How cute is this.

Some of our friends are having their first baby. They are the sort who restore their own cars, build hot rods and Granddad is a mechanic, so we made them a family set as a present. They're originally DH's friends and the ideas are mostly his, the execution mine (although he wouldn't buy me an embroidery machine so we got that done).

Did I mention they're having a girl?

Size 00 mechanic's overalls

DH is a bit sick - yes, that is an Amorall badge on the bum.

The whole set. The front of the adult shirts say Mum and Dad, the backs have the 2 appliqued hotrods. I can just see Dad in a pink shirt!

My babies have gone ...

Well, they're gone. This is the first time my nappies have been out there for people to see without me there to explain or answer questions. I am relying on people working in a shop who have no idea about MCN to explain and sell them to future parents who also have no idea about MCN. After we left them there I was so nervous I was actually shaking. In line with my new positive spin I keep reassuring myself that they are running a business and they wouldn't have taken them if they didn't think they would sell. It definitely makes me feel like an amateur!

I spent the weekend creating packaging and I'm pretty impressed with how it worked. I didn't want to put them in plastic, that sort of defeats the purpose. This way they have all the information they need like care and materials, plus they have a little blurb like "real" (mass produced?) products, but people can still have a good look and play with them.

Front and back of the packaging.

The band is slotted to fit around the nappy.

I tried to give them a selection of different prints, mostly unisex. And hopefully the name is distinctive enough that people will look it up if they want something different.

My husband went back later (to pick up the plastic tub we forgot after browsing in the store) and they already had them up, so he got a photo of them on display for me. Now it's just time to hope ...

So much happening

I just re-read some of these and I really am out of date, so I'm making a resolution to try to blog more often again. This is thanks to my wonderful, incredibly supportive husband. I was getting very negative because I'm basically having to start all over again after pulling back when I was pregnant. He pulled me up and has been taking the girls while I sew or do markets and has been giving me ideas. He keeps telling me to use some of the hypbirthing things I did when I was pregnant, that was all about being positive. At first I didn't want to because it's actually hard work to turn around and find positives, it's much easier to just sink down. But in the end it's exhausting to be depressed, so here are the positives happening at the moment.

There's great feedback from my testers on the fitted nappies, they are ready to go and now I just have to sew some :)

I finally found a use for this bamboo! The widget "helped" me paint it ages ago but it wasn't right for what I wanted, now it works really well as the outer of some of the fitted nappies. This isn't actually one of the new fitteds, this is a special large one I made.

That reminds me, I've had some custom work designing a nappy for an adult, it was actually a lot of fun.

I've been doing markets while we are in the city, I've only sold enough to cover costs but have given out a heap of cards and done lots of advocacy. It's funny that the people who are most impressed are the Grandmothers - obviously all those years of using old-style nappies they can see the advantages! DH insisted I use one of these photos, even though I hate photos of myself.

I've got onto WAHMania about re-opening my store on there, I really need the exposure of being on a mall.

And possibly the biggest and most exciting news - I have a real life store that's taking my pockets on consignment! The manager was very enthusiastic and they are going to take some and see how they go, if they go well the store will start to order them from me. It will pay a lot less than selling them myself, but having large orders is way better than one or two at a time. And not having to do the actual selling makes it easier as well.

Hopefully I'll be writing again soon.