shopping market places. I've already mentioned MISI on several occasions, and not just because I have my own items for sale there. I have bought almost all of the gifts I've given in the last year (apart from the ones I've made myself) from MISI, which is a huge UK based community of sellers making all sorts of wonderful goods for sale. Most are one-offs, and I would suggest that the range of goods covered would be enough for anyone. There are all the usual contenders, lots of unique and very individual styles of jewellery, some fabulous candle makers, soap makers, card makers, artists, childrens clothing, adult clothing, homewares, garden wares, woodworkers and many, many more. MISI has almost 9,500 registered users, and the vast majority of those users have items for sale, as well as buying from one another.
Even if you have never shopped on line before, I would urge you to just take a look at MISI for yourself, it is a really friendly community covering the whole of the UK from Cornwall to Edinburgh and beyond. If you cant find that special something that you are looking for somewhere in amongst MISI's sellers, I doubt you will find it anywhere.
So please, do yourself a favour, as well as all the lovely UK crafters out there in the on-line marketplace, and have a poke around MISI (http://www.misi.co.uk or click highlighted word for direct link to MISI homepage), I guarantee you wont be disappointed.

9 comments:

lampwork beads by jo said...

I buy most of my presents from misi, such a lovely place :0)

Rachael said...

Thanks for promoting Misi like this Joy, you're doing each and every Misi seller/ user/ crafter a really good turn. Good Luck with your sales...you new stuff looks great!

Tracy said...

great idea Joy, Misi is such a great place to buy beautiful handmade gifts and there's such a lovely community on there too check out some of my misi monday cupcake choices here

http://madaboutbagsuk.blogspot.com/2010/09/misi-monday-cupcakes.html

tazbride said...

Nice post, good luck on your course results x

ScottishPrincess said...

I'm a recent convert to Misi & I think it's great. My Misi shop is here:

http://www.scottishprincess.misi.co.uk

Just K Jewellery said...

fab blog Joy - great idea and much appreciated by ALL us Misi sellers.
This is the link to my Just K Jewellery shop on Misi http://jkj.misi.co.uk

Elaine said...

Fingers crossed that your result is good.

How did you find the open university short course? I did my degree with them, graduating in 2005, and have wondered how good their short courses are. Always good to get first-hand experience from someone.

Elaine

joy said...

I really enjoyed the course, they reckoned it would take only 10 hours per week, but of course, once you start you can actually spend a great deal more time, but its optional. I did it to improve my skills rather than anything else, I dont think I want to do any more studying, its too disruptive to family life. I felt the course more than covered everything I wanted to learn and the online support was excellent.

Elaine said...

Thanks for sharing that info about the course.
I also found that my OU studying took over everything else. My studying years were the 'wilderness' years as far as sewing was concerned! I did very little at all .... no time for it :(