New product: Helvetica b-day hats

New in the shop: Helvetica birthday hats.  I actually worked up these patterns about 6 months ago, but never got around to making a few sets for pictures.  It's about time we added something new to the shop.

Helvetica characters have such beautiful geometry when you really zoom in.  They made a pleasant building block for these simple tessellations.  The shapes enclosed by the "1"s actually become figures on the ground of white until you realize the numerals.

Fresh

The new shop is up!… well, it has been for about a week or so now. We started it because we needed something a little more flexible than “babydarling” for any non-baby items we may want to make. So far “HENNstudio” only offers two basic items: fabric bookmarks and pen pouches. You may be wondering what exactly a pen pouch is. It is something I developed about a year ago. Being an architecture student I am very particular about my drawing/sketching/writing utensils and these would fall out of my pocket and be lost, all the time. This pouch keeps my precious drawing utensils in order and together as one manageable unit, like a wallet… and like my wallet I never leave home without it! There are other things we’ve talked about making but we’ll see if we ever get around to it. And the shop is not doing too bad. We’ve had 5 sales – all pen pouches – and all possitive feedback. One person even wrote: “WOW….I couldn’t get my pens in this sweet pen pouch fast enough. You did a beautiful job making it. Great communication and fast delivery. I may have to have another one…it’s so darn cool. Many thanks!”… that was pretty exciting. Here’s a screenshot of my SOLD page.

We’re also in the process of adding some fresh items to babydarling. Just today we had a photo-shoot for a couple new crib sets.  We’ve decided that bumpers might be a little too intense for us to keep making (especially with the new baby on the way), so hopefully these new bumper-less sets will be well received.  Also, authorities on infant-safety now say that bumpers significantly increase the risk of SIDS, so these sets are a great option for those who feel uneasy about crib bumpers.

Anyways, the photo shoot went pretty well.  We rearranged our living room, assembled the crib, borrowed Noah’s mobile and mattress, and turned our little living room into a photography set.  We have more to do tomorrow, but here are the two sets we were able to add to the shop today.

This has been a nice break from schoolwork, but we have so much more to do before baby Olive gets here, including my portfolio and thesis book (that I should be working on right now).  A new baby is sure to slow things down…

Featured!

As many of you know, the front page of Etsy always features a set of twelve “handpicked items” chosen from treasuries curated by members of the site.  Our crib set made it to the front on November 1st (this post is obviously a little overdue).  Treasuries are usually based on a theme or color… in this case it was the term “linen.”  The fabric we use is not linen, it is cotton, but fortunately its name “optic blossom in linen” helped us to become part of this set.

The Elephant in the Room

This post is sort of an addition to Monday’s post, but I just finished this blanket last night and took pictures of it this morning. This is another custom order for a lady in Illinois. She came to me wanting a blanket for her baby’s nursery and found this fabric from a seller on Etsy. This adorable fabric is hand screen-printed on “yummy natural organic hemp/ cotton” over in Australia by umbrellaprints, and the price tag goes along with it! It is super cute though, and when I had finished the blanket- I have to admit- I really wanted to keep it!

Around the world in 534 days

So the great thing about Etsy is that it can make a really small business pretty big, geographically at least.  Brooke and I (this is Nick) were amazed when we got our first international sales to Singapore and Portugal. Now our international sales list includes the UK, Italy, Germany, China, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and Canada… oh yeah and the bizarre metropolis of Dubai (that happened this morning). We were also excited when we began shipping to fun cities all around the US like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Boston. Finally we decided to map our sales on Google maps… it’s a pretty tedious process that I’ve been doing during my Revit (computer) class.  We’ve had 412 sales on Etsy to date, but I think I’m about two-thirds the way done.  Here it is so far:

Teals are crib sets, purples are mobiles, and magenta is everything else, and if you click on a marker it will say what it was that was sold. I thought about including an image of the sold item, but I don’t have that kind of time. It’s interesting to see where sales are concentrated across the US, mainly around denser cities like New York and LA. If you don’t see your city, purchase something and represent.