Monday, August 29, 2011

Let the Planning Begin...

I feel very accomplished! I had a four day weekend and I managed to get pretty much everything on my "baby list" done. The house is clean except for one room, where I just need to move some clothes. I loosely packed my hospital bag and even though I want this little to wait until my mom comes in a little less than 3 weeks, I'd be ok if he made his appearance early :)

Also I have been going through ideas for my daughter's 3rd birthday. We are having her party a week and half early so that my mom, dad and sister can be here for it and see the baby. But also with the new baby, I am trying to plan a fun party where I don't have to do much. My daughter's last two parties have been at our house and I tend to bite off more than I can chew or get myself all stressed out and I end up up running around like a crazy person. I want none of that this year. Soo I plan on either having her party at a gymnastic place that does parties and pretty does everything for you or Chuck-E-Cheese. I am hoping for the former, just because Chuck-E-Cheese might be too overwhelming.

But I need to start getting stuff together now so I won't be worrying about the details, while trying to keep my sanity with a newborn and 3 y/o.

I have her invitations all created in my mind and I will share them with you once they are a reality. The theme is PURPLE. Its my daughter's current favorite color. She asks for everything in purple, its so cute.

I created a little Pinterest inspiration board, you can check out the full details HERE. Purple is starting to become a fav (don't worry Green, you're always #1 in my heart!!)

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Friday, August 26, 2011

I'll Take That In A Printable Version Please...

First of all, I am writing this at 4 am because since I am currently carrying the "dance party usa" baby I am normally up at crazy times in the night because he won't stop moving or I have to pee. Plus this morning there is thunder and lightening and RAIN!!! Don't get me wrong I love the sun and summer but seriously because of the aforementioned baby the heat is killing me. A break would be nice.

I am also awake because I have so many ideas and thoughts between the two shops that it keeps up at night trying to figure out what to add to my list. I really am trying to pace myself but I am also trying to get items prepared before baby comes so hopefully it will mean less stress.

One thing I have tossing around and I think I am just going to commit to is offering printable With Envy Paper items. I know there are already shops that offer printable art and stationery, so I figure I can make that option available which would be more convenient at this point more and maybe give people who wouldn't otherwise purchase from me due to time constraints and shipping costs.

I'm going to work on re-shooting few a few of my product photos and then adding the "printable" versions to the shop in the next few days.

Now off to sleep for a little bit and then finally getting a day off to give into my crazy nesting instincts and clean the house and set up the last of the baby things (26 days and counting!!!)

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Products "In Action"!

Its crazy, with a new baby coming I have started the process of wrapping things up at my day job although I am not officially on leave until mid September. But things over here are chugging right along. I have a crazy "to do" list, because I was to have as much stuff done and waiting to just add to the shop before this little guy gets here. I have been making good progress and hopefully I can keep it up!

Now on to the good stuff. 

Here are the details!I love the products I create. It literally squeal with delight when I see something I envisioned in my head come together. But what I also would love to see is how you guys use and re-purposed items you've purchased from my shops. So if any of my customers (With Envy Parties, With Envy Paper and even Green With Envy Studios) have photos of my products "in action" or can take any I would love to see them and feature them. Please feel free to email them to me at withenvystudios@gmail.com I am offer a coupon code for 25% off your next purchase as a thank you for taking the time to do this for me. 

Happy Wednesday guys!!!!

Monday, August 22, 2011

HALLOWEEN IS HERE!!!

Halloween has arrived at With Envy Parties!!! I am so happy with the way this printable party set turned out and I'm even more pleased with how the photoshoot turned out!!! Oh and did mention I've included a FREEBIE after all the fun photos :)

This set is now available HERE.







The prints that were included in the photo shoot can be downloaded for FREE below!!

Fully customized and personalized, non-holiday silhouette prints available to With Envy Papers!!


Friday, August 19, 2011

Impulse Decision....

I just couldn't resist...



With Envy Paper is now open!

I decided to open but start with only a few products. Right now there are two of my favorite prints and two of my favorite styles of bookplates. I will probably add a few more items and see how things go. Go ahead and check it out!!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Ah Facebook!

I created a facebook fan page but I'm still tweaking it (surprise surprise). I will post sneak peaks, shop updates, coupon codes and my random thoughts here, so stop on by and do a little "liking" :)

Monday, August 15, 2011

Getting Some Satisfaction!

I think I seriously have an issue with being satisfied with things. I love the idea of personalization and customization simply because I always find things in stores I like but there is just one or two things I want changed. So I really love to provide the opportunity to really customize everything about my products. But ever since I open I have been second guessing how I have things listed. I initially was going to list complete party sets and then list everything separately too into their own listed. I initially scraped that idea as I felt it would take forever and there would be a ton of listings as there are like 20 items per party set.

So I then decided to list full party sets and then have one "ala carte" listing for the items in the party set and you just pick from the full set and provide all of that information. I decided that was too difficult and the listing was just asking for too much information and wasn't very user friendly. So I went back to my idea of listing each item for each party set separately which is a pain in the but. But as I was doing that I always struggle with how to get all the information I need to create a proof without the listing being to complication. Which is hard when there are soooo many options.

I also have been struggling because before I closed Green With Envy Studios, I really liked how my pictures were coming out and what I was offering and I felt the look of my shop was really representative of me.

I had started to offer customizable party items in that shop and I really like the look of the pictures. I was not as happy with the look of my current shop.

So in typical me fashion I revamped everything. I really want people to realize from the pictures that everything is customizable, which is something I don't think they are getting from my current set up. Needless to say I am in LOVE with the look of the shop!!!




I think the pictures match my banner better and it just makes me happy to see the rainbow of colors! I still have a a few more items to list for my Stuck In The Middle Collection and then I will list the Ribbon version of all the items. Once thats done I can move on to my ginormous today list (for the shop and for baby).

Happy Monday!!

Monday, August 8, 2011

Monday Monday...

I must like torturing myself or something. I am still getting everything into the shop (taking way longer than I thought it would). I have a long list of things I need to be working on. I feel like it wouldn't be soo crazy if we weren't 44 days away from having our second child (if he is good and stays put that long). So I feel like I'm in a crunch to get things done in advance so, like my holiday collections. Plus there is a long list of new illustration I want to create. Oh and did I mention I have a day job where it's crunch time to get all my stuff wrapped up.

With my first pregnancy I developed pre-eclampsia right at the end of my pregnancy literally a week before my due date. I was induced 3 days before her due date. Next week they are going to start testing my urine for protein at my appointments and I'm super nervous that I will develop pre-e again and have to be induced early (plus I just have this feeling I'm not going to make it to my due date). So my stress level is crazy high and I am definitely staying up way past my bedtime and getting up way to early to get things done. Fingers cross it all pays off!!

So my priorities right now are:
-getting all the ala carte items listed
-finishing my Halloween and Christmas collections
-finishing some freebie collections

I think I have decided to put the opening of With Envy Paper on the back burner until after the baby comes. In reality setting up that shop isn't too difficult but actually creating products and shipping is just too time consuming for me right now. If I happen to get everything on my current To-Do list done ahead of schedule I may think of opening that shop early....but I doubt that will happen.


Happy Hectic Monday!!!

Friday, August 5, 2011

Friday Freebie!

Happy Happy Friday everyone!! I am so glad it's here, its been a crazy week. So even though here in Oregon it feels like summer just arrived, school will be starting back up in a few short weeks. 

So I decided to offer some Back To School Party Circles that I created last year. I tweeked them a bit and now they are available for downloading.
Oh and did I mention they are FREE!!!!

They can make great cupcake toppers, favor tags, napkin rings, treat bag toppers etc. Let your creativity soar!!

Back to School

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Whats New?

I opened With Envy Parties on Monday and already I remember the feeling of managing a shop plus a day job and family. But luckily I also instantly remembered the excitement of listing items and constantly checking Etsy. I love Etsy, love the create people that make it up. I still don't have everything listed so I am working this week on getting things completely listed but my "to do" list is continually growing.

But despite that I am having a lot of fun already. I thought I would show you some of the items that are available in the shop. The following are the 5 main printable party sets that I offer. You can customize and personalize these sets to make them your own. I also offer most of the items in the party set ala carte. 








Oh and did I mention from August 1-8th EVERYTHING in the shop is 50% OFF!!!!!

So stop by and look around...stay tuned for a freebie later this week!!
Happy Wednesday!!

Monday, August 1, 2011

Welcome to my new home! I formally ran Green With Envy Studios where I sold mainly personalized and customized paper goods. I also started to branch out into printable party items. My Etsy shop was open for a little over a year. Unfortunately around Valentine's day my computer died. I had backed things up but not nearly as often as I should (lesson learned for sure). It took a while to get my computer back up an running. During that time away as much as I liked what I was doing it was getting difficult due to me being in the first trimester of pregnancy with my second child. Having the energy to work on and complete orders after a very long day at my day job plus, wrangling a toddler was really difficult. So I took the computer problem as a blessing disguise. It gave me the break I needed but also time to really think about what I wanted to do and where I wanted my focus to be. I knew I wanted to get back up and running but I really wanted to take the time to be planful and do it the right way. So here I am!

I decided to change the name of my business slightly to With Envy Studios. I will eventually have two areas (at least) to this business. One is With Envy Parties that I opened today. This shop will focus on personalized and customized printable party items. I also will be opening With Envy Paper in a few days. This shop will focus on the personalized and customized paper goods like I had in my Green With Envy Shop. But I have decided until after our new little addition comes I'm probably only going to offer bookplates which were my bestsellers. I will gradually offer more items but I want to take it slow at first.

I'm not the best blogger with everything I have to juggle in life but I hope to eventually post regularly about shop happenings, custom work and inspirations. I hope you will stop by the shop and have a look around. I feel better and more organized this time around then I did when I opened Green With Envy Studios so I am hoping I can keep it up and fingers crossed hoping no further computer problems (once was enough to inspire me, twice will just make me cry!)

Stay tuned this week for a FREEBIE and also I will be showcasing some of my parties in the shop!