sweet, sweet trading

I'm trading 50 of my business card sized thank you notes with wallpaper envelopes for the motherload of bath and body products from Mirasol Farm: one rosemary mint lotion, one lavender lotion bar, one sweet eucalyptus soap, one orange clove soap, one kitchen soap, and one double mint soap. I'm very addicted to handmade soaps and like to try new shops all the time, so when she approached me about a trade and wanted up to 50 cards I was a kid in a candy shop. For those of you who've read my past soap-related posts, you know how much I love all things rosemary; Mirasol Farm's kitchen soap is rosemary orange, and since she uses all the natural ingredients instead of fragrancey crap, this strikes me as a completely brilliant innovation. We'll see how long this bar lasts in the kitchen or if it has to migrate into my shower and/or be permanently installed in my nostrils.

BUT!

Because it's 50 cards and I asked my usual "do you have any preferences" question (i.e. love/hate plaids, florals, damask, the color pink, etc.) and she mentioned liking blue and orange, I decided to make a whole bunch of fresh envelopes yesterday in blues and oranges. And then I found I had some wallpapers with what look like sunflowers ("mirasol" is "sunflower" in Spanish) so I had to include a bunch of those...

BUT BUT!!

now I'm stopping myself.
I've made enough.
No more.

Because these all have the "jillhannah.etsy.com" stamp in them, and I'm trying to switch my universe to the Off The Wall Greetings branding, which can commence very soon (my clever business deal will likely be the subject of my next post).

SO!

Now I have to finish up this batch by folding them all, take my photos and make the listing for mirasolfarm, and ship whatever 50 I end up deciding make the most sense in blues and oranges and sunflowers but still get some others in for variety.

And then my sweet, sweet soaps and lotions can come to me and I will be delicious.

I need to do a post on the importance of trading in this economy. Maybe later.

Holy Sales, Batman!

QUICK "Black Friday" update before I go out and brave the live shopping world myself with my brother and his fabulous girlfriend (something in the past my family has avoided but I've always kind of wanted to do, just because it's there and entertaining in a sick, crazy way):

Lots of places will be pricing items below cost today. I used to work at Circuit City, and we could see what the cost to the store was of an item (they estimated in labor and crap, too). The day after Thanksgiving, one of the managers made a big deal out of showing us a bunch of the "doorbusters" and other random sale items that were selling for significantly less than the cost to the store. So why did the store choose to "lose" money on these items? These were not things that had been sitting on the shelves, where any sale would be making more money than the $0 they were currently pulling in (like I talked about last entry). For the Circuit City model (and many other stores like it), they pull you in with some main big fabulous deal that really is a deal, but then count on you buying accessories like batteries, remote controls, blank CDs, software, etc. where they charge way more than cost and make up for the loss on the initial item and then some.
Can you do that? I'm not doing it so much in my shop. I'm going with the "everything on sale, things that already exist can go to any price because they already exist and things that would need to be made can go very close to cost and no matter what it's good to get people into my store and buying because if I can get them hooked on my product while it's cheap then later when it's not on sale they'll come crawling back because my wallpaper envelopes are made out of crack and I use really nice papers that are laced with heroin*" method myself, but if you think creatively, I'm sure there are ways of using the Circuit City method in your shop, too. Or the drug dealer method. That works, too.

Now where are those leftover cinnamon rolls?

*no actual drugs in any of my products, I'm afraid, but if you're a paper or texture nerd like me, they are fairly addictive.

Photos (items for sale on Etsy):
grey gardens ava bag by cookoorikoo
brass mushroom earrings by carolinableu

Eveloped in Wallpaper

I have wallpaper envelopes coming out of my ears.

A few weeks ago I started making a new version of my "screw email" cards with recycled wallpaper envelopes. People liked them a lot. Some people said they loved the envelopes and the feel of the cards but wished they had a different message, so I designed some cards that said "thank you" to fit in the same envelopes.

Find more photos like this on Indiepublic

Then I was at a favorite local coffee shop and noticed they had gift cards with crappy envelopes that didn't fit right. Lightbulb went off in my head right away. I talked to the shift manager and left some of my "screw email" cards and envelopes with the suggestion that I make specialized gift card sized ones with or without cards that said something giftcardy or the name of the coffee shop or something.
I was back a week later with a handful of envelopes in perfect gift card size and cards with the messages "thank you" and "don't spend it all in one place," the latter being my idea of funny.

That particular coffee shop owner still hasn't gotten back to me despite much cheerleading on my behalf from several of his managers (he went out of town for a week and I've stopped by a few more times, c'est la vie), but on Wednesday a different coffee shop expressed serious interest, and everyone I show any of my envelope/card combos to gets really excited and thinks they're the greatest things since sliced bread. It's all pretty exciting and flattering.

Find more photos like this on Indiepublic

And the latest exciting news and my real inspiration for writing: one of the people to whom I gave some of my cards/envelopes was my therapist. After all, much of what we talk about is me being sick/demi-dead (really no secret after my last few entries), and this was something I could do/make even on my demi-dead days. She loved them and asked me if she could show them to a friend of hers who sells high-end jewelry. I said of course! She was a little concerned about the confidentiality and what to say if the friend asked how she knew me, but again, I don't think it's such a shameful thing to be in therapy. As long as she's not telling her friend what we discuss, a connection is a connection, and why is a therapist any different from a dentist or a personal trainer? Ideally, if time and money were no object, everyone should have one. It's healthy. You don't want them talking about your particulars, like your gingivitis, flabby arm muscles, or recurring sexual fantasies about gorilla suits, but we're all human and imperfect and seeing specialists to work on things to better our lives is positive. Not shameful.

That being said, my therapist's friend is having a jewelry show on Thursday and loved my cards and wants to feature a display's worth of them for sale! So now I have to come up with a way of displaying them that is

• ●portable (so I can drop it off with my therapist on Wednesday)
• ●classy (I've been doing farmers markets and craft shows, but this is high-end jewelry, which has a different feel to it)
• ●self-explanatory (I won't be there to say "the ones on the top are $1.75 or 6 for $8 and you can choose your own card and envelope combo, blah blah blah")

I'm thinking of going to Target or JoAnns and getting a big cloth bullitin board/frame thing or two and then using cards of the two sizes as "signs" to say "cards my size are $_ and come with the envelope of your choice"

If you have any other ideas/suggestions, I'm more than happy to hear them. Keep in mind I don't want to spend more than about $15-$20, since my profits aren't that high to begin with.

Also, if you own a business and want some gift card envelopes and/or cards, let me know! It's a sliding price scale based on how many you want and if I ever find a faster more efficient way of making them (still working on that...I'm up to about 10 an hour, which is ass-slow but I can watch a movie or listen to audiobooks or have a migraine at the same time, a major plus).

I've been making envelopes for days. Plaid, floral, solid, weird, paisley, stripes, you name it. And they're coming out of my ears. Let's just hope they do well selling Thursday, on Etsy, and in the universe.