One of the greatest parts about running an Etsy shop is sending an item off to its new owner. As a buyer, ordering an item online is always fun because, no matter what, it always feels like a gift when it arrives. We’ve always loved it when Etsy sellers throw in little surprises to make opening a package that much more exciting, so, we knew we wanted to package our items with special care so our buyers have something fun to open when their item arrives!

We wanted our packaging to reflect the aesthetic of our shop, which is fairly old-time-y. We both like old photos a lot, and we thought adding some buttons and tying it all together with some yarn would keep with the theme of antique-y looking gift wrap. The fun thing about it is that you can sort of personalize the wrapping for each item you send out! Whenever we’re out thrifting, we tend to keep our eyes open for things like old maps, old photos, old buttons, or even old newspaper. All of those things can be really nice accents, and then your basic packing supplies really don’t need to be very fancy, some tissue paper, or brown paper, will do the trick just fine.

In the end, we hope that our buyers will be excited to receive their new item, and that the little extra surprises will put a smile on their faces when they receive their purchase.

posted by Meaghan & Alex

Well, we hope this doesn’t start to sound like we’re writing these posts just to brag about all of the talented friends we have, but truthfully, we do consider ourselves really lucky to be surrounded by some of the most wonderful, (generous), creative people!!!

In this case, we’re talking about our very good friend Kira, who just so happened to appear in our pumpkin picking post earlier this week (she’ll likely pop up in a lot of things we post!) …

Kira is currently working over at eLuxe,  constantly turning out awesome editorials for them, and photographing everything for the online shop. But, besides having a really cool day job, Kira also happens to take beautiful pictures that we both absolutely love! There was never a question that we were going to ask her to shoot our first lookbook, and we’re really excited about working with her on it. We’ll leave you with a few pictures from her website and blog- including one or two from the day trip we took to Elora Gorge this Summer – since we aren’t quite ready to show you what we’re working on together just yet…

We won’t go on about the importance of having a lookbook, because we don’t think they’re a necessary part of selling on Etsy. That being said,  they’re a really great way of promoting your shop and giving people a sneak peak at what you will be listing in the shop. It might keep people coming back if they see something in your Winter collection that they are coveting! Not to mention, that with things like Tumblr and Pinterest out there, it never hurts to throw a pretty picture up, because people are likely to share, and that’s a quick way to get more attention for your shop.

We happened to know right from the start that we wanted to put out “collections” and corresponding lookbooks to promote them. Selling vintage may not be such a “collection” oriented branch of online retail, especially since we plan to be perpetually updating the shop with new items, but, we thought it would make the whole experience feel more like a project – plus it will just be fun!

Check out her website here & be sure to follow her Tumblr (it does not dissapoint).

*All photos belonging to Kira

-Posted by Alex and Meaghan