Showing posts with label rustic wedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rustic wedding. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

A Week in the Life of an Etsy Shop Owner

Life just doesn't ever slow down, does it? The past several days have been a whirlwind of activities for me and my family.  Here's a quick summery of what's been going on - 

* Last Thursday, Hannah, Holly and I traveled about 2 hours east to help Gabriel move from a temporary room rental to his first apartment that he will share with his soon to be bride.  It's a furnished apartment over a garage - a nice little one bedroom.  So we just had a few boxes of personal items to carry up the steep but beautiful dark hardwood steps.  The AC had just gotten turned on and it was literally 90 degrees in the little place.  Had to cool off by going to the grocery store.  We bought frozen pizzas and cooked them in the oven which didn't help with the heat.  And we found out that "fully furnished" doesn't include a pizza cutter.  So I cut the pizzas with a steak knife.

*John did not go with us because he had to travel to DC to pick up our Romanian friend, Marius, from the airport. He was supposed to arrive around 7 PM but the flight was delayed until after 11 PM.  It was 2 AM before they arrived home.

* On Friday morning we left for yet another trip. We had to take Hannah to New York City to meet her team at the airport there to go on a two week mission trip Romania. So we spent the night with my former college roommate in New Jersey and left her house on Saturday.  She lives about an hour away from the airport so that was incredibly convenient and we were blessed to spend some time with her.  I was amazed at the amount of money we spent on tolls, round trip from VA to NJ to NY and back to VA - about $70.

*We got back on Saturday night and Sunday evening was the beginning of our church's Vacation Bible School.  I'm teaching the 1st - 3rd graders. 

*Come Friday morning I can breathe a short sigh of relief before getting serious about all the last minute details for Gabriel's rehearsal dinner and wedding.  Soon I will post some pictures of some of the things that Sarah has asked me to make for the reception.  Meanwhile, here's on order I'm working on this week for a fall wedding - 

Thursday, July 2, 2015

What's My Biggest Selling Item on Etsy?

What's my biggest selling item from Ellie Marie Designs?  Amazingly it's these plain brown kraft tags.  I started out with a set of 25.  A potential customer sent me a message and asked if I could do 200.  200?  What does anyone want with 200 plain brown tags?  Doesn't matter really.  I can do 200.



Three years and thousands of tags later, I'm still selling them.  I've done several sizes from 1.5 - 5.5.  The 3.5 is the most popular.  And I've done anywhere from 25 to 2,000.  They've gone all over the world from Hawaii to New Zealand.
So what do people do with these tags anyway?  Mostly, they don't tell me.  I know that some have been used for:

*Escort labels at weddings

*Price tags for brick and mortar stores

*Etsy sellers gift tags.  

*DIY Christmas tags

*Yard sale price tags

*Fundraisers

Need some plain brown tags?  Visit my shop!  I can also make a custom listing for special sizes, quantities and even colors.