My Dog collars are slowly making their way into the shop today, I am so excited. Etsy has been good to me, I haven’t had the time to market much yet, but have already had 5 sales. What a rush that was! I can’t imagine how the sellers who have hundreds of sales feel, hopefully it isn’t one of those great feelings that fades after it happens so often.
Here is the first ad for the Mimi collars, yes I realize that I spelled Cecilia’s name wrong in the listing, and yes I feel pretty stupid. At 7 am this morning that seemed the logical way to spell it, at 10 I realized that I was so wrong, but it was too late to change it by then. Good thing Cessie doesn’t know how to read, she would have her feelings real hurt.
The husband says it is a bit "scrap bookie" which is probably good since I used digital scrap booking software to create this! I think it looks cool, makes me wish that humans wore collars cause I think I’d be smashing in this one (but not as Cute as Etta is looking in it)
This weekend Noah decided that he wanted to learn to sew. He was insistent that using a sewing machine "didn’t look that hard" which made me mad a first till I realized that it was probably a compliment that he thinks I sew with such ease. I finally got him to settle on making those shapes with plastic beads that you melt together with an iron– you know which ones I mean?
We went to Joann’s together, so much fun. Something I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to do with my kids since I have two boys. He also bought a Hannah Montana pillow that he is going to ‘kid sew’ and a sunflower grow kit.
Well by the end of the night he had big ideas. He told us that he is going to start a web site and sell these treasures on-line. When I asked him what people could use them for, he said that he is going to attach them to blankets, collars, make a mobile out of them. I wanted to giggle, both at how funny he was and how cute I found his sense of entrepreneurship, but I didn’t. If I know one thing about Noah it is that he doesn’t like to be laughed at. I explained to him how he needs to make his product stand out from the rest, how he needs to make people want to buy it. I could see the wheels turning in his head. He was making even bigger plans, I could see it in his bright eyes.
And then, at that moment, I was taken back to my childhood. My grandma had me sewing with her right out of the womb and by the time I was Noah’s age I also had some big plans. At the time I was crocheting baby bottles that held a bottle of baby powder, if you can imagine this in your head, see the nipple bending back to reveal the holes int he top of the powder. I then carefully weaved a ribbon in the middle of the bottle, for decoration and to distinguish if this should belong to a boy or a girl.
My step mother owned a boutique for babies in town, in fact it was called Baby’s Boutique. It was a high end resale shop in a pretty fancy shopping center, I didn’t realize at the time what a very cool shop it was. But, I did see the opportunity for a business of my own. I would make hundreds of these baby bottle powder holders and I would sell them in her shop. And I would make so much money, I mean they were $3.00 each and I would sell thousands of them.
She was nice enough to let me put them up on the counter where people checked out. Week after week past with no sales. I couldn’t figure out why no one wanted these goodies. I mean, they were so super cute, and the idea was funny, it was a bottle that was actually powder! At the time it didn’t occur to me that they had absolutely no function at all, I was just so proud of myself that I had made all these on my own. My mom and my grandma were proud of me too and kept encouraging me to make more of them, make different things– just keep creating.
So I did. And every Christmas, up in till last year, my family got gifts that I had spent the year trying to perfect. This has gone on for probably 22 years now.
In the years between the baby bottle debacle and now, I have been a bit scared to put my work out there in the world again. I only got the courage again after my family and friends told me that people would buy the things that I am making, that they had good form and function.
It is super cool to see Noah having the same thoughts that I did. I can only hope that my newest endeavor takes off and really works so that I can be inspirational to my boys, so that they can see that it can be done.
Most likely Noah will never sell any of his plastic race-car adorned blankets or collars, but I hope that this is just a seedling in his brain that will someday grow into a million dollar idea.
Mace Windu hopes so too.
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