Packaging, Art, and Cameos

I've been doing a lot of work giving my shop a little bit of a makeover. I'm trying to work on packaging and what I guess you could call advertising. It's a lot of hard work, but it's sort of fun! I honestly feel a bit like I did when I was little, coloring and cutting out fake coupons or circus tickets in preparation for for a game of pretend. But this time my shop is actually a real one, selling things I've hand made. I'm actually trying to keep as much of my packaging hand made as possible. I've got a nice printer, a paper cutter, a big stack of cardstock, and a hole puncher that makes tiny little holes! What can I do with that? Well, I've found that I can do a lot of things with it that create a, hopefully, professional look to the things I make and sell.

For my line of sweet stuff, I've made fancy little cards to clip some jewelry onto. They then go into little 4x6 ziplocks that I found in the craft section. My more classical or gothic jewelry will be packaged up a bit differently, I'm not quite sure how yet, but I have printed up some tags with a pretty engraved style design on it.

I've also been working on some postcard sized prints for my shop, and just for fun. I will be getting these printed for me, one at a time, because it would kill my printer and it's just cheaper to do these in bulk. A whole lot of tags can be made from a couple sheets of paper, but these are a bit bigger!

Click either for a larger picture.

I plan on doing one for each style my shop caters to, Classic Lolita, Sweet Lolita, and Gothic Lolita. The Gothic Lolita one is still in progress! I plan on giving these away with orders from my shop as a little thank you. I drew and colored them myself, and it's been quite some time since I did very much art, but I hope that these are nice enough for people to want to keep and tack up somewhere, and not crumple them up and throw them away XD You can also check these out, and any other Lolita art I might do, on my Deviantart account.

One final project is to make all these cameos into something pretty! I've had the bare cameos hanging around for a very long time and finally found a place selling the fancy backs in the size I need. The next step is to fancy them up a bit with chain and beads and maybe some rhinestones, then put some on pin backs and others on necklace chains. Maybe even make a hair clip or two!

Special Photo Shoot

I've updated my shop with a number of things, most of which are completely new things that I hope to make a regular item in my shop!

First up is the Sweet Garden half bonnet. This is a simple, all pink, half bonnet decorated in a very OTT Sweet Lolita manner with lots of extra roses and a scattering of pink chiffon bows.

The first of my shop's new items are mini tricorn hats. I've been wanting to get into making mini tricorns ever since I learned the art of millinery, and I made this photo shoot as an excuse to finally get myself in gear and make some. I found it a really fun experience! I'm still trying to get the technique down, but so far, so good! I've made two for sale, a gothic black mini tricorn, and a sweet blue and white one.

I also am starting to stock cake slice hats. I really love making things out of felt, and I love the silly over-the-topness of the cake hat, so I couldn't resist making my own version of the Lolita classic. The first cake slice in stock (that sold out within an hour of posting!) is a super sweet pink and blue slice.

Another new thing for Ophaim is jewelery with a sweeter style. I really enjoy making cute and pastel jewelery, my favorite to make at the moment are little polymer clay teddy bear themed pieces.

To keep with the theme of a few new, sweeter, pieces being added to Ophanim, I've also included some small deco'd tins. I've discovered decoing to be a really fun hobby. I don't know which style I like more, the cabochon and rhinestone kind, or the whipped cream and sweets kid!

I recently got together with some lovely Lolita designers and models, check out my Lolita blog for pictures from that awesome event!