May & June 2011

Whew! May & June turned out to be busy months! I had several wholesale orders and custom requests for which I'd like to say thank you lovely customers! I also had a couple of very large orders! It started with an order for 42 oversized zip pouches to hold headphones for an LA County School District.

 

Zip pouches are relatively easy to make, but anything in the quantity of 42 tends to become monotonous after a while.  Just FYI, I do offer discounts on large orders. Discounts can be as good as wholesale pricing (50% off) depending on how many you need.

I also had a couple of custom request embroidered travel clutches - which are one of my favorite things to do. Especially since I'm so recently obsessed with the embroidery function of my sewing machine. I haven't totaled my bill on how much I've spent on embroidery designs and materials thus far, but I have a feeling I'm going to be shocked at that total. That's ok. I'm going to chalk that overage up to how much fun it's been this year to do all this embroidery! Anyway, here's one of the designs:

The customer wanted to change the color scheme of the Peacock Plume to focus more on purples and blues. I thought it was such a great idea, I actually made two of them. The other one is half way finished, so I'll be listing it pretty soon.

Perhaps my most favorite request of the year so far is a bride requesting matching travel clutches, purses and luggage tags. I LOVE making purses, but so do a lot of other people in the Etsy market so I tend to focus on more of my travel niche. Anyway, I was lucky enough to make 12 purses, one for each of the 11 bridesmaids and one matching smaller scale purse for the flower girl (to match her bridesmaid mom’s purse), 11 travel clutches and 11 luggage tags. Believe me, I fully planned to take advantage of that photo shoot. I may never get an opportunity like that again. My Love* was NOT happy that I agreed to a 2.5 week time line.  In order for me to agree to that kind of time line, it means nothing else gets done around here. No laundry, no cleaning, no meals – I’m doing good to take daily showers. Seriously. The only thing I WILL take time for is Busy*. I refuse to ignore or become lazy in being Busy’s mom because he is why I do this business. If I ever lose sight of that, then I’m sunk. Luckily, Busy’s Gigi (my mother –in-law) was able to watch him a couple days a week. So, that helped. My Love was, however, happy that the price tag of the order paid for half of Busy’s recent surgery bill. Of course, My Love is my love for a reason, and he was really awesome during those 2 weeks and definitely picked up where I left off. Oh, and don’t get me started on how much Obamacare is such a ridiculous farce, or I will absolutely lose my mind. I could fill several blog posts on the obscene cost of health care and how if we lived anywhere else but these great United States, my beautiful boy would not even be eligible for the surgery's he's received and will be receiving in the future.  More on Busy’s health later….Anyway,  take a look at this great order.

My Love  helped me set up a laundry line between two trees outside so I could try and get them all in one picture. 

Ok, obviously I'm a picture short in the collage above...which is why you should never do anything worth while when you're tired. Below are some close-ups.

 

 

It was windy on picture day which was nice considering the hot weather, but not so nice when you're trying to take pictures! I have lots of blogging to catch up on, but first a Newsletter for my loyal followers. If you're not signed up for it, hurry! Click on the 'Newsletter' tab at the top to get signed up!

*I recently read a blog where the blogger referred to her husband and child by nicknames, to protect their identity of course. I loved that idea. She referred to her child as 'Busy' so I'm adopting that for my own.  And my husband is 'My Love'. Really how perfect?

Larger Passport Covers

Since I've opened my shop in 2009, one of the questions I was asked the most is 'Will your passport covers fit Canadian Passports?" And every time I had to send a regretful response that, 'No, unfortunately, my vinyl passport covers will not fit Canadian Passports'. As OSD's store popularity grew and I started shipping to more countries, I discovered that there are several other countries that have passports larger than US standard sized passports.

This was becoming a pretty big problem. Due to me not being able to provide larger vinyl passport covers at the same $5 price as my standard passport covers, Canada was replaced by Australia as the #1 country I ship to outside of the US. I was losing a whole country of customers!

So I researched my options. I briefly offered laminated paper passport covers that were sewn together. These were mildly popular, but because of the cost of lamination and my time to sew them, I couldn't offer them at the same $5 price and eventually their popularity waned.

Finally, I am happy to announce a solution. OSD is proud to announce that we offer a new larger passport cover design. Please see the picture below (drum roll please)

They are identical in quality to my standard sized passport covers. The only difference is their larger size and the interior pockets are larger than the standard passport cover size. They are ideally suited for Canadian Passports as well as any country that has a slightly larger passport. These larger sized covers are priced the same as my standard covers, just $5. And perhaps the best part is, you can ONLY get this larger size at Owl Say Designs. Can I call myself a pioneer, cause that's how I'm feeling right now! You can check out the measurements below:

These larger passport covers have been available in my shop for several weeks, but I wanted to test them out before I made any announcements. Thank you to those of you who helped quality test this new product!