Who, Me?

We are extremely honored and flattered and flabbergasted to be included in babble's 50 Best Etsy Baby Shops! We are at #9 with Best Bedding! Wow! I never dreamed that our business would come this far! Can I just take a moment to tell you all how our little business began? Back in the spring of '07 when I was pregnant with Noah we were searching for baby bedding for his crib. We came across some we liked, but they had a hefty price tag. So Nick had the idea that we could make it- as in, sew it. We didn't own a sewing machine and the only experience I had was from 7th grade home economics. Initially I thought there was no way we could do this, but Nick convinced me to buy a sewing machine, we found some fabric we liked (which, by the way, was from a quilted blanket and a bed sheet), and we gave it a go. Now, 4 years later we have a successful etsy shop that has made it to over 700 sales! God is truly gracious to us. This business has been such a blessing. It is what helped us get Nick through school and now serves as a little extra income. We have shipped our items all over the world! I get chills thinking that there are people in Australia, China, New Zealand, Canada, England, and many other countries that are using things that we made with our very own hands. Kinda cool, I think.

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…

Fun Etsy Finds and Trades

Not only am I an Etsy seller but I have also purchased and traded some fun things in the online marketplace for handmade goods. Trading on Etsy is, in my opinion, the coolest thing ever! You can offer your goods and/or services in exchange for someone else’s. Most of the time no money is involved, except in the case where one person’s goods are worth more than the other’s agreed upon item for exchange. The list of items I have traded for include (mostly for little Olive): a baby memory book fromednamaebaby (in exchange for a mobile and two pillows); a tiny bracelet (in exchange for a bib/burp set); stationary and address labels from artsynikki (for a giraffe); and thank you notes from twopoodlepress (for babydarling store credit for the holidays).

When a trade wasn’t convenient I have also purchased a couple of things- a “big bro” shirt for Noah from happyfamily, some cute leg warmers for Olive fromknottybabywear, and little “olive” booties from carameldiezel. I have greatly appreciated those sellers who were willing to do a trade with me and hope that more will be willing in the future!

Sweet Extras

In my business I do quite a few custom orders for people.  I enjoy doing these “sweet extras” because it’s a nice change from the usual stuff I make, and it gives us a chance to try out new fabrics that could eventually be added to our repertoire.  It’s also fun to take a few pictures of these special orders, and now I have somewhere to put them! Here are a couple of the most recent ones.

This custom crib set uses some fun fabrics from Joel Dewberry‘s Aviary Collection, most notably the “sparrows” print in almond. These fantastic fall colors were a great break from our usual fabrics.  These giraffes are miniatures of the ones in our shop. They were sent to San Francisco where they will be made into a mobile.

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.