Anyhow,  I wanted to mention that the old URL http://eurotrashdoll.com is now functional and directing to the site so both URLs will work when accessing the EuroTrash site! Yay!

Also a gentle reminder to please observe the shop limits. If they are exceeded I WILL decline the orders and have the items relisted into the shop.  I don’t always have time to e mail every person to double check and wait for an answer, so the 2nd item on any order will be dropped and relisted.

Through my unpacking process I’ve finally located some of my older patterns and I’m having alot of fun sewing up the Sonic Stepford dress.

The first Sonic Stepford appeard in September 2007! My how time flies!! Anyhow its a pleasure to work with the pattern again and offer it in my shop. I’m hoping to make it my ‘Go To’ dress pattern this summer. I’m also hoping to revisit some of my previous patterns that I made in the past and have either lost in my moving shuffles over the years and see if I can redraft and repair and re-create some of those that I’ve lost along the way.

Thank you again for all your support and patience!! <3

So as you’ve noticed, I’ve got a couple new features going on with this website. First of all is the handy-dandy ‘subscribe’ button there on the right to be able to subscribe to the blog, which will then notify you whenever I make a new post. This can be very useful and over time will be replacing any sort of newsletter mailings I do in the future because usually my newsletters that I do mail out are simply a copy of a blog post. So I think this keeps it pretty simple for everyone, myself included.

Then you will see there is an Auctions widget also on the right. Its a very straightforward auction set-up. Over time I’d like to keep the bulk of my auctions off E-bay, for many reasons. In some ways they are a necessary evil but their fees go higher and higher and even their charity services take some % from the charity donations, also recently they’ve begun holding funds for up to 30 days even after auction winners receive their items. The last time I had an auction finish, I had to call them to get the funds released and actually spoke with them about how to get those holds dropped. I’ve been using E-bay for over 10 years now, before I was even into Blythe, and to tell me that I need to sell more frequently/more often to raise my ratings. (what ratings? I have no bad feedback!?) anyhow basically for no reason they can hold funds for up to 30 days. Fees now include postage fees (because too many people were inflating postage costs to cover fees) So by the time Paypal & E-bay took their cuts  you are out about 15% of an auction. Also I really was not thrilled with the way that they handled the charity,taking service fees from the contributions. Now that there are many charities that take direct payments with paypal, its easy enough with screenshots to make a transparent donation so people can see the donations happening Anyhow, anyway, the Auction widget, as I’ve tested it works pretty smoothly. I have good control on the back side of things and can clearly see all the information of bidders etc. The only thing we’ve found while testing it is that its possible to bid against yourself. So you are better off to let your bid rise naturally rather than putting a higher bid yet again while you are the highest bidder. (Also I do have the capacity to remove bids, so if I see someone bidding themselves higher I can always remove the bid/use logic/contact the bidder to ask what they would like) But otherwise it seems secure and functional and I think the bidding against yourself issue is pretty straightforward/normal/easy to work with.

So there you have it, thats primarily the main new features the site has for us, the shop still works the same and in fact is the identical shop we’ve always had (don’t we just love cloud hosting!?).

I’ve got this new host, and we’ve got 30 days to test the heck out of this hosting to see if it works for us, so all feedback is welcome! I’m hoping that with the next 30 days we get an idea of traffic and some stats to make the hosting better and suited to what we need. My previous host has not given me any of the stats I need so in a way its starting from square one, BUT at least this time I’m in control and have access to the information I need to serve you all better. I hope in time we get the eurotrashdoll.com site back/directing to this site as well so that it will continue to be a functional link. Thank you all again and I hope you have a wonderful weekend, Mother’s Day etc!