Business Notebook (Or, how I hoard business articles!)

Before school ended last month, I realized that I had "prints" that I needed to use up before the semester ended. Every semester, part of our tuition goes towards prints on campus, each sheet costing 10 cents to print in black and white. While I used up about half of my prints on schoolwork, I still had a good amount of prints left, which do not roll over to the next semester. So, to prep for my inevitable comeback to SecondSpringSoaps, I began printing off business and soap making articles!

I ended up gutting my school notebook of notes, papers, and graded assignments, and used the three ring binder and its dividers to create neat little sections of my "business notebook."

I started off by printing some really great business articles from the Wholesale Supplies Plus Handmade Magazine! I went through their most recent issues and printed off everything that caught my eye.
I also went to some of my favorite soaping blogs, like SoapQueen, and printed new recipes that I have been anxious to try!
I went to Handmadeology and printed some great articles on tips for selling online.
And my final stops were to Etsy's Seller Handbook and Zibbet's Blog to print off blog articles that would help me with my comeback!

I also went through my school notes and copied down all of the ideas that I had jotted in the margins and saved any "ideas" pages that I had hastily written while brainstorming. I'm in the process now of whittling those notes down to the best of the best, and I've got some really great stuff here: Loads of great ideas for blog posts, scent blends, and soap designs!

Now that everything is organized and all of my articles are slowly being read, re-read, and digested, I am so thankful that I had the foresight to use up my prints in such a productive way!

Time for a Comeback

March was awful. April wasn't much better. But May looks to be spectacular!

As I've waddled my way through my first trimester with the twins, I've been focused on keeping myself as healthy as possible while keeping up with my school work. My soap shop has really fallen to the wayside, and I think that putting it on hiatus was a smart decision on my part. It really freed up a large chunk of my time and energy to get through the past few months and come out healthy and happy on the other side.

Now, with only one final to go and most of my debilitating morning sickness behind me, I am excited to announce that I will be opening my soap shop back up online only! My Etsy shop and Zibbet shop will be up and running Wednesday, May 7! I will be going through my inventory this weekend and updating all of my listings, as well as updating my turnaround time for orders (I am expanding my turnaround time to 3-5 from order date) to give myself some leeway. BUT! I am very excited to get everything going again and return to the soap making world!

And since you all have been so patient with me, here's the latest pic of our little troublemakers:

(If anyone is interested, they are di/di twins (two placentas, two amniotic sacs) 

and have a 70% chance of being Fraternal!)

Have a wonderful weekend and I cannot wait to see you all on Wednesday!

New Logo Goodness!

I've been in business for almost 2 and a half years and, I am horrible ashamed to admit this, I've never had a real logo. Seriously! It's one of the first things you need, one of the most essential things to building a brand, and I've never had one!

I've tried to circumvent this by staying consistent with my packaging and labeling. I've only ever used 2 fonts, I designed packaging that I could print from home and slightly change for each product, and I've kept the same green color scheme for some time now.

But, now is the time for a nice, neat, logo to represent what Second Spring Soaps is all about! 

I've noodled on a logo for longer than I have been in business! I've always known that I wanted it to be bright and colorful, just like my products. I've always wanted bubbles. I've played around with the idea of flowers and bath tubs and bars of soap... But yesterday, it just came to me out of nowhere. And my logo idea was born!

My only problem was how to do it...

So, I started researching online. I am no graphic design artist by any means, but I knew that my logo was fairly simple and I should be able to make it myself. So, after a few hours of playing around with GIMP (my open-source image manipulator of choice!) and watching some tutorials on YouTube, and after loads of trial and error, my very first logo was born!

I love it! I could not be happier with how it turned out! I even sat down and made a banner to go along with my Zibbet shop! 

It is exactly how I imagined it, down to the shades of colors I used! It really represents my business, fun and colorful and bright, as well as soapy! I cannot wait to see this on business cards, on my banner at shows, on t-shirts... AHH! I am so excited!

Etsy SEO Information

To go along with last week's post about Etsy Relevancy, I also created a quick pdf file with some basic SEO information as it relates to Etsy itself. You can find the .pdf below: Again, if you have any questions, comments, or additional information, please feel free to add it below! As this information changes, I will provide updated pdf files on my blog for you to check out.

Etsy Relevancy Information

One of the trickier parts of being a seller on Etsy is simply being found in a search by potential customers. Being found in searches is so important, second only to great photographs, and Etsy relevancy changed in mid to late 2012. I wrote up this short and compact Etsy Relevancy guide for my local team, and I have decided to provide it on my blog as well. Please check back next week when I will have my Etsy SEO pdf file for you to check out! If you have any questions, comments, or anything to add, please feel free to comment below!!