Four posts in 4 days – what’s up with that?
I just had to share the prize bag I won from Sarcastra’s blog giveaway over at Too Lazy To Be Evil. Look what she sent me…
Bunches of candy, and custom sharpie pens and a moleskin notebook, and even some toothpaste to wash away all that sugar! Hubby and I decided to cut back on our candy consumption, and then THIS prize came in the mail. I rationalized that the UNIVERSE wants ME to have CANDY. So I ate it. And it was good.
You might recognize Sarcastra as a frequent commenter on the DuhBe blog. If you don’t already read Sarcastra’s blog – you should. Her dry sense of humor is very entertaining. Who doesn’t love a sarcastic quilter? I especially enjoy how she manages to not kill her co-worker on her frequent business trips.
OK, my shameless plug for Too Lazy To Be Evil is over. But I do enjoy her writings, and she sent me lots of Candy.
She rocks. That’s all. Check her out.
I really did NOT plan on writing this. But there were so many good comments on the last couple of posts about my pending bath and body business that I wanted to continue the discussion. I know many people don’t go back and read comments later on, so maybe this will be easier?
Read more…
Can I show you the bath and body packaging decisions I’m dealing with for the future Wonderland Bath & Body? Sometimes voicing this stuff makes it more clear to me. Do you do that too? Blog about things just to figure out your own mind? Yes, I thought so.
I tried many different packaging approaches. I still love brown kraft paper, and string, and muslin and linen. So I played around with soap packaging and various logo designs…
Read more…
Many of you have already figured it out from my last few posts. You realize I’m obsessed with making bath and body products, while the sewing is not so fun for me anymore.
So now I’m ready to tell you that I have made the decision, and I’m prepping everything to begin my own bath and body business. I will be phasing out the DuhBe shop on Etsy over time, and launching a bath and body shop this October.
It didn’t feel right calling the new bath shop Duhbe, so we came up with a new name which seems to fit the feeling I want – a little dark grunge with lots of playful whimsy. It felt right. Wonderland Bath & Body. (We kinda liked Wonderland Bath project but were afraid people would assume they were signing up for experiments or something)
I’m on schedule to launch in October. I have actually built a lab in the basement, all the ingredients and packaging are here, the product line is decided, now I just have to finish production and get my product liability insurance. (at $500 per year, it’s a stiff entry fee into the bath and body world) This week I’ll be figuring out what craft fairs to start with in October. Now you understand why I’ve nearly disappeared from my blog?
Some of you are frequent commenters that have proven you can deliver honest feedback. (umm, the ruffle pants debate for example? LOL) So what do you think about all this? Am I crazy, or finally on the right track?
The Perseid Meteor shower peaks tonight – Thursday, Aug 12, 2010. And since the crescent moon sets about an hour after sunset – we should have a dark night to help increase the visibility of the falling stars.
Grab your loved ones and star gaze tonight. Don’t forget to wish upon a falling star. It doesn’t get any better than that.
(the little fairy reminded me - grab some mosquito repellent while you’re outside, they have been viscious this year!)
(I actually wrote this post several month ago and I’ve been too afraid to post it. Time to bite the bullet – so here it is with a few notes added in for updates)
OK. It’s time I come clean and really tell my embarrassing story. Readers who have been with me for a while have already figured this out about me, but they are kind enough to play along and be nice to me anyway. Today, I am telling my story in the hopes that others can learn from my mistakes and craziness.
You see, Websters dictionary has a word for me …
vac·il·late – waver in mind, will, or feeling : hesitate in choice of opinions or courses
I even created a digital collage to illustrate how my creativity works -
I’m suffering more confusion along this creative path I’ve chosen. This is one of those posts where I ramble on and dump my brain onto you. Here it goes…
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In my last post, I promised I wouldn’t blog again until I could talk about sewing. And then an entire month went by with no posting. I’ve been so distracted I haven’t even visited my friends blogs that much. Sorry.
Oh sure, I’ve been sewing orders for customers. But nothing new and exciting to report. So yesterday I finally sat in front of my sewing machine and played. It should come as no surprise the new item was bath and body related.
This is a silk pouch for a lotion bar…
I’ve had that lotion bar sitting on my nightstand for maybe a month? Just sitting there on a paper towel so it won’t leave a grease spot. So I finally whipped up a pouch from recycled silks to house my solid chocolate scented lotion.
Then I needed to make a pouch for my sister in law. She’ll be getting a lotion bar for her birthday this week. But her taste runs more to the contemporary fabrics so I made this for her…
Those last 2 pouches had free motion quilting and embroidery on them. They were sort of time consuming. So I thought about making lotion bar pouches that were fast and easy but still made of fabric. A quick jaunt into photoshop with the Digi Dolly legs, some treated muslin to print on, then a few quick stitches on the serger and VOILA! This was born…
The ingredients are printed onto the back of this fabric pouch. This one was a private joke between me and the husband. Since my lotion bar is chocolate scented with lots of cocoa butter, I rub it on my feet at night and exclaim (very excitedly) that I have chocolate feet! Thus the chocolate feet design was born. It still makes me giggle when I see it, and then I smell the chocolate again. Seriously, I want to take a bite of this solid lotion.
And now that I have fulfilled my promise of a sewing post, I will get back to the bath and body stuff that has consumed my time, money and imagination for the past month. You will be hearing more from me, and it won’t take a month for the next post! I suspect I will be coming clean to you in the near future. (cheesy pun intended)
That’s right, another post about soap. This will be the last one for a while, until I experiment and formulate a few new things. Oddly enough, me and the husband have started watching that old TV show “Soap” on Netflix. I really do have soap on the brain. More photos of my new hobby… Read more…
I guess you would think that fabric + soap = clean fabric
But it’s never about the obvious things with me, now is it?? Read more…
As per my usual, I keep graphs of the sales statistics that Etsy publishes each month. Etsy calls this their weather report. I just update this post each month when Etsy publishes their sales figures.
I somehow missed the new stats published by Etsy on June 11th. Not sure how I missed the RSS on that one, but here they are a little later than I normally publish the charts. It looks like May is better than April but not quite recovered. I see many unhappy people in the Etsy forums complaining that google is not crawling their shops anymore, maybe that’s a factor? Anyhow, April to June are typically slow in retail. It’s a good time for a shop makeover and to start working on fresh new items!
Some of the charts don’t show “May” in the legend at the bottom, but I assure you the last dot on the right of each chart is for May 2010.
And as always, here is the link to the spreadsheet where I keep those numbers on google docs if you want to copy and play with them yourself. All I ask is that you link back to me if you publish what you use.
