Aaaaaah, we did it. We made it through the holidays. Good for us! The Etsy shop is now re-opened, and all items are shipping within 2 short business days (or less) after receipt of payment!

I wanted to give a quick shop and product update, but first things first. My grandma turned 88 on New Year’s Day so I wanted to start off by saying: Happy 88th Birthday, Gramma!

Gramma’s kids, grandkids, grandkids-in-law and great-grandkids alike gathered together over the holidays to celebrate Gram’s 88th birthday, and we had a blast starting the evening with a buffet dinner and finishing it off with roundtable stories of the grandkids favorite memories of Gramma. What was even better was that Gramma had at least 3 stories to tell for each of our 1. We’re so blessed — and spoiled — to have a grandma like ours. This shot is from our storytelling session, where my aunt is helping to do the English/Taiwanese translation:

Alright, NOW back to shop updates. As I mentioned, the Etsy shop is now re-opened after our short holiday break and in it you’ll find “classics” such as the Big Lug and Little Lug handbags, alongside newer items like the Out ‘n About Convertible Wristlet and Decorative Pillow Covers.

In fact, one of the Decorative Pillow Covers made it to the Etsy Home Page the first day of our holiday break! It was the Gold Volumes on Grey, which is smack dab in the center of the 2nd row below:

Thanks to Etsy Front Pagers for uploading a screenshot of this to Flickr, and to Etsy seller Uncorked for selecting my item to include in her Treasury listing!

My 2009 will start off with some fine-tuning to my business goals for the new year, so my introduction of new products may initially be a little slow. I definitely intend to work on new designs, especially in the categories of smaller zip pouches and home accessories which I’m able to crank out a little bit faster and can therefore offer more of at more varied (i.e. lower) price points…which I think a lot of us can appreciate at this particular time.

Another thing I’m pretty excited about is the prospect of adding sewing patterns to the mix as well! This has been on my mind for several months, and now I’m ready to think more seriously about it and get at least a pattern or two drafted and tested.

I’m also incredibly psyched to be working on a DIY lifestyle site with one of my best friends and partner-in-crime Jenn Lim. We’ve been heads down of late getting the site ready to roll sometime early this year. More on this later!

So, I think I’ve got my work cut out for me and a little planning and organization is in order. One thing’s for sure, I think 2009 is full of good opportunities, and I can’t wait to make them happen! Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to a great one for each and every one of you.

Er…we’re in an Etsy Treasury. Or actually, the Wooly Rosette Felt Brooch is in a Treasury (top left in the gallery below)! Not only that, but it’s in a CHOCOLATE-related Treasury. And we know how much we like chocolate, oh yes we do.

What’s an Etsy Treasury, you ask? In the words of Etsy:

The Treasury is a member-curated gallery of short-lived lists of 12 hand-picked items each (plus four alternates). It functions as a high-demand (and pretty!) promotional tool that many devoted Etsians fight to get.  Members can feature their favorite items, items selected on a theme, or just however they like. The Treasury is not intended for self-promotion, but instead to acknowledge and share the many cool things for sale on Etsy. Admin often choose an exceptional Treasury list to promote on the home page and occasionally make them to tie into Storque articles or special events and occasions.

Thanks to Etsy seller mathildathreads for putting together this one. I’d be thrilled if we went all the way to the Etsy home page, but I’m already pretty darn happy just to be here. Hooray for small successes! :] As you can see, I like to celebrate them all.

This link will expire in a couple of days, but for now, here’s the live Hot Chocolate Treasury!

Happily, I’ve steadily been making my way through the 150 padded shipping envelopes I ordered from Overstock awhile back and am almost in need of restocking my supply. I’ve decided to switch things up a bit and find different packaging. Here are the results of my homework to date…

Jiffylite Cushioned Mailers
I currently use two sizes of Jiffylite Cushioned Mailers, the outsides of which are made from 100% recycled content and 10% post consumer content. The Bubble Wrap® brand cushioning inside, which also provides a moisture barrier, is made with 10% recycled plastics. At 68 and 88 cents a piece including shipping for the #5 and #6 sizes, respectively, they’re not too bad of a deal. But, I’m not sure I really need the plastic padding so much as something that’s just water- and tear-resistant. A product without the bulky padding will also make the mailers a lot easier to store, and Jimmy will like that. =]

image from Overstock.com

CareMail Mailers
I really liked the CareMail Mailer that my Figs & Ginger necklace arrived in a couple months ago. It was a plastic-free, cushioned rugged mailer made by Duck Products. CareMail Mailers are made from 90% total recycled content (50% post-consumer), cushioned with recycled newsprint and can be recycled along with your mixed paper. Unfortunately, they’re not quite the right solution for me either since they’re a little more rigid than I need and again, my products are soft and kind of self-cushioning.

image from duckproducts.com

Tyvek Mailers
So now I’m looking at non-cushioned Tyvek mailers, maybe the expanding ones like these from Amazon:

image from amazon.com

Tyvek is what those soft USPS Priority Mail (and FedEx) envelopes are made from. These are free from the USPS if you’re shipping with their Priority Mail service, but if you’re only going First Class like some of my smaller and/or less expensive items, the post office won’t allow you to use that packaging at First Class rates.

Tyvek mailers are not only lightweight, resistant to water and tearing and strong enough to repurpose into a vast array of DIY projects as a quick web search of “Tyvek DIY” will prove, but they’re also 100% recyclable! Tyvek maker DuPont runs a nationwide recycling program to collect used Tyvek envelopes and recycle them into other materials. Who knew?!

The bummer about it so far is that prices are higher than the Jiffylites and there don’t seem to be as many larger-sized options, so I have some comparison shopping to do.

Polypropylene Mailers
Poly mailers look just like the Tyvek ones and are also less expensive, but I’m wondering if these are just lower quality knockoffs that are also without the benefit of being recyclable. The ones from Staples are however, made from 25% post-consumer content, so there is some green in it.

So I guess after all that, I’m still shopping for shipping supplies. If anyone has any tips, I’d love to hear! The Switchboard Forum has a couple of threads here and here with links that look worth trying (you might have to register to see). Think I’ll check those out on a later break…

Yaaaaaaay, I’m this week’s Featured Shop on the SF Bay Area Etsy Street Team site!

First, I’d like to thank Kendra from Brownies Vintage & Indie Design Clothing Boutique for the interview, awesome post and sweet selection of photos to feature with the article. Next, I’d like to thank my husband for his enthusiasm at seeing the interview published live. And of course I must not forget my producers, agent, casting directors, friends, family, Mom and Dad…Teh heh heh. =P

It’s been great to get a mention here and another there. I hope it’s the start of lots more to come! I especially look forward to re-examining the business plan after the holiday rush is over and plotting my way towards bigger and better! As I mentioned in the interview, getting my products on the shelves of local boutiques and gift shops would be amazing so that’ll be a top priority for me in 2009. There, I said it! They say one of the best ways to keep yourself on target is to publicly state your intentions, don’t they? Well hopefully in the coming months I’ll have all kinds of posts on all the progress I’ve made. Wish me luck and perseverance!

I love sewing to episodes of Project Runway playing in the background. I guess it feels like we’re all in it together, trying to crank stuff out before the next deadline. But when Project Runway reruns aren’t on, The Martha Stewart Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show are over and I can’t take anymore of Tabitha’s Salon Takeover (which always seems to be on), I turn to my collection of good old audio podcasts.

I can listen to podcasts all day long and seem only to be limited to the 4GB capacity of my old iPod Mini. My all-time faves are by far: NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me and NPR’s This American Life. The New Yorker Fiction Podcast is a close runner-up, and I’ve also really been appreciating the BusinessWeek SmartAnswers podcast. I’m told that I’ll love the TED Talks series also. I have a love/hate relationship with my MorningCoach.com podcast, but I listen to it almost every day. Mostly I appreciate it. =]

Here’s a list of all the podcasts I currently subscribe to. You can find and subscribe to all of these free podcasts on iTunes, but a lot of them are also available through their respective websites, which I’ll link to in the list below if I can find it.

• Small Business Podcasts
  • BusinessWeek Smart Answers
  • Wall Street Journal on Small Business
  • Harvard Business IdeaCast
  • StartUp Nation Radio
• News Podcasts
  • NPR: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!
  • NPR: Fresh Air
  • BusinessWeek Cover Stories
  • 60 Minutes - The Full Broadcast
• Inspirational/Motivational/Self-Improvement Podcasts
  • MorningCoach.com
  • Inspiring Words of Encouragement
  • Oprah.com’s Spirit Channel
• Life/Fiction/Storytelling Podcasts
  • NPR: This American Life
  • New Yorker: Fiction
  • The Moth Podcast
  • NPR: StoryCorps
  • TED Talks (thanks to Jenn for this one)

Today, I added One Minute Mandarin! Why not? I would have added Taiwanese but can you believe? They didn’t have it.

I made a bunch of small changes to the site over the weekend, starting of course with the new navigation column over on the right hand side! My whole adventure started with wanting to add a section on craft books to the site, and this was soon followed by adding a couple other nice-to-haves that have been on my website to-do list. So after several hours of toying around, these are some of the new goodies I’ve ended up with!

Amazon.com aStore widget
First is the Amazon.com aStore widget, which allows members of the Amazon.com Associates affiliate program, which I’ve been an inactive member of since 2006, to create a mini store with book selections of their choosing. My aStore contains craft and small business-related books that I actually have — and use! — in my own library. So not only do I get to share some of my faves with you, but if you decide to order any of them through a link that you’ve clicked on my site, well then I get a little 4% referral fee from Amazon at no cost (but a lot of thanks =P) to you!

Add to Any Subscribe Button
Then there’s the Wordpress plugin I added to replace some of the outdated feed links I had in my left column. This one’s called the Add to Any Subscribe Button plugin, and it gives readers an easy way to quickly subscribe to the blog with whatever feed reader(s) they use like Google Reader, which I’ve grown to love.

Google AdSense for Search
Finally, I decided to make use of the Google AdSense account I’ve again had but not used since 2005 and set up Google AdSense for Search. The new Google Custom Search tool will search this site and my Etsy shop and spit out a page with a few targeted ads atop and below the list of search results.

Eventually I’d like to do more with both the Amazon.com Associates and Google AdSense programs to try earning a few extra cents here and there, but for now…this is what I’ve got!

My stickers are here! My stickers are here! I am now the proud new owner of 250 sheets of 2″ circle labels and 250 sheets of weatherproof shipping labels! My little inkjet’s got its work cut out for it!

I’m a huge fan of OnlineLabels.com, where these packs of stick-on labels obviously came from. They’ve been really responsive to product and order questions, they offer good prices and have a super-speedy turnaround.

My first order with OnlineLabels.com was a pack of weatherproof lip balm labels, and I came back this time around because of the good experience, but also because of a $5 off coupon they offered for writing up some feedback about the type of label software I’ve used! I respond well to bribes. Mine’s at the bottom dated 9/18, though actually it’s really not even worth looking at.

I’m not so crazy about OnlineLabel.com’s Maestro Label Designer software, which I tried today to make my first sheet of packaging stickers. Once I finally realized that it doesn’t matter if the image on the screen looks pixelated because it won’t actually print out that way, I ended up wasting half a sheet of stickers because the image printed higher up on the sticker towards the bottom half of the sheet which left me with not so cute excess white space.

But, the software is free for customers for a certain length of time after your purchase so it’s not that big of a deal anyway. I wouldn’t pay to use it again when my trial period expires though. Besides, they provide a bunch of templates for each product to allow you to use plenty of other software to print your labels so you’re plenty covered.

With any luck, I’ll run through these packs of sheets like there’s no tomorrow…and then I’ll be back for more! =D

One of the to-do’s coming out of my meeting with StitchCraft’s Nicole Vasbinder was for me to consider investing in manufactured labels for my bags. I currently hand make each and every label, so outsourcing this piece will help me streamline the process and take a few minutes out of the time it takes to make each bag.

I’d thought about this awhile ago after seeing Fashion Incubator’s post on How to order labels pt.1, but I’d put it on the back burner and kind of forgotten about it. Prompted by Nicole, I requested a quote from ClothingLabels4U.com. I also dug up Kathleen’s aforementioned post for the source mentioned there, Laven Industries, and got a quote from them as well. Both companies got back to me within the same day which I really appreciated, and now the ball’s in my court to figure out what kind of label I want.

ClothingLabels4U.com mailed me a bunch of samples, including these (woven labels on left, fusible labels on right):

…and these, which are the ones I like the best (front view on left, back view of same set on right):

Laven Industries sent me a PDF with photos of labels across different categories. Considering price, so far I like their printed twill labels the best:

This is my first label order and I’m pretty undecided, so I kind of wish the companies had a quick ‘n easy chart of the types of labels they offer and their corresponding prices so I wouldn’t have to go back and forth with “How much for this one? Oh wait, how about this one? Or maybe…what about…”. Maybe there are just too many variations to list, and/or they want customers to contact them, and/or perhaps it’s a competitor/privacy thing…? I dunno.

At any rate, here’s what my options currently look like:

Laven Industries

• Minimum order: 100 labels
• Prices at 250 labels:
  • Printed satin (cheapest): $90 + $50 setup
  • Printed twill: $120 + $75 setup
  • Woven label: $250 for 100 labels, or $275 for 500 labels (no setup fee, no option for 250 qty)
• Turnaround: 1-2 weeks depending on type of label
• Shipping costs: not sure

ClothingLabels4U.com

• Minimum order: 250 labels
• Prices at 250 labels: not sure, but 500 labels are between $270 and $380
• Turnaround: within 2-4 weeks or sooner after payment and approval of final proof
• Shipping costs: 15.00 for all US orders via FedX Ground (5-7 business days)

Custom Couture Label Company (an Etsy shop!)
Of course I had to check Etsy, and this seller has some great values on woven labels!

• Minimum order: 100 labels (the smallest quantity available on their site)
• Prices: $90 for 200 text-only woven labels (they also have other options on their site)
• Turnaround: 3 weeks
• Shipping costs: $4.95 via USPS Priority Mail

So…decisions, decisions. I know I want a horizontal layout. And text-only. One color for the text, one color for the background. Aaaand, that’s about it. Do I want it folded? How do I want it attached? I know it’s either sewn on around all four borders like I currently have, but then now that I have the option, maybe I want to sew it into one of my seams! Well hopefully I figure it out soon so I can cross this off my list of things to do. Wish me luck! =]