A Week in My Life as a Handmade Business (The Real Version)

I see those "week in my life" posts on Instagram. The ones with good lighting, a tidy studio and a creator who seems to have it all together. This isn't that.

This is what a week actually looks like when you're building a handmade business around a five year old, a school run, looking after alpacas and a to-do list that never, ever gets finished.

The shape of my days

My working hours aren't 9 to 5. They're more like 9.30am to 2.30pm, then 8.30pm to whenever I run out of steam.

School drop-off kicks off my morning. After that I have a window, usually a few hours, to actually make things. Then 2.30pm comes around fast, pick-up happens, and from 3.30pm it's family time until 8.30pm. Dinner, bath time, the whole routine. I wouldn't swap it, but it means my making day is always on a timer.

Once my son is in bed, I switch back into business mode. Not the fun kind.......the unglamorous kind. This week that meant working through a backlog of website issues and SEO problems that have been quietly driving me mad. It's not the part of running a small business anyone warns you about.

What I've been making

This week I've been working on something I'm genuinely excited about , double zip pouches made from the patchwork squares left over from my quilted tote bags.

I really don't like waste. When I finished the tote bags, I had a pile of perfectly good patchwork squares sitting there and it felt wrong to just set them aside. So I've been turning them into pouches. The same fabrics, same colours and four options to choose from so that they coordinate with the totes bags if you want to treat yourself to a matching set, or they work perfectly on their own.

It feels good to make something from what would otherwise be thrown away. Zero waste, and honestly some of the prettiest little pouches I've made

The washing machine moment

This one I had to share on Instagram because I needed to know, and I figured if I was wondering then other people probably were too.

I put one of my quilted book sleeves through the washing machine.

I'll be honest, I held my breath a little. But it came out beautifully. The quilting held, the fabric came up fresh, and it looked just as good as before it went in. If you've been wondering whether my book sleeves are practical for everyday use, the answer is yes. Wash them. They can handle it.

The slow, frustrating bits

I'm going to be real with you: Instagram is hard.

I try to post Mondays through to Friday to show what I'm actually working on, the pouches, the wash test, the behind-the-scenes stuff but the growth is slow. Slower than I'd like. I'm still figuring out what resonates (it seems not much is hitting as I have only grown to 126 followers in just over a year. So I am clearly, still trying to find my groove and some days it feels like I'm shouting into the void.

I don't think I'm alone in that. But it doesn't make it less frustrating.

So in between the making and the school runs and the alpaca feeding and the spinning practice (yes, I'm learning to spin... more on that another time), I'm also trying to figure out SEO, fix website issues and learn how to actually get found online and do this content creation malarky.

It's a lot. Most nights I'm working on something business-related long after I'd rather be asleep.

Why I keep going

Because I love making things. Because zero-waste patchwork pouches make me genuinely happy. Because someone picking up one of my book sleeves and saying "this is exactly what I needed" is worth more than an algorithm.

But I'll be straight with you, the business is in the red right now. I'm putting in the hours, making the things, showing up online every day, and it hasn't clicked yet. I'm still waiting for something to land, for the right person to find me, for the traffic to start finding its way to my website.

I don't know when that happens. I just have to keep believing that it will.

So I keep making. I keep posting. I keep fixing the SEO at 9pm when I'd rather be horizontal on the couch. Because the alternative is giving up on something I really care about, and I'm not ready to do that.

If any of this resonated with you, I'd love it if you shared it with someone who might enjoy it too. And if you ever hear someone looking for a thoughtful, handmade gift, a quilted tote bag, a book sleeve, a little zip pouch then I'd be so grateful if you sent them my way. Every single visitor to my website genuinely helps, and word of mouth from kind people means everything to a small business like mine.

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