Category Archives: Blog

Blog, Dogs We Love, Helpful Info

The Carlson Pug Gang Represent Personalized Dog Collar Buckles!

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

I love these pugs.  If you have been following us for long, you probably recognize Zoe, Zack and their little sis Zelda Pug. They are probably 3 of our biggest cheerleaders, they’ve been wearing Mimi Green almost exclusively for the past 4 years!

Pugs Personalized Dog CollarsThey 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:personalized dog collars-no jingling tag!

  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!)


 

Blog, New Products

Spring is in the Air at Mimi Green!

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

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!
Spring Line of Mimi Green CollarsI 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 :

Cora pomeranian dog
Cora
jones german shepherd
Jones
Louie French Bulldog
Louie
stella pug
Stella

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!

 

Blog, New Products

New Blog & New Mimi Green Products!

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

 

Welcome to our new blog! We loved our old Typepad blog, but it was time to move it onto our own site, so here we are on WordPress. Bear with me as I learn all the ins and outs of WordPress (which is awesome so far btw!).

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.

Cora Camera StrapWe 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!

mimi green custom camera strap
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…

 

 

 

 

 

Blog, Mimi Contest

And the winner is…

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

I have been so excited for today — you would have thought that I had entered and had a chance at winning. I guess I was just excited to see which of you would win — I had so much fun reading all your comments and I really wished all of you could win!

I wasn’t sure how we were going to choose a winner, so I asked my 11-year old son Noah to choose a number between one and 100 (to coorospond with each comment) He chose a number and the winner is….

Sarah Miller! 

I “like” (but really LOVE!) Mimi Green on Facebook!

Posted by: Sarah | January 02, 2012 at 10:21 PM

Congrats Sarah, you win a laminated cotton collar & leash of your choice! (we will email you with all the details!)

and… she’s not the only lucky winner today.

Our runner up, who wins for being the most creative (I mean, he made a sign people!) is…

Louiesign
Louie the Frenchie and his momma Jess!  

Louie wins a laminated cotton collar of his choice.

 

Thanks for entering! That was really fun, we’ll be sure to do it more often!!

 

Blog, Chupa Approved, Gear We love

Things we love: The New Year & Our New Camera!

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

Happy (almost) New Year! I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on this coming year being one of the best yet. I turned 30 last month, Mimi Green is doing great & life is very good. There are a few things that I decided I am going to do differently this year, one is that I am finally going to make time for things that make me want to sing from the rooftop — you know, things that really make my heart glow. One of my most favorite things in the world is blogging and this past year I really put that on the back burner. In 2012 you are going to see lots more from me on this blog!

Secondly, I am bought myself a newer, fancier camera and I am making a vow to use it everyday. I also bought a bag that allows me to carry all my purse stuff and my camera (in the same awesome bag! Review of that later) so I have no excuses for not having my camera with me. Photography is one of my great loves in life (Dan’s too, we met while I was an undergrad and he was a grad student in photography, but that is a whole ‘nother story!)

And that brings me to my post. It takes a lot of gear to keep Mimi Green running smoothly and new Mimi Green gear is VERY exciting to me. We get lots of questions about who shoots our products (I do!), what camera we use to shoot them, what sewing machines we use, etc.  All of these items we use have been Chupa approved (two paws up) and I’d love to tell you about some of them — starting with my newer, fancier camera….

canon 60d review

I had a wonderful SLR the past 4 years — the Canon Rebel XTi. I was always a Nikon gal until my D100 failed me during Auggie’s birth. I felt traumatized and Dan loves Canon so I switched teams and I’m glad I did. Nothing against Nikon (except for the birth photos fail!) but something about my Canon just feels like home to me, it feels right. I know, not a very quantitative review, but I am a super passionate person who leads with her heart, what can I say!

canon 60d review and canon rebel xti

(I took this photo with my iphone, it’s not great but you get the picture 😉

I loved the XTi, took every product photo you see on our website with it. And its been great, 4 years without one problem and I have been rough on it. And I would have been totally happy with it for quite awhile longer except that I saw and held a Canon 60d one day last month. I was wowed by the 60d’s substantial body, its BIG flip out screen, the fact that it also shoots video! I felt a bit guilty that my loyalty to my XTi faded so fast & I almost ignored my desire to stray until I read about the 60d’s specs on-line.

Although the Rebel has always been fantastic for products that don’t move, it wasn’t always great for shooting my son on the soccer field or our hyper doggy models. The 60d promised to be much faster than my little XTi and based on that I took the bait.

Dan tried to get me to look at the even faster models, but they were all so BIG and heavy. I’m not a tripod kind of person so I really didn’t want the extra weight. And for what I need it for, the 60d is still a lot of camera.

canon 60d review and rebel xti

I’ve had the 60d now for about a week and am falling further in love with it everyday. There are so many featrures to explore and learn about — I’ve done somthing new with it everyday since I got it & I still haven’t learned about all its possibilities.

Today I shot our new laminated cotton collars and it was like a dream — I can’t wait to show you all the finished product.

And there’s no need to worry about the fate of the Rebel XTi. Our office manager Paula is going to give it a new home & since the beautiful Chupa lives with Paula, I’m sure it will be very happy shooting for many years to come at its new home.

Blog, Fashion love, Pups wearing Mimi Green

Mimi Green, Jonathan Papelbon, MSPCA and Gucci?? Say what?!

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

This month we had the honor of dressing a dog for the fashion show at the MSPCA-Angell Animal Tales Gala.  The Gala raised a whopping $481,000 for Boston’s MSPCA!

 Not only did we get to dress sweet Lucille in the fashion show, but Red Sox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon and his wife Ashley waked her down the runway!

Jonathan Papelbon & Mimi Green dog

 

Boston’s WCVB’s news reporter and anchor, Randy Price announced,

“First we welcome Red Sox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon and his wife Ashley walking the beautiful Lucille, whose accessories tonight are by Mimi Green and Gucci.”

Excuse me, were the words “Mimi Green” and “Gucci” used in the same sentence?!?! Heck yes they were! And to top it off “Jonathan Papelbon” too!!??

Jonathan Papelbon Red Sox & Mimi Green Leash / harness

Here’s Lucille with the shelter staff. The MSPCA does great work for animals in their community and we felt so happy and honored to be able to help in the small way we did.

MSPCA, Mimi Green, Jonathan Papelbon

(photos by Bill Brett and Topher Cox and beautiful Lucielle is wearing the Fidora Harness and Leash )

 

 

 

Blog, The babes, The Pups, Work

Can’t wait for the dog days of summer!

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

Its been a long and interesting Winter/Spring here at Mimi Green. Professor Chicken fell in love, and I mean IN LOVE, with one of our employees, Hilary. Everyone was super sad in March when Hilary moved to France to take care of her grandpa, Chicken was especially hurt.  Although we admired what she was doing, we have all taken her move really hard.   We’ve all joked about mailing ourselves to France to see Hilary, but Chicken seems to be taking it seriously.

mimi green cat professor chicken blue russian

Mimi Green had some exciting news this Spring too. We were honored by being featured by In the Company of Dogs catalogue! They took some awesome photos of our embroidered personalized webbing collars, and the collars have had great reception. It is so exciting to see our work in print, especially with a company as cool as In the Company of Dogs!

embroidered webbing dog collars Other than that, we have just been super busy filling orders — so busy I have again been neglecting my blog! But hopefully that will change this month because on May 21 I am going to be lucky enough to get to stay home half days with Augustine.

mimi green dog collar flowers

He is getting gigantic (and really scary!) and I am feeling a bit nostalgic about when he was a baby and I got to hang with him all day.

IMG_7261

He will be 4 this year — I can’t believe it since I started Mimi Green when he couldn’t even sit up on his own yet! I figure I don’t have much time left till Kindergarten and I have my whole life to work 😉 Good thing I have such an awesome, supportive husband that is willing to work twice as hard to cover for me!

Anyway, Auggie and I are planning super fun stuff to do with each other (and the doggies) so I will have lots to blog about.

I better run for now, goodnight from everyone here at MG, especially sleepy Chupa!

chupa the mimi green pug

Blog, The Pups, Work

Introducing Professor Chicken!

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

So we got a new worker here at Mimi Green and he's really smart, a professor in fact. russian blue cat Dan and I looked and looked for a kitty, we must have met 20 cats.  This little (well, he's kind of big for a cat, 12 lbs or so) Russian Blue we met on the first day of looking just stole our hearts and no other cat compared.

His name at the shelter was Emmitt, but Auggie was insistent that the cat's name was Professor Chicken.

The Professor loves being at the office, mostly he supervises and helps Hilary on her machine.

russian blue cat And Chicken helps me take product photos, which Lord knows I need! russian blue chicken cat
I never thought that I liked cats, I am a BIG dog person, but this cat has totally changed my mind. His purring is so soothing, it is hard to have a bad day with his sweetness around.  I read that cat's purring helps relieve stress and aids in general healing. I don't know if I would have believed all that before Chicken, but just look at him, how can it be denied!

russian blue kitty, chicken

 

(Yes, I did put pink claw clovers on his nails. FYI, real men wear pink;)

Blog, Genius Dog Products, Photography, Web/Tech, Work

Wanna Borrow My Rubit Images?

Posted on by Amanda Jackson

So my good friend over at the wonderful website http://www.BarkSlope.com just had some of his original images ripped off by a kind of lousy website that was too lazy to photograph the products themselves. Needless to say, my friend is pretty upset since they didn’t even bother to ask him to use the images.

I, on the other hand, have the opposite problem.  In Chicago, at the Backer trade show, our neighbors were the very cool guys from Rubit! — the clip on dog tag holder company. Now these guys have it made. They have brought to market the best idea since the dog tag itself. This little gadget allows owners to easly switch their dog tags from collar to collar – which is great for our customers that have more than one of our collar designs. We knew that we HAD to carry these on our site.

Since they are such a new company, I had problems finding stock images to use, so I took my own. This wasn’t a problem at all since now our customers can see how cool Rubits look on our collars and I love any excuse to pull out my trusty Canon SLR camera!

large rubit clip on dog tag holder
But I also had a secret hope. I was hoping that some sites WOULD rip off my image. Mimi Green is also a fairly new company and I take great joy in spreading the word about our collars. Plus I figured since Rubit hasn’t released a ton of images yet that ours would stand out.

small red rubit dog tag clip
Today I was almost as sad as my friend at Bark Slope was when a simple google image search told me that NO ONE had borrowed my super cool Rubit images! What the heck, right!?!

So here is my public offering — should you be reading this and you would like to use my Rubit images, feel free, very free.

However, we should all remember that the internet is a tricky beast. I want folks to use these particular images, but its all for shamless promotion.  We must respect each other enough to ask other sites should we want to use their images. Stealing to avoid extra work is not cool.

But don’t think of using my Rubit images as “stealing”, lets just call it “borrowing”. And when your customers ask what crazy awesome collars those Rubits are attached to, don’t forget to tell them they are MIMI GREEN!! rubit dog tag clips

PS: Second public decloration of the day — I WILL take better care of this blog. I love it, I do, but Mimi Green has been busy beyond words lately. Will post more about that soon too. Growing is great, but boy has it be exhausting!

Double PS: Rubits rock. I have them on all my doggies since I can NEVER get their tags on and off easily. These make switching collars a sinch. Rubits are on my must buy list for all dog and cat owners!

xo– amanda