Handmade Monday 172

Hello and welcome to another Handmade Monday!  We've had some fabulous weather here this week (hope you have too!) but interspersed with rain... still, it wouldn't be Britain without copious amounts of the wet stuff, would it?

My personalised fish and chip cones are always a lot of fun to design.  I draw them out the traditional way on paper and use alcohol-based markers to add colour to them.  They then get scanned and emailed to the customer, who then prints and assembles them ready for their celebration.

I've been meaning for a long while to get some generic ones done too and I finally got round to a couple this week.

But all this might change soon.  I've been shocked to hear about new EU tax laws, coming into play in January 2015.  It appears that anyone selling pretty much anything digitally will need to charge VAT at each individual customer's country's rate and it also appears there is no threshold - which is the really scary bit, because my little digital art business really doesn't make enough money for me to start jumping through complicated international VAT hoops.

I'm not sure what the new laws will mean for the future of Handmade Harbour.  I don't even know if it's viable for Handmade Harbour to have a future as a digital crafts supplier.  I mean, even before we get to the laborious and time-consuming gathering of 28 different countries' taxes (with records needing to be kept for ten years!) how do I charge different people different prices?  Do I have a drop-down list on every product with every country's VAT rate calculated for people to choose from?  Could I just charge everyone one rate and would that even be legal?  Could I block sales to non-UK EU countries? And how would this work in practice? Would it still be necessary to get embroiled in VAT?

Blocking sales to other EU countries currently seems the way some digital artists will choose to go - certainly not in keeping with the idea of a common market, but possibly the only way to stay in business?  It does seem HMRC hasn't considered small or micro businesses or indie artists at all.  If you do know more, please share.

I just want to create!

What's running through my mind now is this: is it really worth continuing to sell digitally?  I have a few months to make up my mind, and explore my options.  There is a Facebook Group set up to discuss this, if anyone is affected and wants to know more.

Quentin news

Guide Dog puppy Quentin is doing really well in most areas of his training, but he still gets very excited at times - completely normal for a puppy but sometimes difficult to manage.  The worst times are when a stranger pets him while he is out.  Even if he manages to contain his excitement at the time and not jump up, a few seconds later he is jumping up and taking chunks out of me.  Not good, especially at the checkout in Sainsbury's!

So we've been doing a lot of practice with reinforcing the sit and wait commands.  He's really good at these, but needs much more practice when there are distractions around him, so we're sitting and waiting everywhere I can think of.  Out on walks, I've been sitting on benches so often, he looks expectantly at any bench now whenever we pass one!  I think I should add here that it's me who sits on the bench and Quentin sits on the floor!!

It does seem he's improving with visitors to the house.  He jumps up less and is a little calmer.  The strategy of visitors ignoring him when they first arrive seems a bit mean (and is difficult for dog lovers!) but definitely works in encouraging more acceptable behaviour.

Otherwise, he's just delightful and most of the time he really is quite calm and well-behaved for such a young pup.  He's patient in the car, stands on command for me to lift him out, and never gets over-excited having his lead on for walks.

It's been a bit of a long post this week - sorry!  It's over to you for Handmade Monday now.

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