Taking the plunge

*Warning ... this is so much more than you will ever want to know about this topic... but for the sake of family record keeping, I'm telling it. I promise more interesting things about the kids will follow after I get Sam to preschool.*

Wednesday & Thursday, February 21-22

Six weeks or so ago the girls school sent home a flier about at PTA fund raiser that would be held during parent teacher conferences, called a Shoppers Fair. Home based businesses could rent a table for $25 and sell their products. It took GR and I a long time to decide whether or not we could pull this off - but we did and all in all we were pretty successful.

Truthfully, we were both confident and ready to promote his photography. His pictures are excellent, and his prices - affordable, and he gave out 25+ price sheets - and given the traffic at the shoppers fair, that's pretty amazing!

For at least the last three years I've wanted to sell my baby blanket bundles - my standard baby gift that I've been giving new babies for the last nine years. I wish I could say how many babies have gotten my blankets, but I've honestly lost count, the number of blankets I've made must be to 100 by now. (Kristy, I still need to send you directions on how I do these, I haven't forgotten!)

The baby boom is slowing (I only have six friends this year who are pregnant, instead of the 10+) while my stash of blanket fabric isn't getting smaller. I needed to clean house and let others enjoy these cute blankets.

So many things have kept me from doing it ... one of the main ones was finding an avenue to sell them. I wanted a way to sell them online - craft fairs/booths I've never felt would be worth my time - and having watched similar blankets on ebay I knew that wasn't the avenue for me.

This past summer my friend Heather started a shop on a website called ETSY.com - heatherhalesDESIGNS - selling super chic clothes and accessories for babies and toddlers along with unique housewares and other one-of-a-kind designs. And over the last 8 months, she's really well promoting and moving her inventory. Ever since Heather set up shop, I've known that if I ever decided to sell my blankets (and at the time I NEVER thought I would take this step) this was a perfect place to set up shop.

I started preparing to sell my stuff back in January, I knew that if I was going to do this I would do it all the way or not at all. That's just the kind of gal I am. I can't do a sloppy job of something like this to save my life. All the details had to be put together or I wasn't going to put myself out there. I needed a real name (Barb suggested, Tiny Stitches), a logo (created it in Publisher of all places), product tags, shopping bags (packaging), a functioning way to sell online (etsy.com) AND I needed inventory.

Given the demographics at the school, I decided to broaden my focus from just baby blankets to things older kids would also enjoy. So I went with three baby girl blanket bundles, two boy blanket bundles, two nuzzies, and an assortment of themed standard size pillowcases. I sold three pillowcases, one nuzzie, and two baby girl blanket bundles. And I'm hoping to sell an additional 2-3 bundles to women who requested specific bundles. We'll see, my shop has been live with true products since Wednesday night and people are taking a look which is fun to see. I'm hoping with some additional promotion on Mormonchic.com I can start moving my inventory.

www.tinystitches.etsy.com