Thursday, December 15, 2016

Teacher's Christmas Gifts


Since I started making Tiny Tin Sewing Rooms regularly I think and dream of tiny tin rooms all the time. You know what that means??

My daughter's school teachers get them as a Christmas gift! But not sewing rooms... I made a class room for her homeroom teacher. I picked some things I thought they looked good together. Then, Rachel told me that her teacher loves Harry Potter books, so I added that personal touch.

Her music teacher got a music themed room. It was a bit hard to find miniatures for this room and to decide on the design.

On Instagram, I received such positive feedback for these rooms and some people wanted me to make more for sale. What do you think? I think it would be fun to have a variety of tin rooms but I need to be more organized before I can expand.

In the meantime, I am going to be restocking my shop with Tiny Tin Sewing Rooms. If you were waiting for them I hope you will find the one you have been waiting for!

Friday, December 2, 2016

Tiny Tin Sewing Room Behind the Scenes


You might be tired of me posting about Tiny Tin Sewing Rooms, but this one is a bit different. It is not a shop announcement, it is about "behind the scenes" post. What inspired me to write this post is that I got asked the same questions from people about the Tin room. So I thought it would be fun to collect my thoughts and write about them. :)

{Question 1} "How did you come up with this idea?"

I always liked miniatures and wanted to make miniature rooms. When I finally did it, it was in a little wooden suit case and I loved how it tuned out.

I made some more for my etsy shop and sold them. They sold alright, but there were some challenges... because I used different bases(boxes), I always had to figure out the shipping for each one of them. Also they were harder to ship. There were a couple incidents where some parts came off when my customers received their packages, and I needed to do trouble shooting. I was a bit discouraged and going to stop making them to sell. Then one day, as I was eating some Altoids mints the idea hit me. "Hey, why don't I make a tiny sewing room inside of the Altoids mint tin?!" That's how I started making the Tiny Tin Sewing Rooms.

{Question 2} "Are you thinking about manufacturing them at some point?"

That is a hard question to answer. It would be a lie if I say that it didn't cross my mind, but I feel like manufacturing takes lots of knowledge and money up front. Also, I am afraid that it might lose the uniqueness of each item's "one of a kind" feel. I feel so bad that I can only make so much in a week and make my customers wait, but I think I am going to stick to what I do for now. OH! I *hired* my 11 year old daughter to paint the spools though!



{Question 3} "Do you ever get sick of making them?"

Not so far. I usually don't like doing the same thing over and over again, but because all the sewing rooms are different I enjoy making them. Coming up with different combinations of color, paper, buttons and other miniature items are challenging sometimes, but very fun.


{Question 4} "What do you do with all the mints???"

Hahaha. Yes, we have so many mints. I dump them in a 1 gallon freezer bag and keep them in our pantry and the whole pantry smells very MINTY! I eat them, but one person can only eat so many mints.

I put them in a snack size plastic bags and gave many away to my friends and neighbors, gave my kids some to share with their friends and my husband took a 1 gallon bag to work to share with his coworkers. He told me that they were joking about how their section has the freshest breath in the whole company. :) At this rate, I might start leaving the bags on my neighbor's door steps. hahaha

I better go back to my sewing room and make more tiny sewing rooms. I should be ready to restock my shop by the end of next week. Those of you who are interested, I am sorry to make you wait and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your interest. I will do my best to make them cute and fun to look at. :)