Labels!

     I am so excited! Giddy, giggling, can't stop looking at them, ridiculously excited. Was in the middle of dancing Baby Girl to sleep, saw the box on the porch and stopped dancing to get it, excited.

Take a picture of them still in the box and post it on my Facebook page, excited.

     Getting real, high quality, woven, sew in labels is something I have been thinking about and talking about for a long time, like, months and months.  There are all sorts of tutorials on Pinterest to print your own, and I thought about that for awhile, but I decided that if I was going to do it, I really wanted to do it right.  Even after I made the decision that it was definitely going to happen, definitely a step I wanted my business to make, it still took me months to make it happen.  

     I started working with a local company (Suport local businesses!) that came recommended from a supportive and inspiring friend running an amazing small business selling and renting upcycled cloth napkins, sewn from vintage fabrics, for your home or for weddings and events.  It turns out, that when you are trying to get real, high quality, woven, sew in labels made, you can not send these businesses a picture you made on Microsoft Word that you are calling your logo.  That just does not work.  So, ok, I know how to sew, I know how to embroider, I made the paper price/logo tags I use at farmer's markets and craft fairs and send out with every order with Microsoft Word, a color printer and card stock, and I was pretty proud of myself on that one, but Photoshop?  Making a logo on Photoshop?  

Yikes!

     I have Photoshop, but I really, absolutely do not know how to use it.  Every few months I try to play with it for about an hour and end up just clicking that little red dot and hitting 'don't save.'

Obviously at this point I needed professional help.

     And lucky for me, I happen to know (since the day she was born!) an incredibly talented professional photographer/ video editor/ filmmaker who has all sorts of Photoshop skills.  Also, being my sister and all, she is accustomed to my ridiculousness and can just kind of giggle when I explain this situation and jump in to save the day.  

     With a few emails, text messages and calls back and forth, she was able to take my attempt at a logo and turn it into something much more elegant, beautiful, professional and properly formatted!  I now could send this file on to the label company and get to work.  Unfortunately, the local company somehow was having a really hard time creating what I wanted.  They sent me multiple art proofs for approval, and each one was progressively further and further away from the image I had sent then.  I honestly have no idea what was going on there, but I just gave up.  They had very friendly customer service, but I got tired of all the back and forth and was not reassured that I was going to end up with a product I loved.

     But I still had this nagging desire to get real tags made to help the items in my shop look more professional and help to spread my name out there to all those who were seeing my work on the babies they know and love.  Thank goodness for Etsy!  I found a company whose work looked great, even with small fonts, and had even more affordable prices than I had expected.  

     An order placed, a few emails back and forth, a little more help from my awesome, personal graphic designer, incredibly friendly and prompt customer service (they were even nice to me when I did not know what on earth rastasize meant, or really even how to spell it for that matter).  They very first art proof they sent me was beautiful and perfect, I gave final approval and two weeks later they were at my door!  Anyone out there thinking about getting tags- I HIGHLY recommend Print for Brands.

     It also happened to be perfect timing because I had two order (the fruits of my 1 year Anniversary Sale) about to get wrapped up and shipped out, and they got to be the first 5 bibs to have my labels sewn on.  

So after way too long a story, here they are, looking all amazing and professional.  

Also sewed a few onto what will hopefully soon be awesome, bright,
fun, summer clutches!

     One year into this business, starting to make more regular sales and actually make some money, finding what marketing and promoting works for my business and what doesn't, finding my schedule, energy, motivation and focus to really work in the little, nap time, chunks of time I have in my day, and suddenly feeling so much more professional and like a real business owner.  

Thank you, thank you, thank you Little Sister, could not have made these happen without you!