Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Things are about to get exciting!!

So I've been off the radar for a while.  Here's what I've been doing:









Housekeeping--Check it out, I found the pics of my favorite stockings of the year!  An awesome customer ordered 5 black and white custom stockings with a rainbow of jewel toned flowers.  I thought about keeping them.=) (Forgive me, they're unedited.)

Ran the Big Sur Marathon--A-mazing...The last marathon I ran, said I'd never need to do it again.  This one, we were ready to sign up at the finish line.  A really tough run, but probably the most scenic run I've ever been on, and really well organized.

Apparently everyone I know got the memo that it's Lets Have a Baby Summer.  So I now have a stock pile of baby gift tutorials on my bookmark bar (I'll link some at the bottom), and got to use up lots of really cool tiny scraps of fabric I thought I'd have to throw out. And I learned how to make a sock monkey. Or 6 :)

Anyone know a good IT/IS whatever the *&#$ ( they're called?  I've spent the last couple of weeks transferring software, installing/uninstalling, my web host lost ALL of my contacts, and after 24 hours of internet chat restored them on and on and on.  And now I'm trying to do a total makeover on my website--(soon to be E-Commerce Site!!), blog, packaging, branding, the whole sha-bang.  Did I mention I HATE working on this kind of stuff? I can't wait till I all this crap is over and it's back to sewing!!


The bright side?  I learned A LOT. 
 
We worked through some serious silkscreen issues.  New vendor, new screens, new emulsion, new equipment, couple of good online tutorials (if you're into silkscreening check out this site), and things are going to be about 300% easier, faster, better than they were last year.

Made my big purchase of the year--Accucut Grandemark!! It's a commercial grade die cutter.  I literally cut out 1000's of 1" circles last year by hand, this sucker will cut out about 40 in about 10 seconds. And they make custom dies, lets just say I should buy stock in this company.=)

So all of this horrible housecleaning crap should be finished in the next week or so, and it'll be time to prototype all new ideas for Halloween/Christmas 2011!!  I'll post some pics once I get there.

Oh, and almost forgot, in the midst of all this, we did get some beach bags finished!  I'm not 100% happy with the screen design, that should be fixed this weekend, and should be listed by mid-next week at the latest.

Some baby gift tutorials:

Nursing Cover:  http://sewmuchado.blogspot.com/2009/02/description-stylish-and-practical.html

Easy, cute baby dress:  http://www.made-by-rae.com/2008/04/free-itty-bitty-baby-dress-pattern.html

Classic Sock Monkey:  http://www.supersockmonkey.com/catalog/howtomake.html
(Target has really cute socks for a couple of bucks, pick some up!)