Yes, those are Molly Mutt beds on my couch cushions! Aren’t they cool? This is her brand  new bed, Nightswimming.  I covered the back pillows with a Amy Butler fabric this past winter, but the cushions were falling apart. Between my two boys and my 3 dogs, these cushions were wrecked! We’ve been looking for a new couch for about 6 months but every time we see our boys jumping off the arms, eating on it, etc. we put off the new purchase.  Not only that, but no matter what we do we can’t train the doggies to stay off!

I think Dan said it best when he said “If we can’t keep the dogs off the couch, we will make the couch into a dog bed.”  I can’t say he looked to happy while saying it, but I’ll take what I can get

Yeah, it is kinda strange to cover your couch in dog beds, but I am taking comfort in the fact that not a single person on this planet has a couch quite like mine.

Plus, with all the the awesome Molly Mutt fabrics no one would ever even know these are dog beds!

They look so pretty and feel so nice I almost feel like I got a new couch. Plus, I think I saved the couch from having to go to the landfill (yes, the cushions were that bad!)

They belong to my friend Tracy, she says they are a pug gang but I’m not too scared Although, anytime someone is missing an eye I gotta wonder what happened to the other guy in the fight! The missing eye defiantly makes Zoe look mysterious

Zelda is wearing our new Cora collar, Zack is wearing the Tangerine Collar, Zoe is in the Madeline Collar and all three of them are wearing our laser engraved personalized collar buckles!

What I love about these personalized collars is that there is no need for noisy jingling tags, but Tracy likes the look of their handmade tags so these pugs wear both.

I know it must be hard to choose between the plastic and metal engraved buckle collars, so I thought I’d put together a list about each of their qualities to help.

PLASTIC ENGRAVED PERSONALIZED DOG COLLAR BUCKLE:

1. The plastic buckle is contoured, the metal buckle is not. (This is mainly why the Carlson Pugs are wearing the plastic)
2. I like the look of the white engraving on the black buckle, it is really different and super good looking.

METAL ENGRAVED PERSONALIZED DOG COLLAR BUCKLE:

1. The metal buckle feels really special. It weighs the same amount as the plastic buckle, but it feels more substantial.
2. I like that the engraving on the metal buckle looks like the engraving on a dog Id tag. It just makes sense.

I think that either way you can’t go wrong. They are both really wonderful buckles and they are both super strong (which is very important in a dog collar buckle).  My dogs are currently using the plastic buckles and we love them. I also have an engraved plastic buckle on my camera strap (pictures coming very soon — it looks SO cool!) with my named engraved. Tracy’s dad came up with that idea — brilliant, right!? I feel so happy every time I see my buckle with MY name on it! I imagine that my dogs feel the same way about their engraved buckles (well they would if they could read right!)

]]> http://www.shopmimigreen.com/blog/personalized-collars-no-jingling-tag/feed/ 1 http://www.shopmimigreen.com/blog/spring-is-in-the-air-new-dog-collars/ http://www.shopmimigreen.com/blog/spring-is-in-the-air-new-dog-collars/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:22:16 +0000 amanda http://www.shopmimigreen.com/blog/?p=84 Continue reading →]]> We love the Spring here at Mimi Green. Spring is great because it is 1. the end of winter and 2. Spring collar time! Every Spring we design 5-7 new fabric collars which will be our staples for the year. This year was especially fun because we had SO many awesome fabrics to choose from. So, with no further ado, meet Cora, Jones, Louie, Stella Blue & Stella Rose!
I think this might be our strongest line ever (I probably say that every year, right!?) But seriously, I LOVE every one of these collars! I loved Stella so much that I had to make it in two color ways. It is a super funky West Indies pattern, it looks like a fabric you’d find in Anthropologie.

I also am super excited because two of the collar patterns are specifically for boy dogs. We get asked a lot to make more masculine collars and this year we listened. The Louie and the Jones are just about as masculine as a designer fabric dog collar can get.  I can totally imagine a big male dog sporting either one of these collars with pride

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to our very popular Caroline Collar this month, but its replacement, Cora, is just as beautiful.

As with all of our collars, these are named after dogs we know and love. Just for fun, meet the real :

So here’s to the tulips blooming, allergies kicking in, more daylight and new doggie collars!  Gotta love the Springtime.

(Cora & Jones photos by the amazing Kim Jackson Photography)

& to celebrate, please use code Spring2012 to save 15% off of any of these new styles of collars, leashes, harnesses and key fobs!

We found the sweetest new metal buckles! They are half metal, half plastic which means they are super lightweight (just about the same weight as a plastic buckle) and they don’t have any moving parts that can break.  Plus, it doesn’t hurt that they are HOT on our collars!

We started selling them on all of our collars a few weeks ago and today we launched these metal buckles with engraving!

I am wild over our plastic engraved buckle dog collars, so having them in metal is super exciting. Right now you can get the metal engraved buckles on our
18 colors of webbing, very soon they will be available on our classic, oilcloth, and velvet dog collars.

I love the personalized buckles on these collars because you don’t have to worry about dog tags getting lost (and it eliminates jingling tags!!) all the info that is on your dog tag fits right on the collar buckle.  You can even include your dog’s microchip number, vets number or vaccination info.

I hope that you all like these collars as much as I do. It has been quite a journey, but I think we have truly found the best metal dog collar buckle on the market.

Besides the big blog change, we’ve also had some other big changes around Mimi Green.  This past week we started to add a new line of designer DSRL camera straps to our brand! I know this is getting off track a bit, we are first and foremost a dog collar company, but I have a good explanation.  I love making products that I would want to use. In fact, I have a super hard time making new products that I don’t use myself (it took me two years to make harnesses and I still don’t have all of our styles for sale!)  I use every single thing we make and I love using them.  To be frank, my personal constituiton only allows me to make products I am passionate about.

We all know I am passonate about dogs, but that wasn’t my first passion.  Since I can remember, my greatest passion in life has been art.  When I started college, I knew that I wanted to get an art degree, but that I should get a more pracical degree.  I was on the fast track to getting my bachlor’s in journalism, but I just couldn’t fight the urge to be a student of art. Even though it added a few extra years onto my college expierince, I made the switch. At first I thought for sure I’d be a painter, but things changed after my first photography class. Amanda +  camera = love at first site. And its been that way for the past 10 years with no wavering.  I even met my husband because of photography — he was a photo grad student when I was doing my undergrad (and he was my photo teachers roomate.)

Dan and I got married while he was finsihing up his degree and we made big plans — I wanted to work in a museum (and I did for a bit) and he wanted to teach photography at the university level (and he did for a bit too). We had a great plan, fate laughed at it, and now we are fulfilling our destiny with a dog collar company that we LOVE.

And we do love sharing our passion for dogs with all of you, so I thought that this was the year when I could share some of my passion for photography with you too.

Just like Mimi Green collars started, Mimi Green camera straps began as a gift I made for myself. I looked and looked for a new upscale camera strap that matched my style and only found straps that I sort of liked, nothing I loved. So, I spent a Saturday in the studio and made my own!

This is my personal strap

I really loved seeing our collar patterns in camera strap form and working with leather was AWESOME so I made more. And each one has been prettier than the last.

I can’t wait for all of you to see the full line up. The coolest thing is that you will be able to buy a camera strap that matches your dog’s collar!  We have the most amazing flower embossed Italian leather coming in the next 4 weeks and then we can get rolling. In the mean time, you can see the few that I did make here.

AND if that’s not enough news for ya, our Spring line of collars, leashes and harnesses launches this week! Stay tunned…