Taylor Made designs

Silkscreen Ribbon Orders

We are only one month into the new year and I have had six new orders for silkscreen custom ribbon. Today the last two orders were put in the mail. Phew. My gocco machine sure got a work out. As did my arms. Trust me when I say, it becomes tiresome lifting the lever up and down while checking registration and making sure the ink is printing nicely and not drying out. Like many of us, the gocco can be temperamental :)

What was nice, other than the obvious... making some money... all of the orders were very different. For one of the orders, I printed on 7/8" black satin ribbon with silver ink. It came out beautiful. The women who ordered it plan to use it for some valentine's packaging. How pretty is that going to look?

The very fragrant Meredith from Sweet Anthem asked me to print 20 yards of white satin 3/8" ribbon with brown ink. She sent me her logotype and I printed it on the ribbon. I think it came out so great! She is going to use it for her packaging too. Sweet Anthem is a small socially conscious and vegan-friendly artisan perfume shop from Seattle, WA run by perfumer & designer Meredith Tucker. How lovely would it be to receive one of her packages? Check out her shoppe, think Valentine's Day + just because days!

Tamami from Tamami Ko Bag is a repeat customer. She is so lovely to work with. She ordered 30 yards of .5 inch natural herringbone 100% cotton ribbon. I love the simplicity of her label. It is just her shoppe name in black. It's so understated...and looks so lovely in her colourful bags. Just love her stuff. 

The other three orders I'll post another day. Did not want to overwhelm you with too much ribbon. But I hope to inspire some people out there, who are on the fence about ordering ribbon. I get so many inquiries and only a handful of orders. Just an aside, Tamami garnered over 525 labels from 30 yards of ribbon for less than $150. Not bad, not bad at all :)

A Different Silkscreen Ribbon Order

Isn't this the coolest looking ribbon? Silver ink on black twill ribbon. It came out great. This order was sent all the way to Australia.

I'm really bummed, my gocco supplies are starting to dwindle so once they are gone, so is my custom silkscreen ribbon offering. So if you've been on the fence about ordering, I'd gently suggest, doing it now!

If anyone out there knows where I can purchase some supplies without paying an arm and a leg, let me know!

Custom Silkscreen Ribbon

I have been getting a lot of inquiries to my custom silkscreen ribbon, it's kinda weird! Out of the 10 emails and phone calls I received, here are two orders that were actually placed. Oliver. is a repeat customer, and Green Gal is new. I have four other people on the fence. Two others who are definitely going to place an order, but need to finalize their artwork. The others, well, they were looking for a 100 yards of ribbon for cheap. I wish I could do cheap... but it's just not doable for me. This custom ribbon stuff takes time! And for a mere $35 bucks, well, I think people are getting something special :)  

Print Gocco – Custom Ribbon

Just thought I'd show some ribbon that I finished this weekend using my Gocco printer. The type came out so crisp and was easy to print this time around.  A lot of time it takes quite a bit of practice to get the ink to lie down on the ribbon nicely. Sorry, the photo of the ribbon isn't the best. I took it late at night.

I know I'm going to get emails asking about this :) So here is the 411:
Nicole will get around 80 tags from this spool of ribbon. In addition to the spool, I cut up and sent her my practice ribbon – which was around 25 tags. So, for those doing the math... that's about .33 cents per tag. Not bad for a custom silkscreen tag :) For those interested, either email me, download my order form located on the right hand side of my blog, or visit my Etsy store for information about ordering ribbon.

I'm sure you've heard the news... but Riso, the owner of the Print Gocco has stopped making supplies. It's getting harder and harder to find supplies for my Gocco baby. I have 2 boxes plus of bulbs, and 9 screens left. I plan to stockpile supplies in the next few weeks. Anyone know of a good supplier? If you do, please let me know! I'll be your best friend :)

Holiday Gifts for Teachers

So what do we think of 2009 so far? Too early to tell? :)

Thought I'd show you what I put together for the kid's teachers. I always give money towards the class gift, but enjoy putting together packages that are just from Will + Davis too.

For Davis, there are so many people to put packages together for: her main teacher and her assistant, the Spanish teacher that Davis just adores, the woman who changes her clothes when she gets wet or dirty (which is at least once a week} the librarian who helps Davis pick out great books, the two women who take care of Davis during lunch bunch, the head of school and her assistant. That's a total of nine. phew.  For William, I only had to make four packages up. One for his Kindergarten teacher and her assistant, but also for the first grade teacher + her assistant. {William spends the morning in the 1st + 2nd grade class for math + reading}

I used brown paper bags and made up custom tags for each package. In November, when I had a lot of silkscreen ribbon orders, I decided to make up some holiday ribbon for myself. You'll see that I silkscreened red twill ribbon with the words, "happy holidays from the yarrantons" I think it made the packages feel more personal. I created the tags in Adobe Illustrator, and printed them out on one of my printers. I made homemade truffles, sweet + spicy pecans + chocolate covered preztels. I bought a little can of hot coco mix from Crate + Barrel as well as some ornaments. I included some of my holiday tags + notebooks. Nothing too much, but hopefuly enough to make the teachers smile and let them know how much we appreciate all they do for our kids. :)

Preppy Holiday Swap

I stumbled upon Clemsongirl and the Coach blog a few weeks back and she happened to have a post up that day about a "Preppy Christmas Decorations Swap". How could I refuse, being a preppy at heart? Well I did not refuse, and signed my preppy ass up. Of course I had to make everything pink and green, but with a holiday twist. The pattern I created reminded me of a candy cane and I think the entire package had a nice holiday feel to it.

Since Davis and I spend the afternoons together, she helped me put together my package. We settled on a few things for Rachel Ann, my swap partner, who happens to live right here in MA. Naturally, we made a little package for Davis too :) {she is four, and everything that is yours, is also hers}
 – Crochet snowflake + angel ornaments. Davis just LOVED these. Perfect decorations for Rachel Ann's tree or a packages. We "prepped" them up by adding pink + green ribbons to them. {We also bought a set for us}
– Two rolls of Custom Silkscreened Ribbon. "Happy Holidays from Rachel Ann" ribbon can decorate her packages this year. Davis picked out the ribbon at the craft store. She wanted pink ribbon, but I convinced her that green might be more festive for the holiday.
– Wine + Gift Tags: A few sets of both in pink and green should come in handy for her holiday packages.
– Mini Taylor Book: I made her a preppy green + pink book to keep track of her holiday list this year... but hopefully she'll be able to use it all year round.
– Homemade truffles + holiday MMs. You can guess who thought we should send these :) Good thing I was able to package some up before she got her hands on them. The homemade truffles came out so yummy. I'll post the recipe later this week. So easy. So good.

Overall, a really fun swap to do and a great way to get into the holiday spirit~ Thank you Clemsongirl!

Custom Tag it Wine + Gift Tags

I've been busy filling orders for some custom wine + gift tags. This order was for BoozeBros.com. They have an online store as well as a brick and mortar store in Las Vegas. They sent me their logo and asked me to create custom wine tags as well as square gift tags. Take a look at their site... you can order directly from there, and if you do, you'll see my tags on your bottles. Perfect for buying gifts for the upcoming busy holiday season! Everyone appreciates a nice bottle of wine :)

For many years we hosted Thanksgiving, but this year we'll be at my mum + dad's house. It's a bit nice, in that we don't have to do a lot. I'm bringing some apps + a few other things.  I shopped last week so I would not be in the stores with all the crazy people. Though yesterday, in the pouring rain, I stopped by the local supermarket to pick up three things of Land O' Lake Butter. It was only $1.99. Score! {you know you are old when things like this excite you!}

Oh, today we are making some Truffles. I made some last week and boy are these yummy. I'll post the recipe {which I found on a food blog} and some photos. They are very easy to make and eat!

More Custom Gocco Ribbon

Hope everyone had a great weekend. I worked on three new ribbon orders. This one I actually finished last week, but I've been sick with that horrible cold/flu that has been going around... so I never made it to the post office. I recreated Samantha's logo for her. I think the ribbon came out terrific. Go check out her Etsy store. Great baby stuff.

Last night we watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Can you believe it? It's not even Thanksgiving and the holiday shows are already appearing on TV. I have to keep my eye out for the Rudolph show. Davis just loves Clarissa, Herbie the Dentist and all the other reindeers. Has anyone else been watching Christmas shows already?

ribbit!

Here's another custom silkscreened ribbon order I completed over the weekend. I think it came out great. Two rolls will be cut up for tags, and the other roll will be used as ribbon for packaging.

I get a lot of emails from people wondering how many "tags" one can get from a spool of ribbon. A lot depends on the size of the type. (so far, most of the type, ie..FroggieBaby™,  measures over 2 inches) I usually leave .5 on each side of the type allowing enough room to cut and then sew the tags into your product.

The average amount is @75 tags per spool. I then give @ 10 more cut tags from my test strip that I do. So that's about .41 cents per tag. Now if you have a smaller type, like the one I did for Mary Ann's grandmother, where we only used her initials I counted over 150 tags from a single spool! That brings the cost to about .23 cents per tag! sweet.

The other thing people email me about is my packaging for the ribbon. If someone has a "brand" in place I try to create spool labels that match their brand. For FroggieBaby, she has a distinct brand, which helps me to create really cute labels.

Feel free to email me with additional questions. I'd be happy to answer any of them.
Thanks to everyone for their orders. I so appreciate it.

Teacher Gifts

Friday was the last day of school for the kids. Part of me was so sad, as this was William's last year at this school. He will be attending Kindergarten next year at a Charter School. He really loved his teacher and learned so much. But Davis will be there again next year so we'll still see his old teacher and friends. The other part of me has been doing an insane little happy dance :) No more driving to the school three times a day! Neal use to drop the kids off at 8:30 and then I picked Davis up at 11:30 and went back to pick William up at 3:00. I swear I will gain about 2 hours a day! Plus, we'll save a butt load on gas now! Can I have a woo hoo :)

In addition to giving money to the class gifts, I decided to put together some small teacher gifts. I made handmade notecards for the teachers with the school's logo + then customized them by saying, "a note from Tracy" etc. I hope they will like them. I also gave them handmade photo albums. I gave all the assisants/helpers some other silkscreen cards I made. (no photo :( forgot to take them!) I gave one of the woman that works there a Taylor Mini Book, seeing that she did not get one for Christmas. Then I just simply wrapped them up with ribbon and a special tags thanking them all for a wonderful year.

So it's summer vacation! I'm so excited not to have a routine. I'm sure by August I'll be singing a totally different tune, but right now, I'm as happy as a clam :)

Packing + Shipping

Mailed three packages out in the beginning of the week and have three more to do today. I think wrapping and packaging up stuff is one of my favorite things to do. For some reason, I get so much satisfaction from it. Silly I know :)

I can't believe tomorrow is May 1st. How fast is this year going? I feel like it was just February. Anyone else feel that way?

Ribbon Ribbon Ribbon

The rain has made it difficult to shoot any decent photos :( But you get the idea... ribbon ribbon + ribbon. I've been doing a lot of custom silkscreening ribbon orders - in fact, I'll be doing another one later this week.

Cheri will be able to get @ 90 tags from this spool as her name/logo was a lot wider than the initials done below. For those of you who are curious, I matched Cheri's Etsy Header for her store. (which many times I can do) She happen to know the typeface she used and I was able to download the font and recreate her logo for her. I created a little shamrock to match. The gocco doesn't like little heavy areas, but as I continued printing, the shamrock became cleaner and sharper. I made labels for the spool and for the packaging that matched her Etsy store. Overall, I think a really nice tag + package. If anyone has any questions, feel free to email me or leave me a comment. I'll get back to you.

Happy Tuesday everyone.

Another Custom Ribbon Order

Just finished this custom ribbon order this past Friday for the lovely + talented Mary Ann over at A Very Mary.  She ordered this ribbon for her grandmother who makes handmade quilts. (is she sweet or what?) She is planning on them being tags. For those of you who are interested, (I get a lot of emails asking this) she'll be able to cut out @ 150 tags from this spool of ribbon. Not bad :) You can order ribbon by emailing me directly or by visiting my etsy store.

It's a cold and rainy day here. But I'm not going to complain. We had such great weather last week. Plus, the rainy weather allowed me to read more of my book while waiting to pick up Davis from School. (normally I chat it up with the other mums while the kids run around in the playground, but this time I sat in my car and read) Over the weekend I finished reading, "The Curse of the Spellmans". A silly + lighthearted book I picked up at the library. And now I am half way through "Interpreter of Maladies", and really enjoying it. It's such a quiet and thought-provoking book. I have placed a bunch of books on hold at the library. I hope they will be available soon. Anyone reading anything interesting? Let us know!

:: friday wrap up ::

It's been a busy few weeks. Sold some of my ABC prints in my Etsy store. Had tons of inquiries for my wine + gift tags, sold some of them in my online store, and filled a few wholesales orders. phew. I'm glad it is the weekend. Not that I am complaining. Nothing makes me happier than to be filling orders :)

Here on the east coast, it's suppose to be sunny but still cool this weekend.  Perfect weather for spring clean up. What will you all be doing? Anything fun?