Hat Store is back in Business and...

Last year, my hat business did quite well. In just a few months, I had about 400 followers and made about $250. Not bad for just starting out. But when I got pregnant in November, I shut it down. I opened it briefly for charity work after my miscarriage, but shut it down a little afterwards. Ever since reopening it a few months ago, it was never the same. I lost over a hundred followers and had very seldom orders from all the months I had it closed. I decided I'd just be okay with that, it was a fun run while it lasted and I could try doing craft fairs and flea markets later on to reopen it eventually.

But then, something awesome happened. I got pregnant again, which is a blessing in itself, and with becoming pregnant and one time showing off a few hats I had made baby in my baby group, my store blossomed again. Just in the last two or three weeks, I made almost $100. I am currently working through $250 in orders, and the orders are still coming in frequently (I usually get 2-3 a week). This means three things: 1) my store is running and getting business again, and even more than it got last year with 400 followers, 2) I have multiple repeat customers who not only continue to buy my hats for both their babies and others, but they spread the word about me and rave about me online and 3) I'm going to be able to fully fund preparing for this baby just on my hat business. It's SUCH a good feeling to be able to make some money as a SAHM, and enough to actually pay for all of baby's needs, including a car seat, baby carrier, crib mattress, clothing, and other necessities.

Not only this, but I get to see babies due at the same time as our little boy wearing my hats that I custom made for them! How neat will that be?!

Here's some of my latest works:

Creating Minnie/Gender Reveal Decorations!

I've been crafting every day for about two weeks now, preparing for Katie's birthday party. Like last year, it's very craft heavy again, but this time it's much more. I have so many fun ideas on how to incorporate her party with the gender reveal finale and have everything Minnie and Mickey too.

So far, I finished my Mickey garland. I'm still debating adding tulle poms on every other Mickey head to turn them into Minnie's, but we'll see. I like how they look now too. The black ones are for the front room, which will be exclusively Minnie themed, and the pink and blue ones will be in the second room, which will be pink and blue themed with Minnies incorporated.

I don't have pictures of the black ones, but they're exactly the same. 

With that done, I stopped at Party City and Walmart and grabbed a bunch of stuff for goodie bags! I only made four so far, as I also ordered a few things off of amazon to go in them and each one takes a few minutes to put together. I just need to grab my big blue and pink lollipops to stick in there yet! I just checked though, I don't have pictures of them yet, but I will once I have more made!

Next, I started the huge labor of Minnie Ears. I decided to hand make a set for everyone coming. Thank goodness for Pinterest! I bought a large stack of black felt, foam paper, headbands and lots of hot glue and started cutting circles for days. Once everything was cut, I started gluing and burning my fingers. As of this morning, I used almost all my supplies and got half of them done. While these aren't perfect, I love the idea of the foam paper, which really makes them stand up perfectly. However, each pair of ears cost one whole stick of hot glue!

Sticking with the Katie and gender theme, I made a set of blue pom ears and a set of pink bow ears as a way of everyone showing their guess of the gender to add a little more fun. Of course that meant I had to make mine special, so I got some felt that's new at the store and incorporated it into my pair, and made a special blue and pink pom to go with it.

Team Blue:

Team Pink:

My pair: 

Most of the headbands so far:

Now I have half of the headbands to go yet, and grabbing a few more decorations.

#2- all finished except for legs!

I worked SO HARD yesterday on Lollo #2, trying to finish it before Easter. I managed to get farther than I thought, but she sadly remains with no legs. Instead of struggling and failing, I did all I could and decided that I would pause on the hexagons and decorate the bear. I rather she be missing a leg or two than to have the whole bear crocheted but with no eyes or pretty decorations.

She now has her arms (the hands are praying/holding flowers and are connected by a button), she has a bouquet, two butterflies, a cross on her chest, big glitter wings with fuzzy yarn outlining it, a bow that I won in a contest (Katie wore the second one today on Easter), wing earrings, eyes, and a glittery bow with a large wing on the flower stems. I love how she's shaping up. I brought her along today to do the Elizabeth stuff and to my surprise, even my dad and grandfather said how great it looked (these are not men that typically glance at any craft or teddy bear, so it was nice to hear.)

Lollo Update

Good news - Lollo now has a head and ears.
Bad news - Lollo now has a head and ears and Katie LOVES her. She took one look at Lollo with her head and ears attached to that egg shape body and she went crazy. It was so adorable that I had to hand her over and pray that it would be a quick cuddle. No such luck. Twenty minutes later, she's still over there hugging the limbless teddy bear. I just don't have it in me to take Elizabeth's bear away from her, so meanwhile I'm skipping forming the face and just working ahead on the limbs.

I would love to get this done before Easter so that we can take it with us when we visit Elizabeth. So far this Lollo has gone by faster than the last one and with less problems, but I don't know how fast I can prepare baked goods and food for Easter AND also crochet limbs all day, plus the white glitter wings. We'll see, my fingers are crossed.

The two Lollos:

Lollo #2 day 4 - Body Finished

#2's body is now done! 

It's coming along nicely, and the perfect size. Just cuddling this easter egg shaped body is fun! It's drastically smaller than #1, which I was pleased with as I wanted this to be pretty small. I have no idea if this is closer to the size of the pattern or maybe even a bit smaller, but it'll be the perfect size for what it's intended for. Pictures below show #2 against #1 to compare sizes.

Was hoping to get the head done today, but it's been so busy that I only managed to do one hexagon of the head! Hopefully tomorrow will see many more motifs. I'm eager to experiment with this Lollo's eyes, since it doesn't have to be childproof.

Yep - this body is just a little bit bigger than #1's FOOT!

Lollo #2 - Day 3

So far, my experimentations with Lollo #2 have been successful. I'm currently working with my larger hook (3.50) and made the first two rounds of the body. The 5th round of the motifs have been changed from a double crochet to a single, and I'm sewing them together from the inside. This bear is definitely much smaller! I'd say it's probably half the size, which is great. I'm really liking how to looks so far, I can't wait until this petite bear starts to shape up more!

As I type, Katie has grabbed her Lollo, pulled it in her chair with her and began to cuddle. She drags him around everywhere and gives him big hugs. I love that she still enjoys him so much, she usually doesn't cuddle much with any of her stuffed animals (and she has a lot!).  I tried to steal him away to make a comparison shot of him and #2's size, but her little hands grabbed onto him and pulled him in close! Oh well, I'll have to do it when #2 is more built up!

Here's how #2 is doing:

Thinking Over Lollo #2

I have two major projects I need to get started one. One is a Mother's Day gift that will surely take quite a bit of time and the other is Lollo #2. Lollo #2 is in memory of my Elizabeth, my little angel. This bear is to sit on her memory box as a glittery winged guardian, so I don't want him to be quite the size of Katie's Lollo. However, I want to use the same thickness of yarn, which means I can't use much smaller of hooks. Here's what I'll be changing:

I'll only be using TWO hooks this time, instead of 4-5. Two is really only necessary, one for the bottom part of the body and the head, and one for the parts that taper off.

I'm not going to do double thick yarn on hands and feet. It makes them a bit too big and since this bear won't be played with roughly, there's no real need to double up both sides. Not to mention, the bear will have flowers in it's hands, so you won't see much of them.

I'm doing the hexagon/pentagon pattern differently by doing round 5 as either a single crochet or a half crochet. Right now I'm thinking of doing a single and then sewing them together.

If I don't sew these motifs together, this time I'm going to crochet the patterns inside out to get a smoother joining.

I may take out a round in the body and arms. I'm not sure about this yet as it may turn out a bit strange, but I may use the smaller hook on the head to shrink it a bit, then skip round three in the body and take one round off the arms to make them not look too long. I think I'll leave the legs go though, as they look a little short on Lollo #1.

I'm not sure what size hooks I'll be using yet, but probably the two smallest ones I've used last time if that's possible. This should be a true experiment, to see if Lollo#2 comes out looking alright!

I also need to find a pattern on how to make large angel wings with fingerling yarn. But, that's something to worry about much later!

EDIT: after much deliberation, and reading through other people's reviews (the ones who didn't use 6 tiny itty bitty hooks) I decided to use size 3.25 and 3.50. The most common variant is 3.25 and 3.75, but I want to make this as small as it'll go with these larger hooks, so I want the larger pieces just barely larger. We'll see how this goes! Starting now!

Oh, and these are the colors I chose (the small yarn is white and glittery, I'm going to use it for the wings and possible the eye motifs.)

and a rough draft of how I'm going to decorate Elizabeth's Lollo. The necklace will be a handbeaded string of rubies with a cross at the bottom, the rose at the ear will be crocheted and with the soft pink yarn that's leftover from Katie's bear to add a give a little sisterly addition, the wings will be crocheted out of the glitter yarn above, the earrings will be little wings on each side, and she'll hold a bouquet of beautiful flowers in her hand. I can't decide between which one I want yet though, there's three at Walmart that just jump out at me, so I'm going to wait until Lollo is more finished to decide...hopefully they'll all still be there!)