No credit card, no Paypal account, NO PROBLEM :)

It's time to address the problem of online shopping for youngsters. Ever since Treasurette Girl, slowed down on doing events to really focus expanding online, my younger fans have been emailing me on why I've gone MIA. Since the launch of the newly designed site, we've posted many more charm designs but unfortunately, the girls that are actually wearing the necklaces don't have credit cards to finish an online transaction and are left just staring at their screens.

That's when the emails started coming in from girls between 16-21 years old. They have jobs but, for many understandable reasons, don't have credit cards yet and usually do their shopping at malls... aka: anywhere offline. So two weeks ago, I decided to try something out with a girl named Lily from Florida. She emailed me saying she loved the Pretty Little Liars charm (that she spotted on tumblr) and ask if there was any way she could get it without a card. When I said she can always ask her mom to purchase it for her, she said her mom is totally against online shopping as she had an incident with identity theft. After some thought, I decided to allow her to send mail me cash, making sure she understood and accepted the risks of paying in this manner. The outcome.... in two days I got her payment - she sent it as a standard letter - and shipped her order right out the next day. The transaction went so well that I tried this payment method again with the next customer that didn't have a credit card.

There are definite risks to sending actual cash via mail:
1. It could get lost or stolen during delivery. 
I haven't had any bad personal experiences sending or receiving mail but I've heard of them. Ease your mind and make sure to get tracking and insurance. That way if you are really worried, you'll be able to make sure your payment gets safely to its destination and just in case anything happens, the insurance will cover your losses. Talk to your post office for official details.

2. Trust the person you are sending cash to. 
If you are paying for any kind of item this way, trusting that your items will be shipped to you is a big deal. Anybody can just run off with your cash and say they never got it. There are honest companies out there whose reputations depend on positive customer experiences - these types of businesses will generally offer a more reliable transaction.

With all this said, Treasurette Girl is now officially accepting cash to be mailed-in as a form of payment. I recommend customers to use our credit card or Paypal method as a preference, but this company understands that dealing with online transactions are not for everyone and we are extremely happily to add this mail-in accommodation.

To pay with cash, go through the checkout process and when payment options are listed, click the last one: Send Cash by Mail and continue to the final screen. You will receive an email within a minute or two stating that your order has been successfully placed along with instructions on how to send in your payment.

Example of email that will be sent once customer has submitted an order.

If you have any questions, you can always email me at: cream@treasuretetgirl.com.

SHOP AT www.treasurettegirl.com

The Mushy Mommy Blog & Betsey Johnson Fashion Show

The Mushy Mommy wrote an amazing article on my ecofriendly jewelry company Treasurette Girl. Waking up to see someone appreciate my little entrepreneur venture overwhelmes me with such a wonderful feeling that I just have to find some way to share it with everyone around me. The typing fingers behind The Mushy Mommy is a super gorg woman by the name of Sasha. She is doing a Treasurette Girl product giveaway on her blog and it's completely free to enter.

A much needed ego boost considering I had my highly anticipated Betsey Johnson show at LA Fashion Week scheduled for that night. After a last minute vanity visit to the gym and an hour of hair teasing, my pop-art inspired look was ready for it's close up.

(Left is Camay, editor in chief of Reflekt. Right is me.)

Here are some pics from the show that I snapped with me iPhone:

It was signature Betsey- flashy in every sense of the word. Fourth row viewing wasn't very camera phone friendly, but hopefully I can post pictures Camay took with her fancy camera.

The absolute highlight was enjoying the show with America's Next Top Model winner Naima.

#bestlafashionerekever

Getting ready for my Fashion Week with Editor-in-Chief of Reflekt Mag

I'm so excited for the Betsey Johnson  fashion show tomorrow at LA fashion week. Luckily I ask my beautiful sister Camay, who is the face and and brains behind independent publication Reflekt Mag, to stop by and help me pull together a legit outfit for the show.

The winner are a comicbook printed skirt and lace ruffled corset topped with a black satin bow for a necklace. Just need to paint my nails pink and work on the beehive hair do for tomorrow.

Fashion week here I come!

Coffee, Coding, and Crazy Hair

Coding your own website is a lot of hard work, but if you're on an extremely small budget, the time invested in getting those fingers css dirty is more than well worth it. Before building (or in my particular case, redesigning) an e-commerce site, I had to figure out what was really important when I sold it personally and how to translate that on a screen without human interaction. The product I am selling is is definitely hard to describe and when put into just words it isn't appealing at all:

"Recycled water bottle cap jewelry." 

This definitely  did not embody the fun, sparkly, and super-cute nature of the look and brand personality my product has in-person. My products are colorful, engaging, and sets a stage to display personal interests and hobbies. My decision was made, the focus had to be on images and bright graphics- meaning functions and navigation had to be easy to keep my customers attention on the cute designs. 

Blogger was a free platform where I can easily update my ever-growing collection of charm designs. It also offered less function coding for me as it allowed me to add search, subscription, SEO, tagging, and auto-updating categories in just a click. Plus as Blogger is owned by Google, it wouldn't hurt me SEO-wise.

One week later, a majority of my new site is done. Last night I stayed up till 4am to have the site up by today-- that's a pic of me on top happily enjoying my site with my final cup of coffee for the day. I had a lot of questions during that week, but I made my questions very specific because I knew how I wanted particular parts of it to look/function. Like when I wanted my navigation to stay put and the products to scroll, I simply googled it and was able to find my answer quickly. I recommend to any one making their own site to not be afraid of knowing what you want, the answers ARE out there.

For the cart, I chose to go with Mals-ECommerce as it's free. Completely free, forever. You can link it to your Paypal and you can also accept credit card information and I use Square to process them.

Here's how my site looked before (I used a cart that was part of a template- not too bad. I could only get it to link to my Paypal and I wasn't able to easily create discount codes):

And here's how it looks now. 

I'm planning to fix up this blog just a little bit later this week... maybe, I kind of need to recover from making the Treasurette Girl site :)  

I'm always willing to give some help to other's trying to build their own e-commerce site for practically for free.