Fabric Gift Bags

A few years ago I started making fabric gift bags for our family, and I'm proud to now offer them at BrightBlack. Unlike paper or paper gift bags, they can be used repeatedly, and look good for many years! I have had fun picking out holiday fabrics and coordinating ribbons, and making bags in a variety of sizes. With so many fun fabrics to choose from, the gifts under the tree will never look drab!

My husband likes them because they are so easy to use--no complicated wrapping, even for oddly shaped items!
My kids love them because they can wrap things by themselves, even when they are very young. Plus it's fast and easy to UNwrap things too!
I love them because they are eco-friendly, washable, beautiful, and leave me with no mess on Christmas morning! In the off-season we use our bags to store our christmas decorations, especially our twinkle lights. No more tangled strings of lights, and no more broken bulbs!

Most of my current selection is Christmas-oriented, but over the coming year I plan to add bags for birthdays, weddings, and babies too.

My bags do not come with tags on them at this time, however any type of tag or sticker could easily be applied. I am pleased to recommend the following etsians as folks who have great tags that would work well with my bags:

Paperazzi * Bellsies Booties
Home Sweet Home * Creative Creations

Pie will really gum up a sewing machine...

This month's blog carnival topic: What is your favorite tradition for the Thanksgiving holiday?
It's Pie Night, without question. ☺ It's an annual tradition which my husband and I have been doing every November since we were married.

So, what is Pie Night you may ask? Good question! Go ahead and take notes now, because as soon as you finish reading this you're probably going to run off and start a pie night tradition of your own.
1--invite lots of friends, and ask everyone to bring a pie (and server). (As hosts, we provide plates, forks, and whipped cream along with a pie or two.)
2--there are many many kinds of pie
3--everybody pigs out on lots and lots and lots of pie!

This year I brought a "Chocolate Barbarian Pie"
(yup, I've posted the recipe...I'm going to be posting pies there all month, so check back in!!)

The first year we did it it was a small affair, with only 5 pies (two made by me). The next year it grew, and our third year had 36 people crammed in our little house. Then we moved to Pelican, and had to start over...however this is a friendly little town, and we had over a dozen attendees last year...now that the locals have had enough time to get to know us, this year was a little bigger. Last night we had 22 people and 17 pies! (It was the year of pumpkin pie--there were 6 pumpkin pies!) I think this years winner as fanciest pie was DS's Pear-Almond Creme Tart with Cranberry Flakes... although I personally also really love the Upside-down Pumpkin Pie that CS makes (she said she hates making crust, so she makes the pumpkin pie filling, then puts it in a casserole dish and does a nut-crumb topping on it!)


A couple of little notes if you want to host a Pie Night of your own:

• Put out a couple of pitchers of ice water! With all the rich pie, people tend to need a drink!
• Be sure to remind people to bring a server with their pie, otherwise you might have 8 pies and 1 server...that's awkward!
• Use index cards or something to put labels in front of each pie, so that people can tell what each one is when they go to choose their slices...for example, last night we had a plain chocolate and a chocolate-mocha which looked almost identical, but some people like mocha and some don't, so it's good to have labels!

November's Featured EtsyBlogger

This month's featured Etsyblogger is Deb the Storybeader (click here to visit her blog, or here to visit her shop).

Here are two of my favorite things in her shop (click on the photo to see the listing):


This suncatcher
<---------
and


------------->
This necklace of bears "making their way along the green path" I love bears, and I love how these beads really do tell a story!

What am I working on?

The current EtsyBloggers Carnival is "What am I working on right now?"
I'm working on several things right now, although unfortunately I don't have pictures of all of them yet.

1) I'm running a contest here to win a free diaper (now through Nov 15).

2) I've just finished stocking a whole bunch of cloth diapers in pretty autumn colors. The EtsyClothDiaper Team does monthly themes and this is the one for November...I've separated the themed items into their own section in the shop, and if you buy anything from the theme section you can get another item (from anywhere in the shop) for 25% off!!

3) Rolled knitted washable tampons (I'm in beta testing right now--in other words, I tried them, now I made some for my friends to try, and next month I plan to start posting them at LilBees, as well as making the pattern available for free here on the blog.)

4) I've been sewing a lot of nursing pads this week. They seem to sell as fast as I can make and stock them, so I'm trying to build up my stock!

5) I'm in the designing stage on a waterproof bicycle seat cover. I just got my fabric, and hope to be sewing a prototype next week. We live in a rainy area, we bike everywhere (it's a small town), and we sure hate having wet booties! So seat covers it is! I'll post about them as soon as I am ready to list them!

So how's that for keeping busy?!
Whew, listing them all out makes me feel tired! I think I'm going to go have a cup of cocoa and then have a nap with the little one! ☺

Tuesday Tip: Setting Prices

One of the hardest things to do is set prices. Sometimes it seems like a good idea to lower your prices as much as possible so that everyone will come to you, but that can backfire as many customers equate low prices with low quality. You want to make sales, so you don't want to charge to much; but you don't want to undersell yourself either. You want to charge a fair, competitive price.

So let's evaluate those two things separately: fair and competitive.

Competitive Pricing
This is actually the easier part. Do a search on etsy for items similar to the one you are pricing, and see what others are charging. There will usually be a few outliers--people who charge much more or much less--but look at the middle of the crowd. Consider their materials and yours--if you make a ring sling out of silk, it stands to reason that you should charge more than for a cotton one.

Fair Pricing
This takes a little more work.
1--determine your materials cost. If you buy materials by the yard, for example, then figure out how many items per yard, and divide the per yard cost... Figure these numbers as exactly as possible.
2--determine your time cost. How long does it take you to make/market your item. This includes the time it takes you to select and purchase your materials, design your product, create your product, photograph the item, and create the listing. Of course some of these things (such as materials or item descriptions) can be used for more than one item, so in those cases you should pro-rate the time. Once you have determined how much time you put into the item, then pay yourself a living wage--most etsians I know (including myself) pay themselves about $10/hour.
3--don't forget fees. Etsy has listing fees and sales fees, paypal has fees, and if you have to relist an item then you have fees again. Your prices should be enough to cover all the fees and still pay you fairly. This etsy fee calculator can help you figure out how to adjust your prices to account for the fees.

What about shipping?
When figuring out what to charge for shipping, remember to include your supplies (boxes, envelopes, tape), as well as the time/gas money you spend to send the item, in addition to the actual shipping cost. Some shipping methods cost more than others, and some packaging supplies cost more than others...Evaluate your options and choose something that works well for you, then charge accordingly.

Seven Secrets

I was tagged by LovaRevolutionary (of the EtsyBloggers team) to tell seven secrets about myself, and then tag seven more team members to do the same...

1) My favorite color is hot pink, and has been since junior high at least.

2) I'm scared of oncoming traffic and oven doors.

3) I don't mind blood or ugly injuries if it's on me (ie, if I get a cut), and I can handle it with my kids if I need to, but I don't handle it well at all if it's someone else. I can't watch it on shows, and I would be terrible in the medical profession.

4) In a college play, I wore a cloak that was originally made for Brendan Frasier. (It had been a few years, and other people had used it in between...and we had to hem it for me ☺ but yes, that Brendan Frasier.)

5) I knit inside out and backwards. Or, at least, I like purling (the backward stitch) better than knitting (the standard stitch). I usually reverse my patterns and knit things inside out so that I can purl them instead of knit.

6) I pronounce 'both' as 'bolth.' I have no idea why.

7) If I were not a stay at home wife and mother (which was always my first choice) then I would probably be either a high school teacher or a school counselor/psychologist. (I got a BA in education and was looking into pursuing a masters in psychology when I got engaged and moved back to Plan A.)

I tag these 7 fellow EtsyBloggers:
FreeForged
CandyStickLane / TheJumpOff
DownTheStreet / ElleQuilts
MorningSkyJewelry
Liebling
NatureManipulated
Ametista / TheClayShoppe

Want a FREE DIAPER?!

Tell me your best crazy (cloth) diaper story!
On Nov 15, I'll post them in a poll for one week--the story that gets the most votes, wins a free diaper from LilBees!
The winner will receive their choice of one diaper, in any size or style (AIO, pocket, or fitted). Anyone is eligible to enter (yes, including family, friends, and people that I know could make their own diapers if they wanted to). I have a variety of fabrics to choose from, so I'll contact the winner about their preferences.

C'mon, you might win a free diaper (or you might not) but for sure you'll get some chuckles!!

I'll kick things off with my own crazy diaper story (no, I don't get to be in the contest, but I figure you can have some laughs at my expense, since I know I'm going to have some at yours!)

I often take off Little Bear's diaper and let him hang out naked for a few minutes before putting on the new diaper. I should know better I suppose, but I do it anyway. Air is good for bottoms. One day a week or so ago he came up to me patting his diaper to indicate that he was wet and wanted to be changed. I was in the middle of something so I reached over and just unsnapped his diaper, figuring to let him run...uh-oh, he wasn't just wet... Of course I couldn't let him run around with poo on his bum, so I scooped him up in one arm, grabbed the two ends of the diaper in the other hand, and hurried to the bathroom to wipe him up. I was trying to set the diaper on the toilet so I could get a cloth into the sink when PLOP! I lost my hold on one side of the diaper, and neat little pile of poo hit the floor with a thud (leaving the diaper, ironically, almost perfectly clean). Sometimes it's not the kids who make the messes...sometimes it's the mommy. ☺
Thank heaven for clorox for the bathroom...it's the only place I use it, but I would hate to give it up because, well, this isn't the only time that something like this has happened. ☺