Etsy makeover

Advertising is everywhere.

What you wear, what you drink, what you see, the ads that pop up on social media while you surf trying to escape the world—everywhere.

So why not take advantage of it and be your biggest fan?

Back when I had my tea business I had a custom shirt printed up for me to make a marketing video with. But beyond that, I never really got into merchandise (besides business cards). I didn’t really want to buy things in bulk because I wasn’t a huge company, and never fell in love with a single company to buy custom individual merchandise at an affordable price.

Then one day an artist I follow revealed a pin they had made of one of their art pieces. It was beautiful. This got the wheels turning—what if I could design a pin with logos, perhaps books covers, and put them on a bag to carry around?

Enter Etsy. I found several custom shops to choose from, and I got creative with my budget. I decided instead of doing book covers to do book titles and add interesting pins from different shops to give the bag flair. What you see in the picture is the final product.

Custom book titles, author names, and url: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Hartiful

Skull knife: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ToBeFlairCreations

Black cat reading book: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ToucanTangoDesign

Pen with “writer” flag: https://www.etsy.com/shop/teenyuniverse

Black cat sleeping on book: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FrostDragonDesigns

Witchy kitty: https://www.etsy.com/shop/theGorgonist

Skeleton cat: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Baublesaurus

It took the whole summer to collect all the pins, as some were out of stock at certain points, or I was deciding between different shops to buy, but in the end, it all came together. The canvas bag I bought on Amazon. I had some cute canvas bags from Etsy I was planning on using, but as you can see I put quite a few holes in the bag, and I was afraid I might ruin my Etsy bags (this was my first time using pins).

This got me further thinking about advertising.

I love the gallon challenge. This is where you try to drink a gallon of water a day. Because of this, you can generally always find me with a water bottle in my hand. So I looked into having one custom designed. I had a small one with just my author name made for me at a craft show about a year ago, but I went to Etsy for a larger bottle. As usual, there were plenty of shops to choose from, but eventually, I settled on one and this is the result: