TheSpottedBox

A few months ago, I decided to join up with the Spotted Box. I liked the eco-friendly, family-oriented focus and LOVE the great communication and involvement of the community. I just got my 'free' box yesterday, and I'm even more in love! Not only did everyone send in some fabulous promos, but I learned a TON about what good packaging is. I got a few ideas to give my promos a bit of mmph next month, too.

Here are some pictures from my Spotted Box experience. I've put text saying what and where things are from that aren't immediately obvious on some of the pictures. You should be able to click them and get better detail, if you'd like. I apologize for funky formatting ahead of time. :)

I can't wait to start trying things out!

Things are slowing down.

Winter is obviously starting to set in. All of the trees are losing their leaves and plants have stopped their furious growth. I've been pulling in seeds, and I'll be lifting some of my cold-sensitive bulbs shortly. Entertainingly enough, everything is slowing down, but a handful of weeds are going insane.

Thursday (I skipped the 11th!) is the big day, and I hope I'll be back in fine form shortly after. Supposedly, the procedure is easy and has a fast recovery, so keep your fingers crossed that my heart is thumping the right way soon!

Today, while I was cleaning I found more of my business cards! I thought I was out, but I apparently just misplaced 100 of them. So, now I can staple together promos while I wait for my 1250 others to arrive.

I also ordered 100 post cards. I'm not going to mail them out and intend on using them on thank-you notes, actually. I normally use large note cards to write the thank you and tape seed packs to the back. These will be pretty and serve the same function. Woohoo!

End of harvest.

It's nearing the end of my harvest season, and I've been spending a lot of time sorting seeds, packaging seeds, and planning out next year.

New things for the week:

Seedpods! I sent some of these off to a friend to see what magic she could work with them. If anyone else wants them for whatever reason, I'd be happy to send some off to you. :)

My lawyer gave me the free-and-clear (and a handful of free templates found online with the same layout), so I also placed another business card order, today. I added another flavor to my stash, so I now have five different images. I hope to be able to continue adding variety.

Health news, my heart appears to be clear from obvious defects, so here's to hoping there'll be no exciting surprises during the surgery. I should be scheduling the procedure next week.

Assembled promos.

For the past couple of days, I've been assembling my promos for various people who've requested them for their functions. Bad picture, but it gets the point across. :)

Hopefully, I'll be posting pictures of my new fluffnfixings promos!

A bit of a break.

I got to take a short break over the weekend while visiting my in-laws. It was quite nice to come back to two sales, one in my fluffnflowers shop and one in my fluffnfixings shop. I'm a bit disappointed that the first sale in my fluffnfixings shop was not one of my upcycled mailers, but that's how it goes and you can't argue with any incoming moolah. :)

I've got a lot I need to do this week and a two days are already gone from it. I got my first business card order from vistaprint, and I must say that I'm very pleased. The colors are excellent, the printing and alignment is excellent, and the quality of the paper is also excellent. Even better, it was very inexpensive. I'd rather support an etsian or private printer, but it's hard to argue with the budget. I spent the morning collating (without the intention of binding them ;) them and have them ready to attach to my sample seed packs. I've got four or five people waiting for promos to include in packs, so I've got a lot of work to do on them.

Because I was pleased with my first order, I've placed a second order for a small run of labels (free except for the $3.93 rush shipping) that I plan on placing on my fused plastic 'business cards' that I cut out the other day for my fluffnfixings cards. I think these will be a LOT of fun to hand out and can't wait to get them. They take considerably more work, so I won't be handing out as many as the fluffnfixings cards.

Card crazy

Due to recent concerns publicized on the etsy forums that these cards are copied, without authorization, from happygirlgreetings, I thought I would add this little disclaimer making it clear that this is my own design, as much as a generic design can be. The fonts are all standard in my graphics program and do not identically match that produced on the cards. The images are all MINE, from when I took them all of the way through to the final edit. These are OBVIOUSLY not direct scan and edits from the cards she sent me. I am deeply apologetic for any misunderstandings that may have occurred, and I will forward this on to my legal counsel for clarification on whether this may constitute infringement.

I'm crazed! I did my first small, custom run of cards last week by happygirlgreetings, and I've got the card bug. She did a great job, was super accomodating, and had a great feel for what I wanted. I've already got them all accounted for, so I needed to make another order and decided to play around with some other designs on my own.

And this is what I got:

I'm a complete computer graphics dunce, so I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. Compared to my original promos, they're about a million times more attractive. I was able to keep the upright thing going on, and they're just the right size to have a pack of seeds attached to the back.

I'd been doing some price hunting and was a bit disappointed that they were going to be entirely impractical to print less than 500 of each set (putting the entire order into the $130+ range), until I ran across a great deal with off-site codes by vistaprint.

I've heard all of the terrible things about them, but I decided to go for it anyway and ended up with a $35 order (including shipping) for 4 sets of 250 cards without their name on the back. I wanted to do a double sided card, but it wasn't worth $11 for each set of 250 for one small line of text on the back.

I think that these are flashier and will work better at shows and in promo packs. The happygirl ones are more sedate (dare I say professional?) and will be better suited to be included attached to bonuses in orders and for handing out to people who ask for them.

Hopefully, they turn out well and the entire order processes alright without any undue surprises. For $35 it was worth a try and the hassle of a potential chargeback. We'll see!