In The Works - New Sock Monkey Medallions!

I’ve been working away in my studio the last two days on a new line of coffee sleeves – here’s a sneak peek on the process!

Like all my coffee sleeves, these started with a piece of fabric I just love – in this case a fabulous sock monkey print on a soft aqua background. There are six or so different monkeys on it, so you can expect to see a lot of different versions of this coffee sleeve.

I thought they looked just perfect with red, so the first step is to fuse each medallion onto a nice, polka-dotted red background strip to form the middle of each sleeve.

Then the harder question – what to use as a background? I’ve been loving this faux bois (woodgrain) cotton for a while and haven’t used it very much, except for the inside lining of some zip pouches, and I like the way brown looks with the monkey medallions so I decided to try it out. Very nice, I think! Here’s one waiting to be sewn together…

Yes, he’s pinned through the eyes, and I do realize that’s cruel, but with the interfacing behind it I didn’t want to leave visible marks elsewhere on it!

And after several more steps, they’re all finished up with their cozy red fleece backgrounds attached and a nice Bellflower Textiles label, just ready to be individually fitted to a coffee cup and hand sewn closed in the back.

They look happy, don’t you think?

And a couple of the finished products, now available in the shop! You can click on the pictures to go directly to the listing for these two fine fellows.

First, Our friend from above, in blue… he’s natty and very proud of his hat.

And one of his friends, in pink, sporting a jaunty birthday hat.

You can expect to see some of their friends showing up too over the next few days!

Giveaway today

Sheryll over at Skylar's Candy Clips is hosting a giveaway from my shop today - hop on over to her blog to enter for your chance to win any coffee cup currently in stock!



Thanks so much!

New website!

My fabulously talented friend Kate and I have been working on a commercial website for me for several months now, and I'm happy to announce that Bellflower Textiles is now live on the Web! Please come take a look at the result on my very own domain:

http://bellflowertextiles.com

Having my own website will let me do things like point all of my various online identities and marketing activities back to one central site, and it gives me more control over how my business shows up in search results, lets me collect addresses for my soon-to-be-launched newsletter, and just generally should help me direct a lot more traffic into my shop! And I've got a blog page there where I can post most of my shop news, so check in for frequent updates!

If you're an online seller, purchasing your own domain is definitely a good idea - it keeps someone else from grabbing your company name, and you may someday want to expand your efforts into a full e-commerce site that's not tied to any particular venue like etsy or artfire. Reserving a domain name is fairly inexpensive, and you can just redirect it to your primary selling site until you're ready to develop it further!

And, let me point you all to my friend Kate Witt's website - she runs her own consulting business creating sites for companies and individuals, and I know she really loves to work with small business owners! Her services are awesome and highly affordable and I just can't say enough positive things about the experience of working with her on this -- she's a total pro, and a lot of fun! She's also an etsy fanatic and has a whole page dedicated to how she can help Etsy shop owners get set up with sites of their own.

Thank you Kate!

A few recent goodies - and a giveaway

A little news about Bellflower Textiles!

First, I wanted to share that I'm just a few sales away from my 500th sale!! I'm very excited about this one! And to celebrate, the person who is my 500th buyer will get the zip pouch or coffee sleeve of their choice, free with their order! At the moment that I'm writing this I only need five more sales to cross that milestone - so you have a really good chance of being the one if you head over now for some Christmas shopping. :)


Second, I just wanted to share a few recent items from my store - I've started to make an expanded version of my pencil rolls designed for makeup brushes, and they're selling like hotcakes!

The makeup rolls differ from the pencil rolls in that they have varied-sized slots in them, for different size brushes, and most of them have a foldover flap on the top to protect your brushes from damage.










And there are lots of others available, so please take a look! Christmas shopping seems to have gotten started on etsy already as this month has really been hopping for me. I've posted probably fifty new items this month but things keep selling so fast that I'm getting nowhere near my goal of having 200 items in stock by October 1st.

Oh well. As I've said before, that's a nice problem to have.

Preschool report

So as noted previously, Sofie went off to school for the first time this week. We've been building up to this for a while - reading lots of books about preschool, visiting her classroom three or four times before school started up so she could meet the teachers and join in and play... and I guess it worked, because she's taken to it like a champ!

Despite her occasional tendency to cling to Mommy and not talk to anyone else, on her first day she walked right in, gave me a big hug, and sat down to play. No tears, no real anxiety, no problem. The teacher said she figured out the routine really easily and had fun the first day.

Sofie's only real comment to me that day was, "I didn't paint today!" I guess her preschool books led her to expect that preschool is one big finger-painting bacchanal. Maybe next time, kid.

On day two, she was more than happy to go back. I stayed for a few minutes to watch her do circle time with the other kids (about 10 boys and 3 girls, from what I can tell so far), and then came back a little bit early to peek in from the hall and watch them play ring-around-the-rosie and do some complicated game where they all held little stuffed rabbits and sang a song. Very cute!

She's doing awesome - the teacher said she's extremely comfortable with the classroom and is having a great time. I'm so proud of her!

And wow, is the worktime as great as I thought. Three hours feels like such a luxury, an embarrassment of riches. Monday I got something like eight things sewn for the shop in that time period AND got some of them photographed. Today, I had coffee with my friend Jen, ran errands, and STILL went home and got over an hour of hard sewing time in before I had to go back and pick her up.

So we're both adjusting well and so far, I think this school thing is working out great! Check back with me in week three, when the teachers have told us the real protests about all this going-to-school stuff often begins. Fingers crossed!

Off to school

More words later today, but for now just some quick pics from this morning - new sneakers, a backpack, and a really big grin:

Overheard tonight

Brett: Sofie, are you a boy or a girl?
Sofie: I'm a GROWNUP!

Heh.

Time for a change

The hard part of having your own business and being a mom is that you are literally always working. Bellflower Textiles may not be on the top sellers list (not yet, anyway - but good god, the top folks on there have 52,000 sales!) but for just over a year and coming up on my 500th sale pretty soon here, I feel like it's successful enough that I can call it a real business. It's paying a portion of our bills, it's profitable, and I'm working really really hard at it.

I mention this only because today, in a fit of decadence, I am officially NOT working while Sofie plays in her room for quiet time. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been able to allow myself this luxury in the last three months. I could pretty much count it on two fingers, including today.

Which is AWESOME - I'm so glad to see the business growing and thriving. But I'm tired, dude. And the other thing that's making me feel like I can take today off and just veg is that ... duh duh DUM...

PRESCHOOL STARTS MONDAY!

I'm of two minds about preschool. First, I'm very much feeling bittersweet about the whole thing. My little teeny baby is now a big kid of three who's going to go off on her own for three mornings a week and make new friends, play with her teacher, and have all kinds of new experiences that, for the very first time, don't directly involve me.

Which is wonderful, and especially important I think for an only child like her, and it's going to be fabulous. We've been visiting her school frequently over the last month and her teacher is warm and wonderful, and we just love it there.

But at the same time, it's a real transition point. The last three years of being home with her have been such an amazing time! And now that stage is over and the next stage is beginning and I have to admit, part of me wants to grab her chubby little buddha belly and hug her close and keep her all to myself for a little bit longer.

*sniff*

The other half of my brain, though, sees that for the first time in three years I will now have nine hours of uninterrupted work time, all to myself, on a completely reliable basis, every single week.

The old, pre-mommy me would look at that and say, "Nine hours? Big freaking deal."

But honestly, the last time I had nine hours of dedicated time to myself was probably September 1st, 2006 -- the day before Sofie was born. I've been building this business on 45 minutes here, 30 minutes there, two hours once in a while when I've had a childcare swap going on, an hour or so a day during naptime, 30 minutes in the evening on the nights when it's Brett's turn to put her to bed, etc. Totally random, grab-it-when-you-have it, work as fast as you can, make the most of each second -- wow. It's fun, but it's totally chaotic.

So today, I'm feeling a little less urgency than usual to go grab and squeeze every second of productivity I can from my afternoon. Because not only is tomorrow the weekend when I can usually count on Brett to give me a couple hours of time to work, next week is the start of my new improved schedule.

And with my new, improved, "I've been a mommy for three years and can now do twenty things in the time it used to take me to do two" mentality, I know those nine hours are going to feel like twenty in terms of how much I can suddenly get done.

So yay! And sigh. But yay! It's a new leaf for us both.

Works in progress

Just a little preview of some things I've started working on...

First off, I bought this amazing Japanese linen at a local store a month or so ago that featured rows and rows of these great little matryoshka dolls in various colors. I looked at them and thought, "Coffee sleeves!" And so one measly little yard came home with me - but there are dozens and dozens of little dolls on it.

Last night I finally got around to trying them out. First I fused some interfacing on the back and cut out various versions of the dolls, like the pink ones you see here:



Then the question became what to pair them with. I'm still in the midst of my linen obsession, and I liked the idea of a quiet background for them, so I pulled out some plain tan linen I also haven't used for months and cut a two inch strip...

And then they just cried out for some hand embroidery in kelly green. Because I cannot stop embellishing things. It's a good thing I don't have a bedazzler, that's all I have to say.



Sweet, aren't they? In the pic above you see the other two colors available in addition to the pink dolls from the first picture - red headscarfs, and green.

And finally, what to pair them with? I had an idea in mind, and old 1940s feedcloth fabric I have lots of, but what actually seemed like it worked the best to me was this mega-bright polka dot.



The cheerfulness of the background fabric just seemed to play nicely off the quiet linen insert and the happy colors of the dolls themselves. What do you think?


And of course I lined it in red. Because again, I'm all about bright.

Here's one on a cup:



And just as an experiment, I did make on on the original feedcloth fabric - I like that this is repurposed vintage fabric, honest to goodness 1940s stuff here. And the colors do work. But I just somehow like the polka dot better.



Any votes on which is better?

Of course, several of these are now listed in the store, and you'll be seeing more and more over the next few days as I finish up some more of them!

A young surrealist

Sofie gets up from "quiet time" and screams frantically at the gate to her room, sounding really scared. So of course I come running up.

Me: What's wrong?
Sofie: There was a drill sound and it scared me.
(pause)
Sofie: Actually, it was a fish.
Me: A fish?
Sofie: At the aquarium.
Me: A fish scared you? Did you see it or were you imagining it?
Sofie: I was imagining it.
Me: Oh, okay.
Sofie: It went back to the aquarium now.
Me: That's good!

I love the way her mind works.

Here's a question for you

Was just goofing around on google, seeing what images show up for my name. A few, mostly stuff from the shop, one or two that are actually of me, a bunch of pictures from my friend Michael Murray's Denmark pictures (none of which I seem to be in), and, inexplicably, this one:



Is that snoop dog? Now how does that come up under my name?

Blue Kitty Cake

Ok, I've never used a cake tip before or done any kind of cake decorating other than smearing frosting over a cake with a knife, so when Sofie said she wanted a blue kitty cake this year I knew I needed to step up my game.

So I won a kitty cake pan on Ebay and borrowed some frosting tips and bags from my good friend Michelle, and set to work on this today.

Sofie helped me stir and bake the cake - and darn if it didn't unmold like a dream. (Of course, following Wilton's instructions about lining the pan with crisco and then flour had to help.) And then I made a double batch of butter cream with Wilton's included recipe and went to town.


Does he have demon eyes? I hope he doesn't have demon eyes.

I only used the star tip, and you can see that it's a bit lumpy and uneven here and there, and I totally blew the "make pretty little shells around the bottom of the cake as a decorative touch when you're finished". But overall I think it came out really well for a first timer! And the frosting part was remarkably easy, no harder than normal cake-making.

September goals

Decided to play along with the Modish Biz Tips blog's September goals exercise... And September is a pretty big month for me, both in business and personal life. It's big business-wise because it's the start of what has traditionally been a pretty busy fall/holiday/Christmas shopping season, which I expect to be a lot more crazy for me this year now that I have a good, established customer base. On a personal level we have the start of preschool, Sofie's third birthday, our sixth anniversary, my sister's birthday, and the birthday of roughly half of Sofie's friends. Lots of fun milestones.

So here are my business goals:

1. Build my stock up to over the 200 item mark in preparation for the holiday season. This is a major big deal for me because I've never managed to hit anywhere near that many items listed before! I think I've occasionally had about 120 things listed, maybe 130 once, but with sales I'm always falling back to around 115. This will take a lot of focus!

2. Have 90% of that stock premade and ready to ship. My last special I ran in August featured mostly made-to-order items and, because it was pretty successful and lots of orders came in, keeping up with filling all those nearly killed me.

3. Get my wholesale line sheets updated, finally, so I can stop being a dork when people ask me for wholesale info.

4. LAUNCH MY BIZ WEB SITE!!!!


Personal:

1. Find some babysitters so we can actually go out for our anniversary.
2. Help Sofie adjust to school and try not cry too hard her first day. Or at least not cry in front of her.
3. Settle into a new, improved routine now that she's in school three mornings a week that leaves me getting more of my work done in those hours and being more free to enjoy her without distraction while she's home.
4. Make an awesome kitty cake for her birthday and enjoy my family and my newly three year old kid.

Sofie's Birthday Shirt

Sofie continues to be obsessed with all things blue and all things cat, so I made her a special birthday shirt for her third birthday tomorrow. Here it is:



A little bit closer up so you can see the cats really well:


And just because I like to do this on my shirts, I added a little cat head on the back of the shirt:


She's very excited to wake up tomorrow and be a three year old girl, uh, I mean cat.