Paper toy Halloween craft activity packs - Preparation

I put myself under a lot of pressure to get my paper craft football world cup products ready for the tournament and I was still putting up products a week into the tournament.  I left myself very little time to do any marketing or promotion, hence why only a few sold. I learnt some valuable lessons from that whole process and so I'm aiming to be much better prepared for my next project.

I realise Halloween is just under three months away but I'm learning that it pays (hopefully literally!) to be well prepared. So whilst my Etsy shop may appear a bit dorment with a lack of new products, I am bevearing away feverishly at a range of Halloween paper toy craft activity packs.

I'd already started to sketch and doodle Halloween themed paper toys a couple of months ago, and I've been working on the final designs for a few weeks now. I've got four designs finished or at least ready for final prototype testing, working titles are -

Frankie goes to Colchester

Dra-cute-la

Skeleton Steve

Wolf Pappa!

I would like to do a Witch *itch and a Jack-oooh my giddy aunt-Lantern and a whole other bunch of characters but when you're a one-man-band, working on these things in your spare time, I've got to set realistic limits on what I can achieve.

So once I'm happy with the final designs, I need to do instructions for each and a black and white 'colour in your own version'. Then I need to construct them and stage them for photos. I'm gonna be spending more time staging my products this time. I think I need to go back to what I did with my original Fairy Box Eds which is to show the creation of the products. I've got a couple of beautiful and willing models in my kids to show off how my paper toys get constructed, so telling the audience a visual story about the construction of a paper toy will deliver better stats in terms of views and favourites and sales!

These things sound straight forward but there are always problems and issues which take time to workout. I want to be ready to launch these by the end of September at the latest. That should give me time to do my marketing and promotion and give people time to discover my products on Etsy. All of which will equal more views, more favourites and more sales!

If I do find I have more time then I could do more characters. What I'm more likely to do is to offer more products within the pack or at least demonstrate the uses of my paper toys. Whilst at the moment they are a paper toy to construct and a colour in your own, the designs can be easily adapted to make masks, greetings cards, banners and bunting, invitations, gift tags etc. etc.

Thanks for dropping by, check my Instagram @Box_Eds for my latest sketches and my Etsy shop if you wanna have a go at making some of my stuff.